The Russell Brunson Show - Payoff Your House First...

Episode Date: September 12, 2017

Against all traditional investing advice, this should be your number one focus after you launch your company. On this episode Russell talks about paying your house off quickly so you can have the ability to risk more. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in today's episode: Why Russell is giving the opposite advice as nearly every investor there is when it comes to paying off your house. How Russell was able to keep his wife in the dark about some of the hardest times in the business. Why having the stability of a paid off house gives entrepreneurs the ability to risk more. So listen here to find out what would happen to Russell, worst case scenario and why he wouldn't lose his home or family. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/payoff-your-house-first Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With TD Direct Investing, new and existing clients could get 1% cash back. Great! That's 1% closer to being part of the 1%. Maybe, but definitely 100% closer to getting 1% cash back with TD Direct Investing. Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31, 2025. Visit td.com slash dioffer to learn more. What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to a late night in the wrestling room edition of Marketing Seekers Podcast. 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 answer. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. Alright, alright everybody. So, I spent almost five or six hours today with the kids in my little piece of heaven here cleaning today. So, this is an external garage in our house that I decided to turn into a wrestling room for those who have never seen it before. And it's awesome. I've got wrestling mats, I've got got gladiator walls. We got Bulgarian bags over here. We got paintings of my favorite wrestlers back here. We've got throwing dummies. We got the girls stuff here for the girls. These are actually the wrestling mats I used to wrestle

on in high school. They were on my back deck growing up. So this little nostalgia for you, that's cool. And uh yeah this is the weight room side of it so this is where we we do what we do and it's uh it's awesome so as i was working today uh yeah because it's not like i said we're out kind of the middle of nowhere so there's a lot of spiders and bugs and stuff so all these bug trappers and stuff and so probably three or four months i come and do a deep clean right to get the vacuum out and throw away all the dead spiders and like reclean and like yeah it's kind of a nightmare but it's really fun now it's clean oh like it's so clean right now i just i love it makes more work out so um but anyway during all of this craziness today of

cleaning having fun like that um i was checking my phone a couple times throughout and i saw a post uh from julia stoyan and i thought it was interesting because she asked um hey should i pay off my house or should i pull the money out and use that for other investments and things like that? And it's funny because I gave my answer and it was like the exact opposite of what I think a lot of people thought I would think. And I think it's good. So I'm going to give you my advice right now. Because I know when I was a little uh, my dad, who's an entrepreneur and, uh, has a couple of businesses and, you know, someone who first got me all excited

about this whole thing. Um, he used to always tell me, he's like, you gotta pay off your house. You gotta pay off your house. Like pay off your house as quick as you can. And I remember cause I was like, okay, that's good advice. And then, um, when I got older, I remember reading rich dad, poor dad and read other like investment books. And like they always talk about how a house is a bad investment. You need to keep the money as low as possible and then use that to pay off. Keep your house just down to the minimum, pay monthly payments and then keep that money

and go and invest in other things that can produce more money. And logically, it makes sense, right? If I was an investment dude teaching people investment, I'd be like, yes, you should not pay off your house. Just keep the payments or keep the equity in there as low as possible. Strip the cash out because you can use that in other investment vehicles. So it makes sense as an investor. But I don't consider myself an investor.

Now, I am getting dabbling in the cryptocurrencies. Todd Dickerson, my partner at ClickFunnels, is making insane amounts of money. So he's showing me the ways of the crypto world. But I um, I still don't ever convince, consider myself an investor. I consider myself an entrepreneur. And, um, uh, it's funny cause when I first started reading those books, I started believing that, started believing that. And then I talked to my dad and I was like, dad, why don't you pull your money? Cause my dad's like buys houses, pays them off in the cashflow, buys houses, pays them off cashflow. And then he did his own house. And I was like, dad, like, what are you thinking? You're crazy. And I remember like one night he just kept telling me, he's like,

he's like, Russell, you have to understand there's something, there's something about knowing that your house is paid off. The knowing that like the worst case scenario that your house is there, it gives you the ability as an entrepreneur to go and risk. And I was like, huh. And I don't think I really got it. Like, you know, I heard him, I'm like, you know, young son thinking he knows everything. And, um, but I don't think I got it at first. I was just like, okay, okay, whatever. Um, then, you know, the next 10, next decade of my life started happening after that. And in that decade, I've seen some really big ups and some really big downs and some really bigger ups and some big downs.

And right now I'm on an up cycle and there may be a time when I go back down and that sucks and scary and I have a lot of fear and anxiety around that. Just cause I've cycled twice and I know that feeling, I know the fear, I know the, all those things. I have a constant, I think part of the reason what drives me so hard, people always ask like, why don't you slow down, dude, you're doing pretty well. I'm like, cause I have this like internal fear of like, I remember what that was like to cycle. I'm trying to like protect myself through the hustle or through the, I don't know, whatever,

whatever that is. Um, and so I think that's a big driver force for me. Um, but during this, these cycles, um, and luckily we recovered from them. Um, but a couple of things that I noted, things got really bad a couple of times, but at the same time, like I never, I'm probably wrong, dude, but I never told my wife a lot about what was happening and she found out later. Actually, she was at Last Fun Hacking Live where I did the presentation on all my failures.

She got saw a few episodes back and she was like, what? She's like, I didn't realize it was that bad i'm like oh it didn't really tell you i'm supposed to be the man supposed to be like anyway and uh but like for her i like i knew that like i had to have security so i knew how much like we there's an amount of money every single month that she would that she got that would like cover the rent or not the rent our house payments our bills and stuff like that i just knew like as long as i can make at least that like i could i was looking at risking and trying and doing things

as long as the worst case scenario like my stability my foundation was set and so um and so uh that was that was it and like during those those rocky scary times and everything it was just like i knew the worst case scenario i could always produce enough money that she that like nothing at home was affected so it gave me the ability to risk and to roll the dice and then to try things. And so for entrepreneurs, um, I think that sucking the cash out of your house, investing in other places is the worst advice ever because then you're on this unstable foundation. Sure. You have more money to invest in theory. You can make more money, all sorts of things, but it takes away your ability to risk. Okay. Risk is what makes an entrepreneur great,

right? The reason about the risk, which to jump off cliffs all the time, but risk is scary. And so like the only way for us to be able to increase the level of risk tolerance we have, I think is also to increase the stability tolerance on the other side, right? Like paying off your house is smart because worst case scenario, if everything, if all the crap hits the fan, everything falls apart, if you've done that and you've paid off your house, worst case scenario, you still have the stability of a home for your wife and your kids and your, you know, whatever. And that is like, that's the key.

That's like, that gives you the ability now to go and do the crazier things. Yeah, like if, anyway. So that's my advice for all you guys. Pay off your house. Pay it off fast. Pay it off as quick as you can. Because as you do that and as you, as the stability, the anchor gets stronger and stronger and stronger on this side, your ability to risk over here without the fear of losing that um it gives

you ability to risk more and uh be able to do what you need to do um because entrepreneurship is a lot of like literally rolling the dice this viral video we're doing i keep telling when i'm like you know typically my investments in our business are very strategic right we create a funnel we invest some money we get it converting then we ramp it up really fast like i'm not risking a ton like this is the biggest one where it's like to create the video we had to write a five hundred thousand dollar check like okay there's half a million dollars right put it all in black and then you know with the launch party man launch party between everything we've done it's probably another three or four i mean it's close to man we're all sitting there it'll be

close to a million bucks like all on black like okay let's go and hopefully it'll be close to a million bucks, like all on black, like, okay, let's go. And hopefully it'll work. Right. But the nice thing is that like, because of the stability on other things we set up, like I can take that risk and it's okay. Cause if worst case scenario, it'll be okay. You know, and I've talked about some other episodes of the podcast. The thing that so often keeps entrepreneurs from success is the fear of the worst case scenario. You have to be able to look at the worst case scenario and be like, I'm okay with that. And if you are, then you can jump forward. But some entrepreneurs may never look at the worst case scenario. We're just always, um, like we don't want to, we don't want to look at like the thing that we're scared of. Right? So we see the thing we want and we kind of going forward, but there's

this nagging thing in the back of your head. You're just like, worst case scenario. What if I go bankrupt? What if my, my wife leaves me? What if my kids think I'm a bad dad? All these fears that are happening. We try to ignore them, but because we're ignoring them, they're still buzzing in our ear, in our subconscious mind. So because of that, they just keep coming and they keep coming. I always tell entrepreneurs, if you want to be free and be able to risk, you have to stop.

You look back and be like, what's the worst case scenario back there? If everything goes to crap, what happens? And until you're okay with that, it's so hard to move forward. So a lot of times we have to stop and say, okay, what's the worst case scenario? Okay, and I remember that. But a lot of times, you know,

I've had a couple of times, worst case scenario was bankruptcy. Worst case scenario was losing my house. Worst case, and those are, man, those are scary. Now, at the beginning, a lot of times that's, you have to take that, you have to have the initial risk and you have to be okay. Okay, if I lose my house, it okay if i go bankrupt it's gonna be okay

um but as you get as you start rolling up into bigger opportunities bigger risk bigger things like that it's nice to look back and say okay worst case scenario i'll lose my money on this deal i still got my house still my wife's got my kids like that security gives you the risk big so pay off your house there's my advice It goes against all the famous investing dudes, but I think they're wrong. I think most of those guys aren't entrepreneurs like us. So that's what we do. We're entrepreneurs.

We're risking. We're making the world a better place. And I mentioned this on the Entrepreneurial Scars podcast, the episode a few back about just like, if entrepreneurs don't risk, the whole world comes to a screeching halt. Like the government put in bankruptcy and all these laws, all these things to protect us.

We can risk. And so that's why it's vitally important. Um, yeah. And it's, it's, it's awesome. So there you go.

Here's the mirror. What? There you guys are. We're all talking together. How cool does that look? If you're listening, you know what I'm doing before watching the video marketing secrets.com. That's what you see.

Anyway. All right guys. Appreciate you all. I'm gonna go back in, put my kids to bed. It's been a fun day. Um, this room, this look good. It looks clean. Try for some workouts, try for some people to bleed out of our muscles. It really hurts sometimes. Anyway. Uh, appreciate you guys pay off your house. It'll give you the financial stability you need to risk everything and, uh, change the world. So thanks everybody. I'll talk to you soon.

Would you like to see behind the scenes of what we So thanks everybody and talk to you soon.