The Russell Brunson Show - The Calling VS The Resistance
Episode Date: September 2, 2024Every year at Funnel Hacking LIVE I present a unique Keynote presentation, which is then put on the podcast and on social media. So as we gear up for FHL Online this week, I wanted to share something ...special: my keynote presentation from last year's Funnel Hacking LIVE. This session is close to my heart, not just because of the content, but because it marks a significant moment in my personal journey of growth and discovery. During this keynote, I dive deep into the concept of "The Calling vs The Resistance," exploring how we all face internal battles that either propel us toward our goals or hold us back. I share my experiences and insights from treasure hunting for personal development wisdom, uncovering the powerful philosophies that have shaped my approach to success. So whether it's understanding the New Thought Movement or embracing the importance of having a definite purpose, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you overcome your own resistance and stay driven on your entrepreneurial journey. Key Highlights: The Calling vs The Resistance: Learn how to recognize and respond to your calling while overcoming the resistance that tries to hold you back. Treasure Hunting for Success: Discover the treasures I’ve unearthed from the pioneers of personal development and how their wisdom can transform your mindset. Your Definite Purpose: Understand the importance of having a clear, specific goal to drive your actions and keep you focused on your path to success. Tune in to get a preview of what’s in store at Funnel Hacking LIVE this year and how you can apply these powerful concepts to elevate your business and life. Don't forget to check out this awesome deal from Mint Mobile! https://mintmobile.com/funnels And if you want to enjoy the Marketing Secrets Show ad-free, check out http://marketingsecrets.com/adfree Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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What's up, everybody?
This is Russell Brunson.
Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.
We are in Funnel Hacking Live week this week, which is crazy.
So by the time you're listening to this, I'll probably be in the air flying to Las Vegas.
This is the first Funnel Hacking Live we've ever done virtual.
I rented Eric Worre's studio.
It's this insane studio.
And we're going to be streaming it from there.
All Manor Circle will be in the room.
We have an in-house studio audience of about 300 people.
It's going to be insane.
And all the speakers are flying in.
And we're going to be streaming from this amazing location directly to your homes, which
will be amazing.
I'm assuming you have your tickets by now.
By the time you're listening to this, we'll have raised the prices.
We had it for a while where you could get a ticket for $0 and pay afterwards if you loved it.
The ticket price is only $147.
We got rid of that offer because if you didn't get a ticket now, you're delaying.
So this is your punishment for inaction.
But if you still want to come, now is the time to go get your ticket.
You can get one at FunnelHackingLive.com, and it's just $147 to get a ticket right now
and experience a four-day event with me and all the
greatest speakers on the planet. So to kick off this week, since it's Funnel Hacking Live week,
I thought it'd be fun to play my keynote presentation from last year's Funnel Hacking
Live. I'm not gonna lie. I was halfway proud of that session. I didn't finish preparing. I was
so stressed. I had this idea, this vision I wanted for that session. So I had a whole bunch of things
I was doing on it and it turned out good. At least the first like 70%
was really good. And last 30%, my ideas kind of fell apart. So this one, I'm going to cut out the
last 30% because I don't want you to hear the stuff that wasn't fully flushed. I'll be doing
a lot of it now in greater detail and a lot of changes and stuff. Just some cool stuff this year
that will add to this. But this will give you guys just a good, get you in the mindset of funnel hacking live,
get you in the mindset of personal development and change and a bunch of cool things.
So that's the game plan.
So I hope you enjoy this episode.
Again, this is my part of, the good part of my opening keynote from last year's funnel
hacking live.
Again, you'll be getting this on Monday, which means we're like, what, Wednesday.
Wednesday, I'll be doing my next session.
Thursday morning, I'm doing my actual big keynote I'm excited for.
So if you haven't got your tickets yet, go to funnelhackinglive.com.
But with that said, welcome to Funnel Hacking Live Week.
I hope you guys are pumped and excited.
And we're going to queue up this episode right now.
And I hope you enjoy this keynote.
And then I hope you enjoy even more of the keynote coming in this year over at funnelhackinglive.com.
Thanks, you guys.
I hope you enjoy this one. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over
a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to
start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing
Secrets Podcast. Oh, man. What's up everybody?
Oh my people, I love you guys all. Thank you so much for coming.
I cannot tell you how excited, how anxious, how nervous, how all the things I am right now.
I'm standing behind this before the wall goes up. You guys have no idea.
Half of me is like, I want to run away and go hide and like hide under a rock. And then half is like so excited for everything that's about to happen. And anyway, Oh, I love you too. We have so much fun stuff planned for you guys
over the next four days. So many amazing guests, many of your peers, funnel hackers, a lot of them
were in the audience a year ago, listing this stuff who now are going on stage sharing with you exactly what they've done to have success. We have
so many cool people coming. I can't even wait to have you guys all experience this. It is
the honor of a lifetime to be able to put together an event like this and have 5,000
crazy people from around the world all fly here to be part of it. So thank you guys so
much for your commitment as well. Come in here. So, um, as you guys check in, uh, just checked in, you all got a t-shirt, right? If we can throw
my slides up real quick. So, um, on the back of the t-shirt, there's a quote. Do you guys all have
a chance to read this quote? So when I, uh, when I, we throw slides up real quick, everybody.
So when I, um, uh, uh, from last night to this year, I'm always keeping my eyes open to cool things.
And all of a sudden, one day I heard this quote, and it was super powerful.
And it's from T.E. Lawrence.
This is Lawrence of Arabia.
And when I heard this, I got chills.
I got all the feelings and everything.
And so I want to read it to you guys.
I want this to be something that every single time you put that shirt on, you read it, that it reminds you of who you are.
So this is what it says.
It says, all men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the
dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was a vanity. But the dreamers of the
day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.
When I heard that, I was like, dreamers of the day. That's who we are, right? Everyone dreams.
Everyone thinks about stuff.
Everyone talks about stuff.
There's so many people talking and talking and talking.
But the people who are here in this room, you guys are the dreamers of the day.
Funnel hackers are the dreamers of the day.
And I even think about this, like with our community, we have over 100,000 active ClickFunnels members.
We've got millions of people on our email list and social.
But you are the 5,000 who are the most excited, the most passionate, the ones who were willing
to leave everything, leave jobs, leave family, everyone to come here and be part of this because
you have a dream. Am I right? Okay. And my goal over the next couple of days is to help you,
give you the tools and the assets, everything you need to make those dreams become a reality.
That's our entire goal. That's what we do here at Funnel Hacking Live. Give you guys the tools
and resources you need to take these ideas, these feelings,
these things you want to do and give you everything you need so you can be successful.
So that's what we're going deep on over the next four days, which will be fun.
But before we go too deep into it, are you guys cool if I tell you guys a couple stories
about what I've been doing last year?
Okay.
This year's been a little crazy.
But one of the things I started doing is this year I wanted,
I started treasure hunting. Do you have any treasure hunters in the room? Okay. If not,
you're going to become a treasure hunter, I think, because it's really, really fun. So
this is the picture. This happened shortly after the last Funnel Hiking Live is I decided to go
treasure hunting. And this is a picture of me and my son, Aiden. And I went treasure hunting because
I was trying to find was trying to find something.
I don't even know how to explain it. I remember Tony Robbins said one time, Tony Robbins said that
if you look at success, success is like 20% tactics and like the actual skillset of doing
the thing and 80% psychology. It's the things happening between your brain, right? And so
for me, I spend so much time on the tactics. Like, how do I do this? How do I do this? Like what's step one, what's step two, those kinds of things. I still
love that. In fact, 80% of Funnel Hacking Live will be focused on those things. But what Tony
said is 80% is psychology. It's the things happening between our ears. Okay. And I don't
typically spend a lot of time talking about that with you, with my people, with funnel hackers,
right? I'm always talking about the next funnel, the next way to drive traffic, all that kind of
stuff. And I want to spend some time today going into the psychology
of success. And so a year ago, I started treasure hunting. I started becoming obsessed. This is
actually a little over a year ago, but I started becoming obsessed with personal development. And
like, how do you, like, how can I help myself be more successful, but in return, help all of you
guys be more successful as well. And so I started searching the world for
everything I could find on success. And I don't know about you, but if you open up your phone,
you scroll through Instagram or YouTube, everyone's got success stuff happening, right?
There's success quotes, quote after quote after quote. And I look at some of these quotes and
they'll be like, you know, 10, 20, 50, a hundred thousand people like these quotes and things like
that. But then there's like, there's no substance. It's just like, oh, I feel really, really good.
And it kind of ends. And then like I'd put out a video. I see people have these quotes and things like that. But then there's like, there's no substance. It's just like, oh, I feel really, really good. And it kind of ends. And then like, I'd put out a video.
I see people have these amazing videos about like going deep on something and they don't get very
many views or things like that. And I was like, how do we make this? Like, I want to get past
just like light, fluffy, like motivation. If you can do it, but like really understand this at a
deeper level. And so starting me on this journey and I started figuring out like, where did this
all begin? Like, what was the foundation of this stuff? And so I started looking and started collecting old books and manuscripts.
And so this was one of the first treasure hunts.
Like I said, Aiden and I, we jumped in a plane and we started flying around the country.
We went to Little Rock, Arkansas, because there was a man there
who had been collecting old Napoleon Hill stuff for over 20 years of his life.
He had books and manuscripts, all sorts of stuff that nobody had ever seen before.
And so this started the treasure hunt.
We flew out there.
I ended up buying his entire 20-year collection.
We packed it back in this plane.
We flew back home.
And I didn't know what most of it was.
I remember going to our office.
We had laid it all out.
It was thousands of books and magazines and manuscripts, all sorts of stuff.
And I started going through them, started reading them.
I started reading from people who were like at the very beginning of the success movement,
like people who were discovering these things for the very, very first time. And it was so much fun for me. And so that
was the beginning of treasure hunting. Uh, last year, uh, after funnel hacking live, we went home
and then we had our inner circle meeting. And then as soon as the inner circle meeting got done,
uh, we had to jump a chance to go treasure hunting some more with a couple of our, uh,
funnel hackers. So these are some of the guys here at the top guys and gals. Uh, we got done
with the inner circle meeting. And then, uh, Justin Benton there, uh, he had a plane lined up and we all jumped in a plane from, from inner circle, like literally left the top, guys and gals. We got done with the inner circle meeting and then Justin Benton there, he had a plane lined up and we all jumped in a plane from inner circle. Like literally
we left the building, went to the airport, jumped in a plane and flew to Wise, Virginia. Have you
ever been to Wise, Virginia before? Me and Justin, the only ones. Wise, Virginia is where Napoleon
Hill grew up. I was kind of obsessed with what he was talking about. He was writing. I was like,
I want to learn more about it. And so we went to the town where Napoleon Hill grew up. I was kind of obsessed with what he was talking about. He was writing. I was like, I want to learn more about it. And so we went to the town where Napoleon Hill grew up. And this is actually
where Don Green, who's the head of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, where he lives. And he had a
chance to come out there and actually see the Napoleon Hill Foundation, see the archives,
see all the stuff that he had. Literally had a chance to go through and see the original
manuscript for Outwitting the Devil. We saw the original manuscript for another book called
Outwitting the Beast. Any of you guys read Outwitting the Beast yet?
Oh, nobody has.
It's an unpublished manuscript.
We found all these amazing things.
And Don let us look at them and read them and start looking at them.
And over the last couple months, he's been sending me these things.
And it's been just like the most exciting journey of my life, learning these things for Napoleon Hill.
And then like, who did Napoleon Hill learn from?
Then who did he teach?
And where did it go from there?
And I started going down this
rabbit hole, trying to understand this movement. And so for me, I've become obsessed with, um,
with, uh, a certain time period. In fact, um, the era that fascinates me the most is called the new
thought movement. And this actually started about 1850 and it's gone on until today. Most guys
probably didn't hear, didn't even know about it. I didn't even know about it until I started diving
deep in the history. But about 1850 is when this movement started.
And what's interesting is prior to 1850, people didn't think about the fact that you can think
and change your life. You can think and grow rich. You can think and change your situation, right?
1850 is when this movement began, okay? And the new thought movement, you see here, the focus was
on the fact that our thoughts and our beliefs could directly influence our life's outcomes.
Prior to that, for thousands of years of history, that wasn't something people talked about,
thought about, even understood. People had different things they were doing, but no one
ever thought like, hey, if I think, I can change my life. And they started getting deeper into
like thinking, like, what am I thinking about? Where do these thoughts come from? Right? And so
back then, they all started happening. And there's a whole bunch of really cool people kind of popped up during this time. In fact, I'll show you some of my favorite authors. Oh, um, and, uh, there's a whole bunch of really cool, um, people kind of
popped up during this time. In fact, I'll show you some of my favorite authors. Oh, actually,
let me go back. So, um, it's interesting because I think there's a lot of people who've studied
other eras of time. Like for example, there's the stoic era, right? From about 300 BC to 200 AD,
this was a stoic era. And this era focused a lot on like personal virtues and self-control. How
many guys are a little obsessed with stoicism?
Yeah, it's amazing, right?
Ryan Holiday has taken this era and he's made it popular, made it huge again, right?
Made it exciting.
Everything he's done through his work.
Another era is like the Renaissance, right?
From 1300 to 1600,
they focused on creativity and exchange of ideas.
Another era was the Enlightenment from 1600 to 1700.
They focused on critical thinking and reasoning, okay?
But the new thought movement started about 1850. I can think, I critical thinking and reasoning, okay? But the new thought movement
started about 1850. I can think, I can change my life, right? And so a lot of people know about
the Stoic philosophers. People have heard of some of these people, like on the left-hand side,
there's Seneca, there's Epictetus, there's Marcus Aurelius. On the right-hand side is Ryan Holiday,
who I think is the modern-day Stoic. This is actually a painting I had commissioned for my
library and building, and I put Ryan there. That's actually a painting I had commissioned for my library I'm building.
And I put Ryan there. That's actually a picture of Ryan from Funnel Hacking Live on stage.
I don't think he's actually seen this yet, but he is one of my favorite stoic philosophers.
But a lot of people have heard of the stoic philosophers, but very few people have heard
of any of the new thought philosophers, which is a tragedy because these guys and gals are
brilliant. Some of my favorite people in the world, they become my friends.
Um,
and as I've read their works and listen to the things they put out,
I'm like,
um,
it's personally changed my life.
And,
um,
I want to bring some of these,
these people and these thoughts and ideas to you guys today.
And honestly,
over the next couple of years,
uh,
because I'm so excited.
And so the new thought moves started in 1850 with this guy right here named
Samuel smile.
Samuel lived in the UK.
Um,
and he was the very first person ever to write a book on personal development. And the book was called Self-Help.
Isn't that a creative title? But it was the very first one. It made a lot of sense. So he wrote
this book called Self-Help. And people reading it, it was like, oh my gosh, you can think and
change your life. Nobody, like that wasn't something in like our vocabulary. It wasn't
something people thought about. So he wrote that book, 1850s. 40, 50 years later,
one of his books got here to America and it was in an attic. And there was this young kid named
Orson Sweet-Martin who was minding his business in the attic. He finds this book called Self-Help.
He's like, what is this book? He starts reading the book and he freaks out. He's like, wait a
minute. I can think and change my life. This is amazing. Right? So Orson Sweet-Martin reads this
book and then he goes, he's like, I'm going to like, I want to do this. I want to help people like in here in America to change their life. Just like
Samuel Smiles, the general of the UK is Orson Sweet-Martin starts like, starts writing his very
first book and he starts writing a book and he's putting his, like his entire life. So it's like
almost a decade writing this book, right? Page after page and ends up getting like a manuscript
that's, um, I think it was like a thousand or 2000 or sorry, a thousand to 1500 page manuscript
he had written.
And this is gonna be his first book
teaching philosophy of success here in America.
He has this book and he owned some hotels at the time.
He left the manuscript in the hotel
and guess what happened?
Hotel burned to the ground.
This manuscript he spent a decade on was gone.
And he literally was in the ashes
looking at the hotel burning down.
He's like, my life's work is gone.
What do I do?
And part of him probably wanted to go hide.
But instead, guess what he did?
He walked back to the store and bought a pad of paper and started again.
And he wrote the very first book here in America called Pushing to the Front,
which is the very first personal book here in America.
Shortly thereafter, Orson Sweet-Martin started a little magazine you may have heard of called Success Magazine.
And he was the one that brought the success philosophy, the new thought movement here to America. And Success
Magazine is still around today. I almost bought it a couple of years ago, but I didn't because of a
whole bad business deal. But someday I will own that magazine just because Orson Sweet-Martin is
the man. But there's more like these amazing philosophers that like no one ever talks about.
How many of you guys knew who Orson Sweet-Martin was before today? Nobody. You think the owner of
Success Magazine would let people know about this guy because he is insane he wrote like 40 books on personal development after that one
this guy's one of the greatest thought leaders i've ever met um napoleon hill came from this
lineage i love napoleon we're talking more about him today also robert collier how many guys know
robert collier is the marketers in the room know because he wrote a book called the robert collier
letter book one of the greatest books on copywriting ever written but what most people
know is he wrote like 30 books on personal development that were even better than that.
Okay. One of the greatest new thought philosophers ever. Then, uh, Elsie Lincoln
Benedict, anyone heard of her? She is literally one of my favorite people on the planet. Uh,
in 1919, she spoke to over 3 million people around the world. Okay. And this was rare.
1919, there weren't women speakers, women authors, but she was out there on the forefront
speaking and writing. And like, she's one of the most brilliant minds I've ever heard.
And it goes on.
Earl Nightingale, Elizabeth Towne, Charles Handel, P.T. Barnum, Albert Hubbard, W. Clemenstone, Maxwell Maltz.
These are the people I've been studying who I'm obsessed with.
And so I'm going to try to bring some of these ideas, these principles from these guys to you guys today that we can use to help get our psychology correct.
So that the rest of the days, we're giving you guys all the tactics and the techniques, all the stuff we need to be successful.
You guys will have more success.
Does that sound fun?
Okay.
As I've been studying all these people, it's, I don't know, I'm such a nerd.
So I have a separate office with my books that I go to and I can like,
just look at them and smell them and stuff.
Cause the old ones smell so cool.
It's kind of weird.
But it's like, there's something special about it too.
So I go there and as I'm reading these books, one of the thoughts I have a lot is I, whenever I'm here,
as I think about this clip from one of, from a really cool movie that some of you guys have heard,
not my favorite movie, but this is one of my favorite clips. How many of you guys have seen
the movie Dead Poets Society? Okay. The movie's great, but there's this one clip that literally
changed my life. And every time I'm reading these books and learning from these people who have passed on,
this clip rings in my head over and over and over again.
So it's like a two-minute video I'm going to show you guys really quick.
And if you watch nothing else in the movie, just watch this piece because it's really powerful.
Does that sound good?
All right, here we go.
Thank you, Mr. Pitts.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
The Latin term for that sentiment is carpe diem.
Now, who knows what that means?
Carpe diem, that's cease the day.
Very good, Mr. Meeks.
Meeks, another unusual name.
Seize the day.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Another unusual name. Seize the day.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
Why does the writer use these lines?
Because he's in a hurry.
No. Ding!
Thanks for playing anyway.
Because we are food for worms, lads.
Because believe it or not,
each and every one of us in this room is one one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die.
I'd like you to step forward over here...
and peruse some of the faces from the past.
You've walked past them many times.
I don't think you've really looked at them.
They're not that different from you, are they?
Same haircuts, full of hormones, just like you.
Invincible, just like you feel.
The world is their oyster.
They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you.
Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one
iota of what they were capable? Because you see, gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils.
If you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you.
Go on, lean in.
Listen.
You hear it?
You hear it?
Carpe.
Carpe diem.
Seize the day, boys.
Make your lives extraordinary.
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As I learned from people who have passed beyond, I'm like, man, we all have this,
this like little time we're here on this planet. Um, and I honestly think like for every single
one, we come into this world, we have a chance to be here for however long we're here. And then
we leave. And I feel like for all of us, like one of the things we should be doing is like,
when we're here, we're learning, we're growing. And like, everybody should have a chance to write
like their philosophy on success. Like, what did you learn while you were here? Like what were the things that you were able to gather
to help make you more successful? Um, so someday I'm going to start a whole movement to get all
you guys to write your own success philosophy. But for me, as I've been studying people, I've
been studying each of their success philosophy, what they were doing, why they believed it.
And from there trying to develop my own to help me to get to higher levels, try to get to the next,
uh, phase and evolution of my life. Um, so that said, I want to jump into my formal presentation, which I'm excited for.
Last year, the intro presentation, I gave a presentation called the Drifters versus the
Driven. Who here had a chance to be here for that presentation? Okay. If you missed it,
I actually just recently, I think two or three days ago, we put that episode on the podcast.
So if you listen to the Marketing Secrets Podcast, you go back, you listen to that one.
It was all about the drifter versus the driven.
And this is going to be basically part two of that presentation.
I wanted to take it a little bit deeper.
And so the title of this presentation today is The Calling Versus the Resistance.
And that's where we're going to go.
So you guys excited for that?
All right, so am I.
So the first thing we'll talk about is the actual calling. What is the calling, right? You guys heard me talk about this for like
the call to adventure. You guys have been called. I tell you all the time, like everyone who's in
this room has been called to serve a certain group of people, right? We have this calling.
And I've had people ask me in the past, like, what do you mean, Russell? Like,
like you say you heard a call, you have a calling. Like, did you hear something?
Did somebody tell you something?
Like, how does that work, right?
How many of you guys ever wondered that?
Like, do I have a, like, is this even a real thing?
What's Russell talking about?
Is this like weird stuff or is it an actual thing?
Okay.
I strongly believe that every single one of you who are in this room have been called of God to do something amazing, right?
You came to this planet.
You were given, like, the gifts, the talents.
And he's like, look, you're here today. Now you've got to go and do something with the gifts I've given you.
And so there is a literal calling. But a lot of times it's not like what you think it's going to
be. I think when I first got started in this, I heard people talk about like, oh, you're going to
feel like this call, do something. I thought it was going to be like a phone call. Hey, Russell,
your job is to go and you can gather a bunch of funnel nerds together and start a movement
called Funnel Hacking Live, and you're going to have all these people are going to help them to
serve them, right? It wasn't that ever.
There was no phone calls. There's no nothing. I started thinking like, what was the calling?
Like, what was it? Because it wasn't something like this, like a huge thing hitting me up in
the head. I started thinking back in time, start trying to remember. And as I started trying to
remember, I realized that it was just a feeling, a feeling placed in my heart. It was desire.
Okay. And the desire, I didn't know where it was going to lead me to. The desire came and it was just like, Hey, Russell, here's something that you're
going to be interested in. And that began with some desire. And then I started pursuing that
desire and they got more and more exciting. Okay. So for me, uh, the way that the desire began
was back, man, over 20 years ago now. So my beautiful wife and I have been married now 20,
over 20 years, which is insane. Give her a round of applause.
Can you imagine being married to me, by the way?
It would be a nightmare.
Like she's lasted over 20 years and it's been amazing. Like anyway, so I'm super, I love her.
And 20 years ago we got married.
And about this time is when I was trying to figure out this whole business stuff.
And I didn't really, I don't think I had a desire at the time.
I used to be like, we're getting married.
I didn't have a job. I think I had a desire at the time. I used to be like, we're getting married. I didn't have a job.
I wanted to wrestle.
She had a job.
I was like, I gotta figure out something
because I didn't want to quit wrestling.
And so I, but I didn't want her to have to support me.
So I was like, how do I, I gotta figure out something to do.
Right?
And about that time, that was where this desire
was placed in my heart.
Like you need to go and create something.
And I didn't know what to create.
I remember I started like listening to business stuff.
I tried to like, I went to Google,
typed in how to make money on the internet.
How many of you guys ever did that? That's how you got here. That's the beginning of the
funnel in case you're wondering. So all of us did it. You can admit it. You wrote that. So I typed
how to make money and all of a sudden we started this process. I was trying this and that and all
sorts of just chaos and everything. And eventually I stumbled into people who were doing business
correctly. They were doing some really cool stuff. And I started listening to them. And for some
reason, when I listened to them, it was exciting to me, which is funny because I was
the kid who I struggled in school. I remember my mom taking me one time in high school to a
bookstore. I was like, why would anybody in their right mind want to go to a bookstore ever? This
is the stupidest thing in the world. Books are so boring, says the man who's bought 15,000 books
in the last 12 months. But I was like, this makes no logical sense, right? I go to school. I understand my teachers. I learned stuff. I thought it was stupid. Like
I really, really struggled. And then for some reason out of the blue, I find these guys on
the internet who are talking about business and marketing and also had the spark. And I was like,
whoa, this is really, really cool. Okay. And why did I have that? Like, why was that? Why did I
have that desire? I don't know. Why was I excited? I have no idea why that's where it begins. It
begins with a little spark with a little bit of desire, right?
And you start pursuing that.
You start getting more and more excited.
I remember for me, I was wrestling at Boise State University.
And I remember sitting, we would go on these road trips.
So we have like 20 wrestlers jammed in a van.
We're all like on top of each other, on top of our bags,
because Boise State was too cheap to get multiple vans.
So we're like all like, everyone's on top of each other.
We're cutting weights.
We haven't eaten in like three or four days, like all sorts of stuff. And we have these
like 12 hour van rides to Oregon or to Arizona to go and wrestle. Right. And so all my buddies
be listening to music and stuff. And I would go and I would download teleseminars. Who here
remembers what teleseminars were? Okay. Prior to like zoom and go to webinar before webinars,
there was these things called teleseminars where you would dial in and you would listen.
And so most of the teleseminars happened while I was in school. So I would export them and I would burn them onto
a tape player at Radio Shack. This is how it really worked. So I go to Radio Shack, I want a tape
player. We download a thing, we record it onto this tape player and I put these tapes. And while
we'd be driving in these long things, I listened to the tapes in the car. I listened to people like
Armin Morin and Alex Mendoza and Marlon Sanders and all these guys who were like kind of the first generation of internet entrepreneurs talking about what they were doing.
It was so exciting. Everything he said, like I just like got sucked into it. Right. And that
calling kept coming. I'm like, why am I so excited about this? I can't stop thinking about it. All I
want to do is just learn about this and learn about it and learn about it. But I had no ideas.
I had no business. I had no product. I had nothing. Right. And all of a sudden one day I get this idea.
Like, what if you created a product? And it's not going to make a lot of a sudden, one day I get this idea. Like, what if you created a product?
And it's not going to make a lot of sense nowadays, but back then, I had the first idea.
It was like, I want to create a product that will take a file and it'll brand it. So somebody
opens a PDF file. The first thing they'll see is my ad before they actually get into
the thing. So that was my first, that was the big idea. That's what started this whole
thing, by the way. And I had said to them, I'm going to call this zip brander. It'll
zip the file.
It'll close it.
When you unlock the zip file, it'll show you an ad, and then it'll get them into the thing they unzipped.
So that was the very first idea I had, Zip Brander, right?
And so I go and I buy the domain name.
I try to put it all together.
I try to hire these programmers.
A whole long story short, eventually I found somebody who would build this product for me.
I paid this guy named Cyprian in Romania $ $120 to build this and became my very first product.
I had something to actually sell. Now all these things I was listening to, I could apply it to
something. Like I have something I can actually like do marketing with. And so like I have this
product. Now what do I do? It's like, well, they talked about writing a sales letter. So I learned
about that. So I'd go and I start writing a sales letter and then I needed to drive traffic and all
different pieces. And I just became obsessed with like applying all this knowledge to this thing. Right. It started me down
this process, getting closer and closer and closer. Right. And, um, and I look at that now
and I'm like, that was probably the dumbest idea. Like maybe ever. Um, I think total,
I probably sold 20 copies of zip brand. We Do we have any Zip Brand customers in the audience? There's usually one. Okay. But I was like, that was my first big idea, right? I tried, I tried,
I tried everything, but it gave me something to apply to. And like, that was this calling
happening. Like, you need to create something, right? Now, I want to tell you how callings work.
What happens is God gives you an idea. He's not going to give you like, hey, Russell, you should
go build ClickFunnels, right? Because now I'm like, I don't know how to do that. And if I would
have tried it, would I got crushed under the weight of it, Right? He gives me that. I'm like, I don't know how to do that. And if I would have tried it,
would I got crushed under the weight of it, right?
He's like, I'm going to give you a little idea.
This is a dumb idea.
But here's this idea.
It's called ZipRanner.
He places the thought in your head.
You're like, oh, ZipRanner, this is a good idea.
And he's going to watch.
He's like, what's he going to do with that?
Is he going to be a good steward of that idea?
Is he going to do something with it or not?
So he gives me an idea and I go and try something.
And if I do, he's like, oh my gosh,
Russell actually took the idea and did something with it. I'm going to give him a better idea.
Can't give him a worse idea. We're giving a better idea. Right? Next idea. So then for me,
the next one is a little software product called form fortunes. I was in these forums at answering
messages. I was like, I create software to do this. And God gave me a little bit better idea.
And so I went and found a programmer, made this thing called forum fortunes. Any forum fortune
customers out there? Probably not. Uh, sold that, and that one sold more stuff.
And I was like, oh.
And God's like, oh my gosh, if I give Russell something, he does something with it.
Here's another idea.
He gave me the next one, and the next one.
And I remember one day, he gave me the site for potato guns.
I'm like, what?
Potato guns?
It makes no logical sense.
But I was like, all right.
So we made a product selling potato guns.
You guys have heard that story before, right?
I sold a couple copies of that thing.
It wasn't like this huge thing, but it's just like, I sold some potato guns.
Like, why was that a big deal?
Why was that important?
I don't know.
At the time, looking back 20 years ago, it's like, oh, Russell, you need to make this potato gun product.
Not because it's going to make you a bunch of money, but you need a story that's relatable.
So that in the future, if you keep doing what I'm asking you to do, you'll be prepared to have something to tell people.
Something to give them hope, give them understanding, give them belief.
Right?
Have these little ideas, these little things.
Every time we do something, it gets a little bigger.
Right?
And it's the first thing I understand, like, that's how the calling happens.
It's not just like, Russell, here's ClickFunnels.
It's like a little idea.
And then, are you going to be good steward of that or not?
If you are, okay, here's another idea.
Here's another idea.
And eventually what happens is you get better at what you're doing.
You get better at what you're doing.
Your capacity increases.
You can handle it.
So eventually it's like,
okay, now Russell may build ClickFunnels.
It's like, oh, I don't know how.
Here's Todd.
Oh, what's up, Todd?
Todd, build ClickFunnels.
He builds it and now we've got this thing, right?
But it all works in a process like that, okay?
It was interesting.
I was doing research for this presentation.
I found a really interesting story about Michael Jackson.
Do you know that Michael Jackson and Prince like hated each other?
They were competitors back and forth. And so there was this story where Michael Jackson
was doing this big, huge concert. They already spent $24 million. He was trying to, you know,
like he was trying to make it better and better and better. And he goes to his manager. He wakes
up one morning, like at three o'clock in the morning and his manager's named Kenny. And, um,
and this is what the story says. It says, God channels, channels this through me at night. I
can't sleep because I'm so supercharged.
And the candy's like, well, Michael, we can't do that idea.
We've got to finish this thing.
Can't God take a vacation?
Without missing a beat, Michael said, you don't understand it.
If I'm not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince.
Okay?
I think that's how this whole thing works.
How many of you guys have ever seen something like, oh, I had an idea for that?
Crap.
I know when we were building ClickFunnels, there were five or six other people who I knew
who were actively building the exact same thing.
It wasn't unique.
It was like, okay, well, here, we need some funnel building software,
and everyone's trying to sprint this thing, right?
Who is the one who's going to finish it?
Who's the one who gets it to the finish line?
Who's the one who's going to make it to the end?
Okay?
And so that's what the calling looks like.
Okay?
It's these little ideas.
It's you saying, look, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to do it.
And if you do it, then he gives you something else and starts growing and starts growing.
That's what the calling is.
Okay.
And if you do that, what will happen is in a year from now, five years, 10 years, 20
years from now, you look back and I look at where I am.
Right.
I look back at a 21 year old Rustle who's sitting on a bus in the back of a car, listening
to tapes about how to make money
on the internet. Right. I look at that. It's like, how do I, how did that lead me to here?
Right. But it was the first step and the second step and the third step. Okay. So that's what
calling looks like. Um, and most people I've talked to, it's been very, very similar. It's
not just like this huge, this like big light bulb moment. It's these little things where you're
going to take something and move with it. Okay. So here's a picture of you. Um, and here's the calling. Okay. It's like a voice that points you
in a direction, right? The goal, the goal of this calling is to make you driven. My presentation
last year about being a driven, being someone who isn't just sitting there in silence, but who's driven to move forward, to change things,
to move things, right? So that's the path. So the voice here, I'm going to call the voice the calling
and moves you towards some kind of goal. So this is a picture of a mountain. There's a goal. Okay.
So then the opposite side of that, so we have the calling, and then we have the other side.
And there's a lot of different names.
We should call it the adversary.
You can call it Satan.
You can call it whatever you want.
But recently I was reading a book by Steve Pressfield called The Art of War.
Anyone here?
Sorry, The War of Art.
Okay.
And The War of Art, if you guys haven't read it, it's a pretty fast read.
It's amazing.
But in the book, he calls this the resistance.
And when I read that, I was like, oh, that's what it is.
That's the feeling of what it is.
It's the resistance.
It's the enemy.
It's the thing that's holding you back, right?
The resistance is all the things as you are trying to be driven, as you're trying to move
forward towards something, the resistance is all the stuff that's keeping you from doing
that.
So I read the book, and this is probably a month ago.
And as I was preparing for Final Hacking Live, I had this idea.
I was like, what if I start documenting every time I feel the resistance?
Every time I'm supposed to be doing something, but I feel the opposite.
Like, don't do that, Russell.
And so I got my phone out.
I started recording myself.
And what was interesting is I realized I felt that resistance so often,
over and over and over again.
So let me explain what resistance is for those who don't quite understand it.
How many guys, like in the morning you wake up, you're laying in bed,
and you know you're supposed to get up and go work out, and you're like,
I don't want to, and you turn the alarm off.
That's resistance.
How many guys are like, oh, I got to write a blog post,
or I got to record a podcast or something, you're about to do it, right?
And you're like, I don't want to, I'm tired.
Oh, I'm going to go check my email real quick.
Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to be like,
that's resistance. It's coming from inside. It's your brain trying to get you to do anything except
the thing you're actually supposed to be doing, okay? Resistance hits us all the time in every
single situation. Probably, I mean, even today, for example, I think I probably hit it 12 or 13
times before I came on stage. In fact, right before that thing went up, resistance is like,
get out of here, Russell. You are not ready for this. There are so many people out there
who are going to make fun of you. What if you trip? Like you're wearing a
jacket, you're wearing white jackets. Like you feel like all the thing, like freaking out, right?
It's a beautiful jacket though. My son, my son told me I look like Star-Lord today. So I'm still
pretty pumped about that. If you can address me as Star-Lord for the next couple, anyway.
Okay. So the resistance, that feeling, how many of you guys have felt resistance before in your life, okay, so a month ago, I read this book, The War of Art,
he talked about the resistance, he goes through a million different ways that you see it,
it shows up, and I was just like, okay, I want to be, I want to be aware of this now,
so I start recording myself, right, so I wake up in the morning, getting ready for Fun
Hockey Live, so two weeks ago is when I start prep for Fun Hockey Live, for all my presentations,
so I remember Monday morning, waking up, I'm laying in bed, my alarm goes off.
It's like five o'clock in the morning or something.
I was going to get up.
I was going to like get a couple hours in before my kids woke up and everything.
And five o'clock goes off and I'm like, should turn off.
10 more minutes.
It goes off again.
10 more minutes.
10 more minutes and I'm asleep.
Then I wake up and I'm like, ah, dang it.
Okay.
Six o'clock.
I could still get up if I needed to.
But like, oh, like if I, if I'm, if I don't get enough sleep, I'm going to be hard for
me to actually like function during the day.
So if I get one more hour of sleep, I get more done during the day.
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go and go back to sleep for another hour.
Right?
Resistance is fighting me.
I finally get up.
I'm okay.
I'm gonna go and I get everything ready to drive my, drive my son to school, drop him
off, go to the office, about to get out.
Okay, now I'm going to find him to work.
And also I'm like, oh, I'm gonna check my email real quick.
Put my phone out.
Oh, I'm gonna check social. Oh, I'm going to find a way to work. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I'm going to check my email real quick. Put my phone out. Oh, I'm going to check social.
Oh, I'm going to check Facebook.
Oh, I'm going to check Instagram.
Oh, I wonder if anyone will message me on Slack.
Oh, and all of a sudden, I'm doing this and this and this and this.
All of a sudden, I'm like, oh, crap.
Resistance got me again.
Put my phone down.
And then I go to the next thing and the next thing.
And I'm realizing this thing is hitting me every 15 seconds.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I was like, how do I get anything done?
How do any of us get anything done?
Right? And so the resistance is the opposite. We have the calling, the thing that's driving us.
And the resistance is the other side over here. Okay. Hey, funnel hackers, let's be real. How
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to be. I'm gonna draw, make this guy look a little evil. This is the resistance, right?
And the goal of the resistance is to get you guys to slide off the track,
to get into what Napoleon Hill called hypnotic rhythm.
You get this thing where you're stuck into this spot and you're not moving forward.
It's interesting.
I'm curious how many of you guys feel this.
Hypnotic rhythm in my mind is this feeling where you're stuck.
You're stuck in a rut.
Have you guys ever felt this before?
You're stuck in a rut.
This is what drifters go to. They're stuck in this thing
where they just can't seem to get out. There's drifting and drifting versus the driven are all
about moving forward. Okay. And there's times I feel like we want to move forward. I want to move
forward. But then the resistance is always pulling us back, trying to get us to drift.
Like, no, I got to move forward, get them forward. And we're drifting like this constant
battle back and forth. If you think about this, the majority of people, especially outside this
room, majority of people live their life in resistance. They're living in this life where it's just like this circular thing. Okay. I don't know
about you, but I look at those people and it makes me so sad. I'm like, do you know what you're capable
of? Like, do you know what you're like? If you would put your mind towards something, you could
change so many people's lives. Um, it's frustrating. In fact, uh, when we were in Kenya, Eileen asked
me, she's like, why are you so passionate about this kind of stuff? I was like, I think the reason
why is because I see people where I can see the potential.
Like I know what one human being is able to do.
If they're able to get their message out, they can change an army of people.
And so when I see somebody who's got so much potential, so much they could be doing,
they're not, it drives me nuts.
It's really hard for me.
And so, where's that going on?
Sorry.
And so hypnotic rhythm is like this feeling like this,
right? And this is where most people spend their life. And we're always trying to get out of these
ruts and start moving forward to be one of the driven. Okay. And so that's kind of where, uh,
resistance hits us. And so I want to give these names because I want, um, I want as a community
for us to be able to talk about these things. Like, like I have this calling, I have something
I'm working towards. I have a vision I'm trying to create. And then the resistance is the thing
I'm fighting against. And so we have that battle back and
forth. It's, it's a, it's a key. Okay. Now, one of the interesting things about the calling
that a lot of you guys have probably noticed is that we don't like, sometimes we'll see like
way over here, like you'll see the end go like, Oh, that's where I want to get to.
I'm trying to get to that thing over there. Right. But like all the way from here,
there's all foggy kind of like when they opened the wall here, all the fog came out. It's really, really foggy, right? Like I don't know how to get
from here to here. And so our job is to like take steps forward in faith. You take a step forward,
oh, and then like the fog clears a little bit. You're like, oh, I see where to go. Okay, I'm
nervous. I'm scared. I'm taking another step forward in faith. Boom. And then fog clears and
you keep going forward, right? And so faith is such a big part. It's taking these steps of faith
towards the goal, towards the calling he's driving you towards.
Okay, so the calling and resistance.
Now, one thing I want to point out
that I think is really interesting
that has helped me so much in my life,
ever since I first,
I read this in a book a couple years ago,
and it was powerful.
How many of you guys struggle
because you have a lot of voices happening inside your head?
Come on, you guys, I know it's true.
How many of you guys have more than one voice in your head? Okay,, you guys, I know it's true. How many guys have more
than one voice in your head? Okay. And you're like, is that me? Did I think that? Is it somebody
else? Like what's happening? Okay. And I had in the book I read, they explained it was so powerful.
So there's basically three voices inside your head. Okay. The first voice is actually your
brain. And what this voice says, this voice asks questions. Okay. Ask a lot of questions like,
should I do this or should I do that? Should I do this? Should I do that? Right? That is,
that's actually your brain. Your brain is the thing that's asking questions back and forth.
That's how our brain functions. Like, should I go this way? Should I not? Should I sign up for the
program? Should I not? Should I go to school? Should I like, like our brains always asking
questions. Okay. That's, that's how you know it's coming from you. The second voice. So that's the
first voice is, is you. The second voice is this calling.
Now, this voice is different. This voice is not something that's ever questioning. This voice
tells you things, okay? And usually it's quiet. And usually it's one thing. It's like, hey, Russell,
go do this. Hey, call that person. Hey, go over there, talk to that guy. That's what calling feels
like. Calling doesn't typically repeat itself over and over and over again.
It asks you once.
It doesn't ask you.
It tells you once.
Do this thing.
And then wait to see what you do.
Oh, he's a good steward.
This is ideal.
I'll give him another one.
Do this.
Try this.
We have to learn how to be in tune with that.
But it's hard because the resistance is the third voice.
The resistance is annoying.
The resistance is loud. Okay. Typically it speaks
in absolutes. You guys remember Star Wars when they're like only sis deal in absolutes. Okay.
It's weird how Star Wars fits almost every situation. Anyway. Um, okay. The resistance
speaks in absolutes. This one says, Hey, Russell, you're not ready. Hey, you're not worthy. Hey,
you look funny. Hey, you talk too fast. Hey, no one's going to pay attention to you. They're
going to mock you on social media, blah, blah, blah, thing after thing, after thing, after thing.
Okay. And it's, it's not quiet. It's loud. And it berates you over and over and over again.
Right? So these are the three voices we have in our head. And we start understanding that that's
what's happening. You say, look, this voice of resistance is coming and it's talking and it's
not nice. It's direct. It's absolute.
You are not good, Russell.
You're not good enough.
You're not ready.
You're not worthy.
No one's going to love you.
Like that's what's coming from here.
And when I'm aware that that's not me thinking that's coming from external things,
it gave me freedom.
I realized that this is not me.
This is something I've got to be listening for.
And when I hear it, I got to move forward.
Right?
And then the questions are your mind.
Right?
And so I started paying attention to my thoughts that are happening. Because sometimes we hear this over and over and over again. We think
it's us. We're like, man, I must not be ready. I must not be worthy. Because I keep telling myself
that. It's not you. It's resistance trying to get you to not take your calling, okay? Or you're
like, wait, am I supposed to call that person? Am I supposed to do that thing? Also, you're doing
the questioning thing, okay? If you're doing this questioning thing, you're like, wait, was that me?
Was that someone else? If it came as a quiet, like direct telling what to do,
then yes, it's coming from the calling.
Okay, all right.
That's the first thing I want to talk about.
The second thing I want to talk about,
and this is the part,
like, that I have been geeking out on the most.
I'm having so much fun talking and thinking
and learning about this.
I'll adjust my slides to it.
It's talking about conscious versus subconscious,
how our brain works.
The more I've started to understand how my brain works,
the easier it is for me to be successful
in any area of my life, okay?
And these are simple concepts.
Obviously, there's a deep side to this.
You can go deep into the science
and all that kind of stuff. That's not my goal. You can go deep into the science and all that
kind of stuff. That's not my goal. My goal is to give you guys a usable model that's simple,
that's easy to help you understand how our brains work. The first thing to understand is that there
is a conscious and a subconscious mind. I know most of us know this. This is something that
back in the early 1850s, back when the New Thought Movement was happening, is when they
were discovering this stuff. They're like, oh my gosh, there's a conscious mind, there's a
subconscious mind, and they're different in how they work together. So when you start reading all the books from
the new thought movement, this is what they're just discovering. And the very first time you
see how excited they are and they're freaking out and they're testing things and trying things and
learning all these crazy things during this journey, which is so much fun to read about.
And so for me, it gets me excited. And now there's so much more science on that. We can
even understand it better. There's the conscious and the unconscious. The first thing we'll talk
about, in fact, I'm going to draw a picture of a brain. I think a brain looks kind of like
that. There's a brain. Okay. There's like little squigglies in the brain. So we all said that part.
Okay. So here's our brain. Now, first thing I want to talk about is our conscious mind. So
conscious mind is up here in front of our skull, right?
This is the part that we're having conversations with every single day.
Okay, so this is like the frontal lobe part.
And if you look at this, there are basically, there's two voices that are happening inside your conscious mind, okay?
I talk about the conscious mind as if it asks all the questions, right?
It's your brain asking questions.
I think it was Buddha said that this conscious brain is like monkeys. And when you do more
research, actually, there's two monkeys. And for those of you guys who were, how many of you guys
went to Unlock the Secrets two years ago? Yeah. So that's our young entrepreneur event with kids
and stuff. And I brought monkeys and elephants and lizards. We had a bunch of fun with it.
I didn't do it for today, but I do want to bring back one of the slides, which is this. So understand that there's these two monkeys
that basically are sitting up here on the front. Okay. There's monkey number one. I've never drawn
a monkey. They got tails. I don't know. There you go. Okay. But they are here on your conscious
mind, right? And this is the conversation you're having, right? Every single person is having this
conversation consciously every single day. Emotion and logic.
Emotion and logic, okay?
For example, let's say I go to the grocery store and I'm hungry, right?
Emotion, I'm like, oh, I'm hungry.
I need to eat something.
Or I go to the drive-thru, right?
And so I'm emotionally driven to go do something.
I go to the drive-thru.
I look at all the menu, like, oh, this is amazing.
And my emotion's like, oh, you want the milkshake for the appetizer?
Emotionally, I want that, right?
And the logic comes in like, wait, you're really going to drink a milkshake for breakfast?
I'm like, but I really want one. Like, yeah, but that's a lot of calories. Then you're going to be a little sluggish the other day. And boom, here want that, right? And the logic comes in like, wait, you're really going to drink a milkshake for breakfast? I'm like, but I really want one.
Like, yeah, but that's a lot of calories.
Then you're going to be a little sluggish the other day.
And boom, here it is, emotion logic.
This is the two voices that are questioning each other in your head every single day.
And some of you guys, your emotion is way louder.
And some of you guys, your logic is way louder.
How many of you guys do you think are more emotional?
You hear the emotion more often.
Okay.
How many of you guys are more logical?
Okay. The reality is we guys are more logical? Okay.
The reality is we've got both these things, right?
And that's like when we're questioning is emotion, questioning logic, emotion, questioning
logic.
This is the debate that's happening in your brain all the time.
Again, Buddha called the monkey brain because it's like this chattering, chattering back
forth, back forth, back forth, back forth.
It can be exhausting sometimes, right?
So we have these two things, emotional logic happening all day long, right?
And so this is what's happening here in your conscious brain.
It's the first thing to understand. Okay. So our conscious brain's got these two things. This is and logic happening all day long, right? And so this is what's happening here in your conscious brain. It's the first thing to understand, okay?
So our conscious brain's got these two things.
This is the questions going back and forth, right?
Now, our conscious brain's got some very important things it needs to do.
And I broke it down like five or six different steps that our conscious brain is required
or is responsible for, okay?
The very first thing our conscious brain is supposed to do is to figure out our definite
purpose, okay?
What is the thing that we are trying to do? What is the result definite purpose. Okay. What is the thing that
we are trying to do? What is the result we're looking for? What is our purpose? Okay. Um,
when you start reading Napoleon Hill and read all his books, his manuscripts, it's interesting
because almost every single one of his books, um, he has different laws of success and we have
think and grow rich, all these different books, but almost every single time he starts the book
talking about this one principle, which is having a definite purpose. You have to have a definite purpose.
If you don't have a definite purpose, you're just wandering around in the, in the doing
nothing, right?
The reason why most people don't succeed in life because they have no definite purpose.
So because of that, they're in this hypnotic rhythm.
They're just going circular, not moving towards anything, right?
It's not until you have a definite purpose.
Like this is the thing that I'm trying to, this is the thing I'm trying to accomplish.
This is where I'm going.
That's when everything changes for you. Okay. I started thinking
about myself, like, uh, in my life, like when I was growing up, well, I was a wrestler growing up
and, um, and I wasn't a great wrestler. Like, uh, you can ask my dad or my brothers. Like I wasn't
a great wrestler. We went to wrestling practice. We tried stuff. I was kind of just there. Uh,
I was with my dad. I was just like, okay, I'm wrestling. I was kind of just doing the, the,
the motions, right? Wrestled my first year.
I won half matches, lost half the matches.
And then the next year I started and I wasn't that good.
And I remember my dad took me to the state tournament.
I'm sitting in the state tournament and there were two kids from our high school
who were actually in the state finals.
I remember watching.
The first guy was a guy named Matt Woods.
Matt Woods was in the state finals.
He wins the state title.
He was already a two-time state champion.
He became a three-time state champ.
I remember watching him as the ref raised his hand. I saw that. I remember
saying like, that, that's what I want to do. I had a definite purpose. I want to do like, I want to
be a state champ. It wasn't like, I want to, I want to learn how to be better. I want to, I want
to get a good workout. I want to, it was like, no, that, that is the thing I want to do. It was
definite. It was not just a purpose. I want to wrestle. No, no, no. I'm not.
I want to wrestle.
I want to be a state champ.
When do I want to be a state champ by?
I want to be a state champ as soon as possible.
I want to be a state champ by next year.
Right?
So I told my friends, I'm gonna be a state champ next year.
Like, you're not even good.
I'm like, I know, but I'm gonna be a state champ next year.
Definite purpose.
Okay.
When I had a definite purpose, I had something to run towards.
Right?
Before that, I was just circular.
Just not just in this spot.
Just like, oh, I'm showing practice.
I'm doing something. As soon as I picked a purpose i had that purpose a definite purpose then i had
something to run towards same thing happened in business okay when my wife and i got married uh
which i had this business i was like trying to sell some stuff um we were joking because um
uh um uh i think i had probably five five customers maybe when when Clint and I got married and I was so nervous
that what if one of my customers emails me, like, I'm gonna be in trouble. So I brought my laptop
to our honeymoon, just in case one of our customers would have an issue. I could fix it,
you know, on the fly. But I remember like, like I was trying to figure out this business, but it
was just kind of like, I was doing this thing. I was just kind of going around and it wasn't until
John Reese and some of you guys have heard me tell this story before. John Reese, I think it was August of, I don't remember the day off the top of my head,
but he did what was nobody done prior.
He sold a million dollars worth of his course in an 18-hour period of time.
Made a million dollars in a day.
And I remember sitting there as this young entrepreneur just kind of doing this thing,
and all of a sudden I was like, that.
That's what I want to do. Definite purpose. I want to make a million dollars. And I was like, it's not in my
head. I'm like, it's not possible to be here today, but if he did it in a day, I think I could do it
in a year. I remember he had a thousand dollar course, a thousand copies. I'm like, Hey, I just
need to make a thousand dollar course. And I got to sell a thousand copies in a year. That's three
a day. If I can do that, then boom, I'm, I made a million dollars. So now I had a definite purpose.
It wasn't just, I'm in business to be in business. It was like, I want to make a million dollars in a calendar year.
And so I literally, it wasn't just like in a year, random, it's like in a calendar year,
it starts January 1st and December 31st. I got to make a million dollars in that window.
There was a definite purpose. Now you may be like, oh, Russ, that seems really easy. But back then,
you have to understand, I'd maybe made like $15,000 total, like five years in business prior
to that. All of a sudden I'm like, oh, I'm going to make a million dollars in the calendar year.
Okay.
But what happened?
It took me out of this like rut of drifting and resistance and just like, oh, I'm just
here doing the thing to getting out of that and saying this is where I'm going.
Driven.
Definite purpose.
So I picked a definite purpose and I started running towards that.
Okay.
And it started in January 1st, went through the whole year.
At the end of the year, did not make a million dollars.
Man, I got close. It's like six, $700,000. I'm like, okay,
December 31st, it starts over again. Start the next year, set a goal. Calendar year got really close that year. I think I got the 800,000 or something like that. Missed it again. I'm like,
dang it. Next year, started the goal. Boom. And by, I think October 17th was the day that I broke a million dollars. Okay. Thank you.
Three years prior, I was making one or two sales every other month, right?
Because I was just drifting to like, boom, definite purpose.
The first step is our conscious mind has to figure out what is the definite purpose?
What is the thing that I am trying to do?
Okay.
I remember, man, 12 years ago going to ClickBank. I remember walking to ClickBank.
There's big, huge offices and everything.
It had employees.
It had staff.
It had this wall with clocks on the wall for every time zone they had customers in.
I remember sitting there like that, that.
You have to understand, 12 years ago, I didn't have a business.
I had a couple offers.
I had a couple of funnels that were out there.
That was it.
But I didn't have a business.
But I saw ClickBank.
I was like that.
I want that.
Okay.
How do we build a business?
Well, building business, we need more than just selling a product.
And we started going through it, and like, boom, 10 years later, ClickFunnels, right?
So for you guys, like, the first key is, like, do you know what your definite purpose is?
I think my next slide here is Napoleon Hill.
So Napoleon Hill said there's one quality which one must possess to win,
and that's definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants,
and a burning desire to possess it.
Okay?
So do you guys know what your definite purpose is?
Not like, I want to make money.
I want to win a two column club award,
like definite.
Like I want to do this by this certain time.
In fact, as I was doing research for this,
one of my friends sent me this.
Bruce Lee was a huge Napoleon Hill fan.
In fact, in his day planner,
you see like the times that he was studying
Napoleon Hill throughout the day.
And then there's,
this is a document that went up for auction and it got sold before I found out
about it. Otherwise I would have it because it's insane. But he had his definite chief
name, his definite purpose document. And this is what it looks like right here. In fact,
if anyone knows who bought it, you can connect me with them. I want to buy this. I want this
frame because this is the coolest thing in the world. But this is Napoleon, or this is Bruce Lee
picking his definite purpose.
And some people think, oh, Bruce Lee was like
the greatest karate guy of all time.
He wasn't.
It was not his purpose.
His purpose was not to be the greatest karate person
of all time, okay?
This is his purpose.
He said, I, Bruce Lee, will be the highest paid
Oriental superstar in the United States.
In return, I will give the most exciting performances
and render the best quality and the capacity of an actor.
Starting 1970, I will achieve world fame.
And from then onward to the end of 1980, I'll have my possession, $10 million. I will live the way I please and
achieve inner harmony and happiness. Definite purpose. This is what I'm talking about. Napoleon
Hill said, you got to take this, you got to write down your definite purpose, print it on your wall
and read it every single day. Otherwise, it's so easy for resistance to slip you back into this, right? You got to be able to see it and see it every single day. Otherwise it's so easy for resistance to slip you back into this,
right? You got to be able to see it and see it every single day, see it over and over and over
again. This is again, this is the one that Bruce Lee wrote and had on his wall. Once again, if any
of you guys can help me find this thing, I really, really want it. But it's pretty cool, right?
And so my question for you guys is this, is what is your purpose? What's your chief aim? Like,
what are you doing? You have to be specific. What exactly do you want and when, and then what are