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

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

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

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Travel moves us. Hey, everybody. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I've got a special episode for you today. I'm a little nervous to do this one, but there's been a bunch of questions that I've been getting over the last 24 hours and, um, this is probably the best format for me to kind of talk about it. So I'm going to be talking during today's episode about why I am pausing my inner circle.

So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, we're spending money from our own pockets. How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right, everybody. So, yes, that is the news. As you've probably seen in the ClickFunnels community,

there's been a lot of changes, announcements happening. On the ClickFunnels five-year birthday, we did some big announcements talking about, you know, how we're simplifying the software, we're getting rid of some of the features, and just focusing on being the category king of sales funnels. We then talked about how we launched FunnelFlix, which is a training platform for people in funnels and basically has all the courses that we used to sell

for anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to a couple thousand bucks for free for anyone who's at the $297 a month level of ClickFunnels. And since then, we've had thousands of people upgrade to that level, which is really, really cool. And so now we're able to do more training. And so that was the first big, big announcement. And there's another big announcement happening at Funnel Hacking Live, which you guys are going to freak out about.

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

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

my plan. Like someday I want to do it. And I was wondering, can I tell you the story behind it? And then, and then from there, talk about why I'm pausing it for a while and, and, um, and hopefully it'll, it'll, um, be good for you and inspire you and help you to, to make some decisions that are, that are tough as well. Um, and so that's kind of game plan, but I'm going to go back in time a little bit. So, um, when this whole thing started for me, so I, I joined a mastermind group. It was Bill Glazer's mastermind group. Um, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy's way back over, over 10 years ago now, which is crazy.

And I was in that group for six years. And then, um, when, uh, when Bill Glazer sold the company, I kind of dropped out and I was like, I need another mastermind group. And I had tried to launch my own group a couple of times with varied success. I had it once and I had like five or six people sign up and then, and then I did it for a year or two and it was kind of hard and I canceled it. And anyway, but, um, while we were building click funnels and I was writing the dot com seekers book, both of the things were happening at the same time. Um, I started just having this, this, um, I don't even know what the word is like this desire, this, this need

for like a mastermind group. I tried to join a couple other peoples and just like, never got what I, what I needed out of them. And finally I and finally kind of felt the the pull which I'm sure you guys have felt that pull that calling that whatever you want to call it but that that need of just like I feel like I should start a group and I remember looking at a bunch of people who had groups online and and that were doing really well and I was just like oh like that'd be so cool and they were charging $25,000 for these things and I was just like there's no way that's going to be possible but I want to try and so I went out went out there and I tried to launch this thing. And first I launched the program.

It was $10,000. It was called our Ignite program. We started selling that and it was doing well. And then it grew to the point where it was too big. And I was like, I want to do an inner circle. I want to have my own group that I can work even closer with. And so we launched a $25,000 inner circle program. And at first, nobody would sign up for it.

We kept trying thing after thing. People would sign up for the $10,000 thing, but nobody would sign up for the $25,000. And I was just like, other people are selling things for that much. Why can't I? What's wrong with me? And again, we're building ClickFunnels at the time. I'm writing the Docum Seekers book. And I remember finally we sold one.

And the craziest thing to me is that the person that bought it paid $25,000 and they never showed up to any of the meetings. The first person who signed up never asked for a refund either. We couldn't get this person to ever contact us. It was the weirdest thing. I was just like, we got one person to sign up and they won't even show up. It doesn't make any sense to me. And then we sold another one and another, and we started selling a few.

And it wasn't a ton. I think we had five or six probably at the first meeting. And so I had my Ignite event, which had, I don't know, maybe a hundred people that came to that. And then we did the Inner Circle right afterwards, which had like five or six people in it. And it was the first little mastermind group. And it was so awesome. In fact, I want to take a step back. I shared this yesterday with the Inner Circle members, but it was funny because this whole thing, like the writing of the Dotcom Seekers book and the building of ClickFunnels and stuff came on the backside of a big business failure

where I had to fire like 80 people and I didn't like the business I was in. And if you've read the Dotcom Seekers book, the intro section, I talk about how I woke up one day and I didn't love my customers. And I said, I wish if I would have had a boss, I wish I had a boss so that person could fire me because I didn't want to go in. And about that time I heard Eben Pagan talk about how you need to build out a customer avatar. And I thought it was the cheesiest advice ever. But I was like,

all right, fine. I'm going to do this customer avatar exercise. And I talk about it in the Dotcom Seekers book. And so I sat down and said, okay, who, what's my dream customer look like? And first I thought from a, from a male, like a man standpoint. Right. And so I gave it a name. I said, I'm gonna call him Mike. And I was like, what, what are, you know, what are some of the things about Mike? I'm like, well, he's successful.

He used to be an athlete. He, you know, I kind of list all these different things that, that my dream customer would have. And I took that to Google images and I typed in Mike and all the phrases and a whole bunch of pictures popped up. And I picked a dude who looked like someone I'd want to hang out with that I thought would be cool. And I took that picture and I printed it out and I taped it on my wall. And I was like, well, I don't just want to serve men. I want to serve women as well. I think women are amazing. They have, you know, a lot of times have more power to change and impact

than men, not all the time, but a lot of times. And I was just like, man, if I could help serve women as well, I've never had it. And prior to that, just the reason why that was a big deal to me at the time is prior to that, when I was doing coaching and stuff like that, I never had very many women that came into our groups. A few, but it was definitely more male-dominant. And I was like, I want to work with women too. They're so amazing.

And I've seen the impact that successful women can have on people. And I was like, I want that as well. So I wrote down the customer avatar on the female side and I called her Julie and I listed all these different names and I went to Google Images and I found a picture that was like my dream Julie. I printed that out and taped it on my wall. And I had these two pictures and they became my, like that was my dream. Like I want to build a mastermind with those two people that are there and I can hang out with them. And so that's when this whole journey started, right? And we started getting some people in and had the group and it was five or six people at this first mastermind group and it was the beginning. And then we started, we kept pushing it, kept pushing it. And finally eventually we got to like to eight and

then to 10 people and it slowly grew. And I would do meetings two or three times a year with them. And it was some of the most rewarding work ever I've had a chance to do in these mastermind groups. And then I started talking about it. In fact, if you've been listening to this podcast for the last five or six years, I started talking about inner circle members because I was the closest with them. As they would have success, I would talk about it on the podcast. And the more I talked about the inner circle members, the more people said, I want to be in the inner circle. And then we started getting more traction and more growth and more people started coming into it to the point where we had a full group of like 18 people, which was like, in my mind, I maxed out 18 people and i was like oh my gosh this is crazy and then um we

did i think we did a funnel hacking live about that time and we signed up like 10 more people and then we had like 30 i was like i can't do 30 i think i tried once to do 30 in a in a group it was like really really hard so like i'm gonna break into two groups then we had two groups of like 15 or something like that and um and then one day i had this idea i was like i was like how like like what would it look like if i if i made this perfect i was like we could have like if i did four groups i had four groups of 25 that'd be 100 people i could facilitate that it wouldn't you know it wouldn't crush me you know too much of my time i'd be able to still spend time doing you know click funnels and everything else I'm doing.

So I said, you know, I could handle 100 people in this inner circle, and I'd be maxed out at that point. And so then I think I did a podcast about it, I'm sure, and I sent some emails out. I said, you know, and again, we had maybe 35 people at the time. I said, just so you know, I'm capping at 100 people. When we hit 100, I'm shutting it down. And I didn't think that was going to ever happen. And within like two months, we hit 100 people.

And it was crazy and intense and it was insane. And we'd do these events where basically people would come and it's two days times four groups, two, four, six, eight days over two to three weeks. And it was like basically a month of my life, two to three times a year was focused on inner circle members. And then I did these things called Beck in a Day where they'd jump a call on Friday and I spend Fridays consulting with different people in the group. And it was just, again, so fulfilling, so rewarding.

It gave me the chance to have my hands on 100 people's businesses at a time in all sorts of industries. Like it really for me was the training ground. It was the thing that gave me the ability to understand what works in this business and what's different, like what are the intricacies and the difference between an info business versus a supplement business versus a local business versus, like, I had this rare, unique opportunity for many years just to work with so many companies and see and be on the front lines and be able to talk through voxers with all these entrepreneurs and to figure things out. And it was amazing. And so again, we hit the 100 people and we capped it down. And for like a year, no one could come in. And we started getting

your normal attrition would happen. And after a year, we're down to like 70 or I don't know how many people were in there. And I was like, oh, we need to kind of re, you know, get back up to 100. And so we did a campaign, got back to 100. And then I had this idea. I said, you know what? I don't want to, like, I don't want to keep filling this up with new people. I want to make it where it's like, this is a group of people I'm going to work with. And I just want to, I want to like, I want to every single year come back with the same group of people.

And together, collectively as a whole, I want us all growing together. I said, how are we going to do that when we have people coming and going and things like that? It's really, really difficult. So we did a campaign with everybody. I said, we're starting a program. We're calling this Inner Circle for Life now. We're changing the name. It's called Inner Circle for Life. And when you're in, you're in. And if you leave, that's fine. You can leave. But if you leave, you can never come back in. Because a lot of people said, I'm going to leave. I'll come back next year. I'm going to take a year off. And I was just like, I hated that. So we made an inner circle for life where if you're in, you're in. And if you're out, again, we're still friends, but you can never come back in.

And what happened next was insane. Like nobody, for the most part, nobody left. And inner circle was closed for the next two and a half years or so. And that brought me to where I am right now. And you know what? I'm going to share that in the next episode I'm going to drag this um I'm going to drag this story on because usually episodes about 10 minutes long we're already 12 minutes and um I want to share the rest of the story on the next one so there's the there's the the build-up of where inner circles come from in

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