The Russell Brunson Show - How To Fortify Yourself Against Your Weak Spots

Episode Date: December 26, 2018

As you're planning your year this year, make sure to spend time focusing on this important aspect as well. On this episode Russell talks about having an end of year goal meeting with his partners and what it means to fortify yourself against your weaknesses. Here are some of the amazing and insightful things to listen for in today's episode: Find out why Russell started off the end of the year meeting with Clickfunnels partners asking what the things are that could take down Clickfunnels. How Russell has learned from some weaknesses his former businesses have had and how he is fortifying himself against them with Clickfunnels. Why you should fortify yourself in all aspects of your life, including business, your marriage, your relationships, etc. So listen here to find out why it's so important to look for your own weak spots and to fortify your business against them. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/how-to-fortify-yourself-against-your-weak-spots Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Air Transat presents two friends traveling in Europe for the first time and feeling some pretty big emotions. This coffee is so good. How do they make it so rich and tasty? Those paintings we saw today weren't prints. They were the actual paintings. I have never seen tomatoes like this. How are they so red? With flight deals starting at just $589, it's time for you to see what Europe has to offer. Don't worry, you can handle it. Visit airTransat.com for details. Conditions apply. AirTransat. Travel moves us. Hey, everybody. This is Russell Brunson.

Welcome to Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about fortifying your weaknesses so your company can continue to grow long-term. So, the big question is this. How are entrepreneurs like us, who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, who are 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. Hey everyone, hope everything's amazing. We are getting ready for the holidays. In fact, this episode will probably go live during Christmas, maybe even on Christmas, I don't even know. But last week we had our big partner meeting while all of our partners fly out to Boise and we lock ourselves in a room for two days and we discuss the plans and the future and world domination, what we're going to do and try to figure out the whole process. What's crazy, so anyway, our goal for last year, like last year when we did this, our goal was like, we want to do $100 million in sales in a calendar year. We've

done it in like, I think it was like three years or something. It took us to get 100 million, right? We want to do 100 million in a calendar year. So that was it in like, I think it was like three years or something. It took us to get a hundred million, right? We want to do a hundred million in a calendar year. So that was the big goal. And actually what's crazy is as of yesterday, when we recorded this podcast, we did it. We broke a hundred million dollars in one calendar year, which is crazy. So, oh, insane. So thank you for all of your support. Everybody who's, who's invested in programs, who's by, uses the software, who loves what we do. We are grateful for you guys and, um, for making that happen. So on, you know, now next year it's like, what's the next goal? What's the next phase? So we had the big meeting, got everyone out here and, uh, it was a lot of fun. Um, we basically, like I said, we lock ourselves in a room and we just have a big

list of items that we go through and then we try to prioritize and schedule and figure things out. And, um, just kind of a cool thing we do every single year. And, but I wanted to share with you guys is how I started the meeting this year that's different than normal. So basically, we started the meeting. I brought everyone together. I said, okay, we've done some amazing things this year. We have some big goals for next year.

But before we get into any of that, I want to talk about all the ways that ClickFunnels could fail. And everyone's like, oh, well, that's a depressing way to start the meeting. I'm like, well, not in a depressing way, but if we're not aware of where are our choke points, where could we actually get tapped out? If we're not aware of where our weaknesses are, then it's almost like a lot of people, we don't want to look at those things, so we kind of hold a blind eye. Not just in business, but in everything in life.

Where are my weaknesses in my marriage, in my family relationships, with my kids? Where are the weaknesses? We typically, our brains don't like to think about the unpleasantness of things. So we kind of block those things and we don't, we don't talk about them. I don't think about them as opposed to the opposite, which is like being aware of them, acknowledging them and then fortifying yourself around those things so that the problems don't happen. Right. And so that's what we kind of talk about. So in every business, there's things that can make your business crash. I know because I've crashed multiple businesses in the past and hopefully I learned each time and I've tried to fortify things stronger the next time. But for example, last time

I had my big business crash, some of you guys may have heard this story before. It was actually right about time I started this podcast, but we had a hundred and something employees and we had all of our merchant accounts. I think we had like 14 merchant accounts but they're all with the same process or same bank so i thought we had like diversity because they were different process different merchant accounts but apparently because they're all in the same bank the bank looks them as one merchant cat even though there's like 14 of them and so when that bank said they didn't like us anymore they shut down the merchant account but they shut down all of our merchant accounts we lost 14 of them and with this huge business was growing everything was doing amazing but. But that one, like that one thing

that chokehold was able to like really quickly, like someone just pinched that and the whole company basically went under. Um, you know, I had let go 80 people in a, in a weekend and it was horrible and it's all because of that one thing. And so I started thinking, what are the, what are the things inside of ClickFunnels that if they were to go wrong, could destroy this amazing thing that we built? And so one of them again is merchant accounts. Are we diversified? Do we have backups? If Stripe shut us down, what would we do?

What would be the process? What are the other things we do to ensure that we don't? What are our chargeback rates? What are our refund rates? What's high? What's low? Whatever we need to be. Just figuring out all those things because the last thing that would happen

is lose my merchant account and then I lose ClickFunnels, right? And then everybody who we've been serving, now we screw them over because they lose that piece, right? This is the things keeping me up at night, by the way. So that was the first one. We talked about what happens if the FTC didn't like how we sold something.

Like, oh my gosh, like that could be another short point. FTC came in and said, we don't like how you sell your stuff. We could be shut down. So we were like, what do we do? So it's like, okay, let's go and let's hire an FTC lawyer to go through every single page, every single funnel and give us feedback. And we'll make changes to the copy. Let's look at our webinar presentation, like things that aren't compliant.

Let's change those things. Let's look at, um, you know, all sorts of things. Um, join the BBB, you know, joining, there's another, uh, anyway, the other organization we're trying to join that, you know, whatever we can do to like protect ourselves from anything bad like that happens, make sure that we are squeaky clean in all aspects there. Right. And then we're like, what happens if our servers are going down? What happens if, if we're looking at all the, all the possible things that could go wrong and then instead of like trying to turn a blind eye to him and not think about him,

we try to like face him straight on and be like, okay, here's the weaknesses. What do we need to do? How do we fortify? What are all the things we can do to protect ourselves and protect our customers and the people we're serving? And it's, it's those things. And so I share that with you guys because, well, first off, so you're aware that I am doing everything in my power to, to continue a solid foundation for all of you guys.

I want to make sure you have a place to build your, your businesses on and your legacy on. And we want to make sure that we're here for a thousand years. Right? So hopefully it gives you guys some comfort there. But second off, I think you should all be looking at your business as well. If you only have one merchant account, that's kind of scary. If you only have one traffic source, that's scary. If all your ads come from Facebook, what happens if Zuckerberg decides to change how ads work or everything's coming from Google? What if the algorithm changes again? What if like just being super aware, what would I have a business partnership? And I'm like, what if my partner, I don't get along? Like what could happen there? What happens if, you know, and like all the what ifs, um, and looking at those things and figuring

out how do we fortify against this, right? Same thing could be true in your marriage, right? What are the points that like something bad, like if something bad happened in your marriage, like what are those things? And it's like, okay, be aware of those things. Then how do we fortify against that? Right? Like when Clint and I first got married and first started this business, I started hiring people. Um, one of the very first things that we kind of sat down and said is like, okay, like I'm not going to go to lunch with a single female. Like that's just something I will never do. And that's just like a stronghold. Like even if it's, there's someone I'm not attracted to, or there's someone way different, like, it's just a rule. Like, I don't go to lunch by myself with a female. Like, it's just, it's just, you just don't do it.

Right. Cause who knows what could happen, what people could think it happened or whatever. It doesn't even matter. It's just, I'm fortifying myself against, against potential problems. Right. And so you set up these fortifications ahead of time and then you won't have the issues. And so, um, now that we're in the season of planning and preparing and figuring things out, um, I just challenge you guys to look at your weaknesses and fortify yourself around it. You know, um, if I was to go to war against another country, I'd be looking at the same thing. Like, where are we weak at? Are we weak on land, on sea? Like, like, where are they strong at? Where are we weak at? Like, how do we, how do we fortify ourselvesify ourselves so that if the attacks come there, we're prepared for them

and we can withstand the blows? So anyway, there you go, you guys. There's the lesson for today. It's not going to be the most fun conversation, but I promise you it's a lot more fun than the conversation you have afterwards when your emergency accounts get shut down or when Zuckerberg shuts down your traffic or when the FTC finds your phone was not compliant or when, um, whatever, whatever your thing might be. And so, um, I just want to encourage all you guys to do what we did and really look at those weaknesses, focus on them, figure out how to fortify them, um, as you're making

your plans for, for the upcoming year, because doubling your company or tripling your company, whatever your, your lofty, exciting goals are, which are fun. Um, all that fun disappears quickly if you're not careful. So hope to help somebody out there. Um, I know it was a big thing for us this year as we're trying to figure out how to go from a million or from a hundred million to a billion, which I don't think is a, is a 12 month goal, but I think it is a 10 year goal. You know, how do we make sure we're fortified so that when we 10 X or right now we can handle it, we can support it and we're prepared for it. Um, yeah. So hope that helps you guys. Uh, with that said, I appreciate you all. Thank you so when we 10X what we're at now, we can handle it, we can support it and we're prepared for it.

Yeah, so hope that helps you guys. With that said, I appreciate you all. Thank you so much for hanging out on the podcast. If you learned anything or if you enjoy this, please take a screenshot on your phone. You just click the buttons, boom, take a screenshot, go to Instagram, Facebook,

wherever you're social at, post and say your number one thing, your biggest takeaway you got from this episode. Please tag me in because I'd love to see that. And then if you use hashtag marketing secrets in the post as well, that'd be awesome. And yeah, it's been fun watching more and more of you guys

taking snapshots and posting your big takeaway from the episodes. It means a lot to me and I love it. And so please keep doing it. Plus helps other people find out about our podcast and hopefully I can help serve more people. So with that said, thanks you guys. And we'll talk to you all again soon.

Bye everybody. Want more marketing secrets? If so, then go get your copies of my two bestselling books, podcast and hopefully I can help serve more people. So with that said, thanks you guys. that we've used to become the fastest growing non-VC backed SaaS startup company in the world.