Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Why I'm "Pausing" The Inner Circle (Part 1 of 2)

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

I made an announcement last Friday about why I'm pausing the Inner Circle. This episode will explain why... On this episode Russell talks about the history of his inner circle group in the wake of deciding to pause it for a season. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear on this episode: How Russell got started with Mastermind groups and what lead to him starting his own. Hear about the evolution of the inner circle group from it's beginnings as the Ignite program. And see where the inner circle group is now, just as Russell decides to take a pause from it. So listen here to find out how the inner circle began six years ago, and be sure to listen to the next episode to find out why Russell will be pausing it for a little while. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/249-why-i-m-pausing-the-inner-circle-part-1-of-2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Seekers podcast. I've got a special episode for you today. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous to do this one. But there's been a bunch of questions that I've been getting over the last 24 hours. And this is probably the best format for me to kind of talk about it.

So I'm gonna be talking during today's episode about why I am pausing my inner circle. So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, we're spending money from our own pockets. How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets.

All right, everybody. So yes, that is the news. As you've probably seen in the ClickFunnels community, there's been a lot of changes, announcements happening. On the ClickFunnels five-year birthday, we did some big announcements talking about how we're simplifying the software, we're getting rid of some of the features, and just focusing on being the category king of sales funnels. We then talked about how we launched FunnelFlix,

which is a training platform for people on funnels and basically has all the courses that we used to sell for anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to a couple thousand bucks for free for anyone who's at the $297 a month level click funnels. And since then, we've had thousands of people upgrade to that level, which is really, really cool. And so now we're able to do more training. And so that was the first big, big announcement. And there's another big announcement happening at Funnel Hacking Live, which you guys are going to freak out about. If you don't ever take a chance, go to funnelhackinglive.com and get them.

And then on my 40th birthday, there's another big announcement. So those are three big things happening, but there's a lot of little announcements happening as well. And one of them I made last Friday and it was more silent because it wasn't to everybody. It was just to a small group in our market. And so a lot of you guys know, I've had an Inner Circle coaching program now for over six years, since before ClickFunnels launched. And it's funny. And I shared this with the Inner Circle group. We had a group here on Monday and Tuesday. Today's Wednesday.

And I kind of took today off and spent time with Nora. I went to the pumpkin patch with her. And then tomorrow, Thursday and Friday, I have my last Inner Circle meeting. And honestly, it's been so far far i'm only halfway through the week but it's been like the most one of the most emotional weeks of my life and um and so i kind of just talk about that because i know a lot of people who listen to this podcast specifically this has been a thing that they've been striving for like i want to be in your circle i want to get there like this is my plan like someday i want to do it and i just want to kind of tell you the story behind it and then and then from there talk about why I'm pausing it for a while and and um and hopefully it'll it'll um be good for you and

inspire you and help you to to make some decisions that are that are tough as well um and so that's kind of game plan but I'm going to go back in time a little bit. So, um, when this whole thing started for me, so I had joined a mastermind group. It was Bill Glazer's mastermind group. Um, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy's way back over, over 10 years ago now, which is crazy. And I was in that group for six years. And then, um, when, uh, when Bill Glazer sold the company, I kind of dropped out and I was like, I need another mastermind group. And I had tried to launch my own group a couple of times with varied success. I had it once and I had like five or six people sign up and then, and then I did it for a year or two and it was kind of hard and I canceled it. And anyway, but, um, while we were building ClickFunnels and I was writing the dot-com seekers

book, both of the things were happening at the same time. I started just having this, this, I don't even know what the word is, like this desire, this, this need for like a mastermind group. I tried to join a couple other peoples and just like, I never got what I, what I needed out of them. And finally I kind of felt the, the pull, which I'm sure you guys have felt that pull, that calling, that whatever you want to call it, but that, that need of just like, I feel like I should start a group. And I remember looking at a bunch of people who had groups online and, and that were doing really well. And I was just like, Oh, like, that'd be so cool. And they were charging $25,000 for these things. And I was just like, there's no way that's going to be possible. Um, but I want to try. And so, um, I went out there and I, and I tried to launch this thing. And, um, and first I launched the program. It was 10,000.

It's called our Ignite program. We started selling that and it was doing well. And then it grew to the point where it was too big. And I was like, I want to do like an inner circle. Like I want to have my own group that I work even closer with. And so we launched a $25,000 inner circle program. And at first, like nobody would sign up for it. We kept trying thing after thing.

And like nobody, like people would sign up for the $10,000 thing, but nobody would sign up for the $25,000. And I was just like, like other people are selling things for that much. why can't i like what's wrong with me and and you know we're getting we're building click phones at the time i'm writing the doc i'm seekers book and and i remember finally we sold one and the craziest thing to me is that the person that bought it paid 25 grand and they never showed up to any of the meetings like the first person

who signed up never never asked for refund either never i just never we couldn't get this person ever contacted like it was the weirdest thing and i was just like we got one person signed up never never asked for refund either never i just never we couldn't get this person to ever contact like it was the weirdest thing i was just like we got one person signed up they won't even show up like i don't it doesn't make any sense to me um and then uh and then we sold another one and another and we started selling a few and it wasn't a ton i think we had five or six probably um at the first meeting and so i had my night event which had i don't know maybe 100 people came to that and then we did the Inner Circle right afterwards, which had like five or six people in it. And it was the first little mastermind group. And it was so awesome.

In fact, I want to take a step back. I shared this yesterday with the Inner Circle members. But it was funny because this whole thing, like the writing of the Dotcom Seekers book and the building of ClickFunnels and stuff came on the backside of a big business failure where I had to fire like 80 people and, and I didn't like the business I was in. And if you've read the dot-com seekers book, the intro section, I talk about how I woke up one day and I was, I, I, I didn't love my customers. And I said, I wish if I would have a boss, I wish I had a boss that person could fire me cause I didn't want to go in. And about

that time I heard Eben Pagan talk about how you need to build out a customer avatar. And I thought it was the cheesiest advice ever, but I was like, all right, fine. I'm going to do this customer avatar exercise. And I talk about it in the dot-com seekers book. And so I sat down and said, okay, who, what's my dream customer look like? And first I thought from a, from a male, like a man standpoint. Right. And so I gave it a name. So I'm gonna call him Mike. And I was like, what, what are, you know, what are some of the things about Mike? I'm like, well, he's successful. He used to be an athlete. I kind of list all these things that my dream customer would have. And I took that to Google Images and I typed in Mike

and all the phrases and a whole bunch of pictures popped up. And I picked a dude who looked like someone I'd want to hang out with that I thought would be cool. And I took that picture and I printed it out and I taped it on my wall. And I was like, well, I don't just want to serve men. I want to serve women as well. I think women are amazing. They have, you know, a lot of times, uh, have more power to change and impact than, than men. Not all the time, but a lot of times. And I was just like, man, if I could help serve women as well, I've never had it. And prior to that, just the reason why that was a big deal to me at the time is prior to that, you know, when I was doing coaching and stuff like that, I never had very

many women that came into our groups, a few, but it was just, it was definitely more, more male dominant. And I was like, I want to work with women too. Like, they're so amazing. And I've seen the impact that, that, that successful women can have on, on people. And I was like, I want that as well. So I wrote down the customer avatar on the female side and I called her Julie and I listed all these different names. And I went to Google images and I found a picture of, that was like my dream Julie. Julie. I printed that out and taped it on my wall and I had these two pictures and they became my, like, that was my dream. Like I wanted to build a mastermind with those two people are there and I can hang out with them. And so that's when this whole journey started. Right. And we started getting some people in and, and had the group and it was

five or six people at this first mastermind group and it was the beginning. And then we started, um, kept pushing it, kept pushing it. And finally eventually got to like to eight and then to ten people and it slowly grew and i would do meetings two or three times a year with them and it was some of the most rewarding work ever i've had a chance to do in these mastermind groups um and then i started talking about it in fact if you've been listening this podcast for the last five or six years i started talking about inner circle members because i was i was the closest with them as they would have successes i would talk about on the podcast and and more i talked about the inner circle members more people said i want to be in the inner circle and then we started getting more traction and more growth and

more people started coming into it um to the point where we had a full group of like 18 people which was like in my mind i maxed out 18 people and i was like oh my gosh this is crazy and then um we did i think we did a funnel hiking live about that time and we signed up like 10 more people and then we had like like, 30. I was like, I can't do 30. I think I tried once to do 30 in a group, and it was, like, really, really hard. So, like, I'm going to break into two groups. And then we had two groups of, like, 15 or something like that.

And then one day I had this idea. I was like, what would it look like if I made this perfect? I was like, we could have, if I did four groups, I had four groups of 25, that'd be 100 people. I could facilitate that. It wouldn't crush too much of my time. I'd be able to still spend time doing click funnels

and everything else I'm doing. So I said, I could handle 100 people in this inner circle and that'd be maxed out at that point. And so then I think I did a podcast about it, I'm sure, and I sent some emails out. I said, and again, we had maybe 35 people at the time. I said, just so you know, I'm capping at 100 people. We hit 100, I'm shutting it down.

And I didn't think that was going to ever happen. And within like two months, we hit 100 people. And it was crazy and intense and it was insane. And we'd do these events where basically people would come and it's two days times four groups, two, four, six, eight days over two to three weeks. It was basically a month of my life, two to three times a year was focused on inner circle members.

Then I did these things called Beck in a Day where they'd jump on a call on Friday and I'd spend Fridays consulting with different people in the group. It was just, again, so fulfilling, so rewarding. It gave me the chance to have my hands on a hundred people's businesses at a time in all sorts of industries. Like, it really, for me, was the training ground. It was the thing that gave me the ability to understand, you know, what, what works in this business and what's different, like, what are the intricacies

and the difference between an info business versus a supplement business versus a local business versus like I had this rare, unique opportunity for many years to just to work with so many companies and see and be on the front lines and be able to talk through voxers with all these entrepreneurs and to figure things out. And it was amazing. And so again, we hit the hundred people and we capped it down. And for like a year, no one could come in. And we started getting your normal nutrition would happen. And after a year, we're down to like 70 or I don't know how many people were in there. And I was like, Oh, we need to, to kind of re,

you know, get it back up to a hundred. And, and so we did a campaign, got back to a hundred. And then I had this idea. I said, you know what? I don't want to, like, I don't want to fill in this up with new people. I want to make it where it's like, this is a group of people I'm gonna work with. And, and I just want to, I want to like, I want't want to keep filling this up with new people. I want to make it where it's like, this is a group of people I'm going to work with. And, and I just want to, I want to like, I want to every single year, come back to the same group of people and together collectively as a whole, I want us all growing together. I said, how are we going to do that when we have people coming and going and things like that? It's really, really difficult. So we did a campaign with everybody. I said, we're starting a program where we're calling this inner circle

for life. Now we're changing the name. It's called inner circle for life. And when you're in, you're in. And if you leave, that's fine. You can leave. But if you leave, you can never come back in. Cause a lot of people said, I'm going to leave. I'll come back next year. I'll take a year off. And I was just like, I hated that. So we made inner circle for life where if you're in, you're in. And if you're out, again, we're still friends, but you can never come back in. And what happened next was insane. Like nobody, for the most part, nobody left. And Inner Circle was closed for the next two and a half years or so. And that brought me to where I am right now.

And you know what? I'm going to share that on the next episode. I'm going to drag this story on because usually the episode is about 10 minutes long. We're already at 12 minutes, and I want to share the rest of the story on the next one. So there's the buildup of where Inner Circle has come from in the last six years and why I did it and how we did it and some of the amazing things and some of the experiences. So that's it for this episode.

On the next episode, I'm going to talk to you about the transitions in my personal life and my family and everything and why I'm pausing Inner Circle for now. I'm not pausing it forever, not indefinitely, but for a season I'm going to be pausing it. I'll tell you more about that on the next episode here at the Marketing Secrets Show. Thanks again, everybody. And I will see you on the next episode. Want more marketing secrets? If so, then go get your copies of my two bestselling books. Book number one is called Expert Secrets and you can get a free copy at expertsecrets.com. And book number two is called Dot Com Secrets, and you can get your free copy at dotcomsecrets.com. Inside these two books, you'll find my top 35 secrets that we've used to become the fastest-growing, non-VC-backed, SaaS startup company in the world.