The Russell Brunson Show - The Transition From All-Star To Coach

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

A private voxer message I sent to my partners, talking about the next phase for me personally inside of the company. On this episode Russell shares a Voxer conversation he had with his partners and later his team on why he's reached the next phase in his journey to become a coach instead of an all-star. Here are the awesome things you will get to hear on today's episode: Why Russell feels like his career has reached a point where he doesn't know what his next goal should be. How going to a retreat with self-help guru's helped him figure out where his focus should be. And why being a coach instead of an all-star could be the way to grow his company from 100 million dollars a year to a billion dollars a year. So listen here to find out why Russell's next step is coaching his team so they can take the championship. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/the-transition-from-all-star-to-coach 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 DI offer to learn more. What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the marketing secrets podcast. I'm excited because today I'm gonna let you in behind the scenes of something that made me a little vulnerable, vulnerable, that the right word nervous. But something that's turned out to be really, really good. I think for a lot of you guys who are the all stars and you

are in the transition point to becoming the coach, this is going to be super valuable for you. So with that said, um, let's jump into this episode. So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital? We're spending money from our own pockets. How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right, everybody. So like I said, this episode is actually a Voxer that I sent to my partners inside ClickFunnels.

And it was after I had a chance to spend a week with a whole bunch of amazing marketers and business owners and kind of reflecting on what's next for me, what's my next step, my next role. And, um, yeah, and I'm not gonna lie. I was really nervous to first off to box those guys about it. And then after I actually forwarded it to all the people on my traffic and funnel building team, because, um, it represents kind of a shift in focus for me personally and for them as well. And, um, for me, it was funny how nervous I was and like the vulnerability of like, Oh, this is the scary thing that I got to try to tackle. But, um, doing so has been like one of the greatest things for our company.

Everyone's getting excited now and seeing the vision and rebuying in and, um, the energy level since I kind of mentioned that has been really, really fun. And so, um, I thought it'd be fun to share with you guys, um, a couple real quick caveats. Is there some people, um, I mentioned some people who were on the trip as well as some people who were, um, you know, just work internally inside of our team. And so I'm gonna have my brother, uh, beep out those, those names or mute out those names and some of the, the, the confidential details. Um, so if you hear little blips of sound, that's what those are, but do not fear all the good stuff is still in there for you. But for anybody of you guys who have been the all star

and you're transitioning to try becoming a coach, which is the phase of the business I'm in right now. And it's a nervous, scary, exciting, everything. I hope that this will give you some perspective and help you out. And for those who aren't there yet, but you're wondering like, where am I going? What's the vision? What's the future hold for me? Hopefully this will help you as well. So with that said, let's jump right into this Voxer and I hope you enjoy it. Hey, what's up guys? Hope you're doing awesome. I want to kind of record this for you guys based on some of my thoughts over the last probably two weeks or so to get your feedback. And I'm probably going to forward this on to like the funnel team and the traffic team just so they have some context as

well but just wanted to kind of put it in here first and get your guys's thoughts on it so um anyway the last little bit has been really good for me i've had like some big personal ahas about stuff and um obviously obviously we've done a lot of things right because we've gotten where we are but I think also I'm kind of this weird spot where I'm trying to figure out like what my next step is and all that kind of stuff so anyway Sharpen's event was really good because they helped me understand a lot better like the team building and how to how to do meetings how to structure things and just it was it was really really good but even with that, I still, I left kind of like this weird uneasiness. So when I was at the event, hopefully my car's not too loud.

It's so loud when I drive. Anyway, when I went to the mastermind group and we were with those guys up at the trout ranch or whatever, and we were doing all the manly things like fishing and shooting and things I'm really bad at. Then we finally got a mastermind together and kind of talking. It was funny because normally mastermind groups obviously are like, we share marketing ideas, but this one was like more like a men's group. It was like self-help, but just self-help gurus. So we were talking marketing.

They were talking like, you know, how to make yourself happier. But anyway, then it got to my turn. They asked like what my biggest struggle was I needed help with from the group. And what I told them was basically I said, you know, my whole life, um, I've always had like something I was running towards. Right. So like when I was, uh, when I was a wrestler, like, so then I learned about wrestling, I became obsessed with it and I wanted to be a state champ.

And so I, I would practice, I'd go to matches and I'd win, I'd get my hand raised. And then like, it got better. I became a region champ. I got my hand raised and I became a state champ. I got my to matches and I'd win, I'd get my hand raised and then like, it got better, I became a region champ, I got my hand raised and I became a state champ, I got my hand raised and I became an All-American and I had all these goals I was shooting towards, right? I got into college, I had next thing, but I always had something I was like,

aggressively running towards, all my time, energy, effort, thoughts were moving towards that thing. And my senior year, I was trying to be an All-American and at the Pac-10 tournament, you have to be the top like, whatever, one or two spots in the Pac-10 to qualify for the nationals, and I was seated. I should have, like, it's ridiculous I didn't,

but lo and behold, I choked, and I lost, and so my career ended, like, three weeks before I thought it was going to, and it was, like, the worst feeling in the world, like, losing, and then I was like, that's it. I'll never wrestle again, and it was, like, the worst feeling in the world, like, losing, and then I was, like, that, that's it, I'll never wrestle again, and it's, like, my whole life, you know, 15 years of my life up to that point was that, and then it was gone, it was, like, taken from me before I was ready, and I would have, like, gone into, like, severe depression, I did a little bit, but I had this little business thing that I was doing at the time, and so, like, to get my mind off of, like, the pain, I just

jumped into business and became obsessed. That's all I did for the next eight years of my life. I gained 50, 60 pounds. I was unhealthy. I was unhappy. I had this thing. I had a new goal. I want to make money online. I was chasing it. At first, I had this goal.

I want to make six figures a year. That would be insane. I was running towards it. As soon as I hit it, my hand got raised and i was like cool now i make i want to make seven figures in a year and i was running running running i made seven figures and i was like hey i want to make eight figures in a year and that one took me a lot longer we ran it for three or four years almost got there and that's when the whole company crashed and then built it back up and then still we were i think we maxed out about three three and a half million during that time and then um clickfunnels came it was like oh my gosh this is the thing right and i could like see the opportunity and then i started

running and as we all did and started running and the goal was to build a 10 you know 10 million dollar business and then we boom we hit and it was like cool like let's do 50 million and boom we did that and then this year's like let's hit 100 million we're gonna hit that this year and then for me it's like what's the next goal and i'm like oh what is the next goal like going from 100 million to 200 million like isn't that exciting it's like i don't know it's like winning another region champ like that like where's the next state championship where's the next national like what's the next thing it's like for me it's like the next thing is the billion which is like oh so far away like it's honestly the reason why i didn't keep wrestling because the next level after like

where i dropped off was the olympics and i knew that like to get the olympics it's like an 8 to 12 year like thing and i was like i don't have 8 to 12 years left in me so i that's why i stopped wrestling at that point and for me it's like that's where i right now it's like a billion dollars seems so far away and it's like well do we sell and like i guess that could be a hand raise but then then we go into severe depression because i got nothing else after you know like this is my thing and and anyway so that's kind of my question for them it's like i don't know what to chase i don't know how to get my hand raised i don't know what the next thing is and because that i feel like i'm spinning in circles like being really really busy because um because

i feel like i need to be busy um because that that numbs the pain of not knowing what the next challenge is going to be right because that's kind of where I'm finding myself at. And so I kind of shared that with those guys and spent the next hour getting personal developed. They're personally developing me. It's fun. And there are a lot of good things that came out of it. But the one, like, the one voice I heard that was, like, speaking directly to me was basically, like, I've always been, like like a player, right? Like I'm an all-star.

And I haven't been a good coach. And I want to caveat that. Like I have been a good coach to our clients, right? Like I've coached Brandon and Kaylin and Alex and Layla and all these people. Like I'm good at coaching people that are our students, but I'm like the worst coach ever for our internal team, like our agency we're building out.

In fact, I was thinking about it, like I feel like I'm that guy who, like I'm like the A level player, like an all-star, right? And I'm playing on this team and everyone on the team's good, but I have this weird thing where it's just like, like for example, I copied, it's good. And instead of me coaching her how to make a crate, I'm like, I like grab it and like I steal the ball from her. I'm like, I for example, I copied, it's good. And instead of me coaching her on how to make it great, I'm like, I like grab it and like I steal the ball from her.

I'm like, I'm just going to fix it and I fix it and I dunk the ball, right? Like, oh, look how good I am and I get my significance hit, right?

Or do a funnel and it's good or something. But I'm like, oh, like I fixed this and I'll jump in and I'll just change stuff

and I'll, because like I want to be the all-star and it's, I mean, it's good because we're putting out amazing stuff but it's also bad because it's like,

I keep trying to be this all-star and it's not helping the team. It's hurting the team more than anything and I'm sure it's discouraging because it's like i keep trying to be this all-star and it's not helping the team it's hurting the team more than anything i'm sure it's discouraging to them and a whole bunch of other things that i probably wasn't aware of until i started kind of really thinking through this and i think um for me the next evolution if we get to a billion dollars it's not gonna be by me being an all-star and you know like you look at basketball teams teams have like one all-star they have an all-star who like gets all the screen time, but like the teams never win the championships, right?

The championship teams are the ones that have like an amazing team. And I've realized that like if we're working at $2 billion, from the marketing side, I can't do what I'm doing. Number one,

because I can't handle more. Number two, it's just, it's not how we're going to scale. Like the way that we're going to grow to the next level is I have to retire from being an all-star player and become an actual coach um like two or

three weeks ago i did a like first training to our team like on hook story offer and like train them and everyone got excited it was a really cool thing and it's like me coaching them um one of the guys in the group his name's um he's the one that wrote the sales video for... If you've never seen it, it's the greatest sales video in the history of the universe. He wrote the sales video, put it out there without having it listed at all. And day one, did like $350,000 in sales. Day two was over half a million, and it blew up. And it was basically the best offer in the history of mankind

until the FTC shut them down and they got in trouble for it. But he's probably the best living copywriter right now. He was doing these one-off things like that, making a bunch of money, but it wasn't a company. And him and his brother partnered up, his two brothers, and they built out a whole company. And they have 150-plus employees. They've got 17

full-time writers now. And this year, they'll do half a billion dollars in sales. So that's, how did you do it? He's like, well, the way i did it he's like i couldn't keep writing you know to get this level i can't write all the copies like so i built this team of of writers and he says what i do like my job is i come in every single day and i give a copywriting course to my guys it's gonna log in and i train them through copy and they get better and he's like that's that's how we're able to scale i've grown so big because i got 17 writers and i'm training every single day and he's like i've become a coach and he's like they probably don't write as good to me but they write good enough

like really really good level and he's like they're getting better and better and he's just like he's like that's where he was like me as an all-star like we could have gotten to you know 100 million dollars but we couldn't have got 500 million like there's no way and um and uh anyway it was really interesting and the other thing he talked about like when he does copywriting training it reminded me of like how you do pair programming where it's not like some code something you'd log in you're like oh you change stuff you like you basically like he brings that the copywriter and shows on the big screen and like in the shows and he's like you know you're a great copywriter,

but I'm going to be super anal here to get this perfect, and we're going to go through this line by line, and he'll, like, tell the person, like, hey, you need to change that period to, like, three periods. You need to change that to a capital here, and, like, literally does the whole thing, but makes the person do it while he walks them through it, and that way the person's seeing why

and understanding the reasons behind it, right? And anyway, so, yeah. why and understand the reasons behind it right and um anyway so yeah so for me i just i think that like that's that's the next step so i have to start transitioning away from being an all-star and hogging the ball and like and not develop my team to actually focusing on becoming a really good coach for for our team so that's kind of my big realization and um and a couple of tools you just kind of add to it like if you read the book good to great talk about different levels of leadership and like level four versus level five and level five leaders someone who like builds it and then when they when they leave the company continues to grow and excel level four leader someone who leaves

and secretly hopes and collapses prove how good they are at what they do i was like i think right now i'm a level four leader which is horrible and i don't want to be that i want to be level five and so i want to transition myself that way and the last cool thing i want to share and then i'll be done my dad um uh and i was thinking like the same thing with all of our project managers so far they started project management stuff and something happens instead of just like coaching through that rip it away from them and you know so i've gone through four or five people trying to do this so it's like yeah i'm just a destructive force anyway not because i wanted just because i'm still learning um but anyway my dad when he turned 60 a little while ago we did a big family reunion thing and he's first birthday and

my mom um went through like each decade of his life like zero to ten will tell us about that life 10 to 20 you know so when he was an athlete wrestling. And then 20 to 30, when he became, you know, like, started his career, stuff like that. And 30 to 40, when he was like a dad. He was coaching us as wrestlers. He was like a coach. And then 50 to 60, the next phase, 60, you know, and kind of walked through all the decades. And my dad was a great athlete. And anyway, it was kind of fun because I asked him afterwards.

I was like, of all the decades, what was your favorite? And he was like, by far, my favorite was the decade where I was coaching you guys. And he's like, that was my favorite, the best years of my life was that 10-year thing. And I feel like I need to get to a point where I'm retiring from being an all-star and coaching our team. And I think that's my next challenge. I think that I'm going to love it. I think it's

what our team needs, what our company needs before we're going to get there. And so anyway, I'm sure you guys are thinking like, oh, of course, that makes total sense. But for me, it was like a big aha and giving me permission to shift my focus a little bit in the effort to help develop everybody and get our team the best team in the world. So anyway, so I share that. Appreciate you guys. And I will talk to you all soon. Bye, everybody.

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