Marketing Secrets (2013-2014)

How one good presentation can transform your business overnight.

On this episode Russell talks about speaking at a Mike Filsaime event and selling 36% of the room and how he did it.

Here are some cool things you’ll hear in today’s episode:

How this one event Russell was able to sell 36% of the room.
Why Mike Filsaime said Russell had one of the best presentations he had ever seen.
And why this presentation actually got Russell more opportunities to speak at other events.

So listen below to hear how Russell was able to do so many sells at Mike Filsaime’s event.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone. This is Russell. I want to welcome you to Marketing in Your Car. Hey guys and gals. So this episode is kind of weird because I think it is the first Marketing in Your Car I have actually done when I am not in my car. Maybe there are one or two others, but that is what is happening today. I am at the office, and just want to share something cool with you guys because I think it would.

I had a chance this last week to watch one of my friends. He posted on Facebook. He is a big believer in bound marketing. I agree with him for the most part. He is trying to get clients and make arguments, but he is talking trash about conversion and sales and persuasion and all these things.

It makes me laugh because that is where his background came from, and that’s what he learned. That is what has worked for him in the past. He is talking trash about that so he can sell his inbound marketing thing. I read it, and I just kept going back and forth. Do I agree with him? Do I not? Which parts do I agree? It was interesting because there are parts that I definitely agreed with him on. I do believe that it is the future. I believe in ad networks versus they don’t squeeze pages and sales letters and things like that.

There’s that side of it, but the other side of it, which I think he is sort sighted on, he is trying to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. His persuasion says it is important to understand, and if you understand those, then it just works. This weekend I had a really cool experience. I got asked to speak at Marketing Genesis, traffic genesis event. I went and spoke there.

There were about 120-130 people in the room when I started speaking. I created a presentation. I don’t know how many of you guys have gone through my perfect webinar presentation, but I have this script that I have built over 10 years, and it has taken the best I have learned from all of my coaches that have taught me how to speak well. I have learned from Ar and Moore and Jason and Dave Vanhoose, Perry Beltcher, and so many people. More than I could go through right now. People have helped me tweak my presentation and tweak it and tweak it and tweak it. I am to the point now, I call it the perfect webinar because it just works.

Anyway, I got asked to speak there and so I spent a day and a half or so just working on the presentation getting it perfect. I just, I literally just followed my script to a tee. I didn’t deviate from it at all. I just used the script. I opened my hand out. It goes through all the different pieces, and that is all I did. I went and gave the presentation, and it was really cool. After I pitched I ended up closing 36% of the room, which is the highest that I have ever done. Probably one of the highest that I have ever seen.

I was just reading my skype right now and Mike said, “Hey, wanted to webinar for your offer. One of the best offers I have ever seen. Maybe the best. It was kind of cool. Just really exciting. I closed 36% of the room at a $1,000 price point. What is interesting is what has happened since then. This is the power of a good offer. If you get a good offer and a pitch that converts, all the inbound marketing stuff is good, but man it will turn your outbound marketing on fire.

I did that presentation. Did my whole pitch, my close, everything. Made a whole ton of money. From there, almost instantly I had four or five people come up and beg me to do that webinar to their list. Mike and Andy asked me. Right now, people are lining up to do that webinar to that list because they saw it converted, saw it was going to make them a ton of money, saw that it was awesome. That is the power of having a good converting offer. People will line up to sell it for you.

I think it was Gary Halbert said, I can’t remember. A couple different quotes. One of them said something about, “Just one sales letter will make all your problems go away. One good sales letter.” I think it’s true. Literally there have been two or three times in my business career where because of stupid choices on my side, we have almost gone bankrupt or things have almost happened. Every single time it is one good pitch, one good offer that totally saves and changes everything.

While I agree with the whole inbound concept, I think that is where we all need to be going. After you use outbound concepts to get somebody in your funnel, that’s where the persuasion and the sales skills and all the things we have been talking and teaching and doing for the last 10 years. They still work. They work better than ever. You just have to learn how to do it.

We don’t have the slide yet, but in the next month or so I will probably put it live. If you go to perfectwebinar.com, I am going to have a DVD there that goes to my perfect webinar script. I will do free plus shipping. I recommend getting it because that thing works.

I just followed my own template, filled in all the blanks. Did the presentation and boom it works. I hope that helps you guys. I appreciate you all for listening. This is episode 99. The next one coming out is 100, and we will have a new theme song. I appreciate you guys, and we will talk to you soon.

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A few quick things you can do to give yourself the edge.

On this episode Russell talks about how he uses supplements to get a slight edge and how he does the same thing in business.

Here are a couple of interesting things to listen for in this episode:

Why Russell uses so many supplements and how people react to them.
How Russell is always trying to have a slight edge on his health and his business.
And what three types of people you will see in both business and supplement taking.

So listen below to hear how supplements give Russell a slight edge.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to a very cold and rainy Marketing in Your Car. Hey everyone. We are almost on episode 100, which is exciting. At 100 I am changing the theme song. I promise. I honestly can’t believe I have listened to 100, that theme song over 100 times. We have new things coming out. Also, I wanted to see how long all my podcasts have been. So I took them all, and I am getting someone to transcribe them all so I can put them on the blog, and all that fun stuff. I am posting it out there. I had my brother rip all the audios.

We put them into one long thing. That’s not counting the music. Just the actual talking parts. It ended up being seven or eight hours long. Maybe it was even longer. It was crazy. I was like, “Man. That is a short key to my office. Can you imagine for a lot of you how much time you spend each day in the car?” It is insane. So, anywho I wanted to talk about something I think is funny.

As lot of you guys know I eat really clean and healthy. I also am a big fan of supplements, and every morning I have a supplement regime that takes me almost an hour to do. Some people think that is crazy. Why would I spend an hour doing it? I have my kits there. Aden helps me. He helps me juice, and also helps me pick out all my pills. We take whatever out of each bottle, and I have this huge stack of stuff, and I take all those.

I take a bunch of powders and mixes. I look forward to it every morning. It is my favorite part. Usually when I am doing it, I am super tired. I take all the stuff and in about 15 minutes or so, I just feel like a million dollars. It is really awesome. Last night I took a picture of my supplements to post on Facebook. I thought it would be fun to get people’s responses. Man, it cracks me up. People’s feedback. Some people, and it’s funny because the people who are the least healthy are always the ones who are trying to explain to me how it’s going to kill my liver all these types of things. It makes me smile because I think about all the stuff I am taking compared to one big mac at Mcdonalds.

It makes me laugh. Also, the super healthy people who have their thing that they follow and they believe, and they stick with that, and they won’t. They said, “All you need is this. All you need is whatever.” They have their thing. Then there’s a couple guys who I know who are always trying to push the edge on things to get themselves the slight edges. All of them posted pictures of their supplements. Some of them have twice what I had on mine, which was fun as well.

I just thought it was funny. I started thinking about that. In all aspects of life. Again, obviously I am a big believer in supplements, but during Halloween, not Halloween, we went down to this Halloween celebration to my brother in law, sister in law’s house. They saw me taking all these things. It was interesting, my sister in law, she said something that I thought was kind of cool. She said, “Wow. You always look for little things to give you the edge.” I thought about it, and that is what supplementation is.

I am trying to figure out what little tweaks, what little hacks, what little things are there that I can take that are going to give me nutrients that I am not able to get out of my food, that are going to give me things that will help me open up my mind, or increase my energy in a natural way that’s not tied to caffeine or tied to these horrible things. All these little incremental things that I am adding into my supplementation have been amazing. That is the first part, and then I started thinking about also from a learning stand point. For me, I am always trying to get the edge. That is why I read so much. That is why I study so much. That is why I am always listening to trainings and audios. I want to get those tiny things.

Each little supplement I can learn and put it in my brain can give me an edge and help me increase my business and help me make more money and help me to serve more people. For me, just like supplements, I am always looking for those little things. I think about the people that almost had the same response with the supplements. I look at their life, and I think they’re response of information would be very similar.

Those who fight to have enough and they don’t need to do learn more, who would mock my library. Then we have those who already have, who do, you know a lot, but they don’t want to learn anymore, and those who are trying to seek knowledge in all aspects of life, and try to search out the best things. For me, I like the idea of always searching out the best things. Trying to find those little edges you can take that are natural. From a learning standpoint and a nutritional standpoint, to help you get to where you want to get, faster.

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How to find coaches to get your unbalanced life back into balance.

On this episode Russell talks about having a life that is like an unbalanced wheel and he is working on straightening it out.

Here are some interesting things you will hear in today’s episode:

Why some areas of Russell’s life are amazing and others are struggling.
What Russell is doing to try to balance out his life so it’s amazing all the way around.
And why it’s important to work out your life and make sure its balanced.

So listen below to find out what Russell is doing to straighten out his wheel.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a brand new, exciting, awesome episode of Marketing in Your Car. Alright everyone. It has been a little while since I have done a podcast. Had kind of a crazy last month or so. Has it been a month? Probably not. It has been quite awhile. Since last we spoke we launched click funnels. It is going great. People are loving it. We are changing the whole industry, and it’s awesome. Loving that. I want to do something different because today I woke up, and I am in an awesome mood.

It is funny because there is a bunch of stuff that I could and should be upset about or frustrated or whatever, but I am in an awesome mood today. There are a lot of reasons for that. For one, I am just grateful for my family. I am grateful for click funnels. I am grateful for my partners, just everything that is happening. It is just awesome, like nothing could pop my bubble right now, which is really cool.

The other thing I want to mention, and I think it’s important, is I want to ask you guys, I want you guys to look at your life. There are different areas. Remember at a Tony Robbins event he had us do this in a circle. Each section’s circle was a pie, each part was part of your life, your personal life, your financial, your spiritual, your physical and all those kinds of things. He had us draw from 1-10 where we felt we were at. If you were close to the center of the circle, the further out you went, the better it was.

You drew these lines across each of the sections of the pie, and afterwards you looked at it, and it was this lopsided wheel. Everyone has one or two aspects of their life they are crushing it in. The other four or five they are really struggling it. It was interesting. He said, “Look at this as the wheel. How can you drive on this? Parts of it are super close. The edges are super close to the center. Part of it is like a real circle.”

I think that is what my life has been like. I have been having great success in a lot of areas, and having a lot of fun and things, but other parts of my life are really struggling like my physical part. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating right. I was doing a whole bunch of stuff to try to get the launch out. Things became lop-sided. I did a podcast a while ago about the unbalanced life, which I still think is important, but I started thinking recently about that.

I have certain aspects of my life, half I am crushing in and half I am struggling in. I started looking at what are the traits in things that are happening in the areas that I am really successful. I have coaches and a team around me helping me in those aspects in my life. Those other ones, I am just going at it on my own and hoping for the best.

Recently, a little while ago I hired this guy. I am not sure if I told you guys or not. I don’t know if I told you or not, but I went and got my blood tested in the middle of our product launch thing. My hormones were out of whack from lack of sleep, lack of, I definitely went unbalanced for a while. My hormones suffered because I gained a bunch of weight. It was hard to sleep.

I had low energy. All of these things came from that. I went to a nutritional doctor, and he told me what I needed to do, and I didn’t agree with it and it scared me. I didn’t want to do. I looked out there, and I looked at my personal world, and try to find somebody who is really good at fixing the issues that I was having. I found this dude.

His name is Caleb Jennings. You can search for him. He is awesome. He is really expensive, $600 for a coaching call. I did my first coaching call with him, and he recommended a bunch of dietary things and a bunch of supplementation things and other things. What I am eating now is so weird from what I have ever eaten in my whole life. We just got started. “There’s two way to do this. The fast way and the slow way.” I said I wanted the fast way.

He said the fast way is really expensive. I said I didn’t care. I want to get where I want to be as quick as I can. Here is all the supplements that you should be taking. I spent $2,000 in supplements. I did that, changed my diet. I have been on it for 10 days now. I can’t tell you. I feel better now than I felt my entire life. It is truly amazing. I feel like I am glowing. I feel so awesome.

The point of this podcast because now I am at the office is, start looking at the areas of your life that are unbalanced and things you are not happy with instead of trying to trailblaze on your own like we always try to do. Go find a coach for that area of your life. There are coaches out there coaching people on anything. If you are struggling spiritually or financially or health wise, go find the person who is doing exactly what you want to be doing, and figure out how much it is going to cost and pay him.

It will get you where you want to be so much faster. I was listening to Tony Robbins this weekend, and that is one thing he said as well. If you want to be successful, you can’t find a good strategy. You have to find the best strategy. Find the best strategy. Find the person that you like the most and model them. Model them to a tee. If you do that, that is where you are going to be successful.

That is what I am doing now. I am finding the areas of my life that are lop-sided, that I am not quite happy with. I am finding coaches and get there quick. The last 10 days, we had a family trip this weekend, and I was driving, and typically when I am driving I am snacking on food and trying to stay awake.

Kids are going crazy and it is stressful. This time I didn’t eat any snacks. I was just driving there. I had so much energy. I was so much more fun. I was goofing off. It was night and day. My wife was like, “what is wrong with you? You are so happy right now.”

I said I don’t know. From the changes in my diet and supplementation, I feel like a million bucks. I am going to find some coaches for the other areas of my life I am struggling with, and I will be firing those as well. Do the same. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening. Have an awesome day, and I will talk to you all soon.

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A cool new way that we are rolling out our new software to the world.

On this episode Russell talks about the Clickfunnels product launch and how it’s different than other product launches.

Here are the coolest reasons to listen to this episode:

How a product launch works and why it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have all your ducks in a row.
How this launch is really more like a reverse product launch and how it will work.
And Why Clickfunnels is being launched differently.

So listen below to hear the plan of the Clickfunnels product launch.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to a very special launch-day “Marketing in Your Car.”

Hey, everyone. It’s been a little while since I talked to you guys, probably because we have been killing ourselves getting Click Funnels launched out. I’m driving home at about four in the morning, and I’m driving back a few hours later. I’m usually a little bit too tired to talk [laughs], but the good news is that today’s the day. We’re going to go live, and it’s exciting, and it’s scary. It’s so many things, but above all I’m excited to share this tool, this gift, whatever you want to call it, with the world, and so we have spent insane amounts of time, effort, money, energy [laughs] to bring this to everyone, and today, we have the fruition of that, which is exciting.

What I want to talk about today, just while I’m thinking about it, every one of us, depending on if you’ve got a business already, and you’re rolling out new ideas, new projects, new things, or those who are just getting started, there comes a time when you have to launch, and a lot of times, you probably think that all of us who are doing launches, that we’ve got everything, all of our ducks in a row, and it’s always perfect, and it’s sunshine and roses, but the reality is, it is crazy every single time. We’re juggling a million different things, trying to get everything done, but it’s fun to see it all come together. Now one thing that we learned from doing this or any launch is that first when you start a project, you get all of these things you want to do and then as you get closer and closer to the deadline, you’ve got to start chopping things and pulling things off, and it gets smaller and smaller until you get to where you’ve got something that you can actually do and put out there in the world, and even right now, it’s kind of fun with this launch. We kept on changing it and figuring out what we had to have to go live, and we picked a date, and we’ve stuck to it, and now it’s go time.

One thing that’s interesting that we’re doing on this launch – I think we’re going to start a trend – maybe. I’m not sure, but we’re doing a reverse launch, so most people do product launches where they show you training video number one, then video number two, then video number three, and then video number four they sell you, and they open the cart and you can go in and you can sign up. This one is going to be backwards.

What we’re doing is inside Click Funnels, we’ve got basically five or six different funnel types. Today we’re going to launch, and we’re going to launch one funnel type, which is our opt-in funnels, which that, by itself, makes us a better alternative than any of our competitors, so it does it better, easier, just right out of the gate. That’s the first thing we’re launching today, and that will give us a chance where the promotional video’s all about that feature and about thing, and we’re talking about that one little thing, and then two days later, we’re going to unlock the next feature, which is our automated webinar funnels and our webinar funnels, and so that will come out. Then, “Boom,” we’ll launch a new sales video with that. We’ll have training that goes with everything and we’ll indoctrinate and get people using that, and then three days later, we open our sales funnels, and after they open it, we’ll go in there and help people get those integrated and get their shopping carts in there, et cetera, et cetera, and then after that we have launch funnels and the membership sites, but we’re doing an internal rolling launch where we’re rolling out new features every three or four days, for a couple of reasons. One is that it gives our affiliates a reason to promote every two or three days, which is very good for sales. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is it gives us a chance on the support side to make sure we’ve mastered one funnel type, and make sure that it’s perfect and that we have templates and Q&As and all of those types of things. Just to make sure we’ve got that one funnel perfect. And then on the third is that it gives the customers the ability to really get in there and immerse and learn one thing at a time, and so anyway, we’re excited. That’s the strategy, and it’s never been done before, so it will be fun to see what happens on a reverse launch, and see if it blows up in our faces, or if it does awesomely, but either way we’re excited, and just really excited to share Click Funnels with the world.

It’s funny. Somebody posted on Facebook the other day about how they thought Click Funnels was the biggest marketing innovation since e-mail auto-responders, which I personally do believe, but I remember that I posted in there – and I thought about it a little bit before I posted, and I posted, and I said, “Look, guys, even if we never sold a single copy, this tool will make me and make my company millions of dollars. I’m just so grateful to be the one that has the chance to share it with you guys,” and that’s really how I feel, and so today, if you’re listening to this podcast, go get your Click Funnels account. Again, we’re giving away free trials, and I promise you guys you’re going to love it. It’s going to change your business. It’s changed mine already, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.

I’m at the office now. I’m going to go in. I’m going to push the last few buttons and give everybody everything live, and in a few hours it’ll be show time. I appreciate you guys listening in, and we’ll talk to you soon.

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The secrets of temporarily unbalancing your life to achieve your dreams…

On today’s episode Russell talks about why his life is unbalanced because he isn’t getting any sleep and why right now, that is okay.

Here are some things you’ll hear in this episode:

Why entrepreneurs don’t have the privilege of living a balanced life when you are just starting out.
And why you have to sacrifice balance sometimes to get the momentum you need to succeed.

So listen below to find out why it’s okay for Russell to live an unbalanced life sometimes.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to a special late night “Marketing in Your Car.” Actually it should be called, “Marketing in Your Ferrari”, because right now, late at night, I’m driving to the office in the Ferrari.

Hey, everyone. I want to welcome you to this webinar. This is not a webinar. This is a podcast. You can tell my brain’s a little bit fried right now. Over the last week or so, we’ve had Todd and Dylan and Chris and the entire Click Funnels crew flew in to Boise so we could focus on getting Click Funnels live and launched, and it’s been super fun. We’re halfway through the week, and we’ve got the other half coming up, and so I’m going in for another late-night session so that we can keep cranking this thing out so we can have it ready for you guys all to experience here soon, and I’m really excited. We’ve got some amazing changes. If any of you guys have used Click Funnels yet, you’re going to be blown away by the new editor and the new UI that we’re rolling it out on Thursday, and so we’re trying to hit a hard deadline and get it all done by Thursday, which will be pretty cool. So that’s why we’re all killing ourselves right now.

I was thinking about some stuff recently. In my life, I’ve been trying to do so many things. I’ve been trying to get this new company launched while keeping our old company growing, while being a dad with my kids now in football, and my daughter in soccer, and then trying to be a good husband, and trying to do all of my church responsibilities. There’re so many things that are happening right now, and I’ve been trying to live a balanced life and because of that, I basically had to cut out sleep almost completely from my schedule, which has caught up with me. It’s been hurting, so I’ve been trying to get some more sleep, and so I’m trying to figure out, what do you do? They always talk about living a balanced life, and how do you do that as an entrepreneur, especially when you’re trying to launch a new company, and trying to provide value to the world. How do you do it?

I was thinking about a couple of things, and funny enough, by both of them coming from Mark Cuban, who, if you guys don’t know who Mark Cuban is, you’re probably living under a rock right now, but one thing he said that was really interesting, and I’m going to slaughter the quote, but he said something along the lines of – something about sleeping at night, like, “While my competitors sleep, and I’m staying up at night getting ready to kick his butt,” or something like that, and so that’s been our mantra, because we’ve been going through this. We’ve got a couple of big competitors, some of them with VC money and everything that we’re competing against. We’re the ones busting our butts at night while they’re sleeping soundly in their beds, and they’re not going to know what came and hit them, so that’s exciting.

The other Mark Cuban thing was I was listening to, watching “Shark Tank”. This was a couple of months ago, but I remember this one scene, and it kept replaying through my head this weekend as I was trying to figure out how to become more balanced. He was talking about how, as an entrepreneur, when you’re first getting started out, you can’t lead a balanced life. He was talking about how things have to fall to the wayside, because there’s so much effort and momentum that has to go into launching this thing. He was like, “Entrepreneurs do not get the privilege,” or whatever you want to call it, “the luxury of having a balanced life when they’re getting started.” Someday, obviously, the goal of being an entrepreneur is to shift that, right? So all of this effort, you kind of frontloaded turns into this company that pays for itself, pays for you and your family so that you can go and live those things you want.

It got me thinking about that. It’s not good to always live your life unbalanced, but there are times when I think you have to, to be able to push forward and to succeed. I look at when I was wrestling in high school and college. My life was very unbalanced towards that, but that’s what I had to do to be able to succeed. You’ve got to sacrifice other things to be able to do that.

I look at the two years I spend on a mission for my church, and when I was doing that, life was very unbalanced. I was giving up everything else to be able to focus on that aspect and to be able to serve the world in that way, and so while I think that the goal is to get to a balanced life, I think in order to get the momentum you need to succeed at almost anything, that initial inertia comes from being not in balance, and so you have to kind of pick and choose.

Tonight, my wife and I sat down, and we started talking about what aspects I need to cut during this process to be able to function, so there’s going to be some things in my life that I love that I’m going to have to cut out just so that I don’t die [laughs] from lack of sleep and lack of everything, right? So one of the things I’m going to cut out is going to be weight-training. It’s going to be this and that, and like, “What are the pieces I’m going to pull out so that I can focus on the good stuff which is obviously launching this company and having success with it and all of those types of things.

Anyway, kind of fun – that’s what’s going down. I’m at the office now. Late night, I’m driving the Ferrari. Things are good. Time to get this Click Funnels launched so it can change the world, both your guys’ and mine. I’m excited, and I will talk to you guys soon.

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Lessons that I learned from my Greco coach, and how they 10x’d my results.

On this episode Russell talks about his wrestling career and some of the things he learned when he started practicing for the Olympics with a new coach.

Here are some of the things you will hear in today’s episode:

A brief history of Russell’s wrestling career and some of the experiences he had.
Why he questioned his Olympic wrestling coach until he saw the brilliance of what he was teaching.
And why it is important to use what he learned in other aspects of his life.

So listen below to hear what Russell’s Olympic Wrestling Coach taught him.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to a very late night “Marketing in Your Car.”

Hey, everyone. It is eleven o’clock at night. I just got done with a two-hour wrestling match, and it was awesome. One of my buddies who’s been my jiu jitsu coach for the last few years or so – I wanted start to do some hard wrestling, and he was trying to learn some wrestling, so we’ve been going a few nights a week at night and beating the trash out of each other. We just got done with that, and I had so much fun. It was awesome. Despite the fact that I’m old and I’m out of shape, I could still do all right in wrestling, which makes me happy.

I’ve got a little drive home right now, and I want to talk about some stuff. I have no idea if this is going to relate to you or your business at all, but I think it’s really interesting, and I think that there are things that you can grasp from it, whether it be in your business or in your personal life. I’m going to be honest. I don’t know how these directly relate to you specifically, but it’s a principle that I learned in a really interesting way, and I’m going to share that with you, and hopefully you’ll get some value out of it. I think that if you think about it, and try to figure out how to apply it to your circumstances, you’ll find value, but it’s not going to be surface-level. It’s not going to be like, “Oh, yeah. This is how this works,” and so if you listen to this podcast, and you don’t get it [laughs], listen to it again, and then just think about it, and think about a couple of different aspects of your life. Think about your personal life, your business, your relationships, because I think that this is applicable on a lot of different levels besides the one I’m going to share with you right now. There’s my preview for this podcast.

The backstory is – a lot of you guys know my wrestling background. I wrestled in high school. I was a state champ. I had a chance to go the High School National Tournament, and I took second there. I became an All-American, lost in the High School National finals by two points. It was a really close match, but it was amazing. Out of all of the things in my life that I identify myself as, I still to this day, if you were to ask me, “Who are you, Russell?” I still consider myself a wrestler.

That was, more than business, more than anything else, that was the thing that defined me and made me who I am. I just love wrestling, and so I got done with high school, I got a scholarship offers at a couple of places. I wrestled a year at BYU, and then they cut the wrestling program, so I transferred up to Boise State. I wrestled my last four years there, and I just had a great experience. I can’t tell you how many happy moments and the stuff that came from that, but again, the defining thing in my life is definitely that.

I’m sure that all of you guys have in your life something that – I look at my life before wrestling, and I’d come home from school and I’d watch cartoons [laughs] until dinner, and then I’d eat dinner, then I’d go to bed. It was the first thing I had where I had a dream, and I had a goal, and I put everything – my blood, sweat, and tears into it and chased that dream and achieved some big goals, and also didn’t achieve some goals, and I learned how to win, and I learned how to lose. It was just – to this day, the greatest thing I’ve ever had a chance to experience – that was my wrestling.

Then when I got done with college, I took a couple of years off, and ate a lot of food. My wife got pregnant with twins, and I gained a lot of weight because of this whole thing, and fast forward about four or five years later, I just really missed wrestling. My business was cranking. We were making money, and I did a podcast about this earlier, so I’m not going to tell the whole story again, but I decided I wanted to train for the Olympics. We built an Olympic training center out here in Boise. I hired an Olympic Greco coach, moved him out here. We moved out six or seven guys who were training for the Olympics, and I hired them. They worked for me, and then we were wrestling every day. It was a really cool experience.

But the story I want to tell you guys today is we brought this coaches in to Ivan Ivanoff, and to this day, one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. I don’t think I’ve ever even told him this before, but one of the people I look up to more than almost anyone else in the world, and just an amazing human and an amazing person. I remember we brought him in as this coach, and he had actually come from Bulgaria with basically nothing – showed up here in America. He moved out to Utah. He got this job coaching this little kids’ club. My little brother’s in that club, and in two years, he took my brother, and this group of kids who didn’t know Greco at all, and within a year and a half to two years, my brother took second place in the country in Utah and the state took first in the country in Greco.

He has this amazing ability to put his hands on somebody, and have them transformed. As soon as he did that with these high school kids, then the Olympic team brought him up, and he started coaching the Olympic Greco team, and raised up some of the most amazing athletes really, really quickly and just awesome, so when I wanted to start wrestling again, I was going to have someone, I wanted Ivan, and I’d never had a chance to personally work with him, but I saw what he did with my brother. I saw what he did with these other people, and so I wanted him there. I was lucky enough and blessed to have him agree, and he moved to Boise and he started coaching us.

It was interesting because I remember the first probably four or five months, we were practicing, and I was really frustrated about how he ran practices. I was almost confused, and I was thinking, “What is this guy doing? Does he not know how wrestling practices run?” Literally, what we would do is every Sunday we’d come in, and in wrestling you’ve got an offensive guy and a defensive guy, right? So I’m practicing moves on him, so I’ll have a guy stand there, and I’ll practice shooting on him, and I’ll practice taking him down. I’ll practice different moves. The defensive guy plays like a dummy, and he’ll let you take him down. That’s how you drill, right? You practice that way, and then you go and you wrestle matches where everyone’s going live, so you have this dummy’s day where your defensive person is like a dummy just standing there and going through the moves, and then you have full-speed wrestling where the guy’s going a hundred percent.

Ivan, literally, probably about the first four or five months, all he would do with us is he would drill the defensive guy on how to be a good partner, and like I said, I was getting so frustrated, like, “Ivan, you need to be teaching us stuff. I need to be learning some new take-downs. You need to be drilling us,” but he would focus on the defensive guy and getting the defensive guy to be a better partner, and teaching him to react the right way as a defensive partner needs to do.

Literally, every single day, we’d come to practice and we would drill defensively how to be good defenders during practice, how to be a good dummy man. I was so frustrated, and I remember one day he told me, “Russell, right now when our guys are coming in here, they’re drilling against people who don’t know how to be dummies, so that’s not going to help them in competition. In competition, if you’re not practicing against somebody who is a good partner, who is giving you the right looks and the feel and the pressure and things like that, if you’re not practicing perfectly in your practices, when you get in competition, you’re not going to be at that level,” and so he spent those three or four or five months getting us to be good defensive wrestlers, to be good dummies, and then as soon as he did that, and as soon as he got to the point where he said, “Yes, now you guys are good defensively. Now you’re good practice partners. Now we can focus on the offense,” and then he started focusing on the offense, and I saw the brilliance in what he did.

Literally because everyone on our team became great at being the dummy, and at giving the right looks and the right pressure when someone was drilling on you, when he started introducing new moves, we were able to pick them up, and not only pick them up faster, but our technique was perfect because the partners we were drilling against were defending them perfectly, and they were giving the right pressure and doing the right things, and so you could literally just start seeing the huge improvements in yourself. I look and a month and a half, two months later, that team that we had built up went to the U.S. tournament, and we were this unnamed team. I can’t remember – I’m pretty sure we won first place at that tournament, if not it was just because we didn’t have as many guys as the other teams, but just we did awesome. We had three or four guys in the finals, and it was really fascinating to watch that.

I’d forgotten that lesson, until a little while ago when I was wrestling with Jason, my jiu jitsu coach, and I told him that. I said, “What was interesting when we first brought Ivan in, the first three or four months, he didn’t focus on techniques for offensive techniques. He focused on drilling the defense man and making him become the perfect partner, so that when we did introduce techniques, we got those techniques perfectly, as opposed to picking them up in an un-perfect environment.

I told Jason that, and Jason got really excited. He went back to his club, and he started focusing on the guys he was training, not so much on offensive, because he said, “Offensively these guys come to practice and the defensive guys are just lying there. They’re doing to moves perfectly, and then they go to tournaments, and they go to matches, and they go to fights, and they’re losing because when they go against somebody who’s good, the pressure and the things that are happening defensively at practice are not at the same level as what’s happening in the tournaments. So he went back and he started focusing on that part of it with his guys, and he started seeing these huge leaps and bounds.

I think that a lot of times in all aspects of our life, we do what I thought we should do, and what I came in and wanted to coach my team, right? It was, “Let’s focus on offensive, offensive, offensive,” and that’s not always the right way to start something. Building the foundation and understanding that part of it, which may seem like you’re taking a step back. It might seem like you’re going slower at first, but it builds a solid structure and builds a platform where now you can offensively grow ten, twenty, thirty times faster.

Again, I’m not sure how this relates back to your life – if it’s in your relationships, if it’s in your businesses, if it’s in some other area – your finances, your religion – whatever it is, but I want you to think about that. What part of your life – it could be your nutrition. It could be your whatever, like what is the equivalent of what I talked about? What can you step back and focus on that builds out a better foundation so that when you are trying to make those offensive moves, you can grow and see ten, twenty, thirty times results from the exact same amount of effort?

Just kind of a thought. The guy got really excited about it, and I’ve been trying to figure out different ways to implement it back in to my life now, and I wanted to share it with you guys and let you guys stew on it. Again, if you don’t get it yet, that’s fine. It’s not something that’s right in front of your face. It’s something you’ve got to think about, and figure out how to relate it to yourselves.

I’m here now. I’m at my home. I’m going to go shower, and I’m going to take a nice, long nap, or I’ll just go to bed, and I’ll see you guys maybe tomorrow. I’m excited. Click Funnels relaunch is about to happen, and I’ve got Dylan and Todd in town. They just got here tonight, and I’m super fired up. We’ve got a new editor. It’s an exciting time, so maybe I’ll share some of our pre-launch strategies with you guys tomorrow on a podcast, because I think you’ll enjoy it. We’re doing some cool stuff and building a lot of buzz, and I’m excited for it.

With that said, you guys, I appreciate you all for listening, and I will talk to you soon.

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How I can make as much front end revenue giving my product away for free, as I can selling it for full price.

On today’s episode Russell talks about something so easy that everyone should be doing it, but nobody is.

Here are some cool things you will hear in this episode:

The secret that has transformed Russell’s business.
And How Russell can get three times as many customers and make the exact same amount of front end cash, before up-sells.

So listen below to find out how Russell was able to transform the way he does business.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to another “Marketing in Your Car.”

Hey, everyone. It’s been a little while since I’ve done one of these. I’ve been super busy, and was actually out until about three o’clock last night recording the coolest promo video ever. I’m excited to launch it. It’s a blend between the FourHourBody.com, if you watch Tim Ferriss’ promo video there – it’s a blend between that and “Prison Break” [laughs], and I think it’s going to be pretty cool. It took us six hours to film, literally, twelve seconds of footage, so we’ll see how it all turns out. In my head it’s amazing, so I’m hoping that it actually turns out that way. That’s pretty exciting.

What I want to talk to you guys about right now is something that I think is literally changing my business right now, and it’s so simple and so easy that everybody should be doing it – and I don’t see anybody doing it yet. Actually, one other dude, I do. One dude was smart enough to see what I did and copy me.

So this is the concept. Let’s say you wanted to sell a $47 product. You’ve got your $47 product, and you’ve got your up sells, and you’ve got your down sells. That’s just trying to sell. For a typical $47 product, you’ve got to write a really good VSL. It’s a lot of work to sell that, right? So you take that into consideration, and there’s your $47 product.

Or you create a free shipping product, and then afterwards you have the same up sell and the same down sell you do on the $47 one, but it’s free plus shipping. I want you to go head-to-head with those. I’m curious. If you send a thousand people to both of those, and on your free plus shipping offer, your copy’s not amazing, but it’s a good offer, so people want it. How many people would you think want both of them? I was thinking we’d be conservative. From $47 down to free, let’s say we get three times as many, so let’s say at $47, I get ten customers. At free, I get thirty customers.

Now I want to ask you – do you guys agree that that’s pretty realistic? If I had almost the identical product, if it was just as good of a product, with one I’d get three times as many customers by not charging them and by giving it away for free? They just cover five or six bucks for shipping and handling? I’d say that three times is pretty conservative. Let’s say three times four – this argument of what I’m trying to sell you guys on right now, okay? [laughs] So there’s that.

Now this is a little secret that we figured out about seven or eight months ago that is literally transforming all three of our core companies. On the page that we’re taking the product, we have the order form, and they put in their credit card information, and then right before they click “Submit”, there’s a little tiny block that has two sentences. The sentences just say, “Yes, I want this,” and “Hey, do you want me to throw in this extra thing that does this that’s really cool. It’s an extra $47. This is a one-time offer, and not available anywhere else.” It’s literally probably thirty or forty words. I’ll have to find out how many exactly, but that’s about it, and then we sell this $47 product. That’s called a bump, that’s like an order form bump.

Now, right now, we’re averaging almost forty percent, so I think it’s thirty-eight percent is what we’re averaging – people who buy our free plus shipping offers, who click on that little button. So let’s say we broke it down, and we only got 33.3 percent to do it. So now I want to come back. We’ve got two offers. The $47 product that we’re selling along with our up sells, and then we’ve got our free plus shipping product, but on the order form, we’ve got this little bump that says “Hey, only $47”, and right now, we’re getting a third of the people to take that. What just happened?

What just happened is, we get the exact same amount of front-end revenue. Ten customers at $47 or thirty customers at zero plus shipping and handling with a $47 bump, if one-third of those people are taking that bump, which they are in all three of our tests right now. Do you guys see what I’m saying? I can get three times as many customers and make the exact same amount of front-end cash before people see up sells by doing the free plus shipping on page order form bump as I can for a $47 straight sale, and the $47 straight sale – I’ve got to sell the crap out of it, whereas with the free plus shipping, I’ve just got to tell them that there’s a cool thing for free. They pay for shipping, and on the order form I need two sentences to sell them on my core $47 product.

It’s interesting. We were doing some consulting stuff, and these guys had a sales page, and then their up sell was their membership site. It was a $1 trial, and they’re getting fifteen to eighteen percent of the people to take that trial. They had some really good copy – a long form video and everything to sell people on that $1 trial. I said, “If you just got rid of that whole video, added that offer to your order page, and write two sentences, they said the lowest we’ve gotten is twenty-eight percent conversion. The highest is over fifty. They’re averaging fifty – pretty close. I think it’s thirty-eight percent or so, are taking that offer. It changes the dynamics of everything.

So I want you to think about that. It might be kind of hard to envision from me explaining it, so listen to this two or three times, and kind of map it out, but the concept is amazing. When we launched Click Funnels, we gave away a free trial, and then we had a $47 bump on the order form. That was the lowest one, I think. We had eighteen percent of the people take that. From the eighteen percent, it made something like $60,000 in sales from giving away free accounts. So pretty sexy, pretty exciting and definitely something you guys should look at and figure out how to try to implement in your business.

I’m at the office now. I have a fun day planned out, so I will talk to you guys all again later.

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A cool strategy to redistribute your work day into other areas of your life.

On today’s episode Russell talks about receiving advice from his life coach about shaving a couple hours off his work schedule each day.

Here are some fun things you will hear in this episode:

Why Russell thinks he should be able to get the same amount of work done in a 20 hour day as he would in a 24 hour day.
Why his life coach recommends cutting two work hours out of his schedule everyday.
And how Russell thinks these changes will go.

So listen below to hear Russell’s plan of getting the same amount of work done in less hours.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car.”

Hey everyone. It’s another early morning day for me today. I had my accountability call with me coach, Carl, today, which was kind of exciting. I learned some cool stuff. I’m heading in to the gym, and I wanted to jump on and do a quick podcast because I thought what I learned today was pretty profound. I hope it will help a lot of you guys, too.

All of us, as entrepreneurs, have this horrible, horrible problem of working too much. I’m not sure if you guys are the same way, but I’m guessing you probably are [laughs], and it’s interesting. Carl – one of the reasons why I wanted him to be my accountability coach is he used to work the 9-to-5, five days a week, like all of us, and then he started cutting out Fridays, and then he started cutting out every other week and literally, right now he works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, every other week, so he works eight days a month right now. He’s making more money than he ever was working the whole time, right? Today his big challenge to me was, “Hey, Russell, you need to start shifting your work habits and what you’re doing.” It was interesting.

He said that, “Do you think that if God took the day, and instead of making it twenty-four hours, he made it thirty hours, would you get more stuff done?” I was like, “Probably not. Maybe a little bit, but not a ton more.” He said, “Okay, well what if we went the other direction. Instead of having twenty-four hours in a day, he cut it down to twenty hours a day? Do you think you would get less stuff done?” and I was like, “No, I think we’d still be able to get everything done in the same amount of hours. We’d be able to jam it in. A lot of times, when you have less time, you get more stuff done.”

He was like, “Well what if we did that to your work day? Right now, what time do you usually leave the office?” I said, “Oh, about six.” He said, “Let’s shave it off so that every day, you start leaving the office at four? Do you think that you could do that?” I’m like, “I guess I could.” He said, “What do you do from four to six, anyway?” I’m like, “I don’t know – just stuff?” He said, “I bet if you cut those things out, all of the stuff you could get done prior to four. At four o’clock, you have to turn your computer off, and you had to leave the office.” We went through the whole process, and he committed me to doing that, which is kind of fun, so I’m excited to start trying that out today.

The next thing was he was like, “What about Fridays, man? What do you do on Fridays?” I was explaining. I explained what I do, and he said, “Friday’s kind of dead day, then, right?” I’m like, “Well I get stuff done, but, yeah, it’s not as productive usually,” and he’s like, “What if you just jammed all of your Friday stuff in to Friday morning, and then every Friday at noon you left and took that last half of the day off? What do you think would happen?” I said, “Probably not a lot. I don’t think I’d lose out on too much stuff.” So he kind of committed me to that. So I am shaving two hours a day off of my work day, and then I’m going to shave half a day off of my Fridays, and just see what happens, and my guess is that the world’s not going to come to an end. I’m excited to find out [laughs].

I want you guys to think about that as well for your life. All of us don’t have enough time – enough time for your family, enough time for your church, enough time for all of the different pieces you’re having, but we spend so much time at the office working. So I’m going to try to shave off those two hours and put it into use in other things in my life that are out of balance and see what happens. I’m guessing, I’m not sure yet, but I’m guessing that everything else will just fall in to the right spots. So I’m going to try it. I want to encourage you guys to try it as well.

I remember one time I was listening to this old cassette course I bought from Jay Conrad Levinson, Jay Abraham, Chet Holmes – I can’t remember who all. It was called “Guerilla versus Gorilla”, and it was awesome. One of the concepts I learned in there, Jay Conrad Levinson was saying that people have habits – a lot of us will kick our business and work eighty hours a week, and we’re going to work so that eventually we can launch whatever, and then we can cut down to twenty hours a week. He said that what he’s found is that whatever your habits are when you start will be your habits forever. If you want to live a lifestyle where you work twenty hours a week, you have to start working twenty hours a week from day one, otherwise you’ll just never get there. It will become a habit. I thought that was interesting as well.

Anywho, that is my game plan to start shaving off some time and redistribute that in other parts of my life that are a little out of balance right now and see what it’s going to do overall. I’m fired up. I’m excited. I recommend you guys test out the same thing. Right now I’m at the gym. I’m going to go get tough, and it’ll be fun [laughs]. I appreciate you guys, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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One little secret I learned from the Clickfunnels launch.

On this episode Russell talks about the secret of the pre-indoctrination video and why it is so cool.

Here are some interesting to listen for in this episode:

Why having a perfect sales pitch is awesome, but you also need an indoctrination sequence.
And what an example of the process is.

So listen below to hear why pre-indoctrination videos will help tell your audience what to think, and therefore what to buy.

---Transcript---

Good morning, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car.”

Hey, guys and gals, and everyone who’s listening. I hope you’ve had an awesome day so far today. If you’re in the car right now, then you’re just like me, and you’re getting excited and pumped up for the day – trying to get in the state, right?

I just want to talk about what my mind’s been on all weekend, because it’s been kind of exciting. For the last however many years – seven or eight years, I’ve been watching everyone do their big product launches. They do the multi-video sequences and all of those kinds of things. I’ve done a lot of product launches in my day, but I never really did the whole multi-video thing. For whatever reason, I just never did it.

The first time I’ve really done it was with the Click Funnels launch to our own internal list, where basically – and partly it was because we had these really cool product launch funnels that I wanted to test out, where it lets you do four videos and all kinds of stuff, and so I got really excited to try it out. So we made these four videos and they were fun and they were entertaining and we got to use some good content. It was just kind of cool.

The coolest thing about it was that people loved the videos. Even those that didn’t buy it, they watched the videos. They loved them. They build a good relationship, and it was cool. I keep thinking more and more about that. I remember I was at a Mastermind meeting, and Frank Kern was there and he was talking what he calls “indoctrination pieces”. He says that before he sells anything, he sends out three or four e-mails of these different indoctrination pieces to pre-dispose people to actually buying. He was showing videos he’s send out. He was showing pdfs. He was showing all of this stuff to go out there and give cool stuff out before you ask for a sale.

The other day on Facebook, I was watching a copywriter [laughs]. He’s one of my friends. He was bragging about two or three letters he wrote for Frank Kern, and how awesome they were, and how they did, [imitates] “a million dollars in like twenty minutes,” and all of this garbage. I was like, “Yeah, but in twenty minutes, there’s no way everyone read the sales letter. They just bought because they wanted to buy.” It’s kind of like he had this feeling.

Frank came in and he was like, “Hey, so-and-so’s sales letters are awesome, but you have to understand that the sales letter’s just one piece of the sequence to this. The sequence is what sells people. It’s all of these indoctrination pieces. It’s all of these things that are happening ahead of time that pre-frame them and get them prepared and get them warmed up to actually buy, where at the last minute, a lot of people never even read the sales letter. They’re just going to buy it because they’re going to buy.

That was kind of a big “aha”, a big epiphany for me. Having the perfect, scripted sales pitch is awesome, and especially for cold trafficking. If they don’t know you, and you’re driving them in from Facebook or somewhere where you’ve got to click and you’ve got to convert them really, really quick. A good old-fashioned video sales letter or an actual sales letter is definitely the way you’ve got to go to convert them, but after they’re on your list, or you’ve got partners promoting it and things like that, I think the best way to do it is to take them through a gauntlet of pre-indoctrination videos and audios and cool things, just to build up that relationship, and do that first.

I got excited. I’m going to go back through all of them. We’re in this process now of re-launching our affiliate program and re-rolling out each of our products and a bunch of other cool things. We’re going to be doing that for each one. I’m excited.

For example, this week we’re rolling out a new project called “List Hacker”, and I’m really excited for it. With that, we basically used four different videos. The first video is this one that I recorded about a year ago with a guy named Jonathan [inaudible 2:25:14]. He came out and it was a video that I recorded at my old duplex, which is where I actually started my business. I told my list-building story, and how I’d gotten shut down for spamming, and all of these things I’d tried to do. I told that story, and it was fun.

So that’s video number one in the sequence, and then number two is me sitting in my office with a whole bunch of junk mail, and I’m talking about junk mail and why it’s important. I tell that whole story, which is again, not really a sales piece. It’s just kind of getting people excited, and it’s something cool that they can watch and get away from their day. The third one is where I do a little more teaching and training how to map out what a list hacking funnel looks like, and in the fourth one I actually show us doing a trip to Kenya, because a percentage of all the money I make goes back to the kids in Kenya. Then from there, “Boom,” then we push the actual sell – push people to the actual sales video which then slam dunks and closes them.

It’s kind of fun. I look at all of my projects. What kind of cool videos can I do to illustrate the concept and get people excited and provide some value before I ever ask for the sale? That’s what we’re going to go back and do with all of our stuff. Just for you guys to think about that, even if it’s not awesome sales pieces, just think of three or four cool content videos around that you for each of my products, just to get my warm list internally to get excited and build a little hype, a little excitement, give some value away, and like Frank Kerns, some pre-indoctrination pieces. Get them re-indoctrinated to what you need them to think to be able to purchase your product or service.

That’s it for today. I’m going to go in today and bust out some pre-indoctrination videos. We should be rolling out the first video, “List Hacking” today, which I’m excited for, and then we’ll go from there. All right, everyone, have a great day.

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The easy way to get to the top.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car.”

Hey everyone. I’m heading back from the gym right now, and I just had a quick thought. Because the drive from my gym to my house is even less than from the office, this one won’t probably be that long.

Last night, I had a really cool experience. I had a chance to talk to Dave Asprey from Bullet-Proof Executive. First off, it was really, really cool. I’ve been trying to do the Bulletproof Diet. I thought I was doing it well, but I’ve been gaining weight and gaining body fat. I was like [laughs], “I don’t think this Bulletproof thing is really working. I think there’re some issues here, and so two months ago, I was on his site, and he had a link. It was like, “Hey, five hundred bucks for a one-on-one consultation.” I was like, “All right. Sweet. I can do that,” and so I paid him five hundred bucks. Last night was my one-on-one consultation with him, and it was pretty cool, because literally, I sat down with him on Skype chat, and within about thirty seconds, he told me everything I was doing wrong, why I was screwing it up. I always thought I was doing it intelligently, and I was doing it totally backwards. We completely rebuilt the whole thing, and it was awesome. I gained more from that hour than I could have gotten in five years reading every one of his blog posts, listening to all of his podcasts, and going through all of that kind of stuff.

It made me start thinking about how when I first got started in this business, I met this guy. I can’t remember his name, but it was at one of Armand Morin’s events, and I may have even done a podcast about this before, because I think it’s a cool concept, but I started thinking about it again last night. It was a young kid, and he was at this event, and he had joined Armand’s Platinum Group, and I was talking to him, and he was in ten different Platinum groups, and all of these different Masterminds. I was like, “Dude, how in the world can you afford all of that? That stuff’s expensive.” He said, “Russell, I learned something early in my life. There’re two ways to get to the top. Number one, you can work your way in. Number two, you can buy your way in. I choose the second. I could spend three years trying to get to know Armand and become friends with him and do a deal with him and learn from him, and all kinds of stuff, or I can just pay him some money, and “Boom,” buy my way in. I buy into everyone’s programs,” and he just works. –“There’re two ways. You either work your way in or buy your way in. It’s faster to buy your way in.”

I was thinking about how with Dave Asprey, I paid him five hundred bucks. Not a lot of money, but I had a chance to spend an hour with him on Skype. We got to know each other. At the end of it, we talked about his book he’s launching. I talked to him about how to promote it, and “Boom.” We feel like we had a connection, and now moving forward, I feel like he will be a friend – someone who I’ll be able to help in the future. He’ll help me, and that kind of thing, whereas if it was someone who I had just contacted him normally, I probably could have gotten through to him. I probably could have met him, but not at the same level as when I was just able to come and just pay and get in that way.

It’s interesting. I’m looking at the people who are in my Inner Circle, people who are in my Knight program and in our coaching programs, and its fun, because literally, I have Voxer on my phone, and all of the people in my Inner Circle have Voxer with me. I know their businesses. They ask me questions all of the time. I know their ins and outs. I know their ups and their downs. They get so much more access to me, and I feel like they’re my friends now. Again, I never would have met these people if they’d had to work their way in, but they bought their way in, and now “Boom,” I’m here. I’m on their team. I’m helping them out in their businesses, and it’s a ton of fun.

There was a guy the other day who – now, I charge a lot more for an hour-long consult than Dave does, but he bought an hour-long consult with me. It was really cool. I went through the consult, and I gave him my all in an hour. We built out an entirely new business model for him online, mapped out the whole thing for him, and it turned out pretty awesome. At the end of it, he was like, “Hey, Russell, by the way, I’ve got this new thing,” that he was doing, and he explained it to me, and it was awesome, and now I am giving him money back in exchange for his thing. But he bought his way in, and that conversation probably never would have happened. It cost him money, but again, in return, I ended up investing in something he had, and he made his money back immediately. It was pretty cool.

That’s my thought for today. There’re two ways to get in, again, you guys. You can work your way in, or you can buy your way in, but it’s always better and faster to buy your way in. That’s my thoughts. If you don’t have the money, then go fricking earn it. Go get a job. Go rake some leaves.

I literally, when I bought my first thing, I had to go rake leaves. I bought a $12 rake and a tarp at Home Depot, and I raked leaves for four or five weekends in a row to be able to invest in Mark Joyner’s “Farewell Package”. That’s what you’ve got to do sometimes – buy your way in.

That’s my message for today. I hope that helps some of you guys. Check out Dave Asprey’s stuff. Super cool guy. I’m excited for his book to come out. We’ll talk to you guys all again really, really soon. Thanks.

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The secret of being present all the time.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I’m here in the car today with Dallin, who is my little entrepreneur, and we’re here for another exciting episode of “Marketing in Your Car”.

So today, its summertime still, and Dallin wanted to come to work with me today. He’s got his little packet of stuff to work on his projects. It’s going to be exciting. What are you planning on doing today?

Dallin: Find out how to build a robot.

Russell: He’s going to find out how to build a robot, which is a very important task. Do you think we’re going to sell that if we figure it out?

Dallin: Maybe.

Russell: Maybe. That’s a good idea. So that’s his plan today [laughs].

I wanted to tell you guys about a thought I had over the last week. It’s been a while since I’ve done a “Marketing in Your Car”, and one of the main reasons was I in Maui with my beautiful wife. She had a birthday, and I surprised her, and had her family come and watch the kids while we were gone, and took her to Maui.

We had a lot of fun, but one of the things I learned on this trip – I re-realized, and I wanted to give it to you. I want to share with you guys. One of the last nights we were there, we went to this luau. Everything out there – you know how tourist traps are – they’re super expensive, right? I think it was a hundred and fifty bucks a person, so it cost us three hundred bucks to go there and have this luau, and we were sitting there and we ate dinner, and we enjoyed the conversation with some people we met, and it was really fun. Then they do an actual luau dance, with the hula dances and all of this stuff. It was really neat. We were watching it, and right in front of us to the right, there was this lady who got out her video camera. She opened it up, and she clicked “Record”, and she was looking through this little tiny screen at the hula dance, which, it’s nighttime. Her little hand-held $200 camera from K-Mart barely picked up any light. You could barely see anything, right? [laughs] She sat there for the entire ninety minutes or so recording it, looking through this little tiny screen, barely seeing it, so she could record it so she would watch it again later, I guess?

I remember I was sitting there with my wife, and we were watching and enjoying this thing, and seeing some amazing things – people doing some cool choreographic things. I don’t know – I love watching them perform, just doing their talents, and I looked over at this lady. She was looking through the screen, and she’s missing the entire thing so that she can record it, so that she can watch it later.

I thought it was ironic. How many times in life we’re missing the most important stuff that’s happening around us, because we’re looking at our computer screen or we’re looking at our phone, or we’re recording something and missing the entire thing. I was reading somewhere on Facebook the other day. I don’t even know whose concert it was. It was some concert. I think it was Jack White or something. I have no idea who that is, but I remember I was thinking Jack Black and he was a white guy, and his last name was White, so I think it was Jack White. Some of you guys probably know who he is. I think it was him. He was doing a concert. I think he was on some TV show – Jay Leno or, I guess Jay Leno’s not on anymore [laughs]. That shows you how up I am with my pop culture, right? But anyway, he was on this show, and he was talking about how they don’t let cell phones into their concert. He said, “We don’t want people watching it, experiencing it through this tiny little screen. We want them actually experiencing it. That’s why we do live concerts. They can go and watch the YouTube clips if they want to watch YouTube clips, but if they want to actually experience it, they have to be there and be present and experience it.”

That’s my big take-away, was that most of us aren’t present enough. I know I’m guilty of this in a lot of things – in my kids’ lives, sometimes, huh, Dallin?

Dallin: Yes.

Russell: [laughs] That’s not a good thing to admit to. No, but even one day in Muai, we were sitting there, and my wife and I were in bed and we were texting on the phone, on Facebook, and stuff like that, and I texted her in the middle, and I said, “Hey, how are you doing?” It was just kind of funny.

We need to be more present in where we’re at, and we need to put away our phones. When you’re at something amazing, don’t worry about capturing it on video so you can watch it later. Watch it right now, and enjoy it, and be there for the moment, otherwise you’re going to miss it. It happens way too often. The more connected we become, the more its happening. It’s happening to everyone, around the world.

So I just want to encourage you guys. Don’t be the person who’s at the luau watching this amazing thing and trying to capture it on video so that you can watch it later. Be present, enjoy it now, and don’t miss the moment, because they go way too fast.

So that’s about it, you guys. We are almost to the office. Dallin and I will have a fun-filled day. We’re going to be launching a new project called “List Hacking” this week, which I’m super excited about. We’ve got a video guy coming over to film us and to film some stuff. We’re going to roll it out, and what’s exciting is we haven’t started building it yet. We’re going to build the entire membership site, sales process, everything inside of Click Funnels, and I will be able to get done in a day or so what used to take me two weeks, and so anyway, just kind of fun. We’ve finished the beta for Click Funnels, now we’re going to just be rolling out a bunch of projects just to prove how awesome it is. People can see the power of Click Funnels. It should be exciting.

We’re at the office, you guys. Have an awesome day, and we will talk to you soon.

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Lessons in success from my 8 year old son.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to a late night “Marketing in Your Car.”

I’m actually headed back home. Todd is in town. We launched Click Funnels last week. It’s been a smashing success, and now we’re doing the other side of the software business, which is keeping up with customer support [laughs], and features, and bugs, and all of that fun kind of stuff. It’s been a lot of fun. He flew in today, and we’re going to be hanging out this week, cleaning it up, and making it perfect so that we can do our big, big launch here. Hopefully within the next twenty or thirty days or so – we’ll plan that out tomorrow, but I’m super excited for that.

I wanted to do a podcast today, because I wanted to share a story that happened this afternoon with my son, Dallin. Dallin is the little entrepreneur in our family, for sure, and he’s always trying to figure out how to make more money. He’s doing yard sales and lemonade stands and all sorts of stuff.

Yesterday, he told my wife, Collette, that he wanted to open up a bank account. He has a couple of dollars, and she’s like, “Well you have to have more money to open a bank account.” So he’s like, “Well I need to make more money so I can open a bank account,” so that’s his mindset. We were driving home from church today, and he had this idea. He said, “Hey, mom and dad, if I lose a tooth today, then the tooth fairy can give me some money, and I can use that money to open a bank account.” I said, “Yeah, but how are you going to lose a tooth?” He said, “What I’m going to do is I’m going to get a string, and I’m going to tie it around my tooth, and I’ll tie it to a door handle, and I’ll slam the door, and my tooth will get pulled out.”

We kind of laughed and giggled, and that’s where I thought it was going to end. Fast forward thirty minutes later, we’re in the house, and my wife and I are making lunch for the kids and getting everything ready for that, and I keep hearing the door slam upstairs. I totally forgot about what’s happening, and so I’m yelling upstairs, “Quit slamming the door,” and then Bowen yells down, “It’s Ellie slamming it. She’s trying to pull out Dallin’s tooth.” [laughs] I was like, “Oh man, hold on,” and so like any good dad would do, I went and grabbed my phone, because I wanted to get this on tape [laughs], so I grabbed my phone, and I ran upstairs. He’d gotten the ribbon from wrapping paper on a Christmas box, and he’d tied a little knot around his tooth, and then he’d tied it to the door. All of the kids were up there trying to figure out how to make Dallin some money, and Dallin was literally trying to pull his tooth out so he could make money so that he could open up a savings account.

What was so funny was he was standing on the wrong side of the door, so when he would slam it, the string would actually get shorter instead of pulling it, and two of the times they were doing it, they were perplexed. They were like, “Why is this not working? Why is it not working?” Then they were both like, “Dallin, you’ve got to be on this side of the door.” I’m filming this whole thing on my phone, so Dallin goes on the inside, and they start slamming the door from the inside trying to pull his tooth out [laughs]. They would slam it, and sometimes the ribbon on his tooth would pop off, and other times it would start sliding through his teeth and not pull all of the way out. Anyway, I got, probably five or six times, them slamming the door and trying to lose his tooth. I thought it was really funny. Then I had them stop so that we could come down and have lunch.

I started thinking about it. I started thinking about this little kid, right? My little Dallin – he’s eight years old, and he’s got in his mind, he needs money.—““I need to figure out how to make some money.” There’re a lot of things he can do. He can do chores. He knows he can make some money doing that, but thought, “A quick way I can make money is to rip one of my teeth out.” Instead of thinking about it and how it’s going to hurt and all of these things, he just went and did it – just got out there and tied a string to his tooth, tied it to a doorknob, and started slamming the door trying to rip his tooth out.

I was proud of him, not because I thought it was the smartest idea to do, but I just look at how many entrepreneurs I have a chance to work with and how many people I work with. Most of them want something, and they want money. They want whatever, but then when you lay out, “Here’s the steps you need to do to accomplish that goal and get that thing you want,” they don’t do it. They’ll buy course after course after course, and they’ll learn, and they’ll hear, and they’ll have ideas and all of these things in their head, but they’re not willing to step up and fricking tie a string to their tooth and slam the door.

I think that that’s one of the biggest problems with people today. I’m so proud of Dallin for doing that – for getting off his butt, tying a string to his tooth, and slamming the door trying to make some money. I think that for any of you guys that are listening to this who are on that fence right now, and you’ve been in this learning cycle, and you’re learning, and you’re learning, and you’re enjoying this learning cycle, it’s time to get off your butt, tie a string to your tooth, and slam the door. I really think that mindset, that attitude, that thing that Dallin has, whatever that is, and I’m proud of him as my son for doing that, but it’s what all of us need.

I look at the things in my life that have been successful, and a lot of it is because of that – because I’ve just gone out there and tried to do that thing. If you’re struggling, this is your call to action. This is your time to get off your butt, tie a string to your tooth, and slam the door, and go out there and find these things. Just do it. Do what it takes to make money. It’s going to be painful. It might cost you some money. You have to get out of your comfort zone. You’re going to have to stretch probably further than you’ve ever stretched before in your life. You’re going to have to have some sleepless nights. You’re going to have to risk some of your own hard-earned money, and you’re going to have to be able to do a lot of work to reach your dream and to have what you want, but it’s worth it, I promise you guys. It is so worth it.

Anyway, that’s my message for you guys today. I thought it was kind of a fun story. If my eight-year-old son, to earn fifty cents or a dollar, whatever the tooth fairy would bring him [laughs], he would have done it, is willing to tie a string on his tooth – on a tooth that’s not even loose [laughs], and try to rip it out to make a buck, what are you willing to do? What are you willing to do to change your life? If you’re not willing to do something, then you’re probably going to keep being it at the spot you’re at right now, so figure out what you’re willing to do, get off of your butt, and go do it. That’s my message for tonight.

Thanks, you guys. I’m sure you’re going to be hearing more from me this week. I’m back from vacation now, and we’re having some fun rolling out the new company. I’m excited to be sharing all of the little behind-the-scenes things that are happening with you guys. Thanks, again, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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How to trick your mind to get crap done.

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Good morning, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car”.

Hi, everyone. Today is an exciting day. It’s a Monday, and we are about to launch Click Funnels. This week is our execution week, which is kind of fun. Now, luckily for me, my wife and kids went out of town this week. They’ve gone camping for the next three days, which basically means I get to pull all-nighters for three nights in a row, launch this thing, and then pass out for two weeks straight, unless there’re issues. Then it means I’ve got to not pass out for a week straight [laughs], but I’m fired up and excited.

I wanted this podcast just to talk about the process of actually getting a project or a product, whatever you want to call it, out of the door. I know that it’s something that all of us go through, and it’s funny. Todd and I were talking about this as we’ve been getting all of this stuff done. It’s kind of like, I think it’s Pareto’s Law, where no matter how much time you have left before the launch date, things will always fill up all of the available time to get things done. That’s what I’m feeling like right now. Literally, the launch date was two months ago, and then one month ago, and then this week, it’s happening, win, lose, or draw, and we still have so much stuff that’s got to be done [laughs], but it’s at the point now where we’re going to make it happen, and we’re put it out there. We’ll do whatever it takes and kill ourselves and get it done, and then we’ll back fill it, and fix any issues we see along the way.

I think one of the things that keeps most people from ever getting their projects out there, and I’m guessing most of you have got at least one, if not ten or twenty projects [laughs] that are mostly done, but they’re not finished yet. They’re not pushed out the door. People, a lot of times, ask me, “Russell, how do you get so much stuff done. How do you get so many things out the door?” I think part of it is because of the philosophy we started using five or six – I don’t know, maybe longer – seven or eight years ago.

It started when I heard a tape that was called “The Scuttlebutt Tape” from Gary Halbert and – it wasn’t John Carlton – Gary Halbert and Michael Fortin were talking about copywriting stuff, and one of the things that Halbert talked about was this concept called “Lead or Gold”. It was interesting to me because he talked about, and again, I don’t know if the story’s true or not, but the illustration of what he shared was powerful for me. He said that down in Mexico that when the mafia warlords wanted to change laws, they would go to the government and say, “Hey, you need to change this law.” The government would be like, “No. We’re not going to do that for you. That’s crazy.” [laughs] So what they would do then is the mafia would go and break in to people’s houses late at night – the government officials. They would wake them up out of their sleep, and they would come up to them, and they would have a gun and a bag of gold, and they would say, “We need you to change this law tonight, and you’ve got two options – lead or gold. Which one do you want? Do you want a bullet to the head, or would you like some cash?” Very quickly, somehow, laws were able to be changed. When the options are lead or gold, it’s pretty easy to get things done [laughs].

I started thinking of that in my business. How many times do we have projects where we’re like, “Oh, we’re going to launch this week. Oh, okay, next week,” and six years later, nothing’s ever happened. We started setting these deadlines, and we called them “lead or gold deadlines”, where it’s like, “We’re launching Tuesday at noon. Win, lose, or draw, it’s happening, and we’ve got two options – either lead or gold, and we’ve got to make this happen.”

When you give yourself those two options, and those two options only, it’s amazing what kind of stuff you can get done. It’s amazing how you can get people to stay late, and you can stay late, and you can work harder, and you can do whatever it takes. You’ll get that project done. So for us and all of our coaching groups who have been here for the last five or six years, I always talk about this, and I say, “Look, when you guys get home from this event, or home from whatever it is that you’ve learned about something, you have to go and set lead or gold deadlines for each step of the process.” You say, “Look, for me, first I’ve got to get the sales stuff done, okay? So my deadline is next Tuesday at three – lead or gold. There’s nothing that can move that date. I will die if it doesn’t happen,” and you just make sure it happens.

Then the next one – “We’re going to have this part done by this day, and you set that lead or gold deadline, and then you hit it, and you keep doing those things. For most of you guys who aren’t getting the things done that you want, it’s because you’re too soft on yourselves. You let yourselves off the hook, like, “Oh well, we ran out of time. We’ll do it tomorrow,” and when you do that, it keeps getting pushed forever, because of Pareto’s law where as much time as you give it, things will always fill up the expanse of that time, no matter what it is, and so I promise you guys, if you want your project tomorrow or a month from now, either way, you’re going to be up until three or four or five o’clock in the morning the night before cramming to get it done, and so why not pick the date that’s earliest and get you more money?

That’s what we’re doing. I’m going in to the office now. We’ve got two and a half days away from launch time, and we picked our deadline, and we are going to hit it, and no matter what happens, we will make it work, and I’m excited. I’m fired up. It’s going to be an awesome day today. I hope you guys have a good day as well. Set some lead or gold deadlines, and we will see you guys again on the next episode. Thanks, everyone.

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What really happened over the last three days…

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you once again to “Marketing in Your Car”.

So first off, I want to say that I think it’s about time we get a new theme song. What do you guys think? [laughs] The 1980s initial version is about ready to be retired, I think, so that’s going to be first on my list for this week.

Anywho, it’s been a little while since I’ve done a podcast. The reason why is that I’ve been neck deep in getting ready to launch Click Funnels, and I’m guessing from the outside, everything seems so calm and simple and easy for what we’re doing. We launched the first pre-launch video yesterday, but there’s always a story behind the story, and so I thought I would just share that to you guys while I’m heading in to the office, because I think it’s always fun.

First off, Click Funnels has been a big project [laughs]. We’ve been going crazy trying to get all of the templates done, working and testing them on every browser, and on and on and on, and it’s been a ton of work on that side, but it’s turning out amazingly. For the last three or four nights in a row, I’ve been pulling sixteen hour days. I work eight hours, go home and play with the kids, and then go back another eight hours, and then come home and sleep for a few hours, and then go back again. It’s been a lot of work on that side.

The last week we started planning out the pre-launch. What should we do? How should we do it? My team member, John Parkes, and I sat down and we brainstormed out an idea that it would be fun to have Chris, our number one designer, go head to head with somebody who’d never used Click Funnels before, and see who could build a website the fastest. We started brainstorming these ideas, and it went from this really simple idea to us renting out an octagon and having these two fight it out in the octagon. We got really excited. This was Thursday.

I had this guy who wanted to do the video, so I called him up and said, “Hey, do you have some time next week to do videos?” He said, “No, I’m flying into Tokyo on Monday.” I was like, “On Monday? Crap. I need these before Monday.” He’s like, “I have tomorrow, Friday, if you want to do it then.” I’m like, “All right, man. Let’s do it,” and so Thursday night, I’m scrambling to try to write scripts for this four video launch sequence. Typically I think, most people spend a couple of weeks writing out scripts to launch a brand-new company [laughs], but literally, I had to do it in about an hour.

Then I had to find an octagon, so I’m calling around, and luckily, some of my buddies own an MMA gym and we were able to rent an octagon. We got the camera person in. I needed to find somebody to be the other person competing against Chris. One of my friends is an author in town. She’s written a book, and she’s been super successful. She’s a life coach, and she also certifies life coaches, so I called her and begged her, and she dropped everything, moved all of her appointments around so she could show up and be the other person, and on and on and on.

That day, I get a call from the Ferrari place, because my Ferrari, which is a whole other story for another podcast, has been in the shop for six weeks. They’re like, “The Ferrari’s done,” and I’m like, “Oh, sweet. We can have the Ferrari in the video.” So I raced down to go grab the Ferrari, and on my way back, trying to get home, it died about thirteen times [laughs], so it still doesn’t actually work, but at least it moves forward long enough so you can catch a glimpse of us driving it on the video [laughs].

So we put the whole thing together, and then the video guy is scrambling because he’s flying to Tokyo Monday morning at 6 a.m., so he’s scrambling to edit the videos and put it all together and get all of his stuff done. Then he texts me Sunday night at about five in the morning and says, “Hey, I got it pretty much done. I left the hard drive out in front of my house, and you can go grab it, and hopefully the files will all work for you.” [laughs]

So I go and grab the thing, and it looked good, but there were some tweaks I needed, and my brother, who’s my main video guy, was heading out of town Monday morning, so I called him and tell him and his wife they can’t leave yet, and so he goes down on his computer and he’s editing the videos and tweaking some stuff to get it just perfect [laughs]. I swear, his wife is probably cursing me out, because they were leaving on this big family vacation. We get that back, and then at the same time, we’re in the process of moving our e-mail auto-responders again, for about the third time this year, to this company called MaroPost, and we’re having issues there. We can’t get the list imported [laughs], and then their scrubbing process, which should take an hour, took about three days.

Then we started building out the launch funnel inside Click Funnels, and honestly, the only funnel I’d never tested yet was the launch funnels, so we started testing them. The first time around, there’re always issues that come with any funnel. Then we’re rebuilding our entire launch funnel sequences and Click Funnels and we’re adding features, and it’s like this storm of things, literally, for the last four or five days. I don’t even know.

Finally, yesterday, I was in the office, and I hadn’t slept in about three days in a row. I literally am living off of our supplement that we’re launching in the MMA market, called “MMA Ignite”. I take a shot of that, every few hours to wake me back up, but the effects of it had stopped working yesterday. I think my body was just done. I was just dragging, putting all of the pieces together, and then finally we got the launch page up. We got the video live. MaroPost uploaded. I sent the e-mail out to the list, and I sat down, and I was just like [sighs], “We did it.” I was so excited.

I went home, played with the kids for a bunch of time, and then checked my phone, and a whole bunch of people were texting, “Man, that video is awesome. It’s the best video you’ve ever done.” You know, all of the things people message me on Facebook and stuff about how impressed they were with it all, and how good the scripts were and everything. It just made me smile, knowing that we pulled the whole thing off, literally, in about a day, if even that. I think it turned out pretty good, so behind the exterior, there’s always crazy stuff happening inside.

Oh, and not only that, we’ve got our support team, right? We ramped up because we were getting ready for Click Funnels, but then, low and behold, Neuracel just went crazy, and so we’ve got three full-time support people who’re doing Neuracel, and we have no one to support Click Funnels, so we’ve been scrambling and trying to hire people in Boise. We haven’t found anyone good.

Luckily, thankfully, and hopefully some of you guys listening have probably got some great friends who’ve volunteered who are good at something, like Garrett Pierson. He’s the owner of a whole bunch of sites, Trust Guard, Shopper Approved, Kart Rocket. He just dedicated his time. He’s coming up for a week to work for free just to help us during the launch week [laughs]. We’ve got a couple of other people that are I met on Facebook that are friends that are going to come in and work for a couple of weeks. People are literally flying here just to help out with the launch, just to help us so that it will go off opefullyHwithout a hitch while we’re finding a more long-term support team.

So anyway, it’s just kind of crazy. I’m grateful for everyone on my team that’s made this happen. I’m grateful for everybody outside of it, people like Garrett and others, who don’t have any vested interest, but just care about me and about us enough to come and throw in a helping hand. Some really cool things are happening, but I just wanted to share that, because I’m sure a lot of you guys, in your business, you see you’re doing stuff, and you feel like nothing’s working, and you’re going crazy, and you’re freaking out. Even though it may look like on the outside that we have it all together all of the time, we’re just like everybody else. It’s a lot of work and a lot of juggling, and when it all comes together in the end, it feels really, really good.

I’m excited. Launch Week is in less than a week – Launch Day. We’re just going to launch to our internal list first and we’re going to test that out and make sure we can handle the support, and then we’ll open it up to affiliates after that. It’s pretty exciting.

After I got home last night, after the kids went down, I had a chance to finally watch “24”, which was awesome, because it’s was Wednesday night, so I’ve had two or three nights in a row of wishing I could watch it, but I’ve been too busy working. I got to watch it last night. It was exciting, and I wish that show would never end. For those guys who are watching it right now, they only have twelve episodes a season, and they just finished up with number ten, so there’s only two more to go. We should have a 24-Dot Com Secrets “Marketing in Your Car” party for everyone. That would be fun.

Anyway, I’m in the office. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ve got to go clean up a couple more messes and stuff for video number two, but I’m excited for it all. I appreciate you guys listening. I hope you got something out of this one, and I’ll talk to you guys all again soon.

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How to stop focusing on the good things, so you can grow the great things.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car”.

All right, guys and gals, I’m actually driving right now in a brand new Lexus. Not because I bought a new Lexus, but because I took mine in for an oil change, and it turns out something was jacking it, and so they wouldn’t give me a loaner car. Then Brent that works with me told them, “You know Russell’s in the market for a new car. You might as well give him something nice. He may come and buy from you guys,” and so they gave me a brand new Lexus. I’m driving a pretty sweet car right now.

Today, it’s about seven in the morning. I’ve been awake for three hours so far. I got up early this morning for my accountability call, which again, I’ve mentioned this to you guys multiple times, and I encourage you to do this if you haven’t done this yet – find an accountability partner. The way we do ours is I write him a check, he writes me a check, and every two weeks we meet together. We have some goals and if we don’t keep one of our goals – if he doesn’t keep his goal, then I cash his check, and vice versa.

Right now I’m doing that with him, and I’m doing it with someone else in a spiritual standpoint. I have some spiritual goals, and I have a buddy who does, too. We did the same thing. We wrote each other checks, and if one of us screws up, we cash the other person’s check. It’s amazing what happens when you do this. I’m going to write a book about it someday, because I’m making huge strides in my business, and in my personal life, so I’m going to try to find another couple of accountability partners. Maybe I’ll do a weight loss one as well, and a couple of other things.

Today I want to talk about the entrepreneurial – I don’t even know what the right word is – ADD, right? Something we all get. We get into these shiny object syndromes, and the guy I had my meeting with, my accountability partner, today we were talking about stuff and I was showing him our businesses and how we were doing. I showed him our supplement business, which is blowing up and growing faster than anything I’ve ever had, and faster than I probably want it to be [laughs]. It’s a business that scares me. There’s liability that makes me nervous. There’s inventory management. All of these things that I haven’t done in the past, I can learn, and we’re learning and we’re doing, but it’s not my core competency. We’re making good money on it.

He asked me an interesting question. He said, “If you were to get rid of that business, Russell, how much money do you think you would make focusing on your core passion, your core business?” which is our marketing and Click Funnels and some of the other stuff that’s coming out in the next couple of weeks. I sat back and I thought about it for a while. He said, “You know, Russell, you’re struggling right now because this business is netting you whatever each month, but what you don’t understand is that that business may be costing you even more in your focus. You look at retailers like Wal-Mart. They have all of this shelf space, right? They look at every single SKU on the shelf, and if something’s not performing or making enough, they get rid of it, right? Their shelf space – they’ve got to be very protective of it. Entrepreneurs like us, our shelf space is between our ears, in our mind, and we’ve got to be very, very aware of it, and be very careful. If something’s taking up a lot of shelf space, and if it’s not making as much money as it should, you’ve got to take it out, because it could be suffocating other parts of your business.”

I was thinking about that this morning. I was thinking about how, whichever part of the business I focus on starts growing, so when we focus on supplements, “Boom,” it starts growing and growing and growing, and then all of the sudden, everything else starts hurting. All of the sudden we’ll look and say, “Hey, the coaching business is hurting,” and I shift my focus over there, and “Boom.” It starts growing and growing and growing. Then I look back and the supplements are suffering, and everything else is suffering. Whatever we’re focusing on is growing. So, what’s the opportunity that you have and that I have that’s going to make us the most amount of money? Let’s focus a hundred percent of our time and effort there, and let it grow. Don’t let these other good things suffocate and kill the great things.

This is stuff, obviously, I know and I’ve heard before, but it was a good reminder for me this morning, and it made me start thinking about some of my side projects, and made me start thinking about what I can sell, what I can kill, what I can give to partners, what I can do and where I can do it to get to the point where I can focus on the great things, and so that’s my focus for today. I just got home from the gym, and I’m going to go see my kids and play with them for a little bit, and then I’ll be in the office to go try to accomplish that, so it should be fun.

I hope you guys have an awesome day. I hope you guys can do what I do and take some inventory of your mental shelf space, and make some good decisions so that you’re focusing on the great things and not the good things. Thanks guys, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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Are you the type of person who finds problems or are you the type of person who finds answers? Find out who you are on today’s exciting episode!

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell, and I want to welcome you to a very late night “Marketing in Your Car”.

It is currently 1:14 in the morning, and it’s funny. I volunteered at our church to lock up the building this week, and I completely forgot [laughs]. I was about to go to bed, and all of the sudden it popped into my head, so I’m driving to the church to go lock up. I thought I would jump on the phone and leave you guys all a message.

Today was the first day back after being gone for two weeks, which is kind of stressful. I don’t know – our business runs well, but when you get back there’re all of these little fires that are on fire when you come back, and you’ve got to figure out how to put the fires out and what to do, and there’re so many questions. You have this stuff you want to get done. You want to move forward, but all of this reactive stuff keeps pulling you back and pulling you back. I’m sure you guys have felt that.

It’s funny, because I still remember when my wife and I were engaged. I was maybe twenty-one or twenty-two at the time, and I was starting this business. I thought I was so cool. I had my laptop, and I was selling stuff on eBay. I had a website, and I probably had two customers total, maybe [laughs]. I might not even have been that lucky, but I remember on our honeymoon, every day I’d have to turn on my laptop and check my e-mails and make sure customer support had been handled. I didn’t want my business to collapse, and it makes me laugh so hard now. I could have not e-mailed those two customers back for that whole week, and it probably would have been a smart idea.

But I digress, so I’ll come back to what I was talking about. I’m sure most of you guys who own your own business have that. You leave for a little bit, and you come back, and it’s just like you have to spend a day or two putting out all of these fires. Today for us, we specifically had a lot of stuff. I’m outside, and its 1:14 in the morning, so if I get mugged or something, we’re going to catch it live on the podcast [laughs], so all of you faithful marketers in your cars are going to be hanging out. Okay, the first door’s locked.

Anyway, so basically, I came back, and our supplement has been blowing up. I’ve talked about this during the podcasts. It’s literally just going crazy. We can’t even keep up with it. Literally, if we wouldn’t have run out of inventory a little while ago [laughs], we probably would have passed a million dollars in sales this month, which is crazy. It’s just growing and growing, and it’s like a wildfire. We can’t put it down. The immediate buyers, we had to cut them down to a fourth of what they were spending, and they’re still spending like crazy. We’re trying to order new supplements and import the ingredients from all over the country. The growing season’s over, and they don’t have enough in stock of the things we need. It’s just issue after issue after issue, and problem after problem [laughs].

We’re behind on support, and we’ve got two full-time support people and they’re still so far behind, we have to hire another two or three or four more on top of that. We’re putting out ads, and we’re trying to hire people. You have people that are applying for ads. We have an ad out there that’s pretty good, that gets them to want to. In theory, it gets them to. We make them jump through a bunch of hoops and do a bunch of stuff. They have to apply, and we have to get good people.

We ended up getting ten or fifteen good people that actually went through all of the hoops that we put out there and applied. We called them back, and out of everyone, only two people called us back. It’s just amazing how people, humans – disappoint me [laughs] over and over and over again. They just don’t do stuff. Its like, “If you need a job, then return the call, or…” I don’t know – just whatever.

So all of these kinds of things are happening, and then we’ve got our mini call center that we’ve set up, and they need more leads, and these other leads they don’t like. We need a new funnel. Our funnel has been stale because we’ve been driving so much traffic to it. It’s been seen by all of the audiences on Facebook. It’s been worn out. We need new leads for it. It’s just thing after thing.

Click Funnels is almost about to launch. We found out that there’s an error here, and we’ve got this thing here, and the day we were planning on launching, it turns out everyone on our team’s out of town. Literally, just all of these issues today – thing after thing, and by the end of the day, I have this little couch by my desk, and at the end of the day, I laid down on it, and I felt this overwhelming feeling. I was like, “Man, I’ve made more choices in the last eight hours than I typically make in a year,” and all of them are big choices.

I think it was Dan Kennedy who said that every six months or every forty-five days or something, that an entrepreneur’s going to make a decision that will make or break their business. I felt like today, I made enough decisions for our entire years’ worth of stuff [laughs]. I was lying on the couch, and I was overwhelmed. It was like, “Ugh, I’m so far behind.” I’m sure you guys have felt that, right? It made me think about – well not at first. At first I just felt overwhelmed. I had a sick feeling. My wife texted me and she said, “Are you coming home for dinner?” and I was like, “Yes, I need to get out of here. I need to just get away from it.” So I got away from it for a while. I ate some dinner. We may or may not have watched “The Bachelorette” tonight, which may or may not be my favorite show [laughs]. I kind of passed out during it a little bit, because I was pretty beat up and tired, and I fell asleep for a little bit.

Then I woke back up, and when I woke back up, I had some ideas. I contacted one guy, and I asked him questions. I got a whole bunch of ideas for the supplement, like how to fix that one. My buddy just gave me a bunch of some really good stuff from his experience. And then all of the sudden, I was just lying there, and this other idea just popped in to my head about how we could solve the application problem for our call center, and all of these things started coming, and I’m like, “Hey, Collette, I’ve got to go back to work. I’ve got to get all of this stuff implemented quickly, before everyone else wakes up in the morning,” and so I went back into the office until about 12:30, and I literally got most of the issues all lined out with all of the stuff I was stressing out about and all of the issues. My brain just needed a little reboot, and then I was ready to go back in and answer the rest of the questions and solve the problems, and now I feel like most of the problems are solved.

Now by tomorrow, I’ll go in, which tomorrow’s the fun day, because I’ve got lifting. I’m lifting weights in probably four hours from now, and I’ll have jiu jitsu practice tomorrow. It should be a lot of fun, but anyway tomorrow I’m going to go in and just do normal stuff, but it made me think tonight about something my dad told me, and I hope I don’t offend anyone with this. That’s not my intention. The sprinklers are on, so hopefully you guys can still hear me. So I don’t want to offend anybody, but my dad told me something when I was a kid, and my dad is an entrepreneur like me, and he had a bunch of his own little businesses and stuff that he did, and I don’t remember the situation when he told me, but I remember it had a big impact on me. He said, “Russell, there’re two kinds of people in this world. There’re people who find problems, and there’re people who find the answers. You always want to be the latter.”

That had a big, profound impact on me, and I started thinking about that in all areas of my life, actually. I was thinking about wrestling. I was thinking about my family. I was thinking about business, thinking about our coaching programs, thinking about everything. There are two types of people. People who find the problems, and people who find the answers to the problems, and I was thinking about how, not all of them, but a lot of the employees on my team are people who find problems. They find a problem. If they have a problem, they come to you with it and say, “I found a problem. I found a problem,” and they just don’t find the answer.

There are a couple of guys on my team that are amazing people at finding answers. One of them who I’ll mention is this guy named John Parkes, on my team and one of the neatest people I’ve ever met in my life. I watched him today, because he gets the brunt of the problem people. They go to him first before they come to me. He has the major job of solving most of the problems. People come to him with all sorts of questions, and he finds them answers. He’s able to think about it, and find an answer. He’s a great person at finding answers.

It’s interesting. I’ve done this experiment over the years with people when they ask me questions, just to see. I think I heard Tony Robbins do it the first time. That’s probably where I got it from. People would ask him something. They would ask him a question, and he would say, “Well what do you think?” and they’d go, “Well, I don’t know the answer.” He’d say, “Well if you did know the answer, what do you think it would be?” The person would almost always give the correct answer afterwards, and so I’ve done that sometimes in the past. It’s interesting that most people can solve their own problems just by asking, “Well what do you think the answer would be if this was you?” and magically they can go, and they can answer these problems.

I think all of us have the ability to be the person that finds the answer, but for whatever reason, we’re nervous, or we like that crutch, or we have this thing where we always want to put it on somebody else. The person who’s willing to find the answers becomes the leader in every situation. In wrestling, I became a leader because people brought me problems and I found answers. In business, I’ve become a leader because of that as well. I look at our coaching program, and it’s interesting – a lot of the calls I do with our students – they come, and they’ve got an issue, and most of the time, they know the answer, and they just want me to tell them that they’re right. It’s just interesting how much people need that validation.

I think for you guys that are listening to this, think about yourself. Which kind of person are you right now? Are you the kind of person who finds the problem, or are you the kind of person who finds the answer? If you’re really the person that’s going to find the problem, I think the fastest way you can get a pay raise, or get more friends, or a bigger following, or whatever that thing is, is you’ve got to shift to the other kind of person, and I know that the answer’s there. When I hear some of our support people come and ask John questions, I know they know the answer, but they want the validation. They want him to answer it for them, because they don’t want to mess up. They don’t want to get in trouble, and they want somebody else to blame if something goes wrong, but if you’re willing to step into that role and be that person, and be the one who’s taking the brunt of the responsibility on your shoulders and if it’s wrong then you take it, you will go a lot further in this life.

That’s for sure, so that’s my message for tonight, and those of you who are entrepreneurs who have those days like I had today where it’s hard and you get beat down and you just want to lay down and cry for a while, just know that it’s okay. Lay down. Take a little nap. Watch The Bachelorette or whatever show it is that you need to, but then get back up and get back to work and solve your problems and make it happen. For all of you guys, focus on that. Focus on shifting from being someone who finds problems to somebody who finds the answers, and as soon as you do that, it will change everything around you.

That is it. I’m home. It’s 1:26 in the morning. I am up in four and a half hours to life weights. [laughs] I hope I don’t pass out. Hopefully something I said made a lot of sense. I’m pretty tired, so I’m not really sure, but I appreciate you guys listening in. I hope you enjoyed the podcast, and I will talk to you all again soon. Thanks, guys.

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Russell’s test for increasing his energy and focus for this week.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. It’s been a long time, but I want to welcome you to another “Marketing in Your Car”.

Hey, guys and gals. I hope you guys are having an awesome time. I actually took almost two weeks off from everything, which sounds really nice, but it’s really painful for entrepreneurs like me who just want to go and create cool stuff, so I’m back in the heat of it, and I’m super excited for this week. I hope you are as well.

While I was in San Diego, some really cool stuff happened. I had a chance to hang out with Todd, who’s one of my partners. He’s the one who has coded all of the Click Funnels, and it’s always fun hanging out with him, just talking about everything from financial stuff to making money to health to weight loss. Always fun stuff, and he got me thinking about a lot of things.

I had a chance to hang out with a guy named Drew Canole. Some of you guys may know Drew. If not, check out FitLife.TV, I think. It may be FitLifeTV.com – one of those two, anyway. Drew is a juicing expert and a super-cool guy. I saw him online, and I was really impressed with him. It turned out that he was in San Diego, so I wanted to go meet him. I had a chance to go hang out with him.

This weekend, I decided that I was going to go, and I was going to try some experiments on myself from an eating standpoint. I’m really going to track it closely. It’s interesting. I’ve done diets and weight loss things for my whole life. All the time from when I was wrestling and I was losing twenty-five to thirty pounds a week, to when I was just out of shape and trying to figure out how to get back into it, but I’ve never been that good at tracking everything, especially from a food consumption standpoint.

What I did is I went out on Saturday, and I went to Whole Foods, because I wanted to do the whole organic, grass-fed everything. I spent a lot of money [laughs], because Whole Foods is not cheap. I bought tons of vegetables – everything I could find – all of the leafy greens and as many different varieties of vegetables as I could find, and I went and found the organic grass-fed meat, and found a bunch of stuff. I came home yesterday, and I took all of my vegetables and I broke them down into five different days, so I’m going to be juicing every day for the next five days. From Mercola.com, I bought his new juicer, which is different from the one I had before. The one I had before was the Jack LaLanne one, which spins and grinds. This one’s got more of an auger in it or something like that, where it squishes the juice out instead of cutting it, so it’s supposed to stay fresher longer. I don’t know [laughs]. I thought it looked cool on the video. I’m not going to lie [laughs].

So I’m doing the whole juice thing, and then I started making frittatas, which if you don’t know what a frittata is, it’s probably the best way to eat simply, so I probably spent an hour yesterday, on Sunday, making frittatas that will last me for at least a week, if not longer. Basically, it’s eggs and vegetables and a whole bunch of stuff like that all mixed. It’s like an omelet/quiche thing, but we call them frittatas. I made some huge ones, and what was awesome, because I went and put in tons of spinach and kale and broccoli and okra and all of these really cool vegetables in my frittatas. I’m just veg-ing it up like crazy. So this is my experiment, guys. I’m calling it my hippie paleo juicing week-long thing [laughs]. I don’t know what I’m going to call it – something like that.

It’s funny. We’ve been teasing about how we were in San Diego, and the area we were in had all of these hippie-type people there. Everyone’s got dreadlocks, and they’re surfing all day long. We were joking about how when I was younger, we used to always make fun of the hippie culture and stuff like that – eating green, where now it’s the cool thing to do, so this is my hippie juicing paleo, because the frittatas are pure paleo the way we build them. It’s going to be fun, so I’m excited.

I’m excited to see how much energy I get from the whole process this week. It should be really, really cool, because I’ve got a lot of stuff happening this week, so I need the energy. I need the excitement. I need the newness of it all, so I’m excited. I’ll let you guys know throughout the week how it goes.

For you guys, I would say, “This week, figure out something different. Figure out a pattern interrupt. Figure out something that you’ve been doing. If it’s diet, or if it’s health, or if it’s how you wake up in the morning, or if it’s how you work, or whatever, figure out something, and just do a big interrupt like I’m doing right now – just a big pattern interrupt. Do something that’s just going to totally shock your system, and see what happens. For all I know, this could be the worst thing in the world, but I’m still excited for it. I think it’s going to be awesome.

I’m at the office, you guys. I am going to go and get some stuff done today. I hope you guys enjoy your Monday, and we will talk to you all again soon.

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Why you should never ask somebody for free advice.

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Hey everybody. This is Russell Brunson, and I have a very special “Marketing in Your Car” for you for today.

Hey, everyone. I just got my hair cut, and I’m driving back home. I actually wanted to do a special podcast. I don’t normally log into Facebook very much because it stresses me out. Typically I’m getting a lot of people who are asking me for my help for free. It’s just hard, because I want to, and I wish I could give them all the attention. The problem is, with everything I’m doing right now in my own company, in my own business, and in my own coaching clients, it’s hard to find time to even sleep at night. There’s so much stuff always happening, and so I don’t typically log in that often, but the last week, I did for a couple of reasons. I just checked again when I was walking out of getting my hair cut. I saw a message, and it just made me think, so I want to tell you about two different people that approached me on Facebook. I won’t use their real names, but I want to share their approaches with you, because they were both very different.

The first guy that contacted me basically said, “Hey Russell, I’ve been watching you for a bunch of years. I love your stuff. I think you’re awesome. How much would it cost to buy an hour of your time?” I said, “Right now, I sell an hour for twenty-five hundred bucks,” and he wrote back and said, “Oh, that’s kind of steep, but hey, man, I love your stuff, and I think you can help me, so where do I send the money?” So I told him. He sent the money. Two days later, we were on the phone. We spent an hour on the phone with him looking at his funnel, building it out, tweaking it, giving him all the advice that he needed, and after he was done, he was like, “Man, that was awesome. I feel like I’ve shifted my focus. I know exactly where I’m going now, I’m going to go ahead and implement it. Hey, do you mind if I shoot some questions now and then as I’m building this thing out, to help me create it?” and I’m like, “Yeah, no worries.” So he went out, and he’s been building, and he shot me a couple of questions. I gave him some feedback, and I haven’t minded because he understood the value of my time, and what it takes for me to spend some time. I don’t mind helping him now, because he valued my time up front, and he was willing to invest, and now he’s trying to implement what I showed him, and so of course I’m going to help steer him in the right direction and have success. It’s been awesome.

Then I have this other guy. Again, a really nice guy, and my heart strings go out to him and to other people that I’ve gotten this message from. Literally, I think, five or six people this week sent me similar messages about, “Hey Russell, I love your stuff. I don’t have any money, but I want to work with you. I’d love it if you could get on the phone with me and coach me through this. I’ll give you half of my profits, and I’ll do all of this kind of stuff.” That’s their mentality, and it’s tough, because honestly, for me as a person, I can’t even tell you how much I want to, but it’s hard. Most of those I don’t respond back to, because it’s just so hard for me to tell them “No”, but it’s like, “You have to understand, that when I was getting started, I never would have gone to somebody who is as busy or had as much success, and just ask them for their time. I always would have gone and figured out how I could provide value to them, whether it’s money or whatever, because their time is valuable.”

I look at my schedule. For example, this week, I was at the office twice until 3 a.m. in the morning this week trying to get some projects done. I literally had, I think, seven or eight one-hour phone call consultations with people. Every single one of those people, outside of the first guy I told you about – he paid $2,500 – everybody else paid $25,000 for those, and it was hard for me to fit those $25,000 one-hour calls into my schedule, because it’s so busy with everything. I obviously made the time, because they made the investment.

Plus I’ve got the Reactive Coaching for our $25,000 students, and then on top of that, I’ve got my own projects and my own businesses, and in our supplement company, we’re in the process of trying to hire three or four more people. It has by far eclipsed our internet marketing business [laughs] to this point, which is exciting. We’re about to launch Click Funnels, which is a brand new company. We’re in the process of trying to find new office space and probably hiring a staff of, who knows – ten to twelve people to help with that.

I literally don’t have time to sleep right now. I go home. I spend time in the morning with my family and kids and at night with my family and kids. As soon as they all pass out, I’m back to work trying to move things forward, and it’s hard when I get an e-mail saying, “I just need an hour of your time. Remember what it was like when you were just beginning and you had no ability? If you had just gotten some guru to help you…,” and how it would help them, and again, my heart strings go out to them, but I don’t think people really understand the reality of it.

For me to carve out another hour of my time, I would have to put one of my projects on hold, and you look at opportunity cost. The one lesson I learned from my college education is opportunity cost. With opportunity cost, if you remember the concept, you’ve got two options. The opportunity cost is what you lost by not taking the other option, so for example, if I was to jump on the phone with this guy for an hour, the opportunity cost is that I’ve either got to give up an hour of time with my family, which is not something I’m willing to do at all, or I’ve got to carve out an hour of time from all of my other projects.

An hour of focused time working towards Click Funnels or an hour towards something else, will make me a lot of money. It’s hard, because what he is asking for and what people like that are asking for – they don’t understand what they’re asking for. They’re asking for an hour of your time. An hour of your time, literally, on the low end, is $2,500. I was trying to be nice to this guy, but because he was willing to respect the value of my time, I was willing to do it for $2,500, but the reality is an hour of time that’s focused on your own business is worth so much more than that.

I just wanted to share. It’s been on my mind. I may send him this podcast, and I hope it doesn’t hurt his feelings. That’s not my intention, but more so just to help him understand the value of other people’s time, and if you want to get someone’s attention, you’ve got to look at things differently.

When I first got into this business, I remember I went to this event, and there was this guy that was at the event. He was in this Mastermind group, and he was in four or five others, and I was like, “How in the world did you get in all of these groups?” and he said, “I learned something early on in life, Russell. I learned I can either work my way in, or I can buy my way in. It’s way easier just to buy your way in.” He had spent tons of money in to getting in to these different clubs.

I said, “How in the world do you afford that?” I think he had spent almost a hundred grand in these Masterminds. He said, “Well, I couldn’t afford it, so instead of complaining about the fact that I didn’t have the resources to afford it, I tried to get resourceful. I went out to a bunch of Internet marketing forums, and I found a bunch of people who were in similar situations like me. They couldn’t afford it, but they wanted the information, and so I said, “Look. This is the deal. I’m going to invest in these five Mastermind groups, and my total cost is going to be X amount of dollars. I can’t afford it right now, but if you will pay X amount of dollars into it, I will go to these events, and I will learn. I will do everything, and when I come back from these events, I will bring back and break down everything I learned, all the notes, give you everything, and you’ll get a chance, at a fraction of the cost, to go to all of these events with me, basically, to get all of the information I extract from these.” This guy literally got ten people to give him $10,000. He had $100,000 in cash to go out and join the best Masterminds in the world. I was just like, “Wow.” – resourcefulness, right? He didn’t have the resources, but he figured out a way to make it happen.

I always think about one of my favorite people I ever met in my entire life, and this is in the business, or out of the business, but it’s a guy named Stu McLaren. Before I even met Stu, I was putting on this workshop called “Affiliate Boot Camp”, and Stu paid $1,000 to be part of this boot camp. He’s one of the smartest people I have ever met. It was a life-training series that I did, and I’d do a teleseminar. Every teleseminar, I’d open it up for questions at the end, and the first person to pop on was Stu, saying, “Hey, Russell, that was amazing. I’m Stu McLaren. That session you gave was amazing. It just totally built me up,” and he talked about why it was so great. He’d ask me some questions, and then he’d thank me, and, “Boom.” Literally, for ten sessions in a row, Stu was the first one asking questions, the first one thanking me, all of that kind of stuff, and it was awesome. Then at the end of the event, he called me up one day, and he was like, “Hey, man, I’ve got an idea. We should work on this project together.” I knew who Stu was, and I knew he’d given me so much value from that side. Me, as an educator and a teacher – to have somebody invest in my business and thank me and all of these things along the way, it changes it. Where now, just like the dude who paid the twenty-five hundred bucks, I have a vested interest in him. I want him to be successful. I want him to take the advice. Yeah, I’m going to pick up the phone, and I’m going to return the call.

The other interesting thing is, in my Mastermind group, in our inner circle, we have a couple of different levels – anywhere from $8,000 up to $25,000 in our coaching program, and inside the programs, all of our members are able to ask me questions each week. They can submit video clips and write questions to me, and we can chat back and forth. It’s a cool process. What’s interesting is that the majority of people who ask me questions will jump on and ask me a question, and that’s it. We move on. Sometimes, they’ll say, “Hey, thanks,” but that’s it. There’re not many people that say, “Thanks,” and I’m fine with that.

I’m not looking for thanks, but there’s one guy whose name is Simon Cryer, and Simon signs up for the coaching program, goes in there, studies a bunch of stuff, and then he jumps into this thing where he can message me, and makes me this video, and all the video said was, “You know, Russell, thank you. This was one of the most amazing things in the world. It was awesome. It was…,” and all of this stuff. I watched the video, and then I was waiting for him to ask me a favor, a question, or whatever, and he never did. He just thanked me, and I was like, “Dude, that guy’s awesome.” Simon’s name, I remembered.

A couple of weeks later, he e-mailed me a question, and because I knew Simon’s name, and because he’d given me value, I literally sat up that night while my wife was angry at me, because she wanted me to go to bed [laughs]. I spent almost an hour on the computer making videos for him, mapping out the whole game process, showed him what he was doing right, showed him what he was doing wrong, sent him all of my files. I literally gave him a years’ worth of my research. I gave it all to him, one hundred percent, and I just said, “Hey, here you go, Simon.” He told me when he got that that he started crying, because he couldn’t believe that I would give him that. I told him afterwards, “You know what, Simon? You’re the first person that ever thanked me.”

It was interesting how that works, and so the reason for this, you guys, is I would just say – I don’t know what I’m trying to say, to be honest, but when you want things in life, there’s the right way and the wrong way to do it. The right way is to figure out how you can provide as much value as possible to other people, and if you do that, it’s amazing what they’ll do back in return for you.

Sometimes that is paying people, right? I pay coaches all of the time. I wrote Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher a check for $25,000 in January, because I wanted some of their help. I’m friends with them. I could text them. I could call them, but I wanted to show them that I have respect for them and what they do, so I wrote them a check. I asked them one or two little questions here and there, and those things have transformed my business.

I look at Bill Glaser. I was in his Mastermind group for six years. I spoke on his stage tons of times, and one day I had a question. Instead of calling him and saying, “Hey, Bill, I have a question for you,” I called his assistant, and I sent him, I think, fifteen hundred bucks for an hour of his time. We got on the phone, and we talked through it. It’s just you understanding that people are busy, and yes, they may have time, and they’re there for their buddies or whatever, but if you’re going to pick their brains or you’re going to do whatever, understand that that’s not a small thing.

I have people all the time that are like, “Hey, man, let me take you to lunch and pick your brain.” In my life, I have not had the luxury of having lunch for months. I don’t have time for lunch. I eat while I’m working, because I don’t have time to break away and go to lunch. I have too many projects and too many things that are happening. If I were to go to lunch, I would miss time with my family, so I don’t eat lunch. So for them to say, “Hey, Russell, I want to take you to lunch and pick your brain,” it seems like in their mind, they’re thinking it’s such a small thing –“Hey, I’m going to buy you lunch,” but for me to pull away and go to lunch, it’s like, “You don’t understand the opportunity cost of that. That will cost me on the lowest end, $2,500, and on the high end, I’m losing $10,000 to $15,000 or more by letting you take me to lunch to pick my brain.”

I think that it’s important to understand that, especially with people you’re trying to get to, trying to get access to and need information from. Figure out ways that you can provide value first. Coming to someone and saying, “Hey, I’ll give you half of my business,” or, “Hey, if you do this, I could make a lot of money, and I’ll give you part of it back,” that’s the same pitch everyone is giving them.

It’s funny. I had a guy – this is another one. I get these all of the time, so I apologize for the rant here, but I had a guy the other day who came up to me and said, “Hey, Russell, this is the deal. I pitch you. You’re the one I want to work with on this project. This project’s awesome. What I want you to do is I want you to work with me to set the entire thing up. We’ll do this, this, and this. Help me launch and help me do everything and from that I’ll give you a percentage of the profits.” I wrote him back, and I was like, “Dude, for the effort that it would take for me to go and do what you just asked me to do, I could do the exact same thing on my own project and keep all of the money. I don’t think you understand that. You’re not providing me value by giving me half of your company and letting me do all of the work. There’s no value for me in that, all right?”

And so it’s just an understanding of you looking at the people that you want information from and figuring out, “How can I serve them first?” Stu McLaren was smart. He did not come to me, day one, and say, “Russell, I need this. I need this. I need this.” He said, “How can I serve Russell first? I’m going to join his coaching program and ask him questions. I’m going to edify him, and I’m going to do all of this stuff, and I’m going to build a relationship,” and now, when Stu calls, I will drop anything. When Stu says, “Russell, I need this,” I will. To this day, if Stu was to call me at three in the morning and tell me that he needs an accountant, I’d be there. That’s how much rapport he’s built with me.

I look at somebody like Simon. After that whole thing happened, I happened to be in Dallas one day, and I think Simon’s from Dallas. We e-mailed, and an hour later, we’re hanging out. We spent the whole day together, and I consider him a close friend. He came out to Boise. We went to the fights together. All of this stuff came from him saying, “Thanks,” from him figuring out what I needed in my life to help me. Because of that now, I have this reciprocity, where I want to make sure he’s successful, and he’s going to be successful, because he played his cards right.

This guy that came to me first and said, “Hey, I’m going to pay you twenty-five hundred bucks for an hour of your time because that’s what it’s worth to you right now,” I’ve probably answered fifteen questions for him since then, because he respected my time. It helped me to feel that value first, and so, yes, I want to help him back out in the other direction.

Anyway, I hope this doesn’t fall on deaf ears. In all aspects of your life, whether it’s relationships, whether it’s business or whatever it is, this advice is important. It’s key, and you need to understand it.

I don’t want to admit this, but one of my favorite shows on TV is “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette”. I watch this show, and I cringe every single time, because these guys get two minutes with the bachelor or the bachelorette to get to know them, and the ones that always blow it are the ones that get on there and go, “Okay, so my name is Joe, and this is what I do, and this is what I love,” and they just start talking about themselves, and just dump all of this garbage on the person that they’re on this date with. The girl gets done and walks away, and they’re like, “Wow. I know everything about that guy, but he didn’t ask me a single question about myself.” The guys who are successful are the ones who sit down and ask the girl questions. –“Tell me about you. Tell me about this.” Those are the ones that succeed. The ones that fall in love are the ones who are not talking about themselves and telling them why they’re great. It’s the ones who go on the dates and ask questions to the other person.

When I was in college, I had a roommate. He was one of the most fascinating people ever, and I say that because I always thought that. I remember always thinking that this guy – John Merritt was his name. I thought, “This guy’s just fascinating.” He was one of the coolest people. I just thought he was awesome.

One day, I came home from something, and I sat down, and I was talking to him, and he literally asked me questions directly for probably an hour straight – just question after question. Everything he had to say, he seemed more fascinated by what I said, and I was like, “Man,” and all of the sudden, in the middle of this I remember pausing and thinking, “Oh, wow. I think he’s so fascinating, but I’ve never asked him a single question. I’m like that guy – I’m the bad date, but he’s the most amazing person in the world.” He just kept asking me question after question after question. Everything I said, he seemed fascinated by, and that’s what he gave me. That’s why I always wanted to be around John. Everyone wanted to be around John. He was one of the neatest people ever.

So anyway, there’s some stuff for all of you guys to think about. I have no idea if this went the right direction or not, but I hope that you guys got some value out of it.

I am at the bank grabbing some money, so I’m going to jump off for now, and I appreciate you guys, and I will talk to you all soon.

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The little app that helps me get done three times more than anyone else I know.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car”.

Hey, everybody. I hope you have an awesome day today. I was at the office late last night working on some secret projects, but some cool stuff happened. One, for example – I think I’ve mentioned this before. I’ve been working on a book that is my first real book. I really going to get it published and try to do the whole “New York Times ‘Best Seller’” thing, but anyway, I needed somebody to write some blurbs and stuff for the book. I needed someone to write a “Forward” and that kind of stuff.

My dream person to write the Forward was Tony Robbins, because I know Tony, and so I came to him. –“Would you mind writing me a forward for my new book?” I was assuming he’d say, “No,” because he’s pretty dang busy, you know? He wrote me back and said, “Hey, I wish I could, but I’m in the middle of writing my own book, but if you want, I could write a blurb, a quote, to put on the book.” So I was like, “All right.” So he sent me a quote last night, and it was awesome.

I’m driving, so I don’t have it in front of me, but it was something about how – well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. You guys will see it. It made me feel pretty good. I was excited. I’ve got a quote from Tony that’s going to be on the book, and then I still need a forward written. I think I’m going to get either Dan Kennedy or Bill Glaser for the forward. I need them both. Can you do two forwards? That would be pretty sweet.

Anyway, I’m super excited for the book. It’s almost done. I should have the rough draft all finished by this weekend, and then I’m heading out to a Mastermind meeting out in San Diego, and so I’m going to be proofreading it out there. It should be pretty awesome, so I’m excited for that, for today.

I want to share with you guys a tool. I don’t share enough tools with you guys, I don’t think, so maybe I’ll start doing more of this. There’re three or four tools that I use to run my entire business, and this one I’m going to share with you guys today is about the simplest, most dumb thing in the world. At first, honestly, I downloaded it as a joke, and then I started using it, and now I’d say I probably look at it thirty times a day. It’s one of my most important things ever.

The story behind it is that back when I first got my phone – actually that’s not true. I’d had my phone for a couple of years. One time I was looking for some kind of task management or to do list software, and there’re tons of them out there. Most of them are just lame, but there was this one that was called “Tomorrow”, and basically what it is, is this app on your phone. You have a “To Do” list, and you put in all of your to do’s, and then can see them all there. What you can do is, if you say, “I’m not going to get this done today,” you can click a little button, and it pushes it to tomorrow. That’s all the app does. It’s a to-do list, and then you can push things to tomorrow. I think the joke behind it is, “Oh, just push it off.” You can just slack off and keep pushing things until tomorrow.

I started using it on my phone for a while. I didn’t really use it a lot, but then one day, I don’t know what happened. I was getting ready to look for some to-do software, and I found that they actually have an online version as well that syncs with your phone and with your iPod and your iPad and with all of your devices, so I logged in there. It’s “Tomorrow dot D-O”. Tomorrow.do is the website. It’s free to use. I log in there, and I have my huge to-do list.

What’s cool about it is that in the past, I’d have to-do’s – I’d have a notepad of paper, and things just always slipped through the cracks for some reason. It always slipped through the cracks. I’d have a notepad of paper at my house, and one at the office, and one in my car. I’d have all of these papers everywhere, and it was hard to keep track of everything. Whereas now, with Tomorrow.do, it’s on my phone. It’s at my office. It’s on all of my computers. What’s cool is when I’m sitting there, like when I’m driving somewhere, and it’s like, “Oh crap, I need to do this thing,” I open up the app real quick and type it in, and, “Boom,” it’s saved.

Then what it does is, at midnight, everything that was on tomorrow’s, “Boom,” all gets shifted over to today, because now it’s today. If I’m up late at night, usually I’ll do it at night, if not, then first thing in the morning when I wake up. I’ll see all of my to-dos. Everything that is still in my queue for me to do, and then I just start going through and I just push everything until tomorrow that I know I’m not going to be able to do today. I push, push, push, push, push, and then all I have left a list of four or five things I need to do today, and it just feels awesome.

I go through it, and every time I get something done, I log back in, cross it off, and I can’t even tell you the feeling I get after I cross something off. It’s like the greatest thing in the world. Literally, for the last eighteen months or so, this little tool has been how I’ve been able to push forward and get things done and not have things slip through the cracks, and just keep cranking on things, and so, if you’re looking for a way to get more done and make sure nothing falls through the cracks, and also for me, it organizes my day. It shows me exactly what’s most important, but I don’t lose track of the stuff I still need to do. It’s my favorite thing in the world, and it’s free, so I highly, highly, highly recommend it. Just go to Tomorrow.do, log in and create an account, and download the app. I think the app’s just called “Tomorrow”, I believe, but if you can’t find the app, just go to the website and the website will link to the app as well, but it is awesome.

Anyway, I’m at the office today. I’m going to go in to the office, and the first thing I’m going to do is open Tomorrow.do, look at my tasks, shove everything off until tomorrow that I’m not going to get done today. Then I’m going to start busting out those things, and I’ll bet you I will accomplish more in the next four or five hours than you can do all day, because I’ve got this little tool. You guys, go try it out. You will love it. I’m at the office. I’m going to go have some fun. I will talk to you guys soon. Thanks for listening.

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Last night I saw one of the most powerful uses of the “attractive character” ever. Let me show you how Lindsey Sterling used the “attractive character” to get her audience to fall in love with her.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car”.

Hey, everyone. It’s early, and I’m heading to the gym, but it’s nice, because now that it’s summertime, it looks like noon at 6:30 in the morning. I love summer. I’m excited for it.

I wanted to share with you guys a really, super awesome experience. Last night, my wife and I had a chance to go to a Lindsey Stirling concert. If you don’t know who Lindsey Stirling is yet, go to YouTube and type in “Lindsey Stirling”, and look. There’re a couple of really good videos. One of them is of her playing violin and dancing in fire, and one’s her running through igloos. It’s definitely worth watching.

She did a show up here in Boise in a really small venue called “The Knitting Factory”, where only about five or six hundred people could jam into this place. It’s standing room only. We went to it, and it was awesome. I’ve heard a couple of pretty cool things in my life, and this was one of the neatest experiences in entertainment I’ve ever seen. We were talking about it beforehand, the fact that, if you watch her, she plays the violin while she dances. It’s a really cool blend of talents. It’s just so different. She was on “America’s Got Talent” a bunch of years ago, and Pierce Morgan kicked her off [laughs], and all of this stuff, but she just kept going and going, and now she’s got this. I think this is her second tour, and she’s done really, really well. What’s interesting is, if you look at her, she’s really good at playing the violin. I’d say she’s an above-average violin player, and she’s a good dancer. I wouldn’t say she’s a great dancer. She’s a good dancer, but the fact that she blends those two together makes her unique and different, and literally, the show last night, I felt like was world-class. I can’t even say enough about how awesome it was.

It was interesting, though. There was one thing I wanted to mention, because I thought it was profound from a marketing standpoint. I don’t think many other people really caught it, but as you guys all know, I’m obsessed with this whole marketing thing. I’m looking at what people are doing and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it and the reaction from the crowd and stuff like that. The one thing that she did that was super cool – she came out, and she played two or three songs, and everyone was going crazy. Then she needed to take a break really quickly to change outfits. She goes off the stage, and all of the sudden, behind, on the main stage, there’s a screen that’s got effects and all of these things happening. All of the sudden, this thing pops up, like a little movie, and it says, “I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced yet,” and then it shows Lindsey when she’s an infant, and it shows her as a toddler, and it shows her as a two-year-old, and a three-year-old, and then five, and six. It’s showing her throughout her whole life – these little video clips of her saying cute little things and doing stuff, and showing her dancing, and showing her practicing violin. All of her experience that got her to this point, basically, you saw in this little three-minute video, and literally, instantly, it went from everyone going there, thinking who she was and seeing her as a fan, all of the sudden, everyone saw her at a different level.

At the event last weekend, I talked a lot about the “attractive character”. I’m sure you guys, if you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you’ve heard me talk about that and the importance of it and what it does for your brand and for everything you’re doing. I would look at that video, and it was just like, “Man, look at how it changed everybody in this room. We all went from Lindsey Stirling and people who wanted to get out for the night to do an event to people who were fans. She did that all in a little three-minute video. It was not professionally done, but it brought out all of the elements of attractive character, and it was awesome.

I’m in the gym, but I want to keep talking about this, so I’m going to pause it, and hopefully when I come back out to the car, my recorder won’t have shut off. I’m going to pause this, and I’ll be back in forty-five minutes.

All right, I am back. That was a hard workout [laughs]. So I’m going to continue where we left off. We were talking about Lindsey’s concert. I was talking about the video and the whole attractive character concept, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me, when we talk about attractive character, “How do you introduce yourself to the audience, and how do you build this relationship?”

A lot of times, I think people are confused. They’re thinking, “How do I do this on the front end before someone meets me?” You create your own squeeze page or on your landing page or whatever, to get somebody in the door, just like Lindsey. She started the concert. She came out. She did two or three songs, and then after we built that initial rapport, it’s like, “Here, let me tell you my story.” Boom – all of the sudden, it sucks you in. For us, usually on your front end or your squeeze page, it’s kind of blind, trying to get somebody in the door. Now if they’re in the door – “Boom.” Now it’s where you introduce your attractive character and everything else.

One of the big questions we had at our event last weekend was from one of the girls that were there. She was really cool. She was talking about how, “How come all of the ads are ugly, and they’ve got red outlines, and you go to these squeeze pages, and there’s no branding? They’re just ugly. I want to have banners that are brown and yellow and that use my colors,” and all of these things. I was trying to explain it to her, and I said, “That’s fine, but there’s a time and a place. Your initial goal is to get as many people in your front door as possible. Because of that, you’ve got to use what works, and what works a lot of times is this cheesy stuff – headlines and color schemes that probably don’t match your brand and your fill, but that’s okay, because your initial goal is to just get them in the door.” As soon as they come through that front door, for us at least, we immediately transition from a kind of a cold, high-conversion funnel to our branding stuff.

That’s the way that we look at the way that we drive our traffic. It’s a two-step process. Step One, bring them in with whatever converts the best, and then immediately, now that you’ve got them, they’re on your list. Now it’s time to start building your brand and your attractive character and all of those things, where now you’re getting them to build the relationship. That’s how you start getting people to convert better on the back end, because I agree one hundred percent. I think that branding on the back end is important. In fact, I think you’ll sell way more.

For example, this week we sold four people our $25,000 package, which is awesome. That’s by far a record for our high-end coaching things in a week. We sold four of them on the phones. I never could have done that off of a cold campaign, where somebody comes in off of a cold squeeze page, and we call them to sell. No, they come in off of a cold campaign, and then after we’ve got them, now we share our attractive character, and we share stories, and we share our branding. We do all of this stuff to warm up that relationship, and get us to the point where somebody will come in at a higher level.

Anyway, I’m not sure how exactly that relates to Lindsey’s concert, but it’s just something that’s interesting. The other thing, and again, this is me, from the marketing standpoint. I always look at situations and stuff from the perspective of, “What would I be doing different if this was mine. If they hired me as a consultant, what would I do?” One of the big things that I notice – oh, and there’s a cop, a motorcycle cop, shooting people with his gun [laughs], and I think I clipped it.

All right, I’m back. I was looking at what they’re doing, and they had this pre-band come out first, and they were great. They sang and got everybody excited, and then they took thirty minutes to reset the stage and everything. Then Lindsey came out, and again, she was just awesome, from the very first second she walked in. What was interesting is I’m looking at this room. There were maybe five hundred to a thousand people, all jammed. We’re all standing-room only, and it’s a really cool facility, and literally, there were probably ten of us – my wife and I, and a couple of others who were jumping around, having fun, and everybody else was just kind of standing there looking at her. I think everyone enjoyed the experience, but we were at the equivalent of a rock concert or more, and nobody’s moving around.

I was thinking a lot about Tony Robbins, when we did his events, and when we were at his event, I’m the kind of person who, I don’t like dancing. We didn’t dance at our wedding. I just don’t do that. At my first Tony Robbins event that I went to, everybody was dancing like crazy, and for the first eight hours, I refused to participate in the shenanigans. I did not want to be dancing, right? [laughs] After a while, he broke me down to where we were all just going crazy, and it was awesome. I remember that next day was the first time I ever met with Tony. We had a little private meeting, and we were talking. We were in Toronto, and he said that it always takes a while to get the audience in a state where they’re willing to jump around and dance and go crazy and leave their inhibitions behind, and he said that at some events, that happens really, really fast, and other ones take a long time. He said that Toronto took a long time. It took five or six hours before he felt like he’d broken through and everyone was playing full out.

So it took a process, but I was thinking about what Tony does. When you show up at his event, he’s got thirty people on stage dancing, and they’re trying to get the whole audience dancing, and everything’s moving, so as soon as he walks out on stage, the whole audience is already dancing and moving and jumping around, and so it’s easy to kind of step into that and start running with it.

At Lindsey’s thing, everyone was sitting around waiting, waiting, waiting, and then she comes out at level ten, but nobody had been moving and dancing and jumping, just people like my wife and I, who’d been to Tony Robbins. We like jumping around now [laughs]. We’re jumping around, and everyone else is sitting there, even after her seventh or eighth performance. It was insane. It was so good, and again, my wife and I are jumping around crazy, and she like comes out to the audience, “You guys are awesome. There’s a pack of girls out there going crazy,” and literally, there was probably twenty of us, maybe in the whole audience who were going nuts.

I think for her I would look at, before she comes out, getting a bunch of people on stage, getting the audience dancing and moving and coach them and train them and get them to get in the right state that you want so that when you show up, their energy level’s at a different level.

Two times ago, when we were in New York, we went to “The David Letterman Show”, and what was really interesting was the fact that before the show, we had someone who took our entire audience and coached us through the entire process and coached us through what we’d need to do. –“This is what David needs. He needs you laughing. He needs you moving. He needs your energy,” and they’d coach us through it, and when we got into the studio, and it was the same thing. They’d coach us through it again, and they got us all prepped. Then Dave came out, and, “Boom,” we were at level ten by the time he showed up. I think from a marketing standpoint, that pre-frame is big.

Now that concept can work anywhere. When I used to do teleseminars and webinars, I would get on there, and they were all quiet and then when we’d get started answering, I’d say, “Hi, this is Russell,” and I’d get started” I remember five or six years ago, I was doing a teleseminar with Armond Morin, and I showed up ten minutes early. He was on there for ten minutes prepping the event, getting people excited, getting them fired up. –“This is what’s going to be happening. You’re going to have a chance to listen to Russell, and it’s going to be great. Thank you so much for coming,” and then he had this loop, where he kept on getting people fired up for this thing, for ten or fifteen minutes before we started. Then, “Boom,” we started, and we were at a level ten.

So that state, the state that whatever people enter into whatever experience – your teleseminar, your webinar, your event, your sales process – there’s a lot of ways you guys can manipulate that. If Lindsey’s crew were to hire me, that’s what I would be focusing on – how to manipulate that pre-frame before she shows up, so that when she shows up, and when she stepped on the stage, it would be at a level ten from day one. And I’d say that idea is for you guys too. Think about all of your sales processes, how to crank that up and get your audience at level ten before you start speaking or selling or teaching.

I’m back home. I’m going to go eat and get ready for the day. I appreciate you guys. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you have a chance to go to a Lindsey Stirling concert, do it. It was awesome. Worst case – just go to YouTube and type in “Lindsey Stirling” and watch some of her stuff, and you guys will be blown away by her talent, for sure. All right, guys. I’m out. We’ll talk to you again soon.

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When is it smart to expand and grow your company vs keeping it small and lean?

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell, again, and welcome to “Marketing in Your Car”.

All right, guys and gals, and everybody else who’s listening in, I’m heading to the office today, and this is what’s been on my mind, because we’re about to do a really, really cool thing. As you guys know, I’ve been talking and bragging and being super-excited about Click Funnels. Last weekend, as you know, we did our Mastermind, and we did our live event. Some of my buddies were at the event, Garrett and Scott – they run a couple of sites. They run TrustGuard.com, ShopperApproved.com, KartRocket.com, and they’ve been really, really successful in the software space. In fact, I can’t tell their numbers, but last month they did insanely well for themselves.

What was cool is while they were sharing their pricing model and how they upgrade people and stuff like that, it opened a huge light bulb in my head, because the way our old pricing was structured, we really had some virtual limits on what we could do and how much money we could make. Anyway, that’s where things were at, and after they showed us their pricing model, it opened up the door to a whole new world, and I’m really, really excited. And then they showed us where they had this mini call center that ascends people who get a free trial, and sends them in to a yearly contract which goes from $0 up to, for a year, $3,000 or $4,000 for that contract.

I really think that that’s the route that we need to go with our company. We completely changed our pricing structure because of it, and with that, we started looking at, “Hey, if we’re going to do this model – what they’re doing, we’ve got to have our own mini call center that’s [? 49:24] ascending trial people, and doing demos, and upgrading them, and this whole thing,” If we’re going to do that, and we’re going to do it right, we’ve got to build a team to be able to do that [laughs]. We’re about a month away from rolling out Click Funnels, and we want to have people in place so that when customers are coming in, we’ve got to obviously have a support team, which is going to be big, but also a team to upgrade and to do demos and everything else. We were mapping it out yesterday. To do that, we’re going to need a small team of people, initially, of, who knows? Four or five people, maybe, which now brings me to my own personal fears.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve got fears in business. Earlier in my career, I went and got excited, and we ended up building a company with over a hundred employees, and it was scary, but it was exciting. But it went down, and so now I’m in a spot where we’ve got something that I think is going to grow, and it’s going to grow really, really rapidly, and we want to make sure that the infrastructure and everything’s in place. So what do you do? Do you not build those things out, and try to keep it small and lean, and support suffers a little bit? Or do you put the extra costs in and try to go big? There’re so many variables, and so the question on my mind today is to grow, or not to grow? What do you do?

I’m just kind of walking you guys through my mindset, because part of me wants to have this whole infrastructure in place from Day One so that we can scale, and part of me is nervous about that, and I’m sure that a lot of you guys are kind of in that same spot. A lot of people are always asking me, “Russell, we’re building our company. Who should we be hiring first? When should we be hiring people?”, and all of that kind of thing.

Some of the best advice I got was from the book, “REWORK”. He talks about in there that you only hire when it hurts, and so anyway, I have these three or four different internal dialogs happening inside my mind, and I’m not sure of the answer yet, so I’m excited to say I’m going to meet with the team and be going over that, and figure it out. Obviously if we do decide to take this span, we’re going to start with the smallest team possible, but also big enough that we’ll be able to handle the influx.

Some of the cool things that we’re planning when we roll this out, as you guys will see, we’re going to have a Tesla club. We’re going to be giving away a Ferrari. We’re going to be doing a bunch of really cool things, and to be able to facilitate that, obviously, there’s going to be a lot of growth, and we need to have things in place, and so we’re in this ‘chicken and the egg’ kind of spot, and it’s really fun, and it’s really exciting. I’m excited to see what comes from it, but anyway, that’s the game plan today.

One of my big focuses is to figure out, internally, are we going to grow or are we not going to grow? Are we going to figure out smarter ways to do it? Are we going to try to have this happen with people that are outside of the company, or are we going to try to do internal? If we do keep it internal, do we get a bigger office? What are the plans? What should we do? So instead of doing it the way I used to do it, where we would just start running – which there’re benefits to the ready-fire-aim model, but I want to try to do this right this time. I want to make sure that as we’re growing, that we’re growing correctly, and that we’re doing it in a way that doesn’t put our company at any kind of risk or harm, but in a way that we’re growing very organically, but very rapidly as well.

Anyway, it’s a fun conundrum. I don’t know if that’s the right word. It’s a fun puzzle. I don’t know about you guys, but man, business is so much fun. It’s every day waking up and you’re playing this game, and you’re trying to figure out what goes where and what’s going to be the best way of how to optimize it, but every single thing you’re doing, you’re always risking. You’re gambling, and sometimes you’re gambles pay off, and sometimes they don’t.

One of our 25K clients – I had a call from him yesterday. He’s a young, 22-year-old kid who’s crushing right now, doing over a hundred grand a month, and he’s doing awesome. It’s interesting. We test things, and he’s like, “I’ll run ten things, and eight of the ten will be losers, but those other two just blow up, and they make everything else worthwhile.”

It’s interesting, and so I look at us in our spot right now, and it’s exciting and fun in trying to decide which direction we want to go, but doing it, again, more methodically this time, as opposed to just running and jumping like I often did in the past. For you guys, I hope that gives you some excitement, and helps you start thinking about your business. Is it time to grow? If so, what’s the strategy? What’s the right way? What’s the wrong way? How do you do it virtually versus internally? All of the fun things we’re coming up with – I’ll let you guys know in the future what we come up with, and where we’re headed.

Part of me would love to get a new office. Our office is nice now, but one that’s a little bit bigger, where we could have more space for our team to be doing that kind of stuff, but then also, it would be fun to have our own little spot where we could do our own little video studio, and a couple of other things, and so I may call my old commercial real estate realtor up here in Boise and look around and see if we can find a spot that’s a little bit bigger that give us the ability to have some cool stuff like that. So who know? I’m excited.

I’m at the office. I’m going to go have some fun today. I’ve got about two hours of work, then I’m heading to jiu jitsu, which will give me about an hour and a half to go and try to beat some people up, which always helps me out, and then tonight, we’re going to go watch Lindsey Stirling, which will be pretty exciting. If you don’t know who Lindsey Stirling is yet, go to YouTube and type in “Lindsey Stirling”, and look for the video where she’s playing the violin in the fire. She’s a rock star, and that’s who we’re going to go see tonight. It should be a fun day. I’m excited. Thanks, you guys, and we will talk to you all again soon.

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A simple lesson that Russell learned from his carpet cleaner.

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Hey, everybody. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to an amazing, beautiful outside day, and a new episode of “Marketing in Your Car”.

I just want to share. I had something that made me smile over the last day or so. I thought I would bring it up to you guys. As you know, we had a big, huge event out here in Boise for the last four days. It was awesome. People loved it. It’s some of the best stuff we’ve ever done, and I’m really proud of it.

One of the things we talked a lot about was funnels. We talked a lot about how to structure your funnel the right way, how to make a lot of money, and one thing I taught is that the concept of that amateurs focus on the front end, and smart business owners like you and me focus on the back end. How do we structure that? How do we put more of our effort over there? After that, I had a funny experience.

We’ve been getting our carpets cleaned for probably the last three years from this guy, and he’s a really nice guy. My wife always talks about him, but I’d never had a chance to meet him. So he was coming over to our house, and he was cleaning the carpet again. I’d say this is the sixth or seventh time we’ve hired him to clean the carpets. He’s made some pretty good money off of us. So I was talking to him, and he said, “Yeah, so you used to own CitySmart.com, right?” to which I said, “Yeah.” “City Smart”used to be, back before Groupon came out. When Groupon was only nine cities, we saw what they were doing, so we launched a Groupon here in Boise called City Smart, and we were growing it and everything, and then Groupon and Living Social came in and beat us out, unfortunately, but it was a lot of fun.

Supposedly we ran his offer on City Smart, and I asked him, “That’s interesting. How did it go for you?” and he goes, “It was horrible, the worst thing I ever did.” I said, “Really? What happened?” He said, “Well, I did it, and from that I ended up getting like, I don’t know, 150 customers. I went and cleaned the houses, and I made no money off of it. It was a complete waste of my time and energy.” I said, “Really? That’s interesting. So how did my wife meet you?” He goes, “Well she bought one of the things off of City Smart.” I was like, “Interesting,” and then I just kind of left it there, to see if he would pick up what I was laying down, and he totally missed it [laughs].

I just want for all of you guys who actually understand marketing and business to smile with me, because that guy didn’t realize that that little cheapy thing he’d run on City Smart, that at least us, if nobody else, at least us – we came in so far, and have hired him at least six or seven times since then, probably spent $1,000 or more with him, and we will continue to keep doing that, because he’s a nice guy and does a great job. I’m guessing those other 150 people we gave him – clients that we drove to him – I’m guessing a big percentage of those guys probably hired him to come back again and again. I would bet that if he looked at his stats from that City Smart promotion, it was probably the best thing that his business ever had – ever.

And that wasn’t even considering the fact that he’s a horrible sales person. If it wasn’t for my wife and the fact that when she meets somebody she likes, she just keeps hiring them over and over and over again, but he never follows up. If you look at one of my buddies, Joe Polish, he teaches carpet cleaners how to build these big businesses, and what he teaches carpet cleaners is that when someone comes in, get them on a continuity program where you go back every three months and clean their carpet. If he was to pitch us a maintenance fee, where we paid him ninety-seven bucks a month and then three times a year, he came and cleaned our carpets at a discount, we would have done it, and I’m betting out of those 150 other people, a lot of other people would have done it as well [laughs].

It just made me smile. It’s unfortunate, but it made me laugh, that someone like that, who got all of these leads from us was upset about the experience, whereas it’s exactly what’s fueling his business right now. I just want all of you guys to know, and I want to make sure all of you guys understand that I know [laughs] that amateurs focus on the front end. I would rather lose $20, $30, $40, $50 on the front end sale if it acquires a customer, because that customer, as you’ve seen with my wife and I and the carpet cleaning did buy, and we’ve continued to buy it over and over and over again.

So for you guys, think about your businesses. What are you being short-sighted on? What are you freaking out on because the front end is not quite right? What could you change around to make it a lot better for you and for your business?

I’m at the office. It’s a beautiful day. I’m excited. Remember, amateurs focus on the front end, and you guys, as people inside DotComSecrets and inside the “Marketing in Your Car” podcasts, you understand that we focus on the back end. That’s it for today, you guys. Have a great day, and we’ll talk to you guys all again, soon.

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How coaching people, through what you do naturally everyday, can change your business forever.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car”.

Hey, guys and gals. It’s been a while since I’ve done a podcast. It’s just been nose-to-the-grindstone, going crazy, and I just haven’t pulled up for a moment. I’m driving right now to get my haircut. My hair also has not had a chance [laughs] to have anyone pay attention to it. I look like a wookie. My hair is huge, so I’m getting it all cut down today, and getting prepared for an event that we’re doing here in Boise next week for all of our Inner Circle members. It’s going to be awesome. I’m really excited.

Here’s some backstory on it. It’s interesting. I’ve wanted to write a book for [laughs] probably ten years now. I keep trying, and it’s hard, so finally last year, I just decided, “I’ve got to do it.” You look at the best people, and they hire really good ghost writers, so I went to out there and tried to find a ghost writer. My biggest thing is that I wanted the book to be the same things I teach at events, the things that I believe in, and that we do every single day, and I wanted it to sound like it came from me. I went and researched a bunch of people, and I found someone who specializes in writing in your actual voice. She’s been awesome, and so I hired her. She’s not been cheap, by any stretch of the imagination, but she’s writing a book for me. It’s important.

She’s been working on the book, and doing the book’s been forcing me to set down, chapter by chapter, in excruciating detail, and record audios and mind maps, and everything in my core – the things I teach. It’s been really fun, as I have been getting out all of these things. What’s interesting is, she may have told me, or somebody else told me, “When you start writing a book is the first time that you really start understanding what you actually do.” It’s been interesting because the mechanics behind what we do every single day, when you try to teach them to somebody at this level, it changes. You really have to dig deeper, and you start getting connections in things you wouldn’t normally see or do. It’s kind of fascinating.

As I was doing this whole thing, I said, “You know what? I know on the back end we’re going to want to sell something, so I want to do an event where I actually go through and I teach all of this stuff as well, plus it will force me to get into these thoughts much deeper,” so I’m putting them down, and we mapped out an event, which is the event happening next week. It broke down everything we were teaching into twelve core secrets. You guys know “DotComSecrets”, so it’s “Twelve Dot Com Secrets”, and they’re all focused around doubling your traffic, conversion, or sales.

It’s been really, really fun. If you guys haven’t had that experience of writing a book yet, I really definitely recommend doing it. It actually reminds me a lot of my wrestling in high school. I was a great wrestler. I was a state champ, I think, second place in the country. I went to college, and then when I was in college, they started inviting me to come teach at wrestling camps.

I remember my first summer after my freshman year, going to these camps and teaching younger kids. I remember the big epiphany I had on things. I can remember working with these kids and teaching them stuff and showing them stuff, and they wouldn’t get it, so I’d have to break it down and break it down until the point where it was just so simple that they’d be like, “Oh, I can see how it works.” When I would do that, it made me start realizing why the wrestling move worked. –“The reason why this works for me is because of the way my positioning was this, the way my hips were this, my arm was here, my leg was here.” You start seeing things you don’t see at a level when you’re in it all of the time, right?

I really think that going back and teaching wrestling camps during the off season helped me a lot as a wrestler. I just was able to learn so much more about what I was doing. You never really see it, and after you realize that this is working because of this, this, and this, then you look at it like, “Well, where else can I apply those principals, those things that are working?” So that’s what’s been happening with this book. It’s been interesting.

One thing that I wanted to do was I wanted each chapter to be a stand-alone, yet they all kind of build on each other, but I wanted them to be like if you were struggling in one part of your business, you could take a chapter and just read it and learn something, but I was like, “I want to go deeper than that. I want it to be like where you can just pick up an image and look at the image, and the image – like if you haven’t read the chapter, you look at the image, and it won’t really make sense, but when you read the chapter, and you come back to that image, it makes perfect sense.” That way, it’s kind of burned into your memory, so if you come back a year later, and you’re flipping through the book, and you see this diagram or this sketched-out concept, instantly, everything you learned before will come back, and it will be just like a flood of memories –“Boom.” It will be there really, really fast.

And so, what’s cool is that for every single core concept I teach and I do and I believe in that we’ve been doing, I’ve been breaking them down into these really cool, drawn-out process flows, where Step One is this, Step Two, Step Three, and so on. I literally went through an entire yellow pad of paper sketching out all of these different concepts, and I’ve been taking pictures of them, and I send them to one of my designers, who then takes it, and makes it look like a really professionally hand-drawn image instead of my scribblings on yellow paper, but it’s really cool.

Today what was fun is one of the chapters – I have a whole chapter that’s when we get to the sales and the copywriting and how we sell stuff online section, that I call “Inception Secrets”. It comes from a presentation I actually gave at mine and Daegen Smith’s event, where I was talking about how in sales and marketing how much business has changed.

In the 1980s, the average attention span of a person was twenty minutes, and today, the average attention span is only nine seconds. Is that crazy? Every nine seconds, your brain’s looking for the next text message or Facebook or e-mail or whatever, and so you can’t focus. Because of that, that’s the world we’re selling in now. If you look at how sales has been taught for years, you know that these brilliant copywriters back in the day, Eugene Schwartz and all of these guys that you study and learn about, while what they taught was correct, and what they showed is true, it’s not as relevant today, just because the environment that we’re selling in is so different.

They would have evolved and gotten to the point where they could sell something in nine seconds, but they didn’t have to back then, and so the Inception Secrets is this evolution of copywriting and how it’s changed. One of the big things is that people that don’t want to be sold to. They love to buy things, and so if you can create a selling environment where they think it’s their idea – you’re basically showing them a process, and then all of the sudden they have this epiphany that they think is their epiphany. It’s kind of like the movie “Inception”, where they would place an idea inside of somebody’s dream which would cause them to do or say or change something.

That’s what the whole concept of that chapter was. It’s like, “How do you illustrate that? How do you create these epiphanies in people’s minds so that they don’t feel like they’re being sold, that they’re buying in?” That was a concept at Todd’s event, but it was like, “How do I materialize that in to a graph where you can look at it and have a process that you can follow to be able to create an inception?” It took me about a day to sit down and really map that out and all of the pieces and all of the things, and it will come out and say, “Boom. Here’s the graph. This is how you do it. Here’s how you create inception in somebody’s mind in the sales process.”

In the next chapter, I go through the different sales scripts for different points in the sales funnel, and I think there’re six core scripts that I use, and again, I go through and down and break those down into excruciating detail, like every single thing. It turned out so cool, like one of them is basically my copywriting template, and it’s based off of – I can’t remember who I learned it from initially. I think it was Gary Halbert, or it might have been Dan Kennedy, but anyway, I talk about the core fundamentals of a sales letter as a star, a story, and a solution.

A star is the person the sales letter is about. The story is their story, and the solution is the product that you’re offering, so it starts out with the three sections, but then inside each section, what’s the process you take somebody through? In the star section, I think there were five things that you take somebody through, and then in the story, I think, there were twelve things, and in the solution there were eighteen things. When you write your copy, you pull out these three diagrams, you start at number one, and, “Boom, boom, boom.” By the time you’ve gone through the whole thing, you’ve got your sales letter written very simply and very easily, knowing that you’re following a proven model.

I just went through all of my old sales letters and literally, I just had like this huge table of everything I’ve ever done or learned or created about writing copy and broke all of that stuff down into these little simple diagrams. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m excited for it.

“What’s the point of this podcast?” you may be asking. Outside of getting excited to see the book someday, and then hopefully getting excited for the event, if you’re coming – and I’m sure we’ll sell recordings of that later on down the road, but what’s the point of this podcast?

I think that the real point of it is a couple of things. First off, it comes back to when I talked about back when I was wrestling. I was a good wrestler. I was a state champ. I took second place in the country. I was an All-American. I did great in high school, yet it wasn’t until I started teaching other people what I was doing that I was able to break down things to a fundamental level where I really found out what made what I was doing work. When I learned that, I was able to apply it in so many different areas, and I think it’s the exact same thing with businesses. I think for you, whatever it is that you do, or you teach, or whatever your business is, I think one of the most powerful exercises you can do is try to teach it to somebody else, even if you’re not a “How to Make Money” or “How to Start a business” business.

If you want to grow your business, one core thing that you can do is sit down and work with other people showing them how to fix their business, or change their business, and start getting your thinking at a different level. You start realizing why what you’re doing is working, why your funnels look this way, why they’re converting, and which part’s not.

I think one of the biggest strategic advantages I’ve had over a lot of the other Internet marketing coaches is just first off, I’ve run a lot of businesses. I do a bunch of stuff. The second off is because our coaching business has been so successful for so many years, I’ve had a chance to work with hundreds and hundreds of different businesses every single year, so I have had a chance to look at different funnels and their processes and coach them through it. Again, I think I get a unique perspective on it because of that, and so I want to tell you guys that same kind of thing. If you’re in business and you want to grow, then focus on helping somebody else’s business, because it will help you so much more to start seeing those things. But then also from your content standpoint, whatever it is you’re selling, how can you teach people more? Even if you’re in a weight loss space, how can you get you more hands in, and teach you more, and break things down more so that you can become better and better at your craft and your art?

That’s the first big take-away, and I think the second one is, just because this was so valuable for me, is try to take all of the core things you teach, and again, if you’re writing a book, it could be fifty pages on a concept and how can you map it, how can you break that down into one piece of paper, sketched out, like in a process for Step One, Two, Three, et cetera. –“Here’s the way you do it.” I was thinking about this as I was going through, like what I do in business is very, very – there’s an art and a science. The art is the beauty, and you’re tweaking and testing and trying all sorts of things. And then there’s the science, which is like, “Here’s the specifics,” and I think the Internet, at least in my business, is more art than science. I think there’s so much art to it. It’s me taking my art, but I have to translate it into a scientific process so that other people can model it, right? I don’t know if that makes sense to you guys. I’m rambling a little bit, but it’s a really cool process.

What you do in your business is art. It’s hard to teach art to other people. I can tell people, “Here’s the conception,” and go into things, and hope that a lot of them do the stuff, but most people don’t, except for the other artists, right? For example, I remember teaching events, and I had a bunch of people there who just wanted to get a process down, and they can’t. I’m telling them all of these different ways they could do it, and they can’t figure it out because of that. People like, for example a Daegen Smith, who was in the room. He’s an artist. I could show him all of this stuff, and he could take that and turn it into his own art. But other people might take that, and it doesn’t help them, so to really help other people, I think, for the masses, because you’ll be able to help other people sharing your art, but if you can to tweak it so that you’re turning your art into a science, again, into a process, now other people can replicate it. That’s where it’s going to be so much better.

An example is one of my trainers that I work out with. I was asking him, “What should I be eating?” He’s like, “Well it depends. There’re all these elements, these variables, and it all depends on all of this stuff,” which is all true, and I get that. That’s the art of it, though. It’s looking down and being able to look at the person’s situation and their life and this and that, and we paint this picture of what’s going to work for you. That’s awesome, but for the masses, you can’t do that. How do you create a template where you can plug people in? That’s where I think the scalability comes in with your content, your offer, your art, and how you can scale it.

I’m in one of those kinds of things where I’ve been sitting at thousands of things, and I’ve been looking at them and mapping them out for the last ten hours, and so maybe I sound kind of weird to some of you guys listening, but I hope you got something out of it. I really hope that you guys take some time and take your art and break it down into a science. Try to make it something that’s a process. As you will see when my book comes out, it’s my best attempt possible to do that, and then second off, go and find somebody else who wants to be like you, coach them through it, because the process of coaching someone through your process and what you’re doing will open up so much stuff for you.

I am here, ready to get my hair cut. Ready for my head to be a little bit smaller [laughs], and excited for those of you guys who are coming out to the event next week. We’ll be hanging out, and we’ll be covering some stuff, and you guys will get the first copy of all of these worksheets I’ve been working on. I’ve been creating a huge book in a binder for everybody that has all of the stuff in there, and then the next time that it will be open will be when my book is done. Hopefully, we’ll have that done by the end of summer. I’m going to try to do one of those “New York Times ‘Best Seller’” campaigns. That’s one of those things on my list I want to accomplish someday, is to get on that list. That would be kind of fun. Hopefully this book will be the tool. I’ve spent more time and energy on this, I think, than any other project I’ve ever done [laughs], so hopefully this will be the tool to get us there, and change some people’s lives, and help get everyone thinking a little differently about their business. I’m excited, and I’m here, you guys, so I’ve got to bounce. I will talk to you all again soon. Thanks, everyone.

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An interesting look on how to build a hundred million dollar company.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to a very late-night “Marketing in Your Car”.

Hey, you guys, it is now 1:30 in the morning. I have almost officially been awake for twenty-four hours straight. I woke up yesterday [laughs] or today or whenever it was, at 4:30 in the morning. I came in early and spend three or four hours busting stuff out before everyone showed up. We worked all day, and we pulled mostly an all-nighter. I just started fading about twenty minutes ago. I just dropped Todd off at the hotel, and now I am driving back home to go get some sleep.

But as tired as I am right now, I don’t think I’ve ever been this fired up about a project ever in my life. We’ve created and we’ve sold a lot of stuff that I’m passionate about – a lot of things that I think are awesome and life-changing and all of those kinds of things, but this is the first time that…Today, I literally spent twelve to fourteen hours just building out funnels and click funnels, and I can’t tell you – I can literally do now what used to take me a programmer, a designer, and a webmaster – what it took three people to do, I can do now myself, and in a fraction of the time. I built an entire automated webinar in under an hour, and that’s because I was writing all of the copy. I was doing everything – the entire thing, from scratch, and got the whole thing done. We built out membership sites. We built out funnels, and I can’t even tell you how excited I am.

I think it’s going to change our industry. I think it’s going to change my personal life. I told everybody, “Even if we never sold this, what we’ve created would still be worth it, because this will change our business forever.” It just gets me excited and fired up about how we’re creating something that is that big. I just started thinking about how in most businesses, I think a lot of the time we sell ourselves short. We think about how to make money or what’s cool. How do we solve this problem for people? We create these little things. I’ve been doing this for a decade now, and this is the first time I feel like we’ve approached something and gone after something that’s bigger than any of us, and the fact that we’ve executed it as well as we have is just…I can’t even tell you how excited I am. It’s so cool.

So anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about is tonight while we were working and talking through things, we kept referencing a guy named Jason Fried. He’s a guy who I had a chance to actually interview a little while ago, maybe about two or three years ago now. He owns a company called 37 Signals. You guys have probably heard of him before. Actually they just changed their company name to Base Camp. They’re the creators of Base Camp.

A while ago they wrote this book called, “REWORK”. In fact, Stu McClaren, one of my favorite people in the world, was the one that recommended REWORK to me. We were at Pirate’s Cove at my Mastermind meeting, and we were talking about books and stuff, and he said, “Hey, you should read this book, ‘REWORK’,” so I went and bought it. It’s a really quick read. You could probably read the whole thing in maybe an hour and a half to two hours. It’s basically that Jason and the partners, when they were creating Base Camp, wrote a book about their experience with the business, and it was the exact opposite of what everybody else was doing.

I remember that I read the entire book, and I remember there were simple, fast chapters – just one concept at a time, and I remember going through it and thinking that every single mistake that I had made in my business, they addressed in REWORK [laughs] as a thing, and I was like, “Man, I wish we would have done this or that,” and so forth. I’ve probably read it three or four times over the last five or six years, and like I said, I had a chance to interview Jason on the book. He was a cool guy.

I remember the same month, I tried to interview him and also Gary Vaynerchuk. Jason was like, “Yeah, man, I’ll do it,” and jumped on the phone. Super low maintenance, it was awesome. Didn’t ask for anything, just giving back to the community, and Gary Vaynerchuk [laughs] said that he’d let me interview him if I bought five hundred copies of his book, which was about eight or ten grand or whatever that was. It was like, “Huh,” and anyway, just a really cool guy.

But some of the lessons – one of the things they talked about was when they created Base Camp. They were a website design company, and they were trying to do project management software, and there was no good project management software, so they went and they created their own. They created it the way they wanted it. They scratched through an itch, and created this thing that as it turned out, everybody wanted it, and, “Boom.” This launched their whole company. I think they have over a million users right now. I think that’s what they said. A million users, paying up to ninety-seven bucks a month, which is crazy.

We were talking about Click Funnels. We built Click Funnels to scratch our own itch, to try to speed up our process of launching offers and rolling out funnels. We created it for us, and now I have the privilege of sharing it with others. That’s the way I really look at it.

It’s interesting, but anyway, there’re so many good lessons in that book, I can’t recommend it enough, you guys. I think the fact that we’d read it – everyone on our team had read it multiple times. I think it’s really influenced a lot of our thoughts and our decisions in how we’re growing our company. We were looking at, as we started growing Click Funnels, the company’s called Etison, E-T-I-S-O-N, we were talking about how to grow it, and we saw that there were two different routes.

One route we saw was with a company called, “iContact”, where the owner, Ryan, went and took on funding and did the whole VC thing and brought in money and had millions and millions of dollars of investor money. He grew it that way and they weren’t really profitable until he sold out. And man, he sold out. I think they sold for about seventy or eighty million dollars. I’ve never built a company that way. I don’t understand that way, but that’s the way he did it, and so for a while, we were looking at it, and we were like, “Wow. Let’s build a company like that.”

But then you look at the other side, and you look at 37 Signals. You look at the way Jason has built it, and all of the lessons they teach in REWORK about only hiring when it’s painful, keeping it small, and that your goal isn’t to try to grow. Your goal can be just to serve people and all of these lessons that are counter to what the rest of the world teaches, and I think we made a decision as a team that we wanted to do it this way – the way that the guys in 37 Signals did. That’s the way that fits into our lifestyle and what we want to do. Like I say, I can’t recommend that book enough.

They also came out with another book recently, called “REMOTE”, and what’s interesting about REMOTE is, if you guys watch “TED Talks” – I think it’s at Ted.com – you search for Jason Fried. He gave a TED Talk about this as well, what the book’s all about. He talked about [laughs] – and this week’s been a perfect example of it. He talked about how when you need to get work done, where do you go? Nobody says, “I go to the office to get work done.” They say, “Well, I come in earlier. I stay late,” or, “I do it during my lunch hour.”

It’s interesting how people at work don’t get work done [laughs], right? They’re talking. They’re doing all of this kind of stuff, and he talked about the fact that if you send all of your employees home and have people work remotely, how much more stuff you can get done, because at work, people don’t work. They’re talking. They’re hanging out. All of this other stuff’s happening. I remember in the TED Talk, he’s talking about, “Would you rather have an employee…?” like everyone’s employees are at the office so that they can be focused, but what if your employee was at home watching TV all day while they were working? If they were watching TV, yes, they’d be distracted a little bit, but that’s a lot less distracting than the boss coming in, or the secretary, or the water cooler talk, or every single person passing through their desk area that wants to communicate and chat. It was interesting when he put it into that perspective, and the book, REMOTE, is all about that – having everybody start working remotely.

As we’re building this new company and thinking a lot about these types of things, and the direction we want to move with things, and how to structure things, and how to grow, I really think that the guys that we’re looking at and I think that the guys that you should be looking at, as well, is 37 Signals, or Base Camp is their new company name. So definitely get REWORK, get REMOTE. It could be your reading for this weekend. Those books are worth their weight in gold, I can tell you that much for sure.

Anyway, you guys, I am home. It’s now 1:47 in the morning. I’m going to get some sleep. I’m taking my three-year-old son to the zoo tomorrow morning, which is super exciting. I’m fired up. That’s the game plan.

Look out you guys. Click Funnel’s coming soon. We’re going to open our second wave of beta next week, and we’re going to roll that for about a month, because we’re going on vacation [laughs]. My family and Todd’s family, and so when we get back from vacation is when we’re going to do the big roll out, but it’s all coming soon. All of the pieces are falling together.

All right, guys, I am in my garage, so I’m going to check out, and I will talk to you soon.

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The new pre-frame that almost always doubles conversions on any type of Facebook traffic campaigns.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to a beautiful, sunny “Marketing in Your Car”.

All right, everyone. I hope you’re having an awesome day. My first question for everyone out there is, “Do you guys think we should do new theme song for our podcast?” [laughs] I keep getting comments about it. It’s funny, because I bought the domain, MarketingInYourCar, almost ten years ago. When podcasts first came out, I was like, “That’d be a cool idea for a podcast, so I’m going to buy that.” Then one of my buddies, Paul Colgin, had a friend who used to write jingles, and he’s like, “You should have him write a jingle for your podcast.” So he wrote that almost ten years ago, and then it was almost ten years later that I finally worked on a podcast [laughs]. We put it in there, and it’s been kind of funny.

Today, I have something fun to tell you guys about, because I think this is something that could be a game changer for most of you guys. I don’t want you to dismiss it, because I almost dismissed it. I actually did dismiss it once. The second time, it was like someone hit me in the head with a bell, and I thought, “Ah, I see what I’m missing.”

In my high-end $21,000 Mastermind group that Daegan Smith and I run, one of the guys in our group is a guy named Glen Ledwell. He owns MindMovies.com. At our first Mastermind meeting, he was talking about in their business how they never get traffic from Facebook to convert – that for whatever reason, it just wouldn’t work, and so they were trying all of these different things. He said that finally they decided just to add a quiz in front of their landing page. They have their landing page, and all they did was add this little quiz, and the quiz is not even a real quiz. It doesn’t do anything. It asks five or six questions about something, and then it lands on a page that has their sales video. Actually for them, it was landing on a webinar registration page, and then they just recently did one with an “Invisible Funnel” webinar page as well – [coughs] excuse me – so that was the concept, right?

He showed us the numbers. At the first Mastermind, he said, “Hey, we did this, and it doubled our conversions,” and I’m like, “Oh, nice.” I didn’t think much about it. Then at the last one, he showed us, and he actually showed us some very specific numbers. It took these campaigns that were at break-even or losing on Facebook and instantly doubled them. Let’s say he was getting a 1.3 percent conversion rate. He ended up getting 2.6 or higher conversion rate, not by changing anything, just by adding a quiz in the front of it. I thought, “Man, isn’t that interesting?”

So right now, I’ve been working on this new campaign, and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to add a quiz in front of this campaign and just see what happens.” That’s what we’re doing right now. Hopefully in the next day or two, I’m rolling out this new funnel thing that we’re doing, and you’ll notice in the front of it, it’s got a quiz. The quiz asks six different questions, but it doesn’t really do much, other than just ask questions, and then it lands them on a page to sign up for something that costs a little more money. I’m really excited to see the test of that versus just going directly to the page, and seeing what happens. I’m really interested.

For you guys, especially if you’re driving traffic from Facebook, I recommend trying that – try and put a little quiz. Again, the quiz is very simple. You’ll see mine. Mine’s basically, “Take this quick two-minute quiz, and find out how to double your traffic, conversions, and sales.” The first question is, “Where did you hear about us from?” and they pick an option. The next step is, “How much traffic are you currently getting on your site?” The next step is, “How many split tests do you run?” The next step is, “What are your…” Just some basic questions just to get them engaged. It’s an engagement device, where they start taking these little micro-commitments and clicking on something. They’re taking this quiz, and for whatever reason – it doesn’t make logical sense to me – for whatever reason, it gets somebody in a state where more people now will take action, just because they’re clicking on these buttons, and you’re asking them questions.

The other interesting thing, now that I think about it is, I went to this Mastermind group earlier this year. It’s called the “Ocean’s Four Mastermind Group”, with a bunch of guys, and one of the guys, Ryan LeVeck, was talking about how he quizzes in all of the markets that he’s in, as well, and how great of a big thing it is. I think it might be the new big thing, you guys, so if you’re running campaigns on Facebook, try a little mini quiz ahead, before you land somebody on your sales video page, and just see what happens. I think you’ll be amazed with the results. I know I’m excited to find out, and I will return and report and let you guys know what we find out in the next week or so, after we run our first real quiz.

I’m at the office. I’m going to go implement this stuff, and I will talk to you guys soon.

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Short message from Russell on his drive home from the tournament. And how, what he learned this weekend, relates to your business.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I welcome you to the Marketing in Your Car podcast. As you can tell right now, my voice is almost gone. Hopefully I will make it for the next four or five minutes to share with you my weekend.

Basically, I am guessing there are a lot of people listening for the very first time. I just finished my Jiu Jitsu tournament and everyone is asking me. I thought, “Instead of telling them the answer, I am going to make them all go to the podcast and listen to hear what happened.” That is the game plan here; I am going to tell you what is happening.

If you are a first-time listener, welcome. You are going to love it. Every day I do a five or six-minute podcast as I am driving to the office. I share a couple of cool marketing tips. I want to welcome you as you start listening. Please listen to some of the backup episodes. Usually we talk a lot more about marketing, conversions, and sales and fun stuff.

I want to welcome you. I had a very fun tournament. The last time I competed in Jiu Jitsu was a year and a half ago. I do not consider myself a Jiu Jitsu guy; I am still a wrestler who is trying to learn Jiu Jitsu.

It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of cool stuff. I won a couple of matches and lost a couple of matches. It is fun to get back out there and try to kill yourself.

I have a couple of lessons I learned this weekend that are valuable from a marketing standpoint, as well. First, I am still kind of learning all the rules. In my first match I went out there against this dude with a long beard.

Just to put this in perspective, I still cannot grow a beard. This dude had a six-inch long beard. We started rolling and I almost took him out at the beginning. I did not quite get it and he put me in his guard, so we had no points. It was zero to zero. Then, literally, he locked his guard so tight that I could not get out of it, so the match ended zero to zero.

I assumed, as a wrestler, that we would go into overtime and I would have a chance to take him down again. I did not think he was that good. However, the match ended and he got the win and I was super confused. I found out the rules afterwards and that he basically won.

The first lesson I learned was that when you go into any situation, you have to understand the rules. I wish I had understood because I would have done a lot of things differently. I would have scrambled better and tried to open him up more. I thought we were tied, so I thought, “You know what? I am just going to hang out here until we can break and go into overtime.” Apparently, they do not do that in Jiu Jitsu.

I think that many times in business people just do not know the rules either. You get into something and you are scared to do stuff. You think, “Should I do this or that?” You do not realize where your boundaries are. Marketing is one of those things where you have to understand your boundaries because you have to push them. You have to be a bit aggressive in order to get people’s attention. It is interesting. You are competing against so many other people. It is kind of funny. In my first eight or nine years in business I never looked at it as a competition.

In January, I had a chance to go to an event and hear Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank” speak, and it was interesting. He was talking. He’s the bald guy on Shark Tank who’s just always angry and that kind of stuff, but he was talking [coughs] – excuse me – and he was talking about how business is like a war. He was like, “You have to go out there and find out who your competitors are. Your job is really to go out there and figure out how you can beat them.”

I’ve never looked at business that way. I thought it was always just like, “Oh, everyone’s happy. Let’s all get along,” and we’ve done well with that, but if you want to dominate your space and become the number one person, you’ve got to look at it more like a war, or like a wrestling match, or jiu jitsu, or whatever, where you’ve got to beat them. You’ve got to figure out the strategic things behind it, and part of it is understanding the rules – what you can and can’t do, and then after you know that, go and push it. Push the envelope hard to beat them.

Then the next is, because this is give and take, it’s just like a wrestling match or a jiu jitsu match. You’re going back and forth. I think more of us need to get more aggressive in our businesses a little bit and realize that we’re competing with other people. Find out who your competition is now, and how you dominate, how you beat those guys. Just something to think about.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last little while, especially as we’re getting close to launching Click Funnels. We’re going head to head against some big companies. One of our biggest competitors just got $5 million in VC funding, so they’re starting out with a bunch of cash and people and a team and an existing customer base, and we’re coming head to head against them. I don’t think they’re going to know what hit them. We’re going to attack and it’s going to be fun. We’re going to try to take their customer base very, very quickly. It’s war. It’s going to be fun.

Then some of the other software products we’re going to be competing with are big companies – companies like Infusionsoft. It’s a war that I’m ready for, and a war that I’m going to win, and I’m excited for it. Think about that with your business. Think about how you can be more aggressive, who you’re competing against, and how you can beat them.

Now a lot of times, there’re rooms for partnerships and friends and that kind of thing. At the same time, you’ve got to look at this as a sport. Business really is a sport.

Back to the jiu jitsu tournament. I lost that first match, and I won my next two matches. One guy, I came in for a headlock, and I choked him out on his feet. He literally went completely out, like passed out. He started attacking. I attacked once, and he was gone, and so I feel kind of bad. He just sat on the mat for four or five minutes afterwards trying to come to. That was kind of fun, and then the guy that I lost my first match to, he lost, so I had a chance to go against him again, and this time we wrestled. I wrestled a lot better, and then he caught me in this weird funky arm bar thing that I had to tap, which is no fun, by the way. Tapping’s the worst thing in the world. And then I went to some other divisions. I went to this “absolute” thing, and I had to wrestle some big huge dudes who were way bigger than me, but anyway, I had a fun time. I’m glad to be back. My voice is shot. I’m almost home. I’m going to go take a bath and then pass out for three or four days and then get back to work, so it should be fun.

Anyway, for all of you guys out there who are thinking about living your dreams. You’re nervous. You’re scared. Hopefully, you’ll get some inspiration that me as a 34-year-old dude that hasn’t really competed in ten or twelve years, just went up against a bunch of young guys who trained a lot more than me and just went head to head. I hope that gives you some inspiration to really just – don’t be afraid of things. Just go out there and do it. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You get tapped out. You lose some money. Whatever the worst case scenario is, it’s really not that bad. It’s more about the journey and the fun and having some joy in it.

That’s it for today, everyone. I am home. I’m going to go pass out. Thanks for listening, and if this is your first time, please tune in. We’ll share a lot more cool marketing and sales stuff, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Thanks, everybody, and we’ll talk to you next week.

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The only strategy you need to get stuff done today.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell and welcome to another episode of Marketing in Your Car! Yesterday I pretty much just talked about Jiu Jitsu and kind of spun it with some business at the end.

Today may be kind of similar. No, there are some good lessons. Tomorrow I am fighting in a Jiu Jitsu tournament. I am in three different divisions, so I probably have ten to 15 matches tomorrow as long as I don’t get tapped out. It is going to be a lot of work and a lot of fun.

One thing, though, is that I weigh-in tonight. Tonight I have to weigh seven pounds lighter than I weigh right now. A lot of you are asking, “How do you lose seven pounds in a day, Russell?” The reality is that I am going to lose seven pounds in less than an hour.

We do it the old school way like we used to do it in wrestling. In fact, I went to my garage and I found a huge thing we had which had all of my old weight-cutting clothes. I had my plastics; I had my sweat suits; I had everything. For me, it was really exciting and nostalgic. It brought back so many memories. There were even my old t-shirts I used to cut weight were in there, my sweatpants, and everything.

I had some fun today and put them on. The pants with my plastics are pretty tight now. I am not quite the size I used to be, unfortunately. It was very, very fun.

Today I am going to work for a couple of hours and then head over to the gym, put on my plastics, and wrestle hard for an hour. In an hour—especially for the fact that I am not fat but I have some stuff on me—I should be able to lose the seven pounds in less than an hour. In fact, my record from cutting weight was 12 pounds in an hour. That was the most I ever did. My record for most total weight loss in a week was 30 pounds.

It is not natural weight loss. Do not ask me to teach you the secret to losing 30 pounds in a week. It is all dehydration. You put these plastic suits on and they suck the water out of you. You literally do not drink for three or four days. It makes me laugh when people say, “You can live without food for a week, but you cannot live without water for more than a day.” That is B.S. I have lived without water for multiple days while sucking water out of my body. It is definitely possible.

It is interesting that when you start cutting weight you stop eating and you stop drinking. Then you start trying to suck the water out of your body. As soon as you start getting dehydrated, your hunger pains disappear. It is kind of cool. You are not hungry, but you are thirsty the whole time. As soon as you weigh in you drink something and boom! Your hunger pains come back. It is interesting. Thirst is definitely worse than food.

Why am I telling you this? First, I am excited and I am going to cut weight today which is kind of a fun thing. The second thing is that I was thinking today about how we are in the middle of a huge project which we are about to launch. You have probably all heard of it, ClickFunnels. I am trying to get all of these things out.

Last night at 10:00 at night I was not done with our stuff. I came back into the office and worked for another three hours to get stuff done. One of my buddies, Xan Spencer (some of you know him) is one of the students who went through one of our courses a while ago. They actually won a Corvette from us and built a huge business.

He moved to Boise, he and his wife, a while ago and they are launching a new business. I showed up at the office last night at 10:00 and he was in there stuffing envelopes for these bracelets he is selling now. I thought, “Isn’t this awesome? We have entrepreneurs here late at night busting their butts to make their dreams come true.”

I was thinking about next week when Todd, our programmer for ClickFunnels, is flying in and we will probably pull five or six all-nighters in a row to get this thing done so we can roll it out and launch it the next week.

I want to talk to you about the fact that you have to set deadlines, otherwise nothing ever gets done. If I did not have weigh-ins tonight at 6:00, I would never lose these seven pounds. Because I do, an hour before I am going to suck it out, I will make weight, and I will weigh-in. If I did not have a deadline for launching ClickFunnels, it would never get done. Because there is a deadline, we are going to pull all-nighters until it is done.

I find it interesting that it does not matter if my deadline is a week from now or six months from now. Any way I do it, the week before I will be pulling all-nighters every single night to get it done. It is just the way it always works.

There is a tape I bought a long time ago from John Carlton and Gary Halbert. They were talking about the concept of silver or lead, “plata o plomo” or something like that. The concept was that when the Mexican drug lords down in Mexico want to change a law, do they try to run it through congress? Congress would be, “No!” We’re not giving you that law. Are you crazy?”

What they do is break into their homes that night, find the people who are the decision-makers, and they come to them with a gun and a bag of silver. They say, “You have two options. You need to change this law. You can do it through “plata or plomo,” through silver or lead. Either we will shoot you and you will die or we will bribe you, give you money, and you will change the law.”

When you have those two options, “plata o plomo,” lead or silver, what are you going to choose? You are always going to choose the money, right? It is a no-brainer, so that is what they do.

When I first heard that story, I started thinking of it for myself. I have to set “silver or lead” deadlines or else nothing will ever happen. Maybe it is just me, but if I do not have those deadlines, they will not happen. When I pick any project, I say, “This is the project and this is the deadline. This is when it has to be done.”

It is not like, “Oh, here is a soft deadline. Hopefully, eventually it will get done.” When you do that, it will keep moving forever. The second you set a hard date and say, “This is the day it will happen, somehow, magically, it will happen. It does not matter if it is a week from now, a month from now, six months or a year from now. Those last two or three days you will be pulling all-nighters to get it done. It is just the way it is. I do not care how much you plan. The week before or a couple nights before, you are going to have to kill yourself to get it done.

Most people just keep pushing it and pushing it. Because of this, they never get to their goal; they never actually hit it. It gets pushed into infinity.

For you guys, I recommend that for all your core projects you set a “silver or lead” deadline. It does not have to be on the project as a whole. Sometimes it is so massive it is hard to do it. Set a goal for each element, though. You can say, “This is step number one in this process I am doing or creating. Step number one is this and my silver or lead deadline is June 16th and it will happen on that day. It is not allowed to happen on June 17th. If I cannot sleep for three days, I will not sleep for three days because it is silver or lead; either I am going to get cash from this or I am going to die.”

If you can trick your mind to really believe this, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. People always ask me, “Russell, how do you get so much stuff done?” A lot of it is because of my “silver or lead” deadlines. This is it. In my head I know this is the date and we cannot miss it. Sure, we could miss it, push it, and bump it another week or two. However, when you do that, it just keeps getting bumped and keeps getting bumped.

In my business, in my career, there have been the times I have been soft on my deadlines. We had a site we launched a little while ago and we literally kept pushing it for six months from our initial deadline. We said, “Oh, we will do it,” and we kept pushing it and pushing it. Six months later we finally sat down and said, “Boom! This is the ‘silver or lead’ deadline. It has to happen!” Guess what? It happened.

I hoped this helps you guys understand how to get stuff done. It is how I am going to make weight tonight. I am going to lose seven pounds in an hour. It is how we are going to get 10,000 people on ClickFunnels. It is how we are going to increase our coaching. All these things we are doing have “silver or lead” deadlines attached. If you do not have them yet, it is time to start creating them for yourself.

This is what I have for today. I am at the bank and I am going to pull some money out because my wife has been remodeling our house and this is what husbands do, right? That is my plan for right now. I appreciate you guys and I will let you know how the tournament goes after it is all said and done. Talk to you guys soon.

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Structuring your business so you can do what you really love.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome to another exciting episode of Marketing in Your Car.

Hey, guys. Today it is kind of raining and I am heading to the office. I am actually excited because this weekend I have a Jiu Jitsu tournament. I am fired up! I have not competed in about 18 months or even more than that.

Here is my Jiu Jitsu journey. As most of you know, I was a wrestler through high school. I was a high school state champ and I took second place in the country. I was an All American in high school. I wrestled with BYU for a year and they cut the wrestling team, so I went to Boise State for the last four years. My senior year I ended up being ranked 14th when it all ended, I think. I did not quite meet my goals, but I did have a lot of fun. Still, my favorite thing in the world is wrestling, by far.

In my senior year, for all the UFC guys out there, I wrestled Johny Hendricks my senior year and I lost to him by one point. That little punk, I was actually turning him in a power half, I had the leg right and I was turning him, and he started screaming like a little girl. The ref stopped the mat and did not give me any points. If the ref stops something when you are in a turning position, you should get at least two, if not three, points. I did not get the points and he ended up winning by one point.

For all you guys who are Johny Hendricks fans, he cried when I tried to turn him. There you go.

Back to this, I got done wrestling, I got into business, and I got fat. I had a lot of fun and a few years later I decided I wanted to start wrestling again. We built an entire wrestling team out here. I did a podcast about it in the past, so I am not going to talk through the whole story. It went for a little while and then we had business issues and everything went crazy, so we had to shut it down.

I did not doing anything for a couple of years. Then one day I was flying home from Vegas and one of my buddies who wrestled at Boise State was on the flight. We sat next to each other and we were talking. He said, “Yeah, I am doing Jiu Jitsu now,” and he was really good.

I said, “Wow,” and he said, “Jiu Jitsu is kind of like wrestling for old, fat people. You do not have to be in good shape to be really good.”

I said, “That’s awesome! I might actually be good at that. My only thing is I could not take a punch. If I got punched, I would be pretty embarrassed. I would start crying or something.”

He said, “No, there is no punching in Jiu Jitsu. It is like wrestling, except you can tap somebody or choke them out or whatever.”

I said, “All right. That would be kind of fun. I might try that.” I got home and I was talking to one of my buddies who did Jiu Jitsu and he said, “There is a tournament this weekend. You should go to it.”

I said, “All right. I have nothing else to do, so I might as well show up.” I literally went to one practice the night before the tournament and I had somebody show me the basics of Jiu Jitsu. I did not know much other than that and I said, “I’m ready to go.”

I went to the tournament the next day and my very first match I did gi. I had to borrow some guy’s gi because I did not know what that was at the time. I put this gi on and I went out there. I was going against the first guy and I was beating him like a little girl and I thought, “This is the easiest sport in the world!” I was picking him up and slamming him down.

I found out if you put your knee on their belly you get four points. I thought, “Sweet!” and I just kept doing knee on belly over and over. I beat this guy 16 to nothing and just thrashed him. All of a sudden he reached up and grabbed my collar on my gi and he did some weird, funky thing. Everything started getting dark.

I thought, “Oh, no! What do I do?” He was choking me out. My eyes started getting hazy and he started getting darker and darker. I thought, “I don’t want to tap out. This is embarrassing! I was killing this guy. I don’t want to tap out!” Eventually I was almost gone and I tapped.

It was the worst feeling in the world. Getting pinned in wrestling is bad, but at least you can tell a story in your mind about how it did not really happen. When you tap, you have to tap and it is pretty embarrassing.

After that in the next three or four matches in gi I won. I had to take second or third in the tournament. They had no gi afterwards which, by the way, I found out I loved much more. I did no gi and in the very first match I was beating a guy and then I got caught in a triangle lock. I had never seen this before and I had to tap out. In the next match it was the same thing. I got caught in a triangle lock and got tapped out.

I thought, “Man, this is frustrating.” I was beating the guys on our feet every single time, but on the mat they triangle locked me. I remember walking out that day and a guy grabbed me. He was an old wrestler and he said, “Hey, just so you know, triangle is like kryptonite for wrestlers. All you wrestlers, when you take some guy and you cover—which is the setup for a triangle—if you just learn some basic Jiu Jitsu, you will be able to stop that from every happening.”

I thought, “All right, man. I am going to learn this thing.” I went back to the drawing board and started practicing. I had some buddies that were doing it; it was not formal practicing. We did it once or twice a week for the next six months or so. It was just the basics of learning not to get triangle. That was the core concept.

I participated in another tournament and I won both styles which is cool. Six months later there was another tournament and I won in both styles there. It was pretty fun, but then life happened and I kind of forgot about it for a while. I missed the next tournament, but I thought, “I want to keep doing it.”

About eight months ago or so, I decided that I wanted to get good at Jiu Jitsu. I did not have anything else going on. I was just doing business and family and everything. There was a lot happening, but I thought I could carve out a couple of hours a week just to do this and it would be fun. It is close to wrestling and it would be fun to do.

I hired a guy named Jason Flynn. He is a stud; he is a black belt dude. He had classes, but I thought, “I don’t want to do classes. I just want to do private one-on-ones with you twice a week.” I started paying him for that and for the last eight months I have been twice a week one-on-ones with this dude who is one of the toughest people I have ever met.

It has been very, very good. I finally learned the art of Jiu Jitsu which is fun. The tournament this weekend will be the first time I have competed in Jiu Jitsu where I actually know how to do Jiu Jitsu, so it will be fun. I am excited. I have to practice today and I have to cut weight tomorrow because I am a little heavy. I have to lose five pounds tomorrow. In about 45 minutes to an hour I should be able to lose that and have weigh-ins.

The party starts on Saturday. That is what is happening. I know it has nothing to do with marketing, but it has a lot to do with what I am passionate about. For all of you out there who have a passion, for me, if I could go back, if I could give away my business and start wresting as a freshman in college, I would do it in a heartbeat, no questions asked. I would walk away in a heartbeat.

I think all of you have something like that; a passion, something you love or you miss that you did in your prior life, right? I would try to look at your business as something that can facilitate that. All of us get into business for a purpose. You got in because you wanted freedom or time or whatever it is. After a while you get so addicted to the game that all the other stuff falls away and I think that is a shame.

For me, it was almost seven or eight years where I completely forgot about the stuff I loved. Make it a priority that your business is created in a way to fuel your real passions. Your business can be a passion, but do not let it be the core driver. Otherwise, I think you will get burned out and you will not love it long term.

There is my advice for today. For all of you guys out there, go get a workout in; go do some Jiu Jitsu; go do whatever it is you love to do and then get back to work and let’s make some money.

Thanks, everybody. We’ll talk to you soon.

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Why Russell deleted his entire webinar and spent the last 4 hours rebuilding it from scratch.

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Good morning, everyone. This is Russell. It is 4:13 A.M. and I am just driving home from the office. I want to welcome you to a late-night, special edition of Marketing in Your Car.

You guys probably think I am crazy, but it is definitely 4:13 A.M. and I have a Webinar eight hours from now which I am very excited about. We have been pruning it all week long. Hopefully most of you will be on there because it is going to be awesome.

This week has been so crammed with everything. I am working with a writer to write my book; we are trying to launch ClickFunnels, and a lot of other stuff. Every day I kept trying to find time to prepare the Webinar and I just have not had the time. It has been kind of crazy.

As you know from my last podcast, I want to do Jiu Jitsu and lift weights and everything else. Eventually it comes down to crunch time and you just kind of do it.

I worked on it today for a while and got my slides finished up. They are not finished, but I had four or five slides done when I left the office. I really needed to come back to the office to get some stuff done, so I came back to the office. It has been a long time since I have written a brand new Webinar from scratch. There was a time when I was writing a Webinar almost every month and I was very good at it.

When Automated Webinars came out, we did a DotComSecrets local one. That one just blew up. I think we did a million dollars the first 90 days with it. That one went on to do about $3 million. For almost a year I did not write another Webinar and then I wrote the DotComSecrets X Webinar. This one has been crushing it now for almost two years now. Maybe it is more than two years.

Anyway, I have gotten lazy. I have not had to do a Webinar for a long time and I have kind of forgotten how to do them. I am trying to get back into the flow of it and do stuff. I am going through a lot of notes and I remembered a guy who is really crushing it on Webinars. I almost paid him $50,000 to write a Webinar for me, for my Supplement Secrets offer. It kind of fell through last minute. I still may do it, but we did not end up doing it for this product.

Wow, there is somebody else out here driving at 4:00 in the morning. How strange is that? I am on some random, small road, and we came to a T and we both came at the very same time. That’s interesting.

I almost paid this dude $50,000 to do Webinars. His name is Jason Fladlien and he is crushing it with Webinars right now. It kind of fell through at the last minute and I was wondering if he had anything to teach in his Webinar system. I would be very curious to look at it to get some ideas.

I went to his Web site and there was a $1,000 product and a $50 product about how he does his Webinars. I thought, “Well, I don’t have time to go through a $1,000 course in the next hour.” It was probably about 10:00 at night when I got into the office and started doing this research.

I bought the $50 course. It was an ebook, so I printed it out and started looking through it. Actually, before I printed it out I scrolled through the PDF to see if it was going to be of value. I started scrolling through very quickly and I thought, “Oh, man! This is really, really good stuff.” There were different ways to present a Webinar which I have not done before.

One core concept, I am not sure if I did a Webinar or a podcast on this. I may have just talked about it at our mastermind group. It was talking about finding the one core thing and focusing on one belief, not trying to get people to believe a lot of things.

I was looking at the existing presentation I was creating. I was trying to get people to believe three or four things and Jason’s template works very much on the one belief thing. I took all my slides, all my notes, everything I had worked on for four or five hours today at the office, plus everything I had done up to that point and I deleted it all. I read through an 80-page ebook in an hour-and-a-half or so and remapped the entire thing.

I then spent from midnight until 4:00 A.M. building out the slides for my presentation. They are not quite finished yet. I would say they are probably about 80% finished, but I am excited.

Anyway, I just got home. I am going to take a nap. My wife is going to lift weights in two hours and then the kids should get up in three hours. Three hours from now my kids will be awake jumping on me. I have to get them breakfast and then I will hopefully have enough energy to come back, and finish the slides.

Also, we do not have the order page up or anything. I have to get the order sales page to flow and the product is not completely finished either. It is close. I have to do all that stuff before noon Mountain Time which is less than eight hours from now.

Wish me luck! I am excited to see what happens. I will report back and let you know if I either bomb or if it is a huge success. I think it should be good, though. I think the pitch is pretty powerful. It is something I would pay for in a heartbeat. It should be good.

That is the game plan. I am going to get some sleep. I appreciate you guys listening. Hopefully you get a kick out of the fact that I am still up. I will talk to you guys soon.

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Four life lessons that Russell learned this week, that you can implement to, hopefully, make your life a little bit better.

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Hey, everybody. This is Russell Brunson and I am doing a special Marketing in Your Car from inside the Mommy Mobile. Yes, I am inside my wife’s car and I am ready to do a great podcast.

I have no idea what direction we are going to go today on this podcast. Usually I have a theme I want to think about, but I have a lot of cool stuff happening and I am excited, so I am going to just start rambling. Hopefully something cool will come out of it and you will get some value out of it.

First, right now I am on day seven of my modified juice fast and I feel amazing. I want to talk about this because I think I just stumbled on something new. I am not sure if it is totally healthy and I may very well die in the near future from it, but I think it is awesome.

This is what I am doing. When I walk up in the morning I do my Bullet-proof hot chocolate which is the Mormon version of Bullet-proof coffee. It consists of chocolate, organic grass-fed Kerrygold butter, MCT oil, cocoa powder, and some Stevia. I blend it up and that is my breakfast in the morning. When I do this, I am not hungry and I feel pretty good the rest of the day. It is pretty awesome.

The second step is that I have been juicing and I was making a gallon of juice per day. This was fun, but all my juices kind of taste nasty because I just juice everything I can find in one huge gallon jug. I carry it around all day and keep drinking it.

I don’t mind it, but it is kind of gross, so I went to a place called Tree City here in Boise. They have this juice cleanse. Every day I go in the morning and they have six juices for me to drink throughout the day, so I have been drinking those. At night, just because everyone else is eating and I feel guilty (I don’t feel guilty, actually; I just get hungry) I usually eat some eggs. I don’t eat carbs, but just eggs.

I have done this now for almost a week and I feel awesome. I am not as tired; I have energy; I am not craving food. Well, I am not going to lie. When I do crave something in the middle of the day, I have been eating Quest Nutrition Bars. From a nutritional standpoint, they are the best protein bar you can get in the world. From a taste standpoint, it is like eating candy. I could live on Quest bars alone. You can go to their Web site, QuestNutrition.com, and look for the cookies and cream one. Man! It is like eating Oreo cookies, but a thousand times better. They are all super high protein and very low carbs.

This is what I have been doing.

Second, I am actually driving right now to Jiu Jitsu. This week has been so slammed and so crazy. Typically, when I am this busy I cancel my Jiu Jitsu. Today my wife said, “You really should just cancel it.”

I said, “You know what? No! This is the thing I look forward to.” This is the reward at the end of the tunnel for me. It is going to beat up dudes. I don’t know why, but it is so appealing to me. This is what I want to do.

So many times we cut out the part of our life that brings us a lot of happiness because of work and other things. I was thinking about this in the case of many of us. Everyone has the things they like to do, right? Many times life gets in the way of those things. We need to make it more of a priority and say, “Look, this is what I do.”

For me right now it is Jiu Jitsu. Twice a week I want to do it, I am going to do it, and everything else has to fall to the side because I am going to do it; that is, outside of my family. With work, many times it fills the space you give it. If you have eight hours a day, it will fill eight hours. If you have 20 hours a day, it will fill 20 hours. Anyway, make sure you tie in those things you really want to do.

The reason we became entrepreneurs is that we wanted to do a bunch of stuff. We wanted more time, more money, more freedom, or more whatever. However, we then shackle ourselves down with our businesses to the point where because of our business we cannot do the stuff we want to do. It is kind of interesting.

There is another life lesson for today.

What else? Oh, the next thing is ClickFunnels. We are almost done with our initial beta. I cannot tell you how excited I am. I literally built an entire membership site last night in 20 minutes from start to finish to everything. It used to take a ton of time.

There is one limitation: You can only do a membership site the way we have it. If you want a fancy membership sites with a lot of other stuff, you have to use WishList Member (that’s a plug for Stu, my man!). However, if you want a basic membership site, man! In 20 minutes, start to finish, I had a membership site that I could start selling.

We were going through sales funnels that fast, automated Webinars; I am going through and creating all of these right now. Even if I never sold a single license to ClickFunnels, it will change my business forever. Now we can sell it and share it with everybody else in the world which is very, very exciting. It is going to be awesome.

We also just hired a full-time accountant which is a crazy thing. She has been coming in. This is the first time in my business where I have had someone do tons of in depth, not analytics, but almost like an autopsy. It is like doing an autopsy of our books, digging deep and trying to figure out everything. Where is the money coming from? Where is it going? Which of our offers are profitable? Which are not profitable?

Right now everything we do kind of gets lumped together, so at the end of the month we are thinking, “Yeah! We are profitable!” I have been learning one thing from my favorite show The Profit. Today, by the way, is the season finale. It is interesting because he goes into companies and tries to find where the profit is on each of the things they are selling. He gets rid of all the low-profit stuff and tries to sell more of the high-profit stuff.

Last night’s episode they were in a pie company. This pie company had an 80% margin on their key lime pie and they had a 10% profit margin on everything else. However, everything else took up 90% of the store. He got rid of all of it and transformed the store to 100% key lime pie and nothing else. Boom! All of a sudden it became profitable.

It was interesting like that. One of my big takeaways is looking at all of my funnels. We have a lot of them. Our support has to be in all of them and there are things happening and costs associated with each of them. Which ones are actually making us money and which ones are not? We are trying to identify this, to drill down, and to figure out which products are profitable and which ones are not?

We are also looking at advertising sources. We used to group everything like, “Here are solo ads; here is Facebook; here is whatever.” We are digging deeper to figure out everything about our business. We have always been pretty good at numbers, but now we are getting very, very good, stripping out everything that is not profitable and focusing on the good stuff.

It is sad. We are shutting down Web sites, funnels, and pages that I love, but they are not making money or they are costing too much in time, energy, support, and headaches. It does not make a lot of sense.

Anyway, I am at Jiu Jitsu now. I am going to go in here. The dude I am going to roll with is way tougher than I am. I am going to try to beat him up today. That is my goal. My goal, actually, is to not get tapped out today from him. He is a stud, but it should be pretty fun.

Hopefully out of this you got something. If not, then just wait until next week and I will have some more good stuff. I appreciate you guys. Look for ClickFunnels.com. It is coming out soon. We are not far from the public release. Like I said, this will change our industry forever. It will change my business forever and I am sure it will change yours, as well.

That’s it for today. Thanks, and we will talk to you soon.

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Russell’s new concoction to give him more energy, flush out his toxins, and loose a ton of weight in a very, very short period of time.

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Good morning everyone. I want to welcome you to another exciting, awesome, fun adventure in the Marketing in Your Car Podcast.

A lot of people actually who messaged me this weekend asking me about my cleanse, so I want to give you some updates on how it went. If you Google the “lemonade cayenne pepper cleanse,” you will see what I started doing.

I did that the very first day. I did the salt water flush. I just started drinking it the first day and it was pretty nasty. After drinking about half a gallon of it, one of my friends who was doing it with me started looking at what we made. There is lemon water, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup.

He called me and said, “Do you realize there are 55 grams of sugar in a fourth cup of maples syrup?” We put a cup in and he said, “There are over 200 grams of sugar in here!”

I said, “Are you kidding me?” and I stopped drinking it. I said, “Dude, that’s not good.” I got rid of it, but I was already mentally into this cleanse mode. I thought, “I have to figure out a way to keep doing this,” so I kind of made up my own cleanse.

The reason they probably did the cleanse that way is to give you some carbs to keep your energy throughout the day. I think I have talked about this before on some of our podcasts. I have been studying the benefits of fat and using fats instead of carbs for energy and so on.

I thought, “What if I blend some stuff? What if I do the Bullet-proof hot chocolate thing for my energy?” I did it in the morning and the afternoon. It is organic, grass-fed Kerrygold butter and MCT oil mixed with some cocoa powder and some Stevia to make it taste good. I drink that and the rest of the day, instead of having this horrible sugar juice, I got a real juice.

I went to the grocery store and bought a ton of stuff: carrots, apples, cucumbers, celery, fennel, and anything that looked like it could be shoved into a blender or into a juicer. I brought it home and produced a gallon of juice and I drank that throughout the day instead. I have done this the last two days, so it has been three days now that I have been on this makeshift cleanse.

The amazing thing is that by doing the Bullet-proof and the juice cleanse and mixing those two together, I did not feel hungry the entire day. Right now it is the third day and I am supposed to be done, but this morning I woke up and I had no desire to pig-out like I normally would have done in this kind of situation. I just had some more Bullet-proof hot chocolate this morning, I juiced some more stuff, and I am just going to keep going with it.

Also, I checked my weight before. I was 206 pounds before and I was 200.4, so I lost almost six pounds in the last three days. I think I am just going to keep riding it. I am going to get down about ten more pounds, so I will keep riding this for another week or so and see how it works.

As I said, I am blending together the Bullet-proof hot chocolate thing with the juicing cleanse. So far I feel amazing. Who knows? This may be the new diet fad or the new cleanse, at least. I was thinking of names to call it like Butter Juice or something like that.

Anyway, I woke up this morning and did it again and I feel awesome. I am almost to the office right now. I have a consult today. Somebody paid $2,500 for a one-hour consult, so I get to dive into their business for the next 60 minutes, rip it apart, have some fun, and show them how to take it to the next level.

These guys seem really cool, so I am hoping they will upgrade and join our mastermind. If they want me to really affect their business it is the best way. I can then work with them throughout the entire year. That is the game plan.

If any of you want a $2,500 consult like these guys, it gives us an hour. It may sound like a lot of money, but I promise you I will make you ten times, at least, in that hour. Just let our office know. If not, just keep listening in and hopefully you will get some more good ideas.

I am at the office and my call starts in ten minutes. I am going to jump in there and give these guys a call and get into some fun, business-building activity. It should be fun.

For all of you who are interested, let me know if you want to know more about the Butter Juice diet. Maybe I will write up a little plan and call it The Butter Juice Cleanse and show you what I am doing. It is awesome and I feel great. I have a lot of energy and I am excited to drink my juice today. You can hear it in my gallon.

Thanks, everybody. I will talk to you soon.

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Russell shares his hypothesis for the best way to convert his buyers into actual coaching clients. Listen in to see if this will work for your business as well.

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Hey everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to an amazing day and another fun episode of Marking in Your Car.

I just got back from a two-day mastermind event in Washington, D.C. It was amazing. We had such a good time.

One of the guys in the mastermind group is one of my favorite people. He is super high energy and awesome and he is a mastermind junky. I think he is in seven or eight groups. After two days, he pulled me aside and said that it was the best mastermind meeting he had ever been to which meant a lot.

We started early; we went late; and we did some awesome stuff for everybody. It was very cool. I had a lot of big breakthroughs, as well.

The mastermind group is one we initially sold at an event called The Invisible Funnel. Some of you may know this concept and some of you may not. It is a cool way to sell things without selling. A lot of the attendees are doing Invisible Funnels, so we spent a lot of time talking about them, dissecting them, and figuring out ways to make it better.

On my flight home yesterday, I was working on a book I am putting together called The Black Box. One of the steps in the Black Box is the Invisible Funnel, so I was writing out that whole process again. All of a sudden, I think a light bulb came on for me. A light bulb definitely did click. I have yet to see if it is a good light bulb or a bad one, but I think it is very good.

Here is the concept behind it. We are selling a ton of our printed products. This is back in our coaching business, so I want to preface that. Our goal, obviously, is to convert people from a front end customer into a coaching client. That is the entire goal, right?

We were trying to figure out how to convert those leads from people into someone who has applied and is kind of raising their hand for coaching. We have been getting a lot of coaching application leads, but not in the volume we want. I do not want to say they are not the quality of people we want, but half of the people applying really are not ready for it. They are not at a point in their life where they can afford it; they are just not ready for it.

I want more of the qualified people, right? When I was writing the section of the book yesterday about the Invisible Funnel, I was thinking about how it came about. There is a story behind it.

I was working with Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes on their company called Business Breakthroughs, International. Chet mapped out their business model for me. It was really cool. They would drive radio ads into a call center which they had built. The person would answer the phone and say, “Welcome to Chet Holmes, International,” and they would give the caller the report for which they had called in.

Then they would say, “Hey, by the way, Tony and Chet are doing this event. It usually costs a thousand bucks to come to Vegas plus your hotel and your flight. Now they have a version where you can do it from home. It is really, really awesome and you need to be part of it.

“Because of this, we are going to let you get on this Webinar. It is a $300 Webinar, but we want to make sure it is something you believe in, so we are not going to charge you anything for it right now. You can come for free. All you have to do is put your credit card in and we will bill you after the Webinar if you love it. If you do not love it, then do not worry about it.”

That was their pitch and their hook. I thought it was really, really cool. When you look at their model, it just crushed it with that. People would come in, register for the Webinar. They would get on the Webinar and stay on there for three hours. If they loved it, they would pay the $297. If they did not love it, they would not be billed for anything. This is how they ran this business. This is how they built this company.

I do not know how much volume they are doing, but it grew into a very, very big company. This is where the Invisible Funnel concept came from initially. I could never figure out how to turn it into an online process, but Daegan Smith figured it out. He started creating Webinars where you would register by putting your credit card in and they would bill you $97 after the Webinar was over. He made a ton of money with it. We modeled it and we made a ton of money with it. It worked.

This is a quick explanation of the Invisible Funnel. I could go on. We literally did an event earlier this year. It was a three-day event talking about the Invisible Funnel, so there is a lot more to it. This is the core, quick concept, though. It is a premium Webinar. Someone puts their credit card in ahead of time, but you do not bill them until after the Webinar is over if they loved it. At the end you can offer them your high ticket products, services, or things like that.

I have been thinking about this as a tool to convert our buyers from buyers into applications. I was thinking that most of the products we sell now are tied to either traffic conversions or sales. I thought, “What if every single week every Friday I did an actual live Webinar?” This is what scares me, honestly. It is my biggest scary part. It would not be an automated Webinar, but an actual live Webinar. It would be three or four hours long and I would teach my entire process for doubling traffic conversions and sales.

“What if I started doing this?” This was my thought. I am kind of nervous about it, but I am going to do it. I will have people come on and try it for free. It would not cost them anything. They would put in their credit card for no charge and then, after the Webinar, if they loved it they would pay $97. That is the process I am going to go through.

I will teach them all of our best stuff for three hours. Then, at the end, I would use it as a tool to get them to apply to be part of our coaching program. This is what I am going to test out and I am very excited about it.

We have done Invisible Funnels on the front end before, but I want to use it as a backend tool for all of our traffic sources. If you look at my business model, I envision someone buying DotComSecretsLabs and DotComSecrets X or purchasing anything we have. They come in there and then the immediate sequence is, “Hey, Russell is doing a live Webinar! You need to get on it! Come here to register.” This would be the core thing we are focusing on, pushing, and promoting.

We would use this as our conversion piece. It would convert people from buyers into clients, I guess. Maybe that is the process. The first step is to get traffic to convert to buyers. This is the conversion. The second step is to convert buyers into clients, into people with whom I am actually working. Invisible Funnel is that conversion piece.

This is an interesting way to look at it. I am learning this stuff with you guys as we are going. You always learn stuff when you start a fleshing it out like this.

Anyway, I am very interested in trying this. It is my goal. Next week we have another Webinar and the week after I am going to test this process out and see if it works. If it does work, I think it is going to be very, very cool. It will be Operation Converting Buyers into Clients. Should we call them “clients” or “students?” It should be “clients.” That is the game plan!

I want to issue you the same challenge. If you are listening to this right now, you have buyers that are buying stuff. Hopefully you have mastered Operation Traffic into Buyers, right? This is the first focus for us. The second is Buyers into Clients and we do this through Invisible Funnel. I think it is the perfect mechanism to get people to switch over.

Anyway, I am excited! I am fired up to try it out! I will report back to you what happens after we do it. You guys can look out for it. You will see me promoting it here probably a week from now. I am going to test it out quickly to see if it works half as well as I think it will. If it does, it will be an exciting thing for us.

That is the game plan for this week for me. It feels weird. It is Friday and this is actually my first day of working. I had a parent-teacher conference for my three-year-old this morning and I am getting my hair cut right now. I will get to the office about noon today to work for three hours and then I am kind of done for the day and done for the week. This is tough for me because I am a workaholic and I love this stuff! Hopefully my wife will not mind if I sneak away and work a little bit this weekend, but you never know.

All right, guys, that’s it. I am heading in to get my hair cut, so I will be a little bit lighter, hopefully.

Oh, there is one last thing I want to tell you. It has nothing to do with marketing; it just has to do with what is happening today.

I am typically a very healthy eater. I am pretty strict and I try to do stuff, but this year has been a travel year so far. We had a lot of stuff happening. We went to D.C. with Daegan and with Daegan, man, we had the best Indian food I have ever had. We had these crab cakes. I ate so much stuff that was not right for me to eat and I felt like garbage.

I got back yesterday and I wanted to cleanse myself and start over. I think many times I say, “I’m going to start over on Monday,” and it never actually happens. I really wanted to flush and reset. Some of you have probably seen this lemonade diet before. It is horrible. You make lemonade with cayenne pepper and you do salt water flushes. It is a horrible process.

Last night I said, “You know what? I am just going to do it.” I always talk about doing it and I needed a hard reset now that I am back. I am home for two or three months before I have my next thing. I want to start these next two or three months going on the right path as opposed to just continuing to eat out everywhere.

This is my goal, to do a hard reset and boom! Start over. I am doing a three-day cleanse with this cayenne pepper and lemonade and salt water flush just to get all the toxins out of my body. I am basically not eating for three days while just doing this cleanse just to reset my body. From there I will move forward in a healthy manner again.

I am not recommending that all of you do a diet, but I am recommending this: When you decide to take a step towards something like in business or relationships or health or whatever it is, most of us say, “I’m going to do that!” and we start doing it. Then we slip back into our old ways.

You have to do a hard reset; otherwise it is very difficult to stick with it, to keep going on. I recommend that whatever big thing you are moving towards in your life—a relationship thing, weight loss, business, or whatever—do a hard reset. If it is business and you are starting a new business, do a 30-day no-TV reset. You get no TV for 30 days maybe.

One of the resets I am thinking about is one a couple of guys in the mastermind are doing. Daegan just did it, too. They are resetting their productivity. Before, they had Skype, Facebook, cell phones, text, and all of these things. They said they wanted to reboot.

Daegan changed the password on his email. He does not know it; he just gave it to his wife. He changed his Facebook password; he got rid of his cell phone. He got rid of any way for anybody to communicate with him. He just turned it off completely and he is hard resetting right now.

He is going to do it for a month or something like that. I don’t know how long he is doing it, but he is cutting off all internal communication to himself to allow him to only focus on doing proactive things. When he wanted to reach out, he will talk to his wife to log into his email and send an email. It will be much harder to do this. This is his process to completely reset.

He did that and he has a couple of other people in the mastermind to do it. I am kind of tempted to do it, as well. I am nervous (I’m not going to lie). He will do the reset and then start reintroducing things back into what he is doing.

If you say, “I am just going to take Twitter away for a day and then Facebook,” it will never happen. It is like pulling off a BandAid, right? It is too slow. You just have to rip it off, go through the pain, and then slowly reintroduce things which you think are necessary. I promise you that during the reboot you will find out how many of the things you are doing are not necessary.

It is kind of interesting, so I wanted to throw it out there for you. Think about the big changes you want to make and figure out how you can do a big reboot just to flush everything out. Then when you are focusing in that thing, you do not have lingering stuff that is keeping you from accomplishing your real goals.

That is what I have. I went a bit longer today because I am driving to the hair cut. I am here now, so I am going to end for now. I appreciate you guys. Look for my Webinar over the next couple of weeks. We have two Webinars coming up. Next week we are going to talk about how we do our high-ticket selling. That will be fun. The next week I am going to test this Invisible Funnel to convert buyers into clients. I am excited and I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again, everybody, and we will talk to you soon.

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A simple three step strategy to make sure you’re in the highest tax bracket.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you to Marketing in your Car. I just got done meeting with the accountants, which if you’ve been listening for any length of time you know is by far my least favorite thing in the world. I would have rather gone to the dentist and get my teeth drilled but it is what it is.

I met with the accountants to do our tax return stuff and sign a million papers, all that fun stuff. I also had the chance to find out that thanks to Obama, my tax bracket is now, I think we pay 47 percent. Isn’t that crazy, almost half of our money. We’re sitting there first and talking about obviously why it makes us angry.

Then there are basically two options. One option is fire everyone and make less money, and just get taxed less or option number two is go and try to make tons more money. You get 50% of it so let’s just double, triple, or quadruple what we’re making. We thought, “You know what? Not only am I going, obviously set a goal to make a lot more money. I want people on my team to max out their tax bracket too.”

How cool, yeah, you maxed out your tax bracket but let’s set a goal for our team. I want three or four people on my team to max out their tax bracket too, to make that much money as well. That’s my new goal is to not only max out mine but everybody else’s. It basically comes down to you got to make $450,000 to max out your tax bracket is my understanding, is what the accountants told me today.

For all of you guys, I think that should be instead of looking at it as a negative thing because it is a negative thing but when you’re negative about it, it just takes your focus off, it takes your eye off the prize and makes you angry instead. Let’s look at it as a positive thing. For all of you guys, that should be your first goal right now.

Everyone has, “I want to make a million dollars,” or whatever but let’s make the goal I want to max out my tax brackets. I need my income to be $450,000 so that boom, I maxed out my tax bracket and the government is going to take half my money. As depressing as that is, that can now be a cool, exciting, fun thing to shoot for.

After you’ve done it for yourself, you got any partners, then boom, that’s your next one to get your partners to max out their tax bracket. Then let’s get our employees. Let’s get everyone on our team to max it out because then we’re making a lot of money. That’s fun. That was my big takeaway from the accountants was just let’s shift our focus on what our goals are and figure out how in the world we can max out our tax brackets.

There are a couple of ways you can do that. This is the education part of the podcast. I’m assuming that all of you guys here have your own business. If not, you need to start your own business. Let’s get that out of the way. After you’ve got a business and you’re focusing on growing it, there are only a couple of ways to grow a business.

A lot of you guys know who Jay Abraham is. If not, he’s a really cool guy to study. As a person, he’s kind of weird but his products are really good. He talks about there’s only three ways to grow a business. He says there’s one way you can get more customers. That’s the way a lot of us focus on. We’re always talking about traffic, advertising, customer acquisition because that’s the first way to grow a business, to get more customers.

It’s also the most expensive one. The second way to grow your business is to get your customers to give you more money, to get them to spend more. You can do that by increasing your prices, adding upsells, all these types of things to get them to spend more money. Then the third way is to get them to buy more often.

You have more products, more services, more cool things for them. Those are three ways to grow a business. What’s interesting is that most people, they focus just on the first one which is more traffic, more traffic. It’s interesting because I’m relearning this lesson. It’s fun when you know something and relearn it through the school of hard knocks.

For example, last month, Neurocell, I don’t know if I mentioned to you guys or not but we made more in Neurocell. Actually, I think it was pretty close to 50/50. It wasn’t quite 50% but Neurocell was almost 50% of our income last month which is crazy, really exciting and cool. The problem is that we spent I think $85,000 in ads to get those things, our customer acquisition. We were getting new customers.

We got tons of customers but that is the most expensive piece of the puzzle as well. We’re usually doubling over on our ads but then we still have our product costs, shipping costs, fulfillment, support, call center, all the things that go into fulfillment of it. When all was said and done, we were probably making 20, 25, probably closer to 20 percent which isn’t bad but that’s what it is on our customer acquisition part of it.

So if I want to grow it, there are a couple of ways I can do it. One is I can go acquire more customers but again, that doesn’t geometrically grow your business. It just adds more fuel. You’re getting more customers at that 20 percent. The next thing is how do we get them to do step two in the phase which is get them to buy more.

What can we tweak or change in our upsell flow? What do we need to add? Can we add another upsell, can we increase the price, can we add a sixth bottle option? What else can we do? In the supplement space, it’s about more products and bigger ticket. In the info product space, one thing I saw Daegan Smith do that was really cool, he had an upsell where the upsell was first I think $500 for this product. It did well.

Then he was like, “Hey, what if I sold $500 for the product or $1000 for the license to sell the product?” He did that boom, people started taking the license to sell the product. He doubled the prices and his customer value just shot up dramatically. Then he was like, “Wait a minute, what if I instead of doing that, there was a one-year option license or a three-year, or a lifetime option? The lifetime option is two grand.”

He added that in there. It’s basically the exact same thing he’s selling. He just put a license and time limit on it. Suddenly, all these people started taking the $2000 option because they didn’t want to renew it after a year, and increased it as well.

What things can you add to your existing sales funnel to increase the average transaction value? That’s the second thing. The third thing is how do you get people to buy more often? What else can we sell them? That’s been, for the last, we’re in April right now, the last four or five days here since we got our month end reports, I’ve been looking at our sales and our profit.

Man, for as much gross sales as we did, our profit was horrible on our supplement. I was like, obviously everything we sell after this to these existing customers, we don’t have the customer acquisition costs. We don’t have all the other pieces that are involved. That’s why I’m like how else can we monetize this and get people to buy more often.

We started looking at more products in our product line. For me, I don’t want right now to go and buy more supplements because inventory costs drive me crazy but obviously the people that have supplements keep buying supplements. We found some friends that have supplement companies and we’re partnering, selling some of their products.

We won’t have as much profit on them but I don’t have to spend ads, do shipping, inventory fulfillment, any of that stuff. They take care of all of that for us. All we got to do is tell my customers about their products. That’s what we’re adding in this month. I was thinking about it. What’s cool is let’s say we sell 30, 40, 50, 60 thousand dollars of affiliate commission on these products? That’s just pure profit to the bottom line. There’s no fulfillment cost, no nothing.

It will take that 20% profit margin we’re running at right now with the supplement, and it will make it now 30, 40, 50 percent. That’s how we grow a company.

This is some fun stuff. I am sure you have probably heard the Jay Abraham stuff before. I am curious if you are looking at this in your business and thinking about it in this way. Again, I learned about this ten years ago and then again five years ago. Over the last three or four days it has become real to me again. I am looking at how we can grow this company and thinking, “Rats! We are focusing everything on number one which is good, but it is the most expensive by far. How do we add more of number two and number three?”

For us it is specifically about number three. With number two we are doing pretty well with the supplement.

Let me step back and take a look at DotComSecretsLabs. At DotComSecretsLabs customer acquisition is doing awesome and our resell stuff and backend monetization is also doing awesome. However, in the middle our profit per sell is, I think, where we are struggling.

In fact, you have heard me over the last two or three months. I have rebuilt the upsell process for DCS Labs probably three, four, or five times. We could not get the average transaction value high enough.

Finally, we cracked the code with this last version and we got it now. This is kind of cool because for every free book we give away we are averaging $49 in cash from the upsell flow. This is exciting. Obviously, we still have to print the books and ship them, so there are still other costs involved. It is cool, though, because we can now spend $20 to $30 on a book and when all the costs are added we are getting pretty close to breaking even. This gives us the ability to buy more media, get more affiliates, and to do all the other fun stuff.

It is kind of cool to look at each of our businesses, each of our funnels, and think about those three things and focus on all three of them. Like I said, the money is going to come more from number two and number three most of the time, but all our focus is on number one, including me. We focus our time on traffic, traffic, traffic! It is getting more customers, more people and more people as opposed to focusing on the other two.

This is some interesting stuff that you guys can use in your businesses to help you max out your tax bracket, then your partners’ tax brackets, and then your team’s tax brackets and everybody’s. I am not sure if I am going to tell all my people that this is my goal for them. They are going to really want that much money. However, I think it is a good goal to set. I am going to talk to them and have them set this goal for themselves, as well. They can start focusing on this and try to figure out ways inside of our company, inside of what we are doing, to increase what they are making. Together we can figure out other ways to add value to reach the point where they can max out their tax brackets, as well.

It is a fun goal! I hope it gets you excited. It gets me excited! It is the one exciting thing I got from the accountant today. Everything else is what it is.

I am almost to the office, you guys. If you like this podcast, please go to iTunes and let us know.

Also, we have started our beta for ClickFunnels. A couple of you guys are in there and it is going crazy. I think there are about 30 people in this beta group. One guy listed off, “This means I can cancel Visual Web Site Optimizer; I can cancel Lead Pages; I can cancel GoToWebinar.” He listed off all the things he could cancel and it added up to $300 or $400 a month in fees he could cancel by using ClickFunnels. He could get all of this at about a tenth of the price which is pretty exciting.

Three or four people said almost word-for-word, “This fills in and solves all the problems I have ever had with Internet marketing; figuring out how in the world to get a sales funnel up.” This is exciting, too. I am fired up about it and I think it is going to be exciting. We will spend two weeks or so in beta getting everybody in there. We are finding bugs in the templates and little things like that. We are knocking them out as quickly as we can. It is kind of a fun process. I have never gone through this before.

This is what we are doing right now. We are cleaning it up and adding more and more templates. After that we are thinking about launch strategies. I do not want to do what a lot of companies do.

Some of my friends own a company called Kijabi. When they launched they had a huge, Internet marketing-style launch. I have no idea how many members they got, but I am sure it was 3,000 to 6,000 people in there. People came in, but with that many coming in that quickly, you just cannot keep up with support. They had headaches, issues, and all the stuff that comes with that. A lot of people dropped out quickly, as well, and there were a lot of bad reviews written about them, about how it did not work and so on.

Eventually, within a couple of months they had it all figured out and now it is a very, very good product. However, you have only one shot to make a killer first impression and they lost that. The people did not come back and they will not come back.

For me, I was thinking that I should have joined Kijabi a long time ago. Why didn’t I? During the product launch I read a review from someone who talked about how bad it was. That was four or five years ago and because of it I never opened an account. I am sure it is now probably the coolest thing in the world, but because of someone’s bad experience, it kept me from even attempting to try it.

We do not want to have that with ClickFunnels. We want to do it differently. I am thinking about more of a delayed rollout. It would be kind of like going to the DMV. You take those little stickers with the little number on it which tells you where you are in the line. We would have something like that where everybody takes their “sticker.”

Each day we would unlock it and say, “Today we are going to let 50 people in, so that is numbers one through 50. Your number is now live. You can come in and get a beta account.” We would let 50 people in and they could spend a day or two in there. We would make sure there were no issue or bugs and then boom! We would open it up and let the next 50 people through.

This is how Gmail launched. You had to be invited by somebody. It was a slow rollout and it caused a lot more mystery, buzz, and excitement. I think we will make it where those 50 people come in under an agreement. You have to create a funnel the first day otherwise we kick you out. We want to make sure people are using it.

Second, if they like it or hate it (I don’t really care), either way they have to write a review about it on their blog or on their Facebook. We want to cause buzz, get people talking, and make everyone want it, right? I think this is the rollout strategy we are looking for. I want to make people go crazy.

Also, we will have the ability from a support standpoint to handle it, to grow it, to scale it, and when we are ready to open the floodgates and allow a million people through, we will have the infrastructure and everything in place. All the bugs will be gone and it will be a rock-solid product from day one.

This is kind of what we are looking at. I am excited. It will be fun to see how we end up deciding on the execution. This is what we were talking about yesterday a bit. I think it would be fun. It would be like a big game.

In a couple of months I think we could get 4,000 or 5,000 very active, very solid customers this way. With Labs, I think we have sold 4,000 or 5,000 DCS Labs books now. We do not have any affiliates promoting it yet. We have a couple that have picked it up, but we have not asked any affiliates to promote it yet. It has just come from our own traffic and Facebook. I think we can do something similar with ClickFunnels.

Anyway, I am at the office. I had a long drive from the accountants’. I hope you did not mind me rambling this whole time. That’s it for today. Have some fun! Go to max out your tax brackets and we will talk to you guys again soon.

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Russell’s new strategy to take home more money without increasing sales, and what’s the #1 reason why business exists…

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to a very rainy Marketing in your Car. It’s raining today. I’m heading into the office and I’m really excited for today. This morning, I had my accountability call with Carl White. I talked about it in an earlier podcast about the power of accountability calls, and finding an accountability partner as someone to hold you accountable.

So far, it’s been going really good. What’s fun is it’s nice having Carl. He’s such a very opposite personality from me. I think that what he brings to the table for me are just things I don’t have right now that are really cool. One of the things he was talking about which I appreciate him so much for this. It’s going to be my big focus for today is he was talking about in his company before, he would look at how much money he would make and then look at what he was actually taking home, and that percentage.

He was like, I don’t remember exactly, 15% or whatever. He was like, “How do I change that to 40 percent?” That became the goal. That was his focus. It needs to be 40 or 50%, whatever the number is. He started working and working on focusing on that. How do I take home a bigger piece each month?

He said that became one his key drivers, not how much money does the company make but how much money does he actually get to take home which is interesting to me because I think my problem is my focus has always been what’s our top line revenue. It’s a good goal to have. In fact, this month we just broke our record which I was really excited about. We had an awesome month. We did that literally without, I don’t think we hardly emailed our list at all. We didn’t do a product launch or anything and it was still probably one of the best months we’ve ever had.

I think the only time we’ve had higher months was back when we had the call center. We had 100 employes but definitely since we’ve shrunk down to about 13 people now, definitely the biggest month we’ve had by a long shot. Being with that, what I took home from that wasn’t that exciting to me. That was my frustration today on my accountability call.

What I decided to do and I’m really excited for this actually, which is funny because the least favorite part for me in our business is accounting, and accountants and stuff like that but we just hired an accountant in house. What I’m going to be doing with her is going through all of our stuff and probably spend two or three days just going through and really trying to understand the numbers because again, they’re like my enemy right now. I hate them.

Understanding them a lot better and figuring out how do I change our business so that I can take home a bigger percentage, I’m not even sure right now what percentage I’m taking home but change that to whatever it is to how do I take home 30, 40, or 50 percent. In business, that’s really the only thing that really matters. That’s not true. There are two things that matter. One is that you’re providing value to the end customer and number two is that the owner is getting paid, the owner is making money.

It was funny, when I was at Boise State, I had this finance class. I also had an economics class. My economics teacher asked a question. He said, “What’s the purpose of a business?” He was like, “Oh, to create jobs, do this, and do that,” all these things. In my finance class, my teacher who I really liked, he said, “The only purpose of a business is to make the owner money, that’s it. If it’s not for that, what’s the purpose of it?”

Obviously hopefully you’re selling something that’s going to provide value to the end customer but the only purpose of the business is to make money for the owner. I think I’m probably more in the middle of those two schools of thought but it made me think about that. Having a business, creating jobs and stuff like that is good but if you as the owner is not getting what you need out of it, what’s the point of it? You just have an average paid job, depending on what you’re doing.

That’s my big focus for this week. There’s going to be less of how can I sell more stuff. I think we got that under control. It’s going and growing. It’s exciting, but more of let’s look at the numbers and really figure out what we are actually making, take immediate costs away, this and that, and then what’s it going to take for me to increase what I’m taking home. How do we change our commission structures, our profit share structure with our internal team so that everyone is incentivized to pay me more?

It’s kind of exciting. I’m not sure what’s going to come of it. I have no idea. That’s part of the fun of the creation of it all. That’s my goal is to sit down in front of a whiteboard for four or five hours today and try to map that out and figure out a way to make that work. I’m excited.

If I figure out the solution, I’ll report back to you guys and let you know but just start thinking about that in your business. Start thinking about how can you set up things so that the goal of the business is to pay you, and one of your KPI, your key performance indicators should be how much money, what percentage of the money that the company is making, you’re able to take home each month.

I think if you do that, even if it doesn’t increase your money, gross sales, it should increase the money you take home which is really the point of this whole game anyway. There’s some advice for today. I’ll let you know how it turns out for me. Other than that, I’m at the office. I got to get out in this cold rain and run to the door. I’m going to jump off now and I’ll talk to you guys soon.

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Over the last 30 days we completely shifted our target market, our ideal customer, and how we communicate with our audience and the results have been amazing…

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing in your Car podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day today. I am fired up. It’s the last day of spring break so I’ve been home with the kids. We were juicing, having some fun. Then I’m going to finally head into the office and get some work done.

I want to talk about something that makes me mad that I’m excited about this because I always make fun of this. You know everyone that’s into the whole law of attraction thing, attract, put out what you want and it will attract things to you? I remember when the Secret first came out. We all watched it, a bunch of my friends and I. There’s parts of it, obviously putting out what you want and attracting stuff back or whatever but I’ve had an experience this last week that’s been really interesting.

I’ve been talking about this a lot. Those of you guys who have been listening know what I’ve been doing but we’ve been really trying to shift our business away from business opportunity seekers and more towards traditional, not traditional but more towards established business. I’ve spent the last probably eight or nine years focusing on helping people get started in business which has been fun.

It’s been fulfilling. You see people who go from nothing to something. It’s exciting but it’s so much easier to take somebody from good to great than it is from nothing to something. Kind of my big conscious decision over the last year or so has been we want to start working more with traditional business owners. Traditional is not the right word but established businesses, people that are already making money.

That’s more appealing to me. We can do a lot more cool stuff, all this advanced stuff that we’re doing now. We can add those things to a business and see insane results. If they have a funnel that kind of converts, we tweak it a little bit, boom, we can take it from a one percent to a four or five percent conversion rate.

Then we can come in and say, “Hey, now that you’re at this conversion rate, now we can spend some more money on media,” and introduce some media buyers through channels. We can take a company from $30,000 or $40,000 a month to a million dollars a month very quickly just by identifying those pieces, changing them, tweaking them, and scaling the traffic.

I’ve seen in our business with our new Neurocell offer, we went from the last three months, it’s tripled every single time. In fact, this month, one third of our income came from Neurocell which is exciting. It fires me up. My goal is to have at least half of our income not coming from coaching and internet marketing this year. We’ll be there by next month which is exciting and fun. I’m really enjoying it.

Our big goal was to start attracting the right kind of businesses, the businesses we want to work with, and not stop focusing on the beginners but not doing coaching with beginners, saying, “Hey, here’s products that will help you but until you’re at a certain level, we can’t work with you.” To do that, we had a couple of strategies.

One was to dramatically raise our prices. We used to sell a $5000 coaching package and traditionally to beginners, which is a lot of money for a beginner but that’s what it was. What I did is I stopped selling it at $5000. We made our lowest package $8000, and then we made a $15,000 and a $25,000.

I told our guys, “All I want to do is sell $25,000 packages. That’s the goal. That’s who we want to work with. People who can write a check for $25,000 are the kind of people that can spend money on traffic and do other stuff. We can really scale their business quickly. That’s who we want to work with.”

I think at first they were really scared to sell higher ticket things but as soon as we got one person at $25,000, boom, the next week, we got three more. All of a sudden, the belief level is coming where if someone can only pay $8000, we don’t even talk to them on the phone anymore. We just want to work with people that have legitimate businesses. It’s been interesting.

I talked about this in one of the earlier podcasts. We changed our bait. We went away from here’s how to make money on the internet to here’s 180 split test results. Our next front end product coming out is a product for coaches and consultants. We’re putting bait out there that attracts the kind of person that’s going to come in, that’s going to have the kind of money we need.

The third thing we did, this still blows my mind. I’ve been sending out emails that are our inner circle program. Applications have been coming in really good. We have some good people that have come through it but yesterday, I did some Ben Settle style reverse marketing. I wrote an email, a daily Seinfeld email. Some of you may have seen it.

Basically, we had this guy who applied. The way he applied and the way he went about it was weird. He had a really good business. We could have done some really cool stuff with him but he was rude to our salesperson and ended up hanging up on her. It ended weird. I wrote an email about that and called him out, and talked about what he did and the kind of people we like to work with and what I would have done in his business had he been humble enough to come through our process the way we have it structured but he didn’t.

Because of that, this happened and this happened. I shared this email. It was fun. I wrote it in a way that was entertaining, sent it out. What’s happened over the last not even 24 hours yet shocked me. It’s been really interesting. Using what Ben Settle calls repulsion marketing, talking, kind of calling out people, calling out your customers and setting a line in the ground saying, “This is what we believe and this is who we’re trying to work with.”

I put that email out there. I tell you what, we’ve got over 40 new applications came in from that email. I would say over 20 of them, more than half of them are people whose businesses are doing over $20,000 a month right now which is my perfect dream client. It was really interesting. It’s been a fun exercise over the last few months as we’ve been tweaking this, changing our front end bait, raising our prices so the people we don’t want can’t afford what we have, and putting out emails that draw that line in the sand.

The results so far have been crazy. We have three new clients. That’s $25,000 this week. I think that for this new group, we’ll probably get four or five more. It’s exciting. For all of you guys out there who are struggling or not sure about your business, or it’s not where you want to be, or you don’t like your customers or whatever it is, I heard people like Frank Kern forever talked about how he got tired of the beginner so he changed his business.

It was funny because his initial business, he had a product called Underachiever Secrets which I had bought the whole company from. I heard this interview with him right after I bought it, “Yeah, I just got rid of my biz-op stuff and started focusing on consultants. Now I’ve got clients that I love.” Dang it, I just bought the clients that he hated.

It’s interesting. Just think about that. You really can write your own destiny. You can pick whatever business you want to be in. You can shift it very quickly. I look at our business, ten years of business opportunity seekers and within a month, we’ve completely transitioned away and we’re actually making more money easier and I had a chance to hang out with awesome businesses I can do so much more for. It’s pretty cool.

Anyway, if you’re in that situation or around there at all, those are some strategies we’re using that work really well. I’m at the office so I’m going to check out these applications coming through and see who I get to work with. We’re doing our first big inner circle meeting here in Boise in May. It’s going to be awesome.

If any of you guys who are listening would like to be part of our inner circle, it’s not cheap but I promise you, it’s less expensive than going through the trial and error on your own. You can apply at InnerCircle.DotComSecrets.com. That’s about it. I’m going to go hang out with my team, call some of these people, have some fun with them and see who we can work with. Thanks you guys. I’ll talk to you soon.

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Russell just had an epiphany that changes the way he will forever communicate with his email list. Listen to this podcast episode to find out what it is and how you can apply it too.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome to the Marketing in your Car podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day today. Some good news, I was right. If you listened to my podcast yesterday about the one thing, we did the tests and it is crushing it. I’m excited. I’m glad that my hypothesis is doing good.

It more than doubled sales from the two other versions. One was written by me and one was written by a really good copywriter who is not me. I’m excited and fired up. That’s good news. If you missed that episode, go back and watch it. Today, I had an idea.

If you look at our business, we have a bunch of really cool front end products. My end goal is to get people into my inner circle. My inner circle is where you get to hang out with me, we get to do cool stuff, I get to work on your business, way more fun. I can change your business better than anything.

We kind of set it up where anyone buys anything from any of my funnels, they come in and then we have a sequence that tries to push them to apply for inner circle. The applications have been coming in but I wanted to get more. I wanted to make it more consistent. I think today I had an epiphany, I think. Again, I’m going to test it out and I’ll get back to you guys and let you know.

It’s been interesting. I’m looking at Ben Settle. If you guys know Ben, I talked to you guys awhile ago about the Seinfeld emails. Ben is the one I referenced that taught me that concept. He does these daily Seinfeld emails. It’s really cool the way he does it. He just keeps pushing and pushing these emails to go out.

Everyday, he’s promoting one product. He has his email players where every single day, there’s an email promoting that one product. I kept thinking in my mind, “My business is tough because I have so many different products and services. What do I send out? There’s not just one thing I do, teach, or talk about.”

But when I started thinking about it this morning, but my one thing, my core thing I want for people is to be in my inner circle. I make the most money out of it. I help people the most. I have the biggest impacts on a business or company in there. It’s like the best, I think it’s the best thing we have.

I started thinking, “What if my typical auto responder sequence is someone comes in, they get some emails and I’m pushing everyone into this sequence where the daily emails are all pushing back to our inner circle?” Everyday, I just find something really cool to share, talk about it, and then be like, “Hey, by the way, if you’re on in our inner circle yet, join here.”

Then the next day, I share a story about someone in the inner circle, talk about how we helped him, boom, if you’re not in our inner circle, go here, and just start emailing every single day, pushing people back to that thing. I’m really excited and intrigued and interested to see how that concept works and goes. That’s what I’m going to be testing out.

For you guys, I want you to think about that. What’s the one core thing you want people to ascend to? What are you trying to push people to? I think I always struggle with this a little bit because Ben’s main thing he’s pushing people to was a $97 a month newsletter but that’s like the only product he really sells. He kept pushing people and pushing people there.

Again, because we have 30 different products, what do you do? Do you just push people to a different one everyday? What do you do? I think it’s really coming back to how can you affect people the best. For Ben, that’s his front end and his back end. That’s his only product he sells. I always thought the goal of it was to push people to your front end but I think the goal of daily Seinfeld emails is to push people to your back end.

That’s an epiphany I just had today. I’m going to be testing it out to see if I’m right. I think I am. That way, I can bring people to any funnel I want but then I’m always pushing them to apply for our inner circle and the right people will weed themselves out, kind of interesting. I’m excited by that. I hope some of you guys, that gets you excited as well to start sending out daily emails.

I’m excited because my daily emails are going to be awesome stuff. Some of you guys have seen a couple we’ve been putting out lately where I’m pushing really cool videos, content, and ideas. I’m going to put out the best stuff possible because I think that’s what is going to attract the right people in the inner circle. I’m going to say something, teach something, or show something cool and people will be like, “Man, Russell has taught me a little nugget. Imagine what he would do if he could work on my business directly. I’m going to go apply for his inner circle.”

Focusing on that every single day, I think everyday will get a new group of people coming through. I’m fired up. It gets me excited. I hope it gets some of you guys thinking about it as well. I’m at the office right now. For any of you guys who want me to look at your business and play around with it, tweak it and make it better, you should come to my inner circle. Maybe I’ll start pitching that more on these podcasts.

Look, these podcasts are fun. Hopefully you guys get good ideas and things from them but if you really want me to affect your company and your business, we have to play at a different level. There are two ways to really get to that level in life. One is to go and to work your way in which is what a lot of us do. You work hard and eventually over a couple of years, you get there or the second way is to buy your way in.

I remember I was at an event one time and I met this guy. I can’t remember, he had a weird name like Scovia Smith or something like that. He was a young kid. I remember meeting him at this event. He was telling me how he joined every mastermind. First off, I’m like how can you afford that. Second off, why did you do it?

He told me, “Russell, there are two ways to be successful in this life. One, you can work your way in and it takes a long time. Number two, you just buy your way in.” That was the first thing he told me. Then he said, “What I did, I had an email list of people. I emailed them all. I said, ‘Hey, I’m single. I have nothing else going on right now. I can go to all these different events but I can’t afford them. If you all want to pony up some money, I’ll go to all these events and come back and teach you what I learn.’”

I think he got 10 or 12 people to send him 10 grand. Then he used that money to go sign up for everyone’s mastermind groups, and he bought his way in. He got to know everybody, got direct access to his business and worked really quick. There’s definitely a lesson inside of that. I’ve taken that lesson and bought my way into a lot of things. It’s a lot faster sometimes than working your way in.

If you’re interested in the inner circle, it’s just InnerCircle.DotComSecrets.com. Thanks you guys and gals. I’m at the office. I’m going to go check out some applications and see who I’m going to be working with today. I’m excited. Talk to you soon.

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How to increase your conversions by un-muddying your offers, and a whole bunch more…

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Hey everyone, this is Russell and this is a special late night edition of Marketing in your Car. I hope you guys are doing awesome. I am actually driving home from the airport right now. I had a really fun weekend. Some of you know if you follow me on Facebook, you probably saw we just launched or created a brand new supplement for the MMA called MMA Ignite.

I was actually in Dallas, Thursday flew to Dallas to go film us actually making the product because we also, sometime in the future, I’m going to be creating a product called SupplementSecrets.com. I just wanted to be able to have that footage of them actually making our first batch of MMA Ignite so I flew down there, brought a camera, and filmed the whole process.

It was cool, you see them. We made our own formula. They go and buy all the raw materials. They have boxes and barrels of all these powders and stuff. Then they take them all, mix them in this huge mixer, and take them into the other room and put them in the machine that puts them into the bottles, and then the label machine puts the labels on, and the thing seals the top. It was a really cool process.

We filmed the whole thing. I’m sure you guys in the next few months will see that when we come out with that product. It’s a fun thing. I was just planning on doing that, then I realized that this weekend was the NCA Wrestling Tournament in Oklahoma and Daegan Smith was going to go. My birthday was two weeks ago, so Daegan was like, “Hey, I just bought you a birthday present. You’re coming to NCAs.”

I flew from Dallas to Oklahoma and had a chance to go watch the NCAs yesterday which was really fun. Daegan came through. He got us front row seats so we were front row, right in the section where the wrestlers run out in the mats. It was pretty sweet. My wife and my kids were watching the tournament from home.

Because we got such good seats, I guess they saw me on TV every couple of minutes so it was kind of fun. My little son Bowen texted and he was like, “Hey dad, you’re on TV. You’re famous,” so that was fun. It was just a really fun weekend. It was cool on the flight home, I had some delays.

It was probably ten hours I’ve been in airports. I had a chance to work on this new product we’re putting out, another one of our free plus shipping products, just finishing up the front-end book for it. It got me excited and thinking a lot more about marketing and things like that. I want to share with you guys a concept that over the last four or five days, I’ve been thinking about this.

I shared the concept with Daegan. I might have mentioned it on a podcast but I’ve just been thinking a lot about it. I have another probably 15 minute drive to get back home so I thought I would just dump it on you guys a little bit, and hopefully give you guys some ideas because I think I’m going to talk about this a little bit, the Dot Com Secrets Lab Funnel.

I rebuilt it three different times. I think the next, I haven’t seen the stats yet but I think the one we built right before I left out of town, I’m hoping that it converts a lot better. I think that the psychology behind what I was trying to do, I explained this whole concept with Daegan. I think that too often, we try to sell things, we’re trying to sell stuff.

When I first got into this business, people always talked about you create an offer and you create bonuses, and the more bonuses you have the better. Then you get your features and your benefits. You’re trying to explain all the amazing stuff about this product. The theory is that if you drop 1000 different bullet points, that one of those little bullet points is going to speak to somebody and they’re going to want to buy.

Because you’re not speaking face-to-face, when you try to sell somebody face-to-face, you have an advantage because you can see what their concerns are and things like that whereas in print and video and stuff, you don’t so the theory is you’re just giving everything you can think of and throw it out there. One of them hopefully will be the one that closes them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I don’t necessarily think I agree with that concept. One of the big things I was just writing about in my book that we’re going to be launching, talking about the different free plus shipping offers we’ve been doing and why they’ve been working so well, one of the things I’ve been writing about is the fact that the free plus shipping offers that do the best aren’t the ones that are this free course or something big like that.

The ones that do the best are the ones that are very singular focused, one concept, one idea, one thing that you’re selling. I was thinking about if you look at, talking about concepts you guys probably don’t know yet because you haven’t read the book, but this funnel that we take people through, this free plus shipping, we put them through an invisible funnel. At the end of it, we sell them your coaching program.

Your coaching program is the end-all, be-all, right? It’s all the stuff you have, teaching them how to do everything. That’s hard to sell because it’s so big that it’s hard for people to grasp that. Then you take your entire coaching program or whatever and pull one piece of that out, the one most sexy part of that. That becomes what you train on during your invisible funnel training.

Then from your invisible funnel training, you pick the sexiest thing and pull that piece out. That becomes the free plus shipping thing, very much one focus. The new upsells that I did for Dot Com Secrets Labs, I kind of did the same thing. One of the upsells is a new traffic upsell. In there, there’s a whole bunch of videos and things like that about different ways to get traffic. It’s a good product. It’s a great product.

When I was writing the copy for it, starting the traditional way, talking about you’re going to learn this traffic system and this, you dump on all these different systems, I was like, “Man, I don’t think people really want that. What people want is the one thing. What’s the one thing that the product is going to give me if I buy it? That’s what I want. How is it going to solve this one thing?”

I took all the, I think it was seven different traffic systems in there, and I just focused on one. I talked about one and made it so mysterious, exciting, intriguing, and cool. I talked about that and was like, “There’s a bunch of other ones too but I don’t have time to talk about this. This one alone is worth more than the price. You’re getting that plus seven more.” I just talked about that one thing, that one bullet point.

I just went deep into that and made that the bait, the thing to get them to have the desire to come in, instead of throwing out every feature and benefit, a bunch of bonuses. I just picked the one thing that I think is going to be the best bait. That becomes the entire focus of the sales message, the same thing with the second upsell inside Dot Com Secrets Labs.

The traffic one is a new upsell that I hadn’t done before whereas this one is one that has been in every version of the upsell flow. We’re selling the Seven Figure Shortcut, which is our automated webinar and sales training. I thought, “I’m going to do the same thing on this. I’m going to figure out what’s the one thing in this entire course.”

This course is big. I think it’s six or seven days worth of videos. It’s two different workshops and a whole bunch of other stuff, probably one of the best products I’ve ever created. The problem is when I try to sell it, people don’t want to buy seven days worth of videos. There’s just so much stuff, they get overwhelmed and it seems like a lot of work.

Of all the seven days worth of content, what’s the best thing? What’s the one most intriguing or sexy, the one thing that had the biggest impact on me, the reason why I put that in the course? What was the one thing that had the biggest impact on me? I was thinking back. The one thing that had the biggest impact on me was when this guy named Armand Morin taught me a thing he called the stack.

It’s the way he did his close when he sold from stage. He taught me this way to close. I did it and I’ve always struggled to sell from stage or on webinars. I learned it and the very first time I did it, I closed 40% of the audience. Then I took that and added it to every presentation I’ve ever done. I think I counted 23 or 24 different webinars and presentations I’ve created that all use that.

Every single one that I’ve used that has been successful. It was this one thing. I talk about that. I say, “Look, I did this whole course that taught everything else I’ve learned about how to script a webinar and how to sell things. There’s some amazing stuff that I don’t have time to go through it all, but just this one thing alone, the stack, that one thing has made me millions of dollars. That’s something that’s inside of this course. I don’t know anywhere else in the world you can get it, but you can get it in this course. For $297, you get the course. You’re going to learn about that one thing but you’re also going to get all this other stuff I’m not even going to talk about, a bunch of other things that can help you get traffic. That one thing is by far worth the price of admission.”

That’s the way I pitched it. I’m not sure how sales have done over the weekend since we launched it. I’ve been out of communication with all the wrestling stuff and the supplements but it logically makes a lot of sense to me. I think us as product designers and developers, we get so into all of the stuff that we create and the packages that we create that have so many elements as things, whereas I think sometimes the power is just figuring out the one thing they desire the most and really focusing on that.

If it’s what they want, not what they need but what they want, that’s going to be what drives them to buy. I think the other things will muddy the waters too much. I think all the other stuff, the bonuses and all that crap that we normally throw in just muddy the waters. It takes the focus off of the core desire they have. That’s my thought process right now.

It gets me excited because it changes the way that I present things and I pitch things. I was also thinking a lot about upsell flows, the right way to do them. I used to for years, I would just go and have my front end product. What’s the upsell? I would pick a random product, and just do random different products in the sales process.

For some reason, it used to work alright back in the day but today, it doesn’t. Thinks have to be very congruent. That’s the other thing I’ve been thinking a lot about. What is your front end offer? What are your upsells and things like that? This black box is turning into some of our high end clients. We’re having everyone create a free plus shipping offer. The upsell is the invisible funnel that they’re doing.

As of a week ago, I would have thought that the best way to do it was have your free plus shipping be teaching this process, and then the invisible funnel is you going deeper into that process. What I’ve found from our testing with Dot Com Secrets Labs, I did that. We set it up where a free book was the front end product and the first upsell was invisible funnel style training where they got to be on this webinar where we went deeper into testing and all that kind of stuff.

The take rate was horrible. It was really bad. I think it’s because if your upsell is more of the same thing, it’s not what people want. They want the next piece of the process. The new upsell flow, by the way, if you look at the Dot Com Secrets Labs one, if you look at Dot Com Secrets as a whole of my company, we have three missions we try to help people do, help them with traffic, conversions, and sales, those three things.

Dot Com Secrets Labs is the conversion product. The upsell is the traffic product. Hey, we just helped you double your conversions. Now I want to help you double your traffic. The second upsell is the third pillar of our company which is sales. Hey, we just helped you double your conversions. If you took the first upsell, we helped you double your traffic. Now we want to help you double your sales.

It’s taking that path of logical next thing they need. By buying your product, what’s the gap that they’re missing? Not so much the gap but what’s the next thing they’re going to need after that. If you can figure those things out, it just makes your upsell flow work a lot better. Thanks for allowing me to brain dump.

I’ve been thinking about it but it always helps me to put it out in words. I’m now at my home. It’s late at night. I’m excited to get to my wife and give my kids a kiss. I appreciate you guys and hope you enjoyed this podcast. I hope you’re enjoying the stuff we’re doing now. We’re putting out a lot of fun stuff and having a good time. Watch what we’re doing. We’re making more money than we ever have. Model what we’re doing. That’s the best way to make more money. Thanks you guys. I’ll talk to you all soon.

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Russell will walk you through the process he goes through when one of his offers doesn’t convert like he wants it to.

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Good morning, good morning. Today is an awesome day. I’m excited to be here with you guys with the Marketing in your Car podcast. Today is exciting because I’m flying to Dallas, first off, because our new supplement MMA Ignite is being produced and I want to film the whole thing so I’m flying to Dallas which is exciting.

Then I’m flying to Oklahoma for the NCA Wrestling Tournament to go hang out with Daegan Smith and some other friends. It’s exciting. I’m excited but today, I have about four hours at the office. I want to tell you what I’m doing today because this should hopefully give some of you guys encouragement who have been playing this game we call internet marketing and not having the success you want.

I have been doing this for a long time, over a decade now. You would think that I would get really good at creating the perfect funnel and perfect offer every time. In theory, you would think that after doing this as many times as I have, I would be pretty good at it. I think I am pretty good at it but even with that said, there’s still times it just hasn’t worked.

One of the funnels we have, we have a really good front end offer that’s converting great. We had an upsell path that was doing alright. It wasn’t doing great but it was doing okay. We wanted to tweak it and change it. We rebuilt it all last week, took a whole week to rebuild it, make new upsells, new sales videos, everything. I thought it turned out awesome.

We rolled it out. Today, this morning, I just got back some stats. From almost 200, 170 front end sales, we only had 10% take the first upsell and one percent take the second upsell which is horribly bad for what I need the numbers to be. In fact, our old upsell is doing way better so I’m trying to figure out what my next step and my next move is.

I think what I’m going to do is go back through today and rip the whole thing apart and redo it. It’s kind of a pain but that’s what it takes to make these things work. I know a lot of you guys, you tested out something. You created a product or offer, and you put up your sales video. You did everything and it didn’t work.

You’re like, “Ugh, this thing is a scam. It doesn’t actually work,” but it’s not. It’s hard work. You’ve got to go in and tweak it, and change it, perfect it until you do get it to work. After you get something that works, it’s just crazy. For example, our supplement offer, we ran it for 18 months. It was doing alright but nothing to brag about, 18 months before finally – and we had redone the sales letter. I think we paid two or three different copywriters to rewrite the sales letters. It just kept not working and not working.

Then this last version, we spent a lot, 20 grand. Again, it was like rolling my dice, rolling the dice, “Please let this thing work,” and luckily it’s been working. Now we can scale it. Now that it works, it’s literally like a slot machine. You put a dollar in, boom, ten come back out and it’s really fun.

It took us a year and a half to get that to work on our supplement. This offer, I’m hoping that it doesn’t take me a year and a half to get it perfect because we’re selling a lot on the front end. I just need the upsells to work. Anyway, just something to think about when you’re creating your offers is just you’ve got to be persistent.

If it doesn’t work, then you tweak it. If it doesn’t work, tweak it. Just keep working and working it. Eventually, if you stick with it and keep studying, keep learning, keep figuring out how to make it work, eventually you’ll get the right formula where boom, it’s going to start working but you can’t just give up after one.

I think too many people, they just give up. I think that’s probably the difference between me and a lot of people is I just get angry and stubborn. I fall in love with my products so much, I want them to sell so I just keep pushing it and working it until it gets it. Man, after it works you guys, it’s exciting.

That’s what I encourage you guys to do. Think about that today as you’re going through your projects. Look at ones that are working, ones that aren’t working and just figure out, “What do I got to do? What do I got to change?” Don’t be discouraged by that. Be excited. I’m kind of excited. I’ve been thinking all morning now since I saw the numbers. How can I tweak this offer?

For example, one of our offers was for this really cool webinar thing. I just don’t think I made it sexy enough. I’m trying to think of what else can I add to it to make it really sexy, and then I remembered a couple of years ago, I did this interview with Gary Halbert. I’ve never shared it with anybody before. I have the audio file. It’s talking about the same topic the front end product is talking about.

I was like, “Man, if I make my whole spin around that, the secret phone call with Gary Halbert literally months before he passed away where he passed the torch on this new concept that we were able to take.” Everything that we’ve done has been based on this one conversation I had with him, this call has been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to me. How would you like to have it? You could only get it one way, boom, by buying this product, picking out one really cool sexy thing and using that as the hook.

A lot of times, just changing the hook, changing the bait, that’s what you’re doing. We’re basically out there fishing. I talked about that I think it was yesterday, to attract the right customers, you’ve got to have the right bait. A lot of times, if they’re not buying what you want, you got to change the hook, change the bait, keep working it around until you find the right thing. When you find the right thing, man, it gets to be really fun.

That’s it. I’m at the office. I got to build a whole new upsell flow in the next four hours which is exciting. It will be a lot of work but I think it will be cool and I think it will pay off. Cross your fingers for me that this time, it will convert the way I need it to and for you guys, go back to the drawing board, do what you need to do. Don’t get discouraged because man, when one of these things works, it’s definitely worth it.

I appreciate you all. Have a great day. I will talk to you guys all again maybe on my trip. Maybe when I’m out and about, I’ll drop some ideas for you guys. That’s about it. Thanks. Talk to you soon.

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Want to change your customers… Change your bait. A simple way to attract the right customers into your business.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell. I am driving behind my wife to take my kids to the dentist. We’re going to do a very special Marketing in your Car. Like I said, we are heading to the dentist right now to take all of our kids to the kid dentist which is usually a lot of fun, but about a 15 to 20 minute drive so I’m going to do a Marketing in your Car.

What I want to talk about today, this is probably one of the coolest phenomenons I think that I’ve had in my business for a long time, my own personal insight. If I look at my business, especially over the last probably four or five years, just because of what we were doing, I was trying to attract more people that are business opportunity seekers.

You could tell by the products we’ve created and services we’ve created, they’re very much geared towards that, how to make your first money online, how to – it was all starting, starting, starting type stuff. It’s interesting because we were able to find a lot of traffic of beginners so we built a big business based on that but the problem that I’ve had is the beginners are so much more work, more effort, and it’s so much harder to get them to where they want to go, even though I think our coaching programs and everything we have is awesome. It’s just harder to get people.

We always say it’s easier to go from good to great than it is to go from nothing to something that’s good. I’ve always wanted to work with people who have more traditional businesses. We’ve done some work with people like that but not to full scale. I think my biggest concern was always if I create an offer that’s build towards business owners, they’re harder to target. It’s not as easy as people who want to start a business.

It’s really easy to find people who want to start a business. Finding people who already have a business and helping them to launch it and grow it, that’s traditionally the harder part. Because of that, I think I’ve had a fear of doing that, being able to grow our business bigger and all those kinds of things. We keep going back to more the beginners.

We were trying to create our new Dot Com Secrets Labs product. It was interesting, we first launched it as a print newsletter. It was $97 a month. We marketed it hard. It was hard to get people in. We had a couple hundred people but it never grew bigger. That was shocking to me because I really thought it was our best product we ever created. It was more valuable and more useful.

The problem was I was really good at attracting opportunity seekers, but not as good at getting actual business owners. For an opportunity seeker, you talk about split testing and it doesn’t really make sense to them. Why would I? I don’t even have a website. Why would I split test? I have to get something to work for them to try to make it better, right?

It never really took off. We ran it for six or seven months. Finally, I was frustrated because of how much effort and work had to go into it and how much money came out the back end, it just didn’t add up. We couldn’t keep doing it. Then the girl who was publishing it for us, she just had her second baby and she basically came to me and said, “Hey, I want to retire from publishing the newsletter.”

We decided to stop. The stuff we produced was the best stuff we had. It’s super amazing and it’s changed our company almost overnight. I think other people to look at it and model it, it could have huge impact on them. Because of that, I didn’t want it to die. She gave us one month notice.

I said, “For the last month, instead of making a whole new issue, let’s just take the best of all of our tests and plug them into one book and sell it for $400 or $500. Because it’s just for business owners, kind of a high end thing, we just won’t sell a bunch of them but we’ll have that there and that will be one of our products.”

We created the whole thing. When it was finished, it was amazing. Most of you guys hopefully have read the book. If not, go to DotComSecretsLabs.com and get it. It’s literally the best thing. I have a copy on my personal desk. I have one next to my bed. I have one on my office desk. It’s a product that we have actually used every single day.

I’m always flipping through, looking at pages, copying and testing to get ideas for what I’m going to do. It should literally be the bible for everybody I think that has a website. You should have it on your desk at any given time so you can have it there and go through it. We created the whole thing and it turned out amazing.

We were planning on selling it for a couple hundred dollars. That’s when I had the idea, “What if we just gave this away for free?” Anybody who is on the newsletter who got the tests, of all the people that were on it, if people bought that book and saw it, they would become raving Russell Brunson fans.

They would buy everything we had. They were coming to our events. They believed in us. What if we got this in the hands of everybody out there? We’re going to lose money up front but if we got it in their hands, they’re going to become a raving fan if they get this thing because it’s our best stuff, and everyone who has seen it so far has become a raving fan. Let’s just make it free and give it to everybody, get it in every single person’s hands, which is kind of scary since this is a 140 page book. They’re not cheap to print.

We said, “Let’s just do it.” We created it, went out there. We’ve launched it and we’re averaging about 1000 books a week we’re giving away. The even cooler, more amazing part of it is the type of people who are getting the book, they’re not the opportunity seeker. The opportunity seeker is not going to be like, “Oh cool, a split test,” but anyone who is a real business owner is going to flip out and get excited.

What’s been interesting is just because I think of how cool it is, we have people emailing us, begging us to promote. We haven’t even let affiliates promote it yet and they’re begging us, “Please let us, we want to promote this, we want to promote it.” We’re like, “No, we’re still testing the upsell flow. We don’t want to just give it away yet.”

Everyone is freaking out about it. We’ve just been mailing our list and buying Facebook ads. That’s all we’ve been doing so far. Like I said, we’ve given away like 1000 a week which is pretty exciting. This week actually, hopefully today we’re going to start turning on the heat and open it up to affiliates and partners.

What’s cool about it is again, the only type of people who buy this product are people who actually have a website, they actually have a business. They’re 1000 times more qualified for any of our mastermind groups and everything else that we want to do. That’s what we’re finding is the people that are coming to our funnel now that are calling us and want to join our mastermind groups and things, they’re like my dream client, the person I wanted to work with forever but I never could get.

It’s just interesting. What my big ah-ha was whatever that front end thing you put out there, I’ve heard it be called bait before but I never really thought about it that way but it literally is bait. The bait you put out there really does attract the type of person you want. There are times and places when you want to cast bait so wide that you bring in everybody. A lot of our business opportunity offers are like that where they’re mass appeal so we can get a lot of people but there are times when you don’t want that, when you know exactly who your dream client is.

What my whole thought now is you’ve got to create an offer that specifically speaks to them. If you do and you put it out there, they will rise to the top. There may not be as big of a mass of those people. In my case, there’s not as many people so it’s harder for me to break even immediately but the quality of person that comes through, most of these that are coming through, they don’t have an issue spending $15,000 or $25,000 on a coaching program whereas the opportunity seekers, we’re lucky if we can get $5000 to $8000.

The depth of your funnel is a lot deeper. It’s just interesting. We started looking at who would be our dream clients. The next category of what we thought was our dream clients really would be consultants and things like that. We created a front end product. It’s a new book that teaches our three-step system for consultants.

That’s going to be our next free plus shipping thing we launch and put it out there. Our whole goal is to attract a bunch of consultants. It’s kind of interesting. For you guys, I want you to think about that. Think about what is your front end offer.

First, think about who your dream client is. Write that person out, everything about them, and then figure out what’s going to be the thing that’s going to be the most sexy to them. Then create that thing and give it away for free, free plus shipping so that they pay to be on your list. Boom, you’ll start getting your dream client coming in the door. Fish with the right bait, you’re going to get the right type of fish.

I’m at the dental office now and I’m going to go hang out with my four kids. Hopefully they don’t have any cavities. I appreciate you guys. I will talk to you all again soon.

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A very simple process, to double or triple how much you achieve every two weeks…

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Good morning everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you to another beautiful day. Welcome to the Marketing in your Car podcast. It’s nine o’clock in the morning. I’ve actually been up for four hours already. The reason why is kind of fun.

There’s this dude I’ve been watching for the last two years named Carl White, someone I’ve been really impressed with but I’ve never had a chance to get to know him. He doesn’t know this yet, but one of the main reasons why, probably one of the top three reasons why I joined Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher’s mastermind group was I wanted to get to know Carl.

We had our first meeting a month ago. Carl was there. It was kind of funny. When we began the meeting, everyone had to talk about the one main thing they’re trying to get from this. I said, “I’m trying to make more money without increasing any employees, staff, or overhead.” Everyone laughed. Carl came over to me afterwards and said, “What you said was dead on. Everyone laughed at you but you’re the one who is thinking the right way. How do you make more money without increasing your costs?”

We hit it off then and went to lunch. We talked about some stuff and was really impressed with him and what he’s doing. At the end of it, we started talking and he brought up, “Hey, how would you like to be my accountability partner?” I was like, “How does that work?” He said, “This is how it works. You write me a check for $2000. I write you a check for $2000. It’s got to be a personal check, not a business check because it needs to hurt. We’ll keep that. Every two weeks, we do a meeting for about an hour. We set goals, the next two weeks, I’m going to do this, this, and this. Then we go out there and do it. Two weeks later, we meet back again. If you didn’t reach your goals, then I get to cash your check. If I didn’t reach my goals, then you get to cash my checks.”

We got this thing on the line where we’re basically holding each other accountable and it’s tied to cash. I was like, “That sounds like fun, let’s do it.” We did our first one two weeks ago. It’s kind of cool. We got to know each other a little bit and said, “Okay, two weeks from now, this is what I want to accomplish.” We’re very careful not to set goals that were tied to things outside of our control like, “I’m going to make $100,000,” an income goal, a leads goal, or something that no matter how hard we work, it might not be dependent upon us but to do steps goals.

For me, it was, “I’m going to have this new funnel completed.” This week, my big one is going to be building out a commission structure for our traffic team and getting them motivated. You pick very specific things that you either do or you don’t. I had mine. He has his. That’s kind of what happened.

Today, we had our little check-up. It was good. It was painful a little bit. I had reached all my goals, and then some of the other ones that I had set last week which had to do a lot more with one thing that Carl is good at but I’m not is saving money and building up your wealth, all those types of things. He’s trying to push me.

I told him, “Of all my issues, we can drive traffic, make sales and make money but I want to learn how to make it so that when I’m done with this game or this business, I have money in the bank and money for my posterity.” That’s what he’s been coaching me through a lot is that, getting set up all these different investment vehicles, putting away a certain percentage and all these things.

There’s one thing I don’t really want to do, I’m not going to lie but he keeps pushing me towards it. Two weeks from now, I have to have it done or else he’s going to charge me two grand, which is setting up a separate bank account and putting 25% of my income into that that’s untouchable. I can’t touch it to buy a house, I can’t touch it to do anything. It’s just to have, to save and to be able to have for whatever comes up, either retirement, a rainy day, or whatever it might be.

It’s really good. I have somebody who is stretching me and pushing me to do things that I know I need to do but I never would do on my own, just a cool process. I had my second call this morning at 5:30 in the morning. We went through it and it was awesome. I just want to encourage you guys and gals, and everybody who is listening right now to go out there and to actually find an accountability partner for whatever it is you’re doing for your business.

I would do it similar to what Carl and I did where you put some cash on the table. Write them a check, have them write you a check for the same amount, and hold up where if someone doesn’t fulfill on it, then the other person promises to cash that check and hold you accountable. Each week or the way we’re doing it is every other week, twice a month we’re meeting, and having our little meeting to report back what we did and set new goals.

I can already tell just from this, I was anxiously trying to get projects done yesterday because I knew I was going to meet Carl today. If I didn’t do it, it was going to cost me two grand so it got me pushing and running, and doing a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t normally have done. I’m a pretty driven guy without that but even with that on top, it’s really taking it to the next level for me.

I want to encourage you guys to do that. Find an accountability partner, someone who is the same business or different business, it doesn’t really matter, but somebody who you can trust and you can share parts of your business with or your life, whatever it might be that you may not feel comfortable with normally. Have them hold you accountable.

Make it a set schedule where it happens every two weeks, you’re holding them, they’re holding you. I’m excited to see what the next three or four months comes from this on my side but I think from you guys, you can do some amazing things as well. That’s what I want to encourage you to do.

The cool thing about this too is it doesn’t always have to be just business goals. Some of Carl’s goals today had to do with exercise and fitness, and things like that, just really cool. I encourage you guys to find an accountability partner, put some cash on the table. Make it fun and see how fast you guys can get each other moving forward.

That’s what I got for today. I’m at the office. I have two weeks now to get my next set of goals done. I’m going to get to work and have some fun. I will talk to you guys again soon. Thanks everyone.

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A unique way to close sales indirectly, and get more people to buy your stuff, without ever actually selling your stuff.

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Good morning everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you to the Marketing in your Car podcast. Hey guys and gals, we are here today in Boise. It is a super windy day. It’s going crazy. It’s like a tornado is coming through. It’s kind of fun. Hopefully I will not get blown off the road while I’m driving to the office.

I want to talk to you guys today about something fun that we’re doing, that maybe will give you guys some ideas. It’s a way we’ve been trying to position and sell our high end coaching. We’ve been having some fun with it. We just added in a couple new levels and an opportunity for people to come to Boise a couple of times a year and hang out with me, and have me work with their businesses one-on-one, or I guess eight-on-one, ten-on-one, or whatever, but in a more intimate situation.

I’m really excited about that. We’re trying to figure out different ways to pitch it and sell it. Selling a mastermind by itself is kind of hard because there’s a lot of people that have masterminds. What’s the difference between yours and everybody else’s? The real difference is the person who is facilitating it. What do they bring to the table? What do they know, and stuff like that?

It’s kind of hard to sell that. How do you brag about yourself versus other people? So I’ve been trying to figure out what’s a better way to promote that and sell that. I remembered probably five or six years ago, I got sold. I love getting sold. I hate going to seminars and you hear speakers, and nobody is able to close. I’m like, “I’m not that hard to close. You just have to give me a cool enough offer.”

It was Armand Morin’s, I think it may have been his last or second to last big seminar. I went there and was hoping that somebody would sell me because I hadn’t been sold for awhile. I just love that experience. I’m going through every speaker. Every speaker is like eh, eh, nothing really got me to move.

Finally Armand got up. Armand is a legend, especially when it comes to stage selling. He was doing this presentation. It was fun watching him go through the whole thing. Sure enough, by the end, he sold me. What was interesting is that he was selling this seminar he was doing called Persuasion X which was his public speaking program.

Like I said, he went through the whole presentation on Persuasion X and then he sold it. It was whatever price, like five grand or something, “Dang it, that’s a lot more than I was expecting,” but I really wanted it and was really happy. Then he came back and said, “Or if you’re a member of my AM2, you get it for free.”

I was like, “Say what?” I knew about AM2. I had heard about it for years but I had never signed up for it though, which was kind of like his inner circle thing that we’re rolling out. I always heard about it and thought it was really cool but never had anything to really push me over the edge to have me join his mastermind.

I think Armand is brilliant, but what am I going to get from him versus some of these other masterminds I’m in? Persuasion X though, that seminar or workshop that I wanted so badly, that I could have got for five grand or I could join AM2 and get it for free, what am I going to do? Sure enough, he closed me and I went and joined AM2.

I think you pay $500 a month for it, and all this stuff but he closed me. I was so excited. This weekend, I was thinking about how to position our inner circle, trying to figure out the right way to do it. Again, every time I’ve tried to write the copy or try to do a webinar, or anything I was trying to create to sell it, I always come back to me, me, me and I feel so stupid.

I hate that. I’m not the kind of person that likes to sit there and brag about themselves and why you should listen to me, why I’m the best person to run the mastermind, and all that kind of stuff. I was like, “You know, let me just not mention me at all. Instead, let’s figure out something really cool. Let’s close in our coaching program right now.”

We’ve been going through this it was supposed to be an eight week course. We’ve turned it into probably it will be a 20 week course, teaching our new Black Box concept which is just killing it for people. What I did instead is I wrote a four page sales letter talking about Black Box, how great it is, and how it literally changed our business and is changing other people’s, and just talked about that concept, how amazing it is.

I talked about right now, everyone in our inner circle is actually going through the coaching program for free with it. That’s the only way to get it. Otherwise, if you’re not part of my inner circle, you can’t have it, and really sold this Black Box training but then said you can’t get it unless you’re in the inner circle. If you want to be in our inner circle, go apply here.

When it was all said and done, when I looked at it, it was so cool and so refreshing. There were no income claims, no bragging, none of that other stuff that was selling. We just talked about this one really cool concept that I think is revolutionary, that I think is changing the way business works and if you want to know how it works, the only way to do it is being part of our inner circle. If you are that, then go apply over here.

I finished the sales letter. It turned out really cool. It’s four pages long. If you bought DCS Labs or anything else from us, you’ll probably get a copy of it here in the mail in a little bit but we’re going to start promoting it and sending it out with everything we do. I think that positioning is really strong. It’s just different. It’s a cool way to do it where you don’t seem like a jerk and you don’t seem like you’re bragging about yourself.

You just have one thing that’s really powerful that people want. For you guys, think about that with whatever it is you’re selling. A lot of times, we go directly and try to sell the product, sell the product or sell the mastermind, the coaching, whatever your thing is but sometimes it’s more powerful to figure out what the bonus could be and sell that, and the only way to get that is by joining our program.

I have a chiropractor that’s one of my close friends. He’s doing something like that right now. I’m really impressed with him, how he came up with the idea. He’s been trying to sell people coming to get adjusted forever and he’s been struggling with it. He went and created this presentation that teaches people this 30 minute morning routine you go through every morning.

It has exercise, yoga, stretching, and all this stuff. Then what he does at the end of that presentation is he gives you a foam roller, a bottle of MCT oil and this meditation CD but only if you come to his clinic and get adjusted. He’s just trained you for 30 minutes on why you need these three things. You can go out and buy it on your own, or if you’re part of his program, you can get it for free, really powerful positioning.

He just finished that whole offer and he’s going to start presenting it to different businesses. That was cool. Think about in your business how you can do something like that. I think I’ll find out really soon how well ours works but I think it will do really well. I think it’s a cool way to sell something without having to actually sell it and get a lot of really cool, excited people in.

That was my thoughts for today. I’m at the office and I’m excited. I have a fun week coming up ahead of me so it should be a lot of fun. I appreciate you guys all listening and we will talk to you soon.

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Russell just discovered a simpler way to sell to your already warm audience. Listen to learn how a simple iPhone video can change your business forever.

---Transcript---

Good morning, everyone out there in Marketing in your Car world. I want to welcome you to today and welcome you to the podcast. I just stumbled upon an interesting realization today. This goes back to this whole evolution of selling stuff for me. I look at when I first got started online, I did sales letters. Then we moved to me in front of a camera doing Russell talking trying to sell stuff.

Then we did PowerPoint videos, then doing some sales letters again. Today and yesterday, we’ve really built out our Dot Com Secrets Labs Funnel. Instead of doing sleek PowerPoint style videos, I’ve just done iPhone videos, literally got my iPhone out. I bought one of these iPhone lav mics on Amazon for $60 and they’re awesome.

The one thing bad about iPhone videos is usually the sound so we got this little thing and it works. All of the sales videos that were in the sales process, I’ve replaced them now. I tweaked the offers a little bit too but we replaced them with me just in front of a camera and conversions are crushing it. It’s interesting.

I think I came into an ah-ha and I may be wrong. I’m going to test it out a bunch. I think that with cold, cold traffic, I think still having the PowerPoint style videos is probably the best because it gives you the most controlled environment to make sure you deliver the message correctly. It takes away people’s ability to judge you and things like that because the one biggest problems with videos of you in front of the camera is people make instant judgments.

If someone comes into my funnel and they see me, they’re like, “Wow, he looks like he’s 11 years old. There’s no way he knows anything about internet marketing,” they’re going to prejudge me before they can hear my message. For cold traffic, I still think it’s probably more powerful to lead with a PowerPoint style video just because, again, it takes away all the judgment of you as a person. It gets that person in.

Then I think as soon as they have come through your funnel and they are introduced to you, and they understand your value, and you’ve been positioned as a spot of authority or whatever you want to call it, as soon as they believe that, I really think at that point that the most important thing, not the most important but the best way to convert on the next thing you sell them is through an iPhone video.

I think at that point, they have a relationship with you and it’s so much more powerful to have them just see you, see your excitement and passion, to see you unscripted where you’re talking about this thing, showing it and making it tangible. I think if you do that, it’s just going to crush it. It is for us right now.

If you look at Dot Com Secrets Labs Funnel, it started with the PowerPoint video. I made a quick video of me in my office holding up the book and talking about it and posted that. I was going to use that just to send out to my list but then I was like, “Let’s just put that as the video,” and sure enough, it beat the PowerPoint.

Then we changed the upsell to where we’re giving away a free shirt and they join a $20 a month membership site. We tweaked that. After we did that, it was just a video of me in the office showing the shirt, talking about it, putting it into a box. I tried to make it a tangible experience. They saw me putting the t-shirt in the box.

I’m going to shoot this box, if you just click yes down below, “Ooh, I want that box,” I was trying to make it a very tangible experience for them. Then the third one, I just went to my home office. I’m actually driving back to the office right now from my home office. I just filmed it and I’m excited to see how it does.

We’re upselling this webinar. Instead of having a PowerPoint of me talking about the webinar, I had the webinar up open on my screen and I show it. I show pieces of it. I made it tangible, “This is what I talked about and this is why it’s important. This is what you’re going to have a chance to see.”

I just really tried to open it up so they could see exactly what it was that we’re doing and that they’re going to get. It’s interesting. I think I had a big paradigm shift today. I’ve definitely been in the process over the last four or five years to script out every video and have it all perfect. While I still think that’s important when you’re bringing cold traffic in, I think after you’ve got a relationship, I think the iPhone style videos are going to convert best.

There you go, you heard it here first. You will probably see a lot more from me doing this in the future. I’m at the office. I’m excited to get this video uploaded and tested out in the funnel. I appreciate you guys and hope you have a good time, and make an iPhone video today. Throw it up and sell something and see what happens. Pretend like you’re Billy Mays and you’ll be amazed at what happens.

In fact, here’s a homework assignment for all of you out there in Marketing in your Car land. Go to Google and type in “Billy Mays Rich Schefren,” and it’s going to pull up a blog post on StrategicProfits.com where Rich Schefren wrote, right after Billy Mays passed away, Rich Schefren wrote this huge blog post about it.

I tell you what, I would have paid $97 easily for that blog post. It goes over how Billy Mays was the best pitchman our world has ever known, his scripts, how he did it, all that kind of stuff. If you go through that, it will give you the exact outline of how you need to create an iPhone style video. You’ll notice one of the big things he talks about is product demos. That’s what I’m trying to do, even with digital products, I’m trying to do these product demos, showing them the computer screen, showing them the demo, giving them some kind of wow moment.

If you do that, that’s how it all works. I appreciate you guys and gals and we’ll talk to you soon.

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Listen as Russell tells you about a new technology that will literally change the future of your business forever!

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Today, I want to welcome you to the Marketing in your Car podcast and I’m going to give you guys a glimpse into the future. It’s been a little while since I’ve done a podcast. I’ve been traveling like crazy, learning some cool stuff and been finishing up a secret project that very few people know about. I’ve hinted towards it a couple of times so I wanted to announce it now to our faithful Marketing in your Car listeners so you guys get a sneak peak above everybody else, not a sneak peak but just know what’s happening so you can prepare for it.

I think it will change your business and honestly, I think it will change your life. That’s how passionate I am about this. I think what we’ve created is probably the best, most needed software product in the industry. I’m fired up about it. It’s almost done. I’m freaking out. I’ve had a demo of it to play with today. It’s amazing.

I’m going to tell you about it. The software is going to be called Click Funnels. What’s cool about it is there’s other web builders out there, right? There’s ones like Lead Pages, you can create a landing page. There’s automated webinar software out there. There’s cool hangout software, there’s membership site software. There are a bunch of things out there that are all good but you’ve got to daisy chain together a whole bunch of different products to make a real funnel.

What Click Funnels does is you log in and look at all the different funnel types. If you say, “Hey, I want an automated webinar,” boom, you click a button and it will create every single one of the pages for the automated webinar for you, boom, boom, boom. Then you show each page, you click on it, and you can pick a template, change the headlines, all the text, kind of similar to Lead Pages, how easy it is to edit stuff. We modeled them on their editor but instead of creating pages, it’s a funnel.

We have automated webinar funnels, we have membership site funnels. We’re literally log back in, click a button, add a tab, copy, paste in your content, boom, the entire membership site is built out in ten seconds. We have micro continuity funnels, we have free plus shipping funnels, we have tripwire funnels. We have basically every funnel you can dream of.

In fact, to launch this, I’m working on a report where I’m going to map out my top favorite funnels. I’ve actually been drawing them out on the iPad. I’m having one of my designers sketch and make them look really cool. I mapped out like 14 different funnel types last night. It’s cool. Our software will create every single one of them in the click of a button.

Let’s say for example you wanted the micro continuity funnel. In that funnel, there’s five different pages. There’s a squeeze page, a free CD page, an upsell page, a thank you page. You click a button and boom, it creates all those pages for you and it also creates a micro continuity member’s area so you can go in there and say week one, unlock this content, week two, unlock this, week three, and literally, you can build out an entire micro continuity site in 20 to 30 minutes.

We also have them for product launches so if you’ve seen all the product launch funnels, boom, you’ve got a product launch funnel. If you want an automated webinar, we mapped out all the pages for that. You click a button, boom, it’s done. If you want an invisible funnel like what we’ve been doing, boom, click a button, and you’re done.

It’s super cool. I can’t even wait to show you guys. Our goal is to have a beta out in the middle of March and then by the end of March, launch it. I’m going to call my shot right now. I really think this will be probably the biggest game changer product that has hit our industry. I think it will stretch beyond our industry. Literally people that have local businesses can use it. People that have network marketing companies, people that whatever it is, it gives you the ability to do anything.

Right now, it takes me a team of four or five designers and programmers to get done. You can do it literally by clicking a button. I’m going to fire half my staff after I have this. No, not really but we’re going to change my staff to where all they’re doing full time is just creating new funnels, new templates, new pages. I’m really fired up for it.

You will see we’re doing a lot of really cool stuff. You’ll notice I’m going to be doing some fun things over the next two weeks talking about funnel types where people can go, all these funnels I’m sketching out, we’re going to have it where we’ll actually ship you out a physical copy of each of these funnels so you can look at it and determine for your business what funnel is the most important.

A lot of people lately, funnels is the hot topic of conversation in our industry. It’s what everyone is talking about. Everyone has, “This is the funnel.” They’re talking about one but the reality is most businesses have multiple funnels for different reasons. I’m marketing to my list, I have to have pattern interrupts, different ways I’m selling different things, different price points just so you can engage with different people.

I’m going to be giving out these hand outs so people can pick what type of funnel they need, and then right afterwards, we’ll be rolling out the software to do it all. I’m fired up. I hope you guys are too. I think you’re going to love it. We’re setting it at a price that’s cheap enough that anybody can use it. I want 20, 30, 40,000 people using this by the end of the year so it’s going to be awesome. I’m at the office.

I’m going to go implement this stuff and get it knocked out. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I appreciate you guys. If you like this podcast, if you’re getting good ideas, if you get excited by the future of what’s coming, then please go to iTunes and let me know. I love reading those. It makes me happy to see the reviews. That’s about it, you guys. Thanks so much and I’ll talk to you guys again soon.

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Can two seemingly conflicting marketing techniques actually work together when used correctly?

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to another amazing, awesome, exciting episode of Marketing in your Car. Hey guys and gals, I had a really fun experience last weekend that I wanted to share with you. I joined a mastermind group called the Ocean’s Four mastermind group. It was out of Vegas. I joined it because it was just a different type of mastermind group.

It was only meeting one time. It wasn’t one you have to join for a whole year so I knew the commitment timetable wasn’t too big. The other reason was Ocean’s Four was because there were four people that were in the mastermind group. Two of them I’ve been studying a lot for a long time. I was really intrigued to get their opinions and ideas.

The two guys that I went to go see, one of them, his name is Andre Chaperon. He has a bunch of products. By far, his best and most prolific is a product called Autoresponse Madness. The other guy was a guy named Ben Settle who runs BenSettle.com. He’s got a print newsletter called The Email Players Club. What’s interesting is I’ve been watching these guys for the last year, 18 months or so, and trying to understand.

They have two very different perspectives on email. With Andre and Autoresponse Madness, his whole goal he teaches is that you need to create a soap opera sequence. If somebody joins your list and over the next 20 to 40, however many days you create this soap opera, it’s bringing your audience in and engaging them. You’re opening loops in one email and closing them in other emails, having many episodes and this big huge story line which I think is really cool. It engages people and pulls them in.

You look at the other person, Ben Settle. His model is very different. You join his list. From that point forward, everyday you get an email with an email I call them Seinfeld emails. It’s kind of like the TV show Seinfeld where they’re basically emails about nothing. Everyday, he sends an email out about whatever, and somehow always ties it back to his core product which is The Email Players Club.

He’s relentless. Everyday since I joined his list, I’ve gotten an email. I don’t think he’s ever missed a day. Every single day, it tells you some random thing that happened that day and then boom, pushes you back to his product. Again, two very different styles. In fact, it was kind of funny, Ben at the mastermind said, “If you were to look at our styles, I would look at what Andre does as a sniper, getting up on the rooftop, aiming, and trying to make this perfect thing and crafting it so you can perfectly close the sale and close the deal whereas with me,” this is Ben talking, “it’s kind of more like walking into the mall with a shotgun and just unloading as many rounds as possible as fast as you can.”

That’s the difference between their two styles. It was interesting because from their perspective, what they do could conflict. I think everyone else in the room, they think it conflicts. What’s interesting is as I’ve been building out our funnels over the last 18 months that I’ve been watching these guys, I’m a big believer in both of their styles but in a very specific and very important sequence.

What I’ve been teaching our students, what we’ve been doing is when someone joins your list, you put them through a seven to day day email soap opera sequence with the core goal of that to build the bond, to build the attractive character, and build the audience’s engagement with the attractive character, to help them to build that bond to get to know the person and to make them want to continue to open emails and purchase products, and be engaged with that person.

After that initial soap opera sequence is done, then we drop people onto a broadcast list. Then we start doing the Ben Settle style daily Seinfeld emails. As you look at my whole philosophy and belief patterns with email marketing is you lead with the soap opera and after they watch the soap opera, then you dump them onto the Seinfeld emails. I think that as a one-two punch, I think it’s the smartest. I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s the best thing to do.

I think if you go directly to the Ben Settle style Seinfeld emails, the audience doesn’t have a chance to build a relationship with attractive character. If you just do Andre’s soap opera sequences, you do a soap opera but eventually, you just keep writing this thing and you want to kill yourself because they’re intricate and it takes awhile to write these things out. If you’re carrying on those story lines, they’re lasting days, months, and years. I think it’s really difficult.

If somebody joins your list in the middle of this thing, they have no idea of all the back story. It’s like trying to watch a show like 24 where you start halfway through the season. It doesn’t really make any sense. What I think is the blending of the two things. If somebody joins your list, initially have a seven to ten day sequence that’s a soap opera sequence that builds a relationship with the attractive character, and as soon as that sequence is over, then drop them on a broadcast list where you do the daily Seinfeld emails.

I think the blend of those two worlds is the most powerful way you could possibly do email marketing. It was really fun to have a chance to go meet those guys and learn the system they have behind each of their businesses, but I think more importantly, how to blend those two things together into what I think is the perfect, most ideal way to your email marketing.

I’m at the office now. I appreciate you guys listening to the Marketing in your Car podcast. I hope you get a ton of value out of it. By the way, if you want some help with your funnel, we have a new coaching program set up. We’re doing some amazing things with it. You just have to go to BlackBoxFunnel.com/application.php. If you do that and apply, you have a chance to work with me and we can look at your sales funnel and have some fun with it. That’s about it for today, guys. I will talk to you all again soon.

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How to shift your focus to the #1 most important aspect of your business, and how to use that to triple your sales this year.

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Good morning everybody. I hope you guys are all doing awesome out there. Welcome to the Marketing in your Car podcast. I’m heading to the office today. I’m excited for this week. I hope you are too. Some of you guys know if you listen to my podcast religiously, you know that over the last week, we’ve been pulling some crazy long hours. We had three nights in a row.

The first night, we were here until three and then I got three hours of sleep. The next day, we were here until four and I got three hours of sleep. The next day, we were here until 6:30 in the morning working because we flew out our head UI designer and our head programmer, and we are about to take over the world with a new software product.

Last week was a lot of development week, working on stuff, creating things, and it was really cool. Then this weekend, I started thinking, “You know what? As great as developing new stuff is, I’ve got to be focusing on selling stuff.” Obviously as a business owner, my number one job is sales. I got to get back to selling.

I was thinking a lot this weekend about Michael Masterson’s book Ready, Fire, Aim. I think I’ve mentioned this before on our podcast. If not, everyone should go get that book just because it will get your mindset right. He talks about in the book what it takes to go from zero to a million dollars, a million to ten, ten to 50 and 50 to 100 million, and the different skill sets and mindsets you need at each level.

What’s interesting is he talks about the very first, going from zero to a million, so many businesses fail because they think they need an office and computers, and I need all this stuff they need. The reality is from the very first year, the very first however long it takes to go from zero to a million bucks, the only thing you should be focusing on is sales, sales, sales. Our company does well on autopilot. Thing are happening but I look at each new venture we launch.

Every time we launch a new venture, I’ve got to look at that as a company that’s starting at zero and just sit down and look at sales, sales, sales. What do we got to do today to sell? This morning, I woke up early and put on my sales cap to figure out how we can market and sell our products. I picked the three core things we’re focusing on right now. One is our Dot Com Secrets Labs newsletter. One is Neurocell, and one is our coaching program and wrote a strategy today about what we could do to start focusing on selling.

I’m excited. We’re heading to the office today. We’re going to have a quick powwow with everyone. Then all we’re going to do is spend most of the day focusing 100% on how do we sell this stuff, writing Facebook ads and solo ads, affiliates, and just going crazy.

It was interesting, I look at a typical business day for me. I would say I probably spend five or six hours a day focusing on building new stuff and then other time, my focus of actually promoting things, maybe 30 minutes a day, maybe. If I can get the mindset shift for me and everyone in my office where we spend two or three hours a day completely focused on how do we drive more traffic to our offers, how do we sell more stuff, how would that change our business?

Within a week, we would be focusing the same amount of time we normally right now focus on in a quarter. That’s really my big focus is I’m going to try to spend two or three hours a day, me and everyone in my team that’s tied to any kind of traffic generation thing, just focusing on sales, sales, sales.

It’s fun, I think I talked to you guys before about this huge whiteboard like a scoreboard in our office. We have our big goal this year which is $10 million. We have daily goals, weekly, and monthly. We actually just hired, we’ve had accountants that have worked for us for a long time. We just hired an in-house accountant to start working in our office so every single day, when I walk in the office, she can say, “Boom, yesterday we made $15,000 or 13 or 22,” or whatever the number was.

I can see that number and we can try to figure out that day, what do we do to outsell what we did yesterday, and just focusing on beating yesterday’s sales. I’m really fired up and excited for that. Those are some of the things that are going on in my mind right now. For all you guys, whatever your business is, I want you to start focusing more on that, waking up each morning, and the number one thing should not be, “What can I create today? What’s my next project?” or whatever it might be.

The number one goal should be how do I drive more traffic, how should I sell more stuff today? I highly recommend creating some kind of scoreboard where every single day, you can see your sales so you know that when you wake up in the morning, I got to beat yesterday’s sales. It’s kind of like when you go to the gym.

I used to go to the gym all the time and just lift hard. I got strong but I got strong to a level. A couple of years ago, I had a personal trainer and he keeps track of every single lift I do, and every time I go in, he tries to increase either the reps or the weight or both, or whatever. I look at the gains that I’ve made over the last two to three years. I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been, and I keep going up. It’s because we’re tracking and measuring, and seeing those things.

I think it’s the same with sales. I’m excited to start watching that. Today is the first day of this. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next month, two months, three months. Last week, we were looking at our sales and we were averaging I think around $16,000 a day or so which is good, but I was like, “Man, what if we could get that to $20,000 and then $25,000, and then $30,000?”

I think we were doing the math. I think $30,000 a day is about $10 million a year. For me to hit my goal for this year, we got to be averaging about $30,000 a day. That’s my KPI, my key performance indicator, the number I need to be looking at every single day when I come in. What did we do yesterday? Okay, what do we have to do more of today to increase that over what we did yesterday? That’s my goal.

I’m excited. I just got to the office. I hope that you guys are as fired up as me. Sit down, look at your goals, look at your daily sales and start figuring out how you can make that bigger. I don’t care if right now, your sales are six bucks a day. That’s fine. Look at that and say, “How can I get to $10 a day? How can I get to $20 a day? How can I get to $50, $100, $1000 then $5000, $10,000?” and just start focusing on those numbers.

If we’re not focusing on it, it’s not going to grow. I promise you, it’s like going to the gym everyday and just lifting. You’ll feel good and the ladies will check you out but you’re not going to get any stronger. When you start measuring that daily and you look at that, the number just annoys you and bothers you.

You’ve got to figure out how in the world to beat it. That’s when you start seeing the big gains that you want. That’s my challenge for you guys today. That’s what I’m going to be doing today. I’m fired up. We’ll talk to you guys again soon. Thank everyone.

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How we’re using a free t-shirt to launch a new membership site.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a very snowy Marketing in your Car. It’s been a little while since I’ve done Marketing in your Car. I want to tell you what’s been happening. We are about to launch this new software as a service, or SAAS as they call it program, product. It’s actually three products.

We’ve been working on it for the last year or so, actually, a little bit longer than that on some of them. We’re at a point now where they’re almost done but they haven’t quite gotten done. We really need a good UI designer to help polish everything off. There’s this guy who I think is the best UI designer I’ve ever seen in my life, and I bribed him and paid him a whole bunch of money to come to Boise to work.

We flew him out this week. He works typically, he wakes up at two o’clock in the afternoon and then hangs out and starts working at seven o’clock at night until six AM. That’s his schedule. That’s East Coast time so it’s even later. Four o’clock my time, he’s normally waking up. We flew him out here and he’s still on that schedule. We’re kind of working around him.

The last two nights in a row, I have worked until about four AM. Then I go drop him back off at the hotel, I come home, sleep for three or four hours until my kids wake up, and then I’m back at it again. I’m running at almost no sleep but for the last two or three days, we’ve gotten so much stuff done. It’s just exciting.

For all you guys who are out there launching new companies or businesses, you probably know that there’s days when you just go in there and kill yourself, when your body is ready to die but it’s all worth it afterward because at least for us, our thing is almost done, and fired up and excited. Last night while they were working, Todd was programming, Dillon was designing, and I was writing sales stuff.

I came up with an idea for a new business model. Because I had eight more hours while they were working to do whatever I wanted, I started implementing this concept. What we did, we’ve done a lot of membership sites in the past. My problem is I always charge $97 for them. While we made a lot of money, retention was never amazing on it.

One of my close friends, Stu McLaren, I remember a couple of years ago, he told me, “Man, if you had a membership site that was $20 a month, people would stay forever. You charge so much, people don’t stay.” I had an idea for a membership site, a $20 a month one that was basically like a forum where people could come online and talk about marketing stuff.

Outside of that, there wasn’t a lot of stuff in there, just that. I wrote the copy for it, not really good but I was like, “Why is someone going to pay $20 a month to get that? What’s the hook to get someone in?” I was looking at all these people doing t-shirt stuff. That’s the hot topic right now. Everyone is selling t-shirts on T Spring.

We tried looking at different models and ideas, and saw one guy in the real estate space who is giving away free t-shirts, like a tripwire offer, giving away a free t-shirt and then upselling them into his continuity program. I was like, “What if I made a t-shirt, the coolest t-shirt in the world and the only way you get that t-shirt is if you’re a member? You join and we ship you out this free t-shirt,” kind of like Insanity does.

You buy their product, and if you lose weight, they send you a t-shirt. We flipped that around. I wrote the whole copy, designed the whole letter last night and it turned out amazing where basically what we’re going to do is print 1000 of these t-shirts and they’re going to be limited edition. When they’re gone, they’re gone. The only way to get one is to become a member of our membership site, which is $20 a month.

You pay $20, boom, we ship you out the t-shirt. When the 1000 t-shirts are gone, they’re limited edition and they’re gone forever. At that point, we’ll design another t-shirt and do it again, and just keep doing this process until we get 3000, 4000, or 5000 members in the member’s area. Every time we have a new t-shirt come out, we will offer it to the new members first so they can pre-order so we can sell 500, 1000, 2000, however many members which lowers our cost. Then we do this launch where we go and pre-print all the pre-ordered ones and then 1000 other ones, and give away these t-shirts for free and advertise them on Facebook, and a bunch of other really cool things.

Like I said, it turned out amazing. The model is really cool. We’re going to be replicating it I think across all of our niches. In our weight loss space, we’re going to design an amazing t-shirt for the weight loss space, one for the jiu jitsu space, one for all these different markets we’re going into, just an amazing t-shirt and the same model, $20 a month membership site and limited edition of that t-shirt, 1000 of them. When they’re gone, they’re gone, and then replicate that over and over again.

I’m excited. It’s a new model. It’s a new concept, new idea. No one is doing it yet. I’m sure that people knock me off. I hope they do. I hope you do but just wait. We’ll be rolling this out probably in the next seven to ten days. I’ll get the t-shirts printed. We already have a design and they turned out amazing. I messaged the designer last night at three in the morning and woke up this morning, he had already designed it and it looked awesome.

It’s exciting, a new model, new ideas to think about. That’s about it for today. I hope you’re loving your business. I hope you’re excited. I’m going to go pick up Todd and Dillon, get back to work. We get one more day of pounding out UI designs and back in programming before they leave. Then I get back to my regular sleep schedule because I am tired. I appreciate you guys and will talk to you all soon.

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The two invisible lessons that I learned, that they didn’t want me to know, while at the traffic and conversion event.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to a very slushy Marketing in your Car. Today, I woke up and came outside. It’s kind of raining but it’s freezing cold so we have this slush all over the road. My kids were running around in their clothes before school and got soaking wet, so we’ve had a fun morning but now I’m heading to the office to get some work done.

I’m super fired up for today for a lot of different reasons. I just want to talk to you guys today about something I saw last week which was awesome. I was very impressed with Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher, their Traffic Conversion Summit. I just wanted to share with you guys something really cool that I learned from it.

It wasn’t so much the teaching. The sessions were great and everything. The reality is the bulk of what they shared was a recap of the best stuff from Perry’s Secret Selling System so the content wasn’t really new or anything from that side, but watching the event orchestrated was amazing. I think there’s a lot of things to be learned from anyone doing any kind of event. It can be online events, offline events, anything.

I don’t know how much they actually sold at the event but if I was to guess, I would say probably sold anywhere from three to five million dollars from the event without anyone ever feeling like they got sold. It was really interesting, so some really cool stuff that all of us can learn from for our own businesses.

One thing, if you watched the way they ran the event, there were about 2000 people there. They had a lot of different sessions and things that they were teaching but there were two core things they were selling. One was their war room which was their mastermind group. The other was their funnel consultations. War room was between $15,000 and $25,000 depending on at what level you get in. The funnel consulting was $17,000.

What they did was they got up there and taught a session on tripwires for example which is a super cool concept they’re talking a lot about over the last few times. At the end of the tripwire presentation, they said, “Look, if you want one of our funnel consultants to look at your funnel, run to the back, fill out an application, and we’ll set up a private one-on-one meeting with you during the event to meet with one of our funnel consultants.”

People run to the back and fill out the form for their funnel consultation. The next session, Frank Kern spoke about something. At the end of it, he’s like, “Hey, by the way, if you want us to critique your funnel, run to the back and get your free funnel consultation.” Every single presentation for the most part was talking about their free funnel consultation.

They had huge monitors in the main ballroom that show people whose turn it was to do funnel consultations. Literally, the entire three days, there were probably 60 people up on the board at any given time, saying, “You guys, report for your funnel consultation,” boom, next ones, next ones. Of the 2000 people in the room, unless they were horrible at closing, I would say they closed anywhere from 100 to 200 people in their $17,000 consult package.

Again, that’s between 1.7 and three million bucks. As I started thinking about that, in my business, can I do a lot more cool free stuff where I’m just giving, teaching, and showing stuff for free, and at the end, “Hey, if you want me to look at your stuff, go fill out this application form.” In our business now, we re-set up a mini call center. We got two people who are calling and consulting, and then selling people on our higher end services.

I look at every blog post I do, every teleseminar, every interview, everything I do, I could be pushing people to go get their funnel consult, or whatever it is that I’m selling and just keep pushing people to this thing. I thought that was really interesting. I think for all you guys, we’re always putting out content, YouTube videos, podcasts. All the different stuff you’re putting out there, every one of them, if you just focus on giving amazing content and then push people somewhere where they can get a consultation, it’s a very powerful zero resistance way to sell. That’s one thing.

The next thing is their war room, which is their mastermind group. If any of you guys have any kind of masterminds or groups that you’re running, I learned this originally from Bill Glazer. He did the same thing when I was in his titanium group. You go to his events, and the whole time, they’re talking about their titanium group and having people from their titanium group get up on stage and talk about what they’re doing and how much success they’re having.

By the end of it, all you know is you want to be in the titanium group. It’s the same thing they did with the war room. They just kept bringing people up from war room and case studying, talking about them. Every presentation would reference the war room. People are just like, “What in the world is the war room?”

Finally, “Okay, we got some spots in the war room. If you’re interested, there are applications in the back. You can go apply.” Again, it’s very zero selling, just talking and putting those people up on a pedestal and making you want to ascend to that level. I’m not going to lie, they closed me on a $25,000 war room package so it worked for me.

Think about it guys, if you have a group, the biggest key is to talk about your students, talk about success stories and that will get more people to want to ascend and become like them. Those are some of the cool stuff that happened in Traffic Conversion outside of the actual seminars as far as watching them do. I usually learn more from watching people do stuff than I do from them teaching stuff.

I definitely got a huge education watching them run and manage that event. It was very impressive. I hope you guys got some ideas from what I shared with you today. Give away free content, put your success stories and your students on a pedestal. If you do that, people will start flocking to you.

I saw it this weekend and I’ve seen it in my own business. We’re going to start doing a whole bunch more of it. I guarantee you guys will see a lot more of it coming through. Hope you guys enjoyed this. If you like this podcast, people go to iTunes and tell people you like it. Go comment on all that fun stuff. I’d really appreciate it.

I hope you guys are doing awesome. We’ll talk again soon.

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Some of my thoughts after day 1 of our new supplement offer.

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Hey everyone, good morning. This is Russell Brusnon. It’s about 6:30 in the morning and I’m heading to the gym. I was too excited to not do a podcast. Welcome to the Marketing in your Car podcast. I got to admit, part of this whole episode is because of my good friend and faithful listener Stu McLaren.

We had a chance, I know you guys have heard me talk over the last however many months about our supplement we have. We’ve been doing really well with it. We always have a free plus shipping thing where they get a free trial bottle. We auto bill them and all that fun stuff.

We couldn’t ever make that offer work very well like in mass media when we would take it to media buyers and stuff like that. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to do it. The media buyers said, “If you want to be successful buying big media, you have to change the way your offer is structured. It can’t be a trial. It has to be up-front pay. It has to be all these things.”

They showed us some successful offers. We looked at all of them. I bought probably 20 different supplements to see their sales process and to see what they upsold and how much they upsold them for, what the price points were, and all that fun stuff. That was what I did about six months ago or so, and started reworking our offer.

We hired a great copywriter. He wrote the copy and designed it all, put the whole process together. Yesterday, it actually went live. It was exciting. You never really know what’s going to happen. You hope and pray that it’s going to do well but yesterday was a big day for us. The ad we bought, we spent $1300 on the ad and within about three hours or so, we broke even.

Within about eight or nine hours, we doubled over, meaning we had made over $2600. This is on cold traffic which is what makes it so exciting. It was the equivalent of putting a big billboard out in the street, and people driving by came in and either bought it or didn’t buy it. I’m excited, to double over your money on the first day on a cold ad before any of the testing process has really started is exciting.

I remember I’ve been wanting to do a supplement for years. Ever since I interviewed a guy named Vince James, and some of you guys, hopefully most of you guys have heard that interview. It’s the 12 month internet millionaire where I interview Vince. He had made $100 million in 23 months selling a supplement. He wrote a really good book called The 12 Month Millionaire. In that book, he wrote a chapter called, “What’s it’s like when one of these things explodes.”

He talks about how with his offer, the one that he did when he first mailed the first sales letter, he said it tripled over on the front end which for him had never happened before. He’s like, since he had that happen, he knew it was game over. He took that letter that he was mailing and started scaling it to more magazines, making it wider and bigger.

Again, with it, he made in 23 months $100 million. That’s how I’m feeling this morning. I’m awake, I’m excited. Today, my only question when I get into the office is how do we scale this. What can we do? How can we increase the traffic and make it more consistent? How can we get more of it? That’s going to be my focus today and probably for the next, who knows, next year if it keeps going this well, if we can keep scaling it.

We’ve had a lot of successful offers. I think last I checked, we had six or seven products we had made that had done over a million dollars in sales but we’ve never had one that we could just really scale, take it, and grow it by adding tons more media to it. That is going to be a fun process to learn and try. That’s what we’re doing.

For all you guys out there who are trying internet marketing stuff, don’t give up. The stuff all works. I took a little break to go in and work out. Now I’m back in my car, heading back home. Anyway, I just wanted to add onto the end of this because I wanted to make this actionable for you guys, not just talk about a success we had.

I’ve been doing this for a long time, over a decade now of creating and trying out offers. It’s interesting, some fail, some do well, some do really well. You never know. That’s why I think if you really want to be in this whole internet marketing/direct response game, a big part of it is you got to always be creating new things and testing stuff because you never know which one is going to blow up. It’s kind of interesting.

I remember hearing, I think it was on Shark Tank or somewhere, they were talking about how most people are trying to get a grand slam. That’s their goal, trying to get a launch that makes them a million dollars and make a grand slam but tons of millionaires have been made by hitting singles and doubles. I think it’s really key.

We’re always looking for grand slams but the reality is you’ve got to hit singles, hit doubles, single, double, triple, and then every once in awhile when you step up to the plate, you’re going to knock one out of the park but you can’t do that if you’re only up to bat once or twice. You always got to be practicing, getting better, trying and testing.

I don’t know where our supplement is going to go but based off just day one, it’s pretty exciting. I think we’ve got a lot of potential. Now it’s going to be the fun part about learning how to scale it, grow it, and seeing how far, wide, and deep we can go. I just want to encourage you guys as well. Just keep on creating different offers until you hit the single, which usually the single is going to be the first one that gives you your big payday, hit a double which is probably the one that’s going to let you fire your boss and make this thing a full time gig, then every once in awhile, and it might not be a year from now. It might be ten years from now but if you’re consistent with it and keep getting better and honing your skills, you can knock one out of the park.

That’s about it for today. I’m excited and fired up for today. I hope you guys are as well. Make sure that you put yourself in a positive state for yourself plus the people you’re working around. Your attitude I promise you is going to wear off on people around you, so put yourself in a good state. Go in there excited today, get fired up, and have some fun. Thanks everyone, and we’ll talk to you soon.

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How we made $30,000 in four hours, training people on stuff we love to share, and how you can too.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the Marketing in Your Car podcast.

We are officially on episode 51 which is exciting for a lot of reasons that I’m going to talk about in a minute. It’s about noon. I’m heading to the office right now. I’m going in a little bit late. That’s because I went in earlier today as well. I had a workout early because we’re relaunching the new version of our supplement this morning.

We had some ads hitting someone in real quick to fix some things up, headed back home to shower and play with the kids, and now I’m heading back to the office, about noon but I want to share with you guys a really cool story about the black box. Some of you probably saw the promotion we ran recently. It’s doing really well. I want to walk you guys through it.

The black box training, if you didn’t have a chance to watch it, which you should go watch it. You can see it at MillionaireIncubator.com. It’s basically I was walking everyone through the process I’ve been using lately that’s just crushing it where basically, we’re leading with a free plus shipping something, a newsletter, a magazine, a CD, a DVD, an mp3 player, a knife, a something, some weird gadget or info, giving away a free thing.

After they purchase that free thing, then you take them to a page that walks them through a really cool case study of something you’ve done or are doing. Then you have them sign up for an invisible funnel webinar which is a webinar where basically they pay zero dollars to attend. Then you do the training live. At the end of it, if they like it, then you bill them.

They put their credit card in for zero dollars and you re-bill them at the end. At the end of the three or four hour long training that you teach whatever concept it is you’re teaching, then you offer them an opportunity to work with you where you have them apply. We ran that last Friday. One of the tweaks we did this time with our invisible funnel which was kind of cool is we actually, up front, they can sign up for zero dollars and then pay $97 when the training is over. Or if they know it’s going to be good and they can save $20 by just paying $77 now. We did that.

What’s interesting is 39% of the people paid the $77 now which was exciting. We made almost $10,000, just shy of $10,000 from people paying the $77 up front, and then today, probably here in about an hour, we’re going to be re-billing everyone who didn’t cancel. Based on that, we’ll be making another probably $20,000 to $25,000 depending on how many people’s cards go through.

We made about $30,000 just doing the actual training which was exciting. It’s always good to get paid to teach someone cool up front. Then now we got a hold of people that applied to work with us. We’ll be signing them up as well for our high end thing which hopefully we’ll make another six figures or more from that. It’s exciting and cool.

This whole black box concept is something that I hope all you guys have a chance to look at. That’s basically the process. You create a really cool, take out your best tip, secret, or strategy or whatever, make a free plus shipping thing, and then sell that. They pay for shipping and then on the next page, you show them a case study of how that thing that they just bought, how it’s worked for somebody else.

Say a case study of how someone lost 30 pounds or someone made this much money, or someone saved this much money on their taxes, whatever your system is that you teach. Then tell them that you’ll teach them that over premium training that is anywhere from $47 to $97 but they don’t have to pay until after the webinar is over. They just put in their credit card now.

If they hate it, they let you know. If they love it, do nothing and you’ll bill them at the end. At the end of that, let them apply to get your more personalized one-on-one coaching program. That’s what we did and taught. It’s been exciting so far. People have been going crazy with this. I’m excited.

The other reason I wanted to tell you this is the whole free plus shipping thing, we used to do it back in the day where we’d do free plus shipping and put someone on a forced continuity program but we stopped doing that because FTC and Visa and Mastercard did not like that, so we stopped doing forced continuity, but we kind of stopped doing free plus shipping stuff as well.

Over the last three or four months, we brought it back, didn’t do any continuity but we do upsells. Right now, that model is crushing it for us. I actually took the first 50 episodes of Marketing in your Car. We put it on a CD. You will see here in the next week or two an offer I put out where you get the first 50 episodes of Marketing in your Car for free, just cover six or eight bucks for shipping and handling and we’ll ship it out to you.

I hope a lot of you guys take it up because you’ll have a chance to listen to the entire first 50 episodes on one CD. We cut out the cheesy audio songs so you don’t have to hear it a thousand times. I think it would be really good. Afterwards, we’ll upsell people into our funnel. I recommend you guys getting it for two reasons.

One, you’ll get all of the podcasts so far on a nice convenient CD, and number two, you’ll have a chance to see this black box process in action. I’m at the office now. I’m going to go rock and roll, make some more black boxes for myself, for my businesses, and check to see how our supplements are doing this morning with our new funnel and the new ad that went out.

Hope you guys are doing awesome and we will talk to you soon.

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If you don’t keep track of your score in business, you can’t win. Here’s how Russell is building his scorecard today. I highly recommend you build one as well.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell, and welcome to another episode of Marketing in Your Car.

I hope you’re excited for New Year’s. It’s coming soon. Last night, I was up until about midnight and couldn’t fall asleep so I got my clothes on, drove to the office, and worked until three in the morning, and then woke up again today at seven because I’m so fired up about getting ready for next year. I want to tell you guys my number one task for today because I think it’s going to be probably one of the biggest things that I could possibly do to increase our business next year.

I’ve never done it before. It shocks me. I should have been doing this for the last ten years of my business. I highly, highly encourage all you guys to copy me and do this today. What I’m doing is basically I’m making a scorecard. You know, the biggest problem that I think I have in my business is that I don’t keep score. I don’t watch the numbers as close as I should, revenue goals and things like that, mostly because I think I hate accountants. They stress me out. They just are really weird people.

Because of that, I really shy away from looking at the numbers and all that kind of stuff. Over the last month, I worked with my accountants to have them completely change our profit and loss sheets because I hate the way that regular accountants do it and I had them make up one for me that actually gives me numbers that look like a way I can actually read and interpret them. That was one part of it.

The biggest part is we’re making a huge scorecard. I’m going and buying a huge whiteboard. We’re mounting it in my office today. Basically, I’m going to break the scorecard into three different sections. One is going to be a daily section, Monday through Sunday, the time each day, and it’s going to have our five core businesses, Dot Com Secrets, Edison, Neurocell, Body Evolution, Living on a Coupon, and other.

Have those businesses and have each day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and what’s going to happen is each morning, we’ll wake up and I’m going to put in how much money we made in each of those companies, boom, right huge in front of our eyes so we can see, “Hey, yesterday we made $13,000 or $23,000,” whatever we made, and we can see it.

Then every single day of the week, we’ll put that in there and we’ll set weekly goals each week and see if we can try to beat the weekly goal. That would be the first section. Then what happens after the week is done, we’ll clear it all out and on the right-hand side of the board, it will be a weekly number. We’ll have week one, week two, week three, week four, week five, and have just the total now of the entire week for all companies.

“Hey, last week, we made $160,000,” or whatever, and put in the number for that week. Week number two, week number three, week number four, and at the end of that, we’ll have our monthly goal. At the bottom of the whiteboard, or all across the bottom, we’re going to have all 12 months and we’ll have just the monthly. January we made $450,000, February we made $600,000, whatever it is, and we’ll be able to start seeing it.

What that will do is that will start getting me and everyone on my team and everyone here focused on those goals. Obviously we’ve done well and we always do well. We’re focusing on just doing a lot of stuff but we never just focused on that number. I think that’s going to be a really big thing for us is having a scorecard out in front of us all day long, every single day because if you can see the scorecard, you’re more likely to keep working towards that and trying to increase it.

One thing I’ve learned is that whatever you measure, you can increase. If you don’t measure it, you can never increase it. I’ve looked at that over the last years. I looked through our numbers with our accountants. It was up and down, up and down. There was no ever steady progression, just ups and down. I think with this, it will give us a focus every single day of what can I do today to increase that.

The big model that I’m going to have for our internal company and also for our website, in fact, I think I may change the tag line of Dot Com Secrets to just being, “How to give yourself a raise everyday,” and how often do we look at it. Everyday, how do we give ourselves a raise? Yesterday, we did $13,000. How do we give ourselves $14,000 today? What do we have to do to give ourselves a raise today, always having that be the focus.

That’s what we’re doing. We’re building a huge scorecard. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be on the board. We’re going to look at it every single day. I’m excited for it. For you guys, you need to make a scorecard for yourselves as well. I recommending going to Home Depot. For $10, you can buy a big old whiteboard, go mount it on your wall, and make your own scorecard. Like I said, we’re breaking our board into three sections, having our daily, weekly, and yearly numbers.

For this, we’re just focusing on revenue numbers. Then internally, what we’re going to be doing is the same kind of thing where each key department is going to have their KPIs which are key performance indicators. Revenue will be one KPI, refunds will be another KPI. Obviously we don’t want any of those. We’ll also have how many opt-ins, how much traffic level, all these different KPIs as well.

Each day, we’ll mail out a report in the morning from the day before of, “Hey, here’s how many opt-ins, subscribers, buyers, blah, blah, blah we got as well.” We’ll have a daily email scorecard that goes out as well as the big scorecard for our numbers on the wall. That’s what I’m doing today. Isn’t it exciting? I recommend for all of you guys as well to make your scorecard, put it up so you can see it and everybody in your team can see it.

If you work remotely, you can do something like ducks board and build your own that way. I just want something that’s out in front of you every single day, and just look at those numbers every single day because again, what you track, you can increase. That’s it, guys. I’m at the office, about to go make my whiteboard. I’m excited. I hope you guys do as well. We will talk to you guys all again soon.

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A cool new strategy I learned from Perry Belcher, kept me up all night Christmas Eve. Discover how a “tripwire offer” can change your entire business overnight.

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Everyone, good morning. It’s the day after Christmas, and I want to welcome you to the Marketing In Your Car podcast. Okay, everyone, so, I don’t know about you, but the last two days have been crazy. Partially because of Christmas, partially because I bought a course. And the night before Christmas, I only had two hours of sleep because I couldn’t stop listening to it, and it was awesome.

So, the product is called, it was Perry Belcher’s Secret Selling System. And if any of you guys know me, you know that I’ve spent close to $300,000 or more on my marketing education in the last ten years. And this product, I would say, would be one of the top three courses I’ve ever gone through. Amazing. Anyway, the, not Christmas Eve, the night before Christmas Eve, I was listening to it.

My wife passed out, and I was not quite tired yet, so I put it in. I started listening. I was like, 10 or 11 hours into it, and Perry started talking about this concept called The Trip Wire Offer. And that’s what kept me up all night long the night before Christmas, and then the next night we had Christmas Eve. So, I’m really tired right now, but I’m so excited it does not even matter.

So what I want to talk to you is about the trip wire offer, because this will change my business forever, and it should change your business forever as well. If you don’t have Perry’s course yet, go and find it. I don’t know how to even buy it. It was an upsell for something but if you can get a hold of it, do anything you can to get it. It’s amazing.

Anyway, so, with that said, the trip wire offer, I want to talk about what this is. And this is not something that’s new to me, but this is something I completely forgot. If any of you guys have been around me for a long time, you probably remember a course that we taught a while ago called Micro Continuity. It was by far our best selling product ever, and we launched it. What we did is, little did I know at the time, we had a trip wire offer.

I actually went to Hong Kong, well, I didn’t go to Hong Kong. I went online, I met this dude in Hong Kong, who sold these little MP3 players. And I took a six-hour trading course and I put it on this little MP3 player. And when we launched it, people bought this MP3 player for free, plus shipping. And then I would ship it out to them, and afterwards we would bill them $97 a month to have access to the Micro Continuity membership site.

And like I said, we launched that, we did well over $1 million. We had, I think we had 8000 people pay $97 a month at the time. And it was awesome. And we, a little while later we did the same kind of concept with 12 Month Internet Millionaire. We got an MP3 player and sold it, and we had these little offers. We had this cool gadget, and it blew up.

Now, there were two problems with the way we ran that before. Problem number one is we were cooking continuity in all of the things. Which isn’t really a big problem, we made a ton of money. The big problem though was that a lot of people just didn’t know they were getting billed. FTC came down, Visa and MasterCard came down, and just started hating those offers. And so, they penalized us, we lost our merchant account for a little while because of it.

And they just didn’t like the free plus shipping we put someone on forced continuity afterwards. And so, that was kind of frustrating for me. And because of that we stopped doing those types of offers. Because I thought that there weren’t any good unless you had a continuity hook to it. But looking back on it now, what was amazing was we did the free plus shipping thing, and we would get so many more people in the front door.

And then, because they made that first commitment, our upsells converted amazingly. We made insane amounts of money. Our ups, I remember for every free MP3 player we were giving away, we were averaging between $60 and $70 in sales from upsales.

Then we have the continuity after that. Again, stupid Russell, because I lost my ability to do the continuity, I just quit doing those things altogether whereas if I had pulled continuity out of the equation and just gave away the free mp3 player and I had the upsells afterward, I still would have made a couple million dollars just from those offers yet I stopped stupidly. So Russell has decided to repent and start doing offers like that again, the tripwire offer.

An example of the tripwire offer is something that’s so amazing, so good, and super cheap that people just buy it. You get somebody in the buying mood, they’ve already said yes to the first thing and they start buying the upsells right afterward. Some examples from Ryan and Perry’s business, I bought three or four of them this weekend and promoted one this weekend just to see how it went. One of them is in their survival business. They have these cool little credit card knives. Basically, you pay $2.95 and they ship you out a free credit card knife. It looks like a credit card and it folds into your knife. You keep it in your wallet. It’s awesome.

I bought one of those and boom, they hit me with three upsells afterward. Then I bought this other one that was this instant light match that lights 10,000 times in a row, boom, free plus shipping. I paid $2.95 shipping and handling, and boom, they had three upsells afterward. Then I bought another one that was this super magic gadget card. I don’t even know, it opens cans and does a whole bunch of things like that. Same thing, $2.95, upsold me three things afterward.

It’s just brilliant because it’s this really cool offer. People love it. They’re very easy to put on Facebook. People pass them along a lot of times. In fact, the first time I found out about Perry and Ryan’s credit card offers, because I saw it on Facebook, everyone is sharing it and passing it around, it had been shared 3000 or 4000 times, this cool free card. I went to contact them to become an affiliate for it and they’re like, “Oh, we don’t have an affiliate program yet.”

All these people were passing it and sharing it, and they weren’t even making anything off of it, just because it was such a cool front end offer. I started thinking about that for my different businesses. For our weight loss business, I’m meeting tomorrow with some guys who do sourcing from China to try to find a couple different things that we can use this on. I’m going to have them look for a pedometer, those things you hold when you walk and it shows how many steps you take, looking for a skin fold tester, looking for a tape measure, different things like that that we can give away for free plus shipping, and then get people into our funnel.

In the information business, I’m looking again for more mp3 players, for USB sticks, things like that. For our couponing business, we’re looking for stuff. I’m trying to find as many things as I can because they’re sexy to advertise. They go viral. You get someone as a customer, they’re more likely to buy your upsells afterwards, and they’re awesome.

They don’t have to be free plus shipping. Ryan and Perry, a lot of their tripwire offers are just like seven dollar reports that are based off one little thing, one trick, one technique, one hack. We’re going to start finding all these little hacks, tricks, and techniques, and start making little tripwire offers to bring people into our funnels.

In fact, for each one of our core offers, we’re going to build five or six different tripwires around it. For example, Dot Com Secrets to Success, I have five or six different tripwires in mind that we’re going to build for that. Dot Com Secrets Lab, in fact, I came in early today because I’m excited to build out this new tripwire offer I have for Dot Com Secrets Lab, all these little tripwire offers that get people into your funnel to start buying your upsells.

They join your list, people promote these things, and you can make a lot of money. They’re really fun for affiliates as well. Ryan and Perry with their credit card knife, they had an affiliate contest going on. Basically, you give away a free credit card knife and they give you $10 for every credit card knife you give away. You don’t get anything on the upsells but I was like, “You know what? It’s a fun thing.”

I emailed yesterday, on Christmas Day, saying, “Hey, check out what I bought myself for Christmas. It’s this cool credit card knife. It was free. I just paid $2.95 shipping and handling. You guys should get one too because they’re really cool.” That was 12 hours ago, probably 18 hours ago I emailed that out. So far, we’ve had 99 people take the thing so I made almost $1000 by giving away a free credit card knife. People are excited. They love it and they’re passing it on.

It’s kind of cool and kind of exciting. It got me refired up. You guys, tripwire offers. Start thinking about how you can make a tripwire offer or multiple for any of your core products. I promise you, there is power in that. Anyway, I’m at the office. I’m going to go work on my new tripwire. I’m fired up. I’m excited. I hope you are as well. Thanks you guys, and we will talk to you soon.

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Last night, Russell cut the deals on a 3-5 million dollar a year opportunity, and woke up this morning feeling awesome. Find out why on today’s podcast.

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Good morning, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing In Your Car podcast. Hey guys and gals, so we’re not far from Christmas. I hope you guys are excited. I’m recording this on a Friday, and Christmas is next Wednesday. And just, I’m so excited, like, here I am, trying to get all the stuff done because January I’m excited to hit the road running with kind of a whole new business model and new plans and new focuses.

And some of the stuff I’ve been talking about over in the last few weeks. And I’m just fired up. And what I want to talk about today, though, was a little bit different, because, you know, marketers and entrepreneurs are always looking at, like, opportunities, right? And there’s so many opportunities in this world. It always makes me laugh. I have some friends that are broke, and broke people always complain because there’s no opportunities.

There’s not many opportunities, I don’t have a job, I don’t have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And I’m in the opposite side, where there’s so many opportunities I can’t even sleep at night thinking about them. And one of my big a-ha’s that I learned this year, I guess I kind of re-learned it this year, was learning how to say No to opportunities. And I think one of the best ways you can make money in this world is learning how to say no to a really, really good opportunity.

And it’s hard. You know, obviously there’s going to be opportunities that — sorry, I’m driving and the lady is crazy across the street. Anyway, there’s going to be opportunities that are so good that are harder to pass up. For example, this year one of the big opportunities that came across my plate was Rippln. And it was something that I thought was going to be huge. In fact, it was huge, as you know.

We got 1.5 million members, but after we did our heavy lifting on the front end, the back end didn’t really kind of fulfil on the promises. And it just kind of went away. But I look at — I spent probably two to three months of last year focusing on that, spending off time and energy and effort. And when all was said and done, the amount of money they made was close to nothing.

But you’ve seen like Napoleon Dynamite, when he’s out there, when Napoleon’s out there and he’s doing all the work with the chickens. And then he gets paid in like, change, and he adds it all up, and he’s like, “Man, I made like a dollar an hour.” That’s kind of how I felt afterwards. For the effort I put in, man, it was just tough. It took three months of the year. A third, or I guess that’s a fourth of the year.

But again it was, it could have been, and it should have been a huge opportunity. And so you never know which ones you are going to hit and miss, and that’s why it’s tough sometimes to realize, you know, what do I try, what do I not try. And I had a guy the other day promote with me, like, “Russell, you need to be a part of this, this is the biggest new business opportunity in the word.”

And then trying to sell me on it, and how much money people were making and on and on and on. I remember I messaged him back, and I said, “You know what? I would love to, but the answer is no.” I said, you know, “I’ve learned over the last year that I make more money by turning away opportunities than I do by chasing opportunities. Because I’ve got enough. I’ve got something I’m focusing on that new opportunities don’t always mean more money.”

And I look back over this last year, you know, two years ago I was back in the shiny object syndrome. We had set up I think 11 or 12 different new companies. Last December, a year ago right now, we had a big publishing meeting, we had all the people who were publishing came in. And we were so excited about the next year what are we going to do, how are we going to roll all these different offers, and all these new things.

And this year, because we had so many different offers it was hard to focus. And so, slowly throughout this year I’ve basically gone back to my partners. And although we had invested $20 or $30 or $40,000 for each of these offers, in some cases, I just gave them back to the partners who walked away and just said, “Hey, Marry Christmas, here’s a gift. I’m just going to give it back to you and let you run with it. Because I’ve got to focus on the stuff that’s making me money.”

And it was hard. Every time I made a call to those partners, and just said, “Hey, sorry, I have to step away from this, but here’s all the assets you made, you can just have them, it’s a gift to you.” Every time, like, I was sick to my stomach to do it, because I knew how much money I was losing and missing out on. And how much money I had already invested that I was not ever going to recoup.

Every time I gave one back and I stepped away, the next morning I woke up and it was kind of like, if you have ever broken up with a girlfriend or fired an employee, you wake up the next morning and you know it was the right decision and you feel just awesome. And so I basically, over the last year, have cut some huge opportunities that I focused on. That I had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on and never became fruitful.

We just cut them. And I looked and there’s probably three or four real good opportunities that we have that we’re focusing on, and that’s it. And so, that’s kind of what we’re doing. In fact, this kind of came to a head, which is why I’m doing this podcast about these topics, because yesterday I cut a project that I think could have made $2 or $3 million next year.

And I cut it, and I walked away from it, and I was scared and I was nervous and I was frustrated. And today I woke up with a huge smile on my face, just knowing that because I said no to that opportunity, I didn’t lose $2 or $3 million. I think that I will be able to make $5 or $6 or $7 million more in my core companies because I lost that distraction, that thing.

And it was a big deal, something that I had been working on for two or three months, and run a bunch of friends and partners into it. It was a deal with one of the guys from Shark Tank. And so, it could have, should have been big, and it just kept, every time I get back into it, it just kept changing and morphing and not being quite what I had initially agreed to.

And finally, yesterday, I just kind of said, you know, I just can’t do this anymore, and I told him, I told the other partners, I told everyone. And like I said, I was nervous, I was scared. But man, today I feel great. I’m going in today and it’s one less huge project off my plate. I can focus again on the things that I know are going to make me money. Things that I’m doing every single day.

And so, I guess my bit of wisdom I want to drop on you guys today, and before the new year starts, is really look at the opportunities you have in front of you. I’m guessing you’re probably chasing two or three or four or five different shiny objects, if you’re at all like most entrepreneurs. And the best advice I can give you is cut all except for the one that you think is the best potential of being your big home run.

And just focus 100% of your efforts and energies, and focus on that one thing. And if you do that, you say no to opportunities, and you just focus on the one that you’re already committed to. That’s where you’re going to see the success you want this year. That’s how you’ll go from, you know, floundering or doing well but not doing what you want to do, to being hyper-successful, is when all your focus is on that one thing.

And this going back to keep, every few years I have to re-remind myself of this, because I get caught up in just like all the rest of us. Tony Robbins says, over and over and over again, where focus goes, energy flows, and it’s true. So, pick your one opportunity, pick the one that’s going to be your winner, focus on that, and cut out all the rest. And I promise you guys, you’ll wake up tomorrow feeling so much better.

So that’s it. I’m at the office today. I’m about to go chase after my primary opportunity. I’m excited. I hope you guys are excited as well. It’s going to be a great year coming up. If you enjoy this podcast, please share on Facebook, Twitter, wherever you’ve got avenues. So share it with other entrepreneurs because I enjoy doing it. I think it can help all you guys all a lot as well. Thanks again, and I will talk to you guys soon.

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How to make the shift from a “promoting” company to a “publishing” company!

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, on a cold, foggy morning, here in Boise, Idaho, and welcome to the Marketing In Your Car podcast. Hey everyone, so I have not done a podcast in a while because I’ve been listening to a new course on my drives that Perry Belcher put out called The Secret Selling System. And it’s amazing, so if you’re looking for a course to go through on how to sell better, I would say by far it’s probably the best.

One of them, like, the top two or three courses I’ve gone through in the history of my life. It’s really that good. So, I highly recommend it. Anyway, so I wanted to talk what’s been going on in my mind, a little bit, because we are in December now. My twins just celebrated their eighth birthday, last Wednesday. We had a huge party.

And the year is winding down. I have about one more week with my staff, also going on vacations for Christmas, and just planning and preparing for next year. And I wanted to kind of just share with you one of the big epiphanies I had for myself. And it may be an epiphany for you as well, so I thought I would share it.

So I talked a little bit of our couponing company that we bought about a year and a half ago, and it didn’t really do too much. We kind of fixed up the site and stuff, and it was sitting there. I didn’t really have the time or energy to spend on it, so I really didn’t do too much to it. And it was kind of stagnant. It was only making about $300 a month.

And that was kind of frustrating. And then, I was able to recruit Xan Spencer and Jenn Spencer. Who, if any of you guys have followed me at all you know that they are one of our huge success stories who went into the hair bone niche. Now we’re making $30,000 a month, and then they sold the site. Anyway, I recruited them to come and help us on this project.

And they came in and the very first month they came in, we went from $300 to $6000. They sent me an income report last night for December, and we are officially half way through December and they’re already at $3800 and it’s growing rapidly. And I think that in the near future, that site will be making $40, $50, $60,000 a month. And it’s exciting.

And what’s interesting is I look at the way we’re monetizing that site and it has very little to do with selling your own products. It’s all about publishing. And we’re publishing offers for people in the couponing niche. People who are looking for discounts and deals. And all we do is we find deals and we post them. And we’re posting 10, 20, 30 deals a day on Facebook.

And then each day we send one email that recaps all the 30 deals we found for the day. And that’s kind of the business model. And it’s really interesting, because that was the big change we took, was going from where we were posting once or twice a day to like 30 a day. And Xan went in, and Xan is really good researching.

He went to all the other couponing sites in our space, and looked at how many average posts per day they have. And most of them are posting 30, 40 times a day. That’s how they’re making so much money. And have huge followings, obviously. So our old strategy in business is, boom, first off, build a bigger fan base, second off, publish things more often. And that really got me to start thinking about my core dot com secrets business.

And we’re really a publishing company as well, except we have our own products, but what do I publish? What do I —I mean, outside of the page stuff we have, like, we are not publishing that much stuff, you know? I may make a post to Facebook once or twice a week. I may send out three or four emails a week, and that’s only when we’re out there publishing, like free stuff.

And I started thinking, like, if I started treating this less like an internet marketing business where I’m selling stuff, and more like a publishing company, where we’re publishing things. We’re publishing offers, we’re publishing information, content, and looking at it from that standpoint, I realized that, you know, because of things like Facebook, we don’t have to — you know, email.

If I were to send you guys 30 emails a day you would get upset. But on Facebook, if I post 30 times a day, it doesn’t really matter. Only the things that really relate to you will rise to the top, and the ones that you click on and the ones that you scroll through. And because there’s so much noise, so much stuff, like, the way to win in social media, I believe, is you’ve always got to be top of mind.

If you’re posting once a day, you are not top of mind, okay? You need to go from $300 a month to $6000 a month in one month, and all it was, was being top of mind. Having, every time they’re looking at Facebook page, we’re there. Over and over and over and over and over again, which is exactly what they want. And so, I think one of the big changes for me, this upcoming year, coming January, is I’m taking some outsourcers who were doing SEO stuff before, and I don’t really believe in SEO anymore.

And we’re just going to kind of let them go, but now shifting to like we’re a publishing company. Let’s talk about this, and so I’m going to have one of our guys who full time, all he does — because Filipinos are obviously different hours than me, is while I’m asleep, he can go and research my topic. Let’s say, like, this week I’m going to be talking about copywriting or about whatever.

And he’ll go out and find blog posts and articles and just constantly, every day, be finding me 10 or 20 or 30 new resources on that topic. And he’ll be pulling in all of this aggregate information for me. Giving it to me, so I’ll wake up in the morning and look at it all, and from that, I’m going to block about an hour to two hours a day where I’m just focused on publishing stuff.

I’m going to take these articles, I’m going to turn them into blog posts, I’m going to turn them into Facebook posts and, you know, cue them up so that throughout the day there’s 20, 30 posts going out. All there is, just giving me awesome information about that topic that we’re talking about. And I will be pushing people to the thing we’re selling. So, for example, we’re going to be having a visible webinar, there’s topic based ones, twice a month.

So one of them is going to be Inception secrets, which is my copywriting course. So for two weeks, I have these guys find everything they can find about copywriting and ads and all this stuff I can be posting for free. And all these things will be pushing people to our live copywriting course, will be happening. And then I’ll be publishing the stuff on Facebook.

So 20, 30 times a day, everyone who is following me, people we’re advertising to, that we’re targeting on Facebook, will be seeing this content we’re publishing, that again, all brings back to our core topic. And if you think about it, if 30, 20, maybe 10, I don’t know how many times a day we’ll do it, say 10 times a day.

There is a new cool exciting copywriting thing that we posted, all of them pushing back to our thing that we’re targeting copywriters. You know, within a week’s period of time we should be able to get 2 or 3 or 400 people to join us on our live class. And that’s kind of my game plan, and so, I think one of the big shifts for me is that I’m going to be shifting away from my promotional company, which is where I think us and most information people are.

And switching to a publishing company where we are actually publishing content and information, and putting it out there, consistently. And making us the lead magnets so we’re bringing people back to our offers. And that’s kind of where my mind has been at, and I’m trying to kind of organize and create that machine right now. I still have one Filipino who all he’ll be doing is just finding topic ideas and interesting things for me to write about.

And then after I make the post, then I have another Filipino who, his job then will be to promote. We’ve got John and Shirley who will put everything on Facebook, but then there are so many other avenues and ways and places to go and promote that. Each blog post, each content, everything at that, and he’ll be focusing on the mass distribution from that side.

And so, that’s what I’m kind of doing right now. I’m shifting myself away from a promotion company and turning it into a publishing company. And I think that by doing that, where we’re putting out so much value and information and ideas, that I think on the other side of it it’s going to have a lot of big, hug, positive impact on everything, including our SEO, which is kind of funny.

It will be the sneaky way we do SEO. So, that’s my game plan moving forward next year, you guys. I recommend, and I highly encourage all of you guys to become publishing companies as well, in whatever niche you’re in. We’re doing the same thing with neuropathy, we’re going to do the same thing in our weight loss. All the businesses we’re doing, we’re doing the exact same thing, and you guys should be too.

So that’s the game plan, everyone. Thanks so much and have a great Christmas. Hopefully I’ll do another podcast before then, but if not, we wish you Merry Christmas, and thanks, you guys, and talk soon.

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Lessons learned from the dumb entrepreneurs on the new show “The Profit”.

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Good morning, everyone, this is Russell Brunson. It’s an early morning, and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Hey guys and gals, so I hope you guys are doing awesome today. I’m actually, it’s 6:30 in the morning and I’m driving to go work out. And this is a testament of the power of hiring a coach. It’s freezing cold right now, and I would be sound asleep right now, if it wasn’t for the fact that I have a coach waiting for me at the gym.

It’s little things like, you know, obviously, I sell coaching so I believe in it a lot. We talked about why you need a good coach. But this is kind of just, you know, for me it’s such a big thing. I know how to work out, I know how to lift weights, I know how to do all these kinds of stuff, but just the fact there’s someone there waiting for me is what gets me out of bed and gets me to go and do the thing that I need to do.

So, if you don’t have a coach yet, in whatever area of your life you’re struggling with, go get a coach. I’ve got life coaches to help me in my personal life. I’ve got business coaches. I’ve got weightlifting coaches. Go find a coach as quick as you can. And if you need a coach in the marketing business, go to 30DayShortcut.com, we can help you out there.

Anyway, so today what I want to talk about is the other reason why I’m really tired today, is I found out about a new show, and I’ve been up all night watching episodes of it. So I think I got like four or five hours of sleep last night. So the show is called The Prophet. It’s on CSNBC. And I first, I remember seeing commercials for it and I was like, I didn’t really think too much about it.

And then Daegan Smith told me, he said, “Hey, that show is awesome, you should watch it.” And so I went to my TV and we have, like, it’s not TiVo, but it’s like the generic brand of TiVo, right? So we TiVo’ed it on our TV, and I never watched it. And then two nights ago, I was bored and my wife had already passed out. I was sitting in bed and I didn’t want to fall asleep yet, so I went to our recorded shows list and I saw that.

I saw The Prophet in there, I’m like, I might as well watch an episode. So I pushed Play, I started watching it, and I have not been the same ever since. The show is amazing. It’s all about this dude who takes struggling businesses and turns them around. It shows him going to these businesses and what he does, he basically comes in and gives them money, just to get in their business, to get things fixed up.

He has his team come in and they turn it around. He takes complete control for a week, and then he re-launches it. And if the people, if the entrepreneurs aren’t morons, and do his job, he turns them around into some amazing things. The first one I watched was, he went into this, I think 100carcash.com, or something like that.

Anyway, and he took this business that had been struggling and turned it around. And then by the time the show had aired, maybe a little afterwards, he had already, he had turned them all to a franchise and franchised it. I mean, almost 100 locations around the world. Which is amazing. So, that’s kind of the power of what he does.

And then last night I watched two other episodes, and it was crazy. So, the first thing that’s interesting is I feel bad for him, and for anyone who’s coming in to entrepreneurs’ business. Because entrepreneurs are like the most stubborn, hard-headed people in the world. Like, this lady last night, on the popcorn episode, she’s like, “My business is $2.5 million a year. I don’t need anybody, blah, blah, blah.”

You know, like, this total attitude. But her business is broke, it’s on the brink of bankruptcy. She’s borrowed money from everyone she knows, and you know, she made $2.5 million, but she didn’t make anything. Like, the business is negative. There were like almost $400,000 in cash that was gone, they couldn’t find it. There’s no record of it.

Anyway, and every single episode she’s like, he’s butting heads with these entrepreneurs who are so stubborn, because they’re so in love with their baby. And so it’s one thing that kind of made me realize as an entrepreneur, I’m probably the same way. We’re oftentimes not as humble or teachable as we should be, because we think we know everything because it’s our business.

And it was interesting, recently I was selling something to a group of people who were kind of more of my peers. And we were selling something that’s not cheap, it was $25,000 or $100,000. And I had a lot of my friends who were on the webinar where I sold it. And they, afterwards, messaged me, like, “Hey man, can you hook me up for free, can I have some of the thing?”

I was just like, man, you guys are not willing to invest in your business. You’re so hard-headed, you think you know everything, you’re not willing to invest. And it just blew my mind, and entrepreneurs, I think, a lot of times are that way. So that was the first thing I wanted to kind of just put out there, is that all of us, as entrepreneurs, we need to not be so hard-headed.

I was listening to a course from Kevin Trudeau, who is not doing too well in the news right now. But in there he talked about a concept called the Teachability Index. He talked about how people are more teachable during — like when you’re a kid and you go to school, etc, you’re super teachable. You’re soaking up everything that’s coming in.

But somewhere along the line, usually about time you graduate college, you think you know everything and your teachability index drops to almost nothing because you know, you’re just kind of set in your ways. You know everything there is. And I think entrepreneurs are the same way. When we begin, we’re like sponges and we’re soaking up everything.

But somewhere along the line we think we know everything and our teachability index goes to almost nothing, and we are stuck in our ways. I think all of us, as entrepreneurs, could really benefit a lot from stepping back. And try to become more teachable and kind of forgetting, you know, forgetting you know everything. And trying to start over and find good coaches, good mentors, good books, good courses. Whatever you can to help increase your business and becoming teachable again.

So, anyway, I had a lot of other cool stuff I wanted to talk about today, but I am at the gym and my session starts in two minutes, so I am going to jump in there. Just kind of one last thing I want to mention about The Prophet before I go. First off, go watch it, guys. Go find it, I don’t know if it’s on Hulu or whatever, but go and find it and watch it.

It’s probably one of the best entrepreneur shows I’ve ever seen. And second off, two of the three episodes I’ve seen so far, the entrepreneurs screwed him in the end. Just totally unethical and just didn’t hold up their bargain, their word. And it’s just sad to me to see how quick they’re willing to just, how low people’s integrity is.

I mean, it’s especially interesting just the fact that they were live on TV. They were live on TV and still doing this, makes me always wonder. So, make sure you have integrity in your business. People will know if you have it or don’t have it, and people — I mean, just be a good person, that’s all I can say. Have integrity, do what you say you’re going to do.

And if you screw up, then tell people you’re sorry and kind of go from there. So, that’s it for today, you guys. Hope you have an awesome day. Go work out, if you haven’t yet. It’s good for your body, it’s good for your mind. And go get a coach to help keep you accountable and help you doing what you need to do. Thanks, everyone, and I will talk to you all soon.

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After our latest startup, I realized that almost everything people are teaching online about startups online are DEAD wrong.

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Hey everyone. Welcome to Marketing in Your Car. My name is Russell Brunson, and I am excited to be here with you today. Hey everyone. I am actually taking my wife’s car on a 25 minute drive to go get some stuff fixed. I have nothing else to do so you guys get to be entertained. I hope that’s alright. I am excited for this podcast. I have been thinking a lot. I have known for a little while, Stu McClaren, one of my favorite people on Earth, called me out yesterday, and said, “Dude, when are you going to do another podcast?” I just wanted to do this one. This one may be a little longer since I have a little more of a drive.

I just wanted to talk to everybody at a different level than normal. Normally I am trying to share different tips and tricks and techniques to take whatever you are doing and make it a little better and make you start thinking different ways. I wanted to talk about what has been happening with some of my businesses over the last little bit. It is interesting. There are so many people that are teaching internet marketing. There’s very few people that I really trust anymore. The biggest reason is because, and I outgrew myself in this same category, a lot of times we assume that whatever worked for us, is what is going to work for everyone.

I’ve built my internet marketing business. We have launched product after product and I know a good formula that works. I know that market really well. Over the last year or so, we have been putting out all these different products and different niches. Every time it surprises me how much new stuff I have to learn to make each of those businesses actually work. It is frustrating for me because I know all this stuff. I should be able to make it work right away.

It always takes time. It takes more time than I ever think. I’ve definitely changed the way that I think about business, and the way I teach business because of that. I understand that it’s not all cookie cutter. It’s not 100%. There’s a lot you have to do, to figure out different markets. We are in the couponing niche. We have been doing well with it. Recently I brought on some of our friends. Initially they were students. They become really good friends. You guys probably heard of them if you have been following me for any amount of me, Xan and Jen Spencer.

We have this couponing site, and I didn’t have time to focus on it. I love the concept and the idea behind it. They just sold their hair bow site and made a ton of money selling it. They are looking for their next project. We brought them in to come work with us on this one. It has been interesting watching what they have been doing and how they are getting into the market and understanding what it is, and really trying to figure out that path and what we can do to make it successful.

Holy crap. Sorry guys. You are getting this live. I am at an intersection, and the light is red and I am stuck in the middle. Holy cow. That was embarrassing. Let me pause this for one second.

That disaster was averted. I was at a green light, and I was turning left and I was half way in the intersection turning left and all of a sudden all the cars stopped. I looked up and we were all stopped turning left. The street we were turning left onto was completely backed up probably about a mile and a half. Then, the light turned red and I was stuck in the middle of the intersection with two cars in front of me in the middle of the intersection and a car behind me in the middle of the intersection.

I am back, and I am alive. Things are good. I was talking about how different it is. Same with our supplement. We have been doing really well with our supplement. Almost a year now. It is doing well. It is exciting. It inspires me just how we put out a little business like that, and by traffic and it works. It just keeps working and working. Because of that we decided to put a lot more energy and effort into it. We actually spent time to write a really good sales video.

We are going back now and diving back into that business, which is a whole different market. It’s interesting to me to start looking at. Obviously I could talk a lot about the differences in the market. That’s not the point. The point is that there are differences. Used to be back in the day you could find a niche, put up a product, drive some traffic and make some money. I think those days are a lot different now. You have to understand there is a culture.

There’s stuff that is happening, and these markets. It’s important to find those things. What I want to talk about today is more like the path that I am seeing a lot of commonalities among all the niches that we’re in, and a lot of what I am going to be shifting dotcomsecrets over to in the new year. I wanted to throw some of this out to get you guys thinking and you can get some ideas for your business as well. We used to always think that we lead with a product, create a good product, drive some traffic and that’s how you lead.

I don’t think that’s the smartest way to lead anymore. I look at that with our weight loss offer. That is what we did. The problem was that we didn’t know the market well enough. We created what we thought was the best offer possible. We launched it and it didn’t do well. We are going back and doing the stuff we should have done first to really understand the market. I think we will do well this time around.

We could have saved almost a year worth of time had we gone this direction the first time. If I, and any business I am in, or getting in like dotcomsecrets, like the relaunch for the entire brand and company and really starting from the beginning where the goal is how much value can you provide. I think that the smartest way to begin in any niche, this is even ecommerce. I am not just talking infoproducts, but anything, is start with value can you give people.

The simplest way to do that is blogging. Set up a blog and start sharing really cool stuff. That’s the first step. After your blog is set up I think you should start up a fan page. I have been fighting social media forever, but one of the other episodes you saw, you see I am starting to see the value of it. You can set up ads for five or ten dollars a day. It will add people to your page. Just set that up and let it run and get people adding to your fan page and watch this community grow from two people to 10 to 50 to 100 to 500 to1,000.

Consistently be doing that. When you are blogging, after you blog, the biggest thing you have to do is how do I promote this blog post now? There’s a lot of things you can do to promote it, but the best I think is Facebook. As soon as you make a post, you go to your fan page and boost that post and push it out there. You spend maybe five or ten dollars doing that.

The next day you make another blog post. You go to Facebook and post it and boost it. Just following that pattern. At first it will be super slow and aggravating and you probably won’t get a lot of traction from it. You will have the ads on there, and people are being added and just consistent. Months from now, three months from now, six months from now you are going to have five, six, ten, fifteen thousand people and it will start growing very quickly from there.

It is all about putting this value out first. Then, you start seeing what people are responding to. A little while ago I was watching a video that Jeff Walker put out there. I don’t typically watch Jeff’s stuff. I like him as a person, but I not particularly interested in product launches. The last thing I want to do is a product launch. I don’t look at that anymore. I was watching one of his videos, and one thing he said that really struck out to me, he was talking about how he said that the biggest thing for him is when he first got the publishing thing. He said, “I recommend all you guys just go publish something.” Put stuff out there. It wasn’t until I put stuff out there that I saw what people responded to.

What things do people like? What things do they share? What things do they talk about? What things do they not care about? What things cause no emotional response what so ever? For example, we know that on our couponing site the last two weeks, we have been posting the model in that market is different. It is how many offers can you get in front of people. We are posting tons over and over, 20, 30 offers a day.

Supposed to put those out there. Some of those get nothing. Other ones get some shares, some get tons of shares. This week had something interesting where Jessica posted on her blog this picture of these homemade dryer sheets that she makes. Unfortunately we didn’t put it on our Facebook page. We put it on our blog. Somebody came to our blog and saw it. The took the picture, they posted on their Facebook page and luckily they linked back to her site saying, “Check out this picture I found on livingonacoupon.com.” They posted it out there. Within four days that image had been shared 350,000 times.

Not liked, shared. 350,000 times. We found out about it from one of her friends. She said, “Look at this sharing your picture.” She saw it, and we missed it. We went back and over that two day period of time, the 350,000 shares, we had 50,000 people that came to our blog per day. Our revenue was over $400 each day, which is awesome.

We found out that was what something responded to. They wanted homemade stuff, like how to make homemade dryer sheets. I never would have launched a course on how to make homemade dryer sheets. Now we know that people are interested in that market and that type of a thing. Instantly now we know.

That is the thing Jeff was talking about. You need to start publishing something. Until you do, you have no idea what people are going to respond to. If you want to start leading with your sales message first then you spend so much time and energy before you know what people actually want, what they are listening to. I would start with that. Making cool blog posts, put it on Facebook page, boost them. Rinse and repeat over and over again. Have something in place where your fan base is growing, growing through paid ads. You are talking five bucks a day, ten bucks a day maybe to implement that strategy. That’s the first step. You are putting this stuff out there. Again, there are a lot of other things you can do to promote your blog posts.

For simplicity sake that is where I would start at.

The second thing I would do, and it makes me laugh. This is my belief now. Six years ago podcasts were brought to my attention, maybe even seven or eight years ago, and I thought they were the dorkiest, nerdiest things in the world and they would never catch on, kind of like RSS feeds, and I was right.

Podcasts I was wrong. They are the thing right now. I keep hearing it. It’s funny because I used to be a faster adapter of things. Now I am more stubborn. I am an old man now. I am a little more stubborn in adapting things. I didn’t want to adapt this for a long time. Recently, one of my friends had a podcast that he wanted me to listen to. I downloaded the podcast app, and I downloaded the podcast and started listening to it, and I got hooked. I suddenly realized that podcasts are the radio of the future.

You can subscribe to the people’s stuff that you want, and you have a chance to listen to it. One of my friends, Stu, I mentioned him earlier. He was telling me one of his clients who works for him said that each podcast listener is worth more to them than an email subscriber, which is crazy to me, but instead of fighting that, let’s go with it, right? Who knows how long email is going to keep working efficiently.

Let’s have distribution channels…as many as we can. I started thinking more about that. This is a distribution channel, these podcasts. I remember about two years ago I had a guy that wanted to interview me for a radio show. We went down to the radio station, and it was the coolest thing in the world. I felt like Frasier Crane. I had a big microphone. He had a producer. I asked the producer if I could call her Roz. She said no.

I felt like Frasier Crane. After I did that, I wanted my own radio show. That was my entire goal for the next 6 months was my own radio show. If I do a radio show locally and it goes good then we could try to pitch it and get syndicated nationally. I had this whole strategy. You got a big, famous radio show. You can sell ads, you can make money, you can push your products, books and make a fortune. For years I kept thinking about that and wanting to do it. After I got the podcast thing, I was like, “This is the radio of the future.” Radio will be dead soon if it’s not already. I don’t listen to radio. I hook up my podcasts that I want, and I am driving and I listen to them. I think again, that’s the direction that we are all going. I have been studying a lot. I am going to keep doing the Marketing in Your Car Podcast because I love it, and it’s fun. It is low maintenance for me to fulfill on. I am going to keep doing that. I am also going to launch another podcast underneath the dotcomsecrets brand.

It is more of an actual radio show where I have people that I interview and I am sharing things. I have to do my first interview for my first one this coming Tuesday. Mark Joiner is my first mentor and Mark is going to come on and be my first guest so I am kind of excited for that. Because I have been setting podcasts to what people are doing and it’s really intriguing. I was listening to the guy who runs the entrepreneur on fire podcast.

He basically interviews an entrepreneur every single day, seven days a week. He was sharing some of his stats, and what I didn’t get it until he went to this. He said, “I ran the show for free for a long time and got a big following.” Now he gets 10 or 20 or 30 thousand downloads each episode. You basically get paid on CPM so every download, every 1,000 downloads, you make whatever. Ten bucks or thirty bucks. Showing the math, each of my episodes, I have three sponsors. This guy, this guy and this guy. He is paying this. He is paying this.

That means, every single day that I do my podcast, because I know I’ll get 20,000 downloads because people are subscribed to it and they are waiting for it, because of that, every single day just to do my podcast, I make $1,200 in advertising revenue, $1,200 just by the fact that he is podcasting. I was doing the math, and $1,200 a day times 30 days, I can’t do right now in my head, but $1,000 a day times 30 days is 30 grand a month, 30 grand a month, and all he is doing is interviewing awesome people.

He launched this less than a year ago. Okay? Start thinking the blog obviously is a great platform. The blog is a great platform to get people who are on Facebook and reading and those types of things, but there is also this huge, untapped market of podcasting. You get these people to download and you are sharing content and ideas. You are building a following and you have your own radio show. People actually pay to sponsor the radio show when you get a following.

You start just like we talked about before. You start out by giving content, putting stuff out there and seeing what things people attach to. What concepts, what ideas you share, what things get other people interested. Only way to know that is to publish stuff. Put it out there like Jeff Walker was saying, seeing what gets people to respond.

That’s the first step, and trying to build your audience like that. I think any market I get in the future, that will be my first two steps before we ever create an offer and see if we can get enough of an audience based on that, then we can go and start getting sponsors for our podcasts and promote products as an affiliate on our blog and get sponsors for our blog.

You know over the last three, six, nine months, what people have been responding to, what things they are interested in, what things get shared, what things get passed around. You find out what doesn’t. As soon as you know that, now you can go back and create the right offer. The offer than people actually want. The thing they want to give you money for. I think that’s the right way to make a business. That’s the right way to start a business. Again, because every market is different, you won’t know what that is until you are in there.

You see the responses. The flip is people will love you because you are giving your best stuff every single day and when you come back and decide to monetize it, there’s different relationship level there. They are going to trust you over someone else because they have been listening to, they have been reading you or seeing you on Facebook. You have established yourself as someone who is credible and cares and someone who is trying to provide value in the world.

That is what I have for you guys today. I hope that gives you some things to think about. Those are things that I have been thinking about a lot. We are relaunching dotcomsecrets. The podcast, we are also launching, a new blog. A new blog you guys will be shocked. My goal is every blog post is for every post to be more valuable than a $97 product. We are going to change some stuff. It will be good.

That is our game plan. I am at the car dealership. I am getting my wife’s car fixed. I have to jump off. I hope you enjoy this podcast. If you like it, please come and comment, but also please share it. If you like it, go on your Facebook account and check out Russell’s latest podcast. It was awesome. I would appreciate getting it in the hands of more people. That’s about all I ask for. Appreciate you guys. Thanks everyone who is listening and paying attention. Good luck with your business and we will talk to you guys all soon.

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An idea that sparked when I heard Tim Ferris speak in New York has dramatically changed the structure of our business.

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Hello everybody who is listening to our podcast today. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to the marketing in your car podcast.

I am having the most fun week I think I have had in a long time with business. Awesome stuff is happening. We just signed a deal Kevin Harrington and Click Bank and Traffic and Conversion summit that was amazing. A bunch of cool stuff is happening. Our living on a coupon site, we relaunched it using a bunch of social media, and we have gone from…it has gone from…it was making about $10 a day to now, $200 a day in two weeks period of time.

It is scaling rapidly, which is fun. Tons of fun stuff is happening. I want to talk about one little thing that I have been doing that we are doing right now that I think is, it is probably one of the smallest, yet the biggest breakthroughs I have had in a long time. Some of you probably remember I signed up for Joe Polish’s, 25k group. I didn’t join the group. I just went to the $10,000 thing out in New York. My wife and I went out there.

I had a couple of podcasts when I was out there. When I was out there, one of the speakers was Tim Ferris. One thing that Time Ferris said that has been resonating in my brain for the last couple months since then was someone asked him, “Should I be on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube? Where should I be at?” He said, you need to pick one. Pick one that is going to be your home. That is going to be your desired way to share stuff with your audience. Forget about the rest. People try to do things on 30 platforms, but they are never successful. Pick one that is going to be your thing that you know you can go to and focus on and go to over and over again.

If you do that then you are going to be successful. Again, that’s just a little thing that makes a lot of sense, but I have been thinking about it. I have been looking at my own business, and my business is all over the place. Some of you guys probably know. I hate going into Facebook, yet I have eight Facebook groups. I have a Facebook group for our local group, for dotcomsecretsx, for Russell Brunson fans, things like that.

I think we have five or six different continuity programs that are all separate. We have multiple blogs. All of this stuff out there. It’s confusing for me because of that, I never, I get overwhelmed logging into Facebook because I had 12 groups I needed to look in and check and communicate with.

Because of that I don’t log in and talk to anybody. I have a blog except I never blog because I know that I should blog. Twitter and tweet, and I never do anything. Because of that, because there are so many thing to do, I just don’t do any of them. I started thinking, I need to centralize everything and make everything simpler and easier for me and for our customers. That way they have a very clear path. Because of that we have been shifting a lot of things.

We decided what social media platform we are going to focus on. We are taking all of our eight or 10 or how many groups we have, we are deleting them all and create one group. It is going to be like the dotcomsecrets group. We are going to push everybody to that. As far as all of our products, we are merging multiple continuity programs into one.

If you join one, you get access to all of them that way people aren’t like, “Should I join this one or this one?” I don’t want to make my customer confused and feel like they have to sign up for multiple things. I want everything into one, singular focus. We have been doing that. From that idea we decided instead of right now we have tons of products all over the place. What if we created one customer center?

Somebody bought something and logged into any of our sites, and it takes you to this one, centralized customer center that has all of our products that they purchased. They can see, click on it and boom, get the information. Again, we had this idea and it seems so simple now. I am like, why didn’t we think of this years ago. It is brilliant.

People come in and see all the products they have access to and also the ones they don’t have access to. Click on them and buy them right there inside of our customer center. We already have the credit card on file, yes I want this product, and boom we ding their card and it unlocks it for them.

These are some of things we are doing all from that one little idea of communicating it to one platform. How can we shift all these things and move them into one platform? It’s been a fun process. Anyway, you guys will start seeing this come out soon.

We are probably two or three away from having the customer center done. We also have merged the customer affiliate center together. Those two accounts are basically one account. You log in, and you have your customer stuff and you have your affiliate stuff all tied there together.

It’s pretty fun and pretty exciting. I am excited for it. For you guys, think about for your business. Same kind of thing. What platform are you going to publish on? Just pick one. Is it going to be your blog? Facebook? I think blog and Facebook you can tie those two together because I look at Facebook more as like a way to amplify a blog, but what ‘s your home base? Some people, Facebook is their home base. Some people it is YouTube. They post videos all day. They use Facebook to promote it.

Where is your home place that you are publishing stuff all the time so people can find it, see it. They know if they are on here for Russell it is all right here. Same thing for you. Where are you going to publish at? If you looked by our products where can they find them at? Are they consolidated in one spot where they can find them easily? Can they upgrade and buy other things very quickly? That’s what we are doing. I am excited. It is going to be fun to see this whole thing roll out.

Before the end of the year you guys will see a new blog, new customer center, new affiliate center, a whole new strategy, a consolidation of our continuity programs into one continuity program, which we are lowering the price on.

I think it is crazy, but I think it is going to be really good too. I am excited. Hope you guys are excited about your business as well. If you are not excited then listen to these podcasts again and get refired up and reenergized. One of the times I was not excited was when I was not learning and growing. Get back into learning mode, the education mode. Learn some stuff. Get excited. Go apply it, and have fun with your businesses you guys.

I am at the office now. I am going to get some work done, get this stuff all consolidated so soon I will have a cool blog that you can actually read all the stuff I have to share with you guys. Thanks you guys, and I will talk to you soon.

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As we transition from a YouTube generation to a Pinterest generation, this new type of sales letter is going to win.

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Good morning. This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Hey guys and gals and anyone who is out there in podcast land and listening today. I am excited today because today I am going to be working on our supplement. A lot of you guys know if you have been listening to this or following me, we have a supplement. I have been wanting to do a supplement for 10 years now, and finally about a year ago we put one together and launched it and it’s been great. We are having a ton of fun with it.

We have been testing a lot of different things. Initially what we started doing with it, we started with a free plus shipping type thing where they would get the first bottle for free. We would charge them shipping, and after 14 days we would start billing their card and ship them out a new supplement, which has been working good.

We are at point now where our recurring is around $50,000 a month from it. Not too bad for a little side project. Right? We should do half a million bucks or so this year from that supplement. So that is kind of cool. I want to grow it big. I have been people who got supplements who are doing half a million dollars a month or more.

I am on this eternal mission to figure out how in the world do I scale it. I think it is how it goes. The weight is really hard to scale immediately. We are spending $80 or so to get a free customer. In some cases we are able to break even by day 14, which is awesome. Sometimes it takes to day 45 or beyond to break even. I don’t know about you, but I have a risk. I am pretty into taking risks and stuff, but I am risk intolerant with my money.

Day 45, if we haven’t broke even by that point it kind of scares me. How do we create something where we can break even at day one or make a profit at day one and go from there? That has been the mission that we have trying to look at. We are looking at all the other people that are doing really well with supplements right now.

Ed O’Keefe has a really good supplement that I take now. I bought it to go through the sales process, and I am actually addicted to it. There are bunch of really good supplements as well. I have been watching their funnels. What has been interesting is that most of the guys that killing it right now aren’t doing free plus shipping type things anymore. They are selling one, three or four bottles off their order page and upsales for other things.

We are working on that. What I really want to talk about today is an interesting thing that I have been looking at. The shift from the sales video back to the sales letter. For the last two year, sales videos have been the thing that has been crushing it. I don’t think it is going to go away at all, but it is interesting. For a while it felt like the market was in this YouTube generation where everyone is watching videos.

Over the last year or so it seemed like it shifted more to the Pinterest generation where we are looking at images and text, if that makes sense. For example, if you post a video on YouTube or you post an image on YouTube, traditionally you are going to get way more comments, shares, likes, things like that from an image than you ever would from a video.

Isn’t that interesting? Where forever it was video, video, video. With our supplement we created a sales video version and sales letter version. The sales letter, we also did it a lot different than we normally do. We are trying to test some things that go against what I have always believed as the norms. I am testing to see if maybe I am wrong. If I am wrong, that is cool.

I would rather be wrong and rich than right and broke. We are testing this out, and I have been looking at, if you guys know Miconi, he owns Mind Valley, and if you look at them, they are crushing it right now in the personal development space. If you look at the way they design their websites and sales letters, they are very different. They are not a traditional sales letter, or even the sales letter way that I have done them and I have taught them where you are starting with a star story and a solution and you are going through this process.

They are more like these blocks of stuff. That’s the best way to explain it. If you look at one of Mind Valley’s sales letters, go to MindValley.com, and look at their sales letters, he sells theirs 10 or 12 blocks. Each block is its own little message. People can scan it. It almost looks like infographics. You scan it and see the things. Each block has a topic. They have bullet points. They have pictures and the next block and the next block and the next block. There is not a logical story progression throughout. It is just like we are talking about the benefits. This block we are talking about the guarantee. This block we are talking about what other people have said about it. This is the ingredient block and stuff like that. We design this sales letter to go that way.

We are going to be doing tons of testing and video versus sales letter versus video with sales letter versus tons of different things we are going to try out. It is really interesting to me right now that I feel like, I look at different markets. If you look at the warriors for example, all of the offers that are in there, none of them are video, very few of them are video.

The majority are all text. I am wondering if we are going to start transitioning back to a spot where people prefer more text based sales letter so they can scan more. They can get their information. If so, I am curious and I am interested to see if it will change the way the sales letters are built because the old school, traditional sales letter is a long story.

You can’t just scan because you are going to miss the point of the story. Whereas the way that Mind Valley is doing theirs and the way we are doing this one, is it very scannable. Each block is independent of itself. If you are looking at that chunk, that block whatever you want to call it. It has one message. Each block has its own core message.

Anyway, it is just very interesting. I am excited to test this and see what is happening. I definitely think that we are transitioning away from the YouTube generation and transitioning towards the Pinterest image, text generation. Beware of that in your marketing. Look at how else can you add more text elements. At least, if you don’t have, you don’t want to make text sales letters, at least have an option that has a text version of your sales video.

I think people are getting now where they don’t want to watch videos as much. It was intriguing for years, but now it’s like, “Oh crap. A video.” Whereas you have text, they can scan, they can find what they want. It is interesting. I don’t know if I am right or wrong, but I am predicting the rebirth of the sales letter. The rebirth will be much different from the old sales letter. I don’t think it is going to be story based. I think it is going to be block based.

That is what I have for today. I am at the office. I am going to go play with my new sales letter. The smackdown will begin. Video versus sales letter. Maybe it will be a combination of both that wins. I don’t know, but we are going to find out. We are going to put it to the test because I want to see where people minds are at right now. It will be interesting. I am here at the laboratory. I am going to step in, and I will report my results back to you guys in the next week or two or three when we get some testing done, drive some traffic and see what people are responding best to.

Thanks so much everybody, and we will talk to you all again soon.

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How to finally get past your sticking points and finish your projects once and for all.

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Hey everyone. This is Russell, and I am actually driving to the office, and I wanted to do a really quick Marketing in Your Car Podcast so here we are.

Today’s podcast is because, this is something probably a lot of us deal with. I just dealt with it, and it was very painful and it is over now. I want to talk about it because it will make some of you guys get some crap done that you have been waiting on doing forever.

We’ve been working on a relaunch of our dotcomsecretsx site for probably three or four months now. It has gone way too long. The biggest reason why is because instead of things that everyone is waiting on me to get done. It is stuff I really, really, really hate doing. I realize I associate so much pain with this one piece of the process that I just avoid it at all costs.

No matter what is happening I block out time. I will come in super early in the morning, a million different things that I try to do to get it done, and I can’t figure out ways to not do it. I have so much pain associated with it that I don’t get it done. I think, and I bet that a lot of you guys are probably the same way. There’s things in your marketing journey or your entrepreneur journey that you know that you have to do, but there’s one or two things that you associate so much pain with that you never do it.

Probably the biggest one that I have seen people do, and it blows my mind.Honestly, it has been good for me and my business, but it’s not so good for you and your business. A lot of people are willing to spend money on training, information programs and seminars and things like that where they are learning, they feel like they are getting value. They are scared to death. They have so much pain associated with spending money in advertising. What if the ad doesn’t work?

What if whatever we click on, nobody buys? There is so much pain they never do it. We just finished a group of coaching students. One of the students came back and was like, “How come I haven’t made any money yet?” I asked if he finished anything, and he asked why he wasn’t making money. The last step was I showed you how to buy ads, and I asked if he bought any ads yet. He said no. That’s the reason you aren’t making money yet. It is up to you at this point.

I think about the things in my life that cause me pain that I avoid them at all costs even if they are things that I need to do to be happy or more successful, whatever it might be. I have been trying to isolate those things, write them out. Look at what they are and why my brain subconsciously creates so much pain associated with them. Then, I start thinking about, I learned this originally from Tony Robbins and since then I study it through NLP and a bunch of other things, was just the concept of pleasure versus pain.

Our brains will always either move away from pain or towards pleasure, towards pleasure, away from pain. When we have a task like that, that is holding us up, the problem is that our brain sees that as pain. It moves away from pain and towards pleasure, tries to find what I can do? I can go to Facebook. I can find pleasure there. I can go eat. I can find pleasure. I can go talk to my friends. I can find pleasure there.

Our brain tries to shift us to pleasure as fast as they can because it doesn’t want to have to deal with pain. For me, I realize forever this has been looming. What I tried to do, and it worked effectively, because I just finished my big painful task that I have been dreading for six weeks now. Six weeks I have been delaying this task that took me 20 minutes to do because I associated so much pain with it.

What I had to do, is I had to go find out, I had to create something that had so much pleasure, so much more exciting that my brain was like, “I want that. I want that more than I am scared of the pain.” I created this thing that I wanted. I am not going to tell you what it is because it stupid and childish, but it’s a pleasure thing for me. It was something that I actually wanted. I created that thing, and I said, “You cannot have that until this task is done.”

It made that pleasure so big and so exciting and so big that the pain of that task just got smaller and smaller and smaller, and I finished it. I just did it you guys. I am excited. I just want to throw that out there for you guys because I am sure that you have, each of us, all of us. I have this in a lot of other areas of my life, and I am sure you guys do too. You have this thing that is causing you so much pain, and you are avoiding it like the plague, even though it is the thing you need to do to get to the real pleasure, the true pleasure, the real happiness.

What I want you guys to do is think about that and figure out how can I create something so pleasurable and so great as a reward for myself that I will go through anything to get it. Think about wrestling. I used to go three, four days in a row without eating any food, two days without drinking any water, going through this horrible, physical pain. I would do this while I wearing plastic suits in wrestling, trying to lose 20 pounds in a three day period of time. I would do that every single week for 10 years.

Why would I do that? I had so much pleasure in winning a wrestling match. That pleasure, that high whatever you want to call it, was so big, I was willing to sacrifice food and water and social life and everything. Everything I had just because I wanted my hand raised after a match. That’s how much pleasure that created for me.

If you can start doing that in your life and look at and find those pain points that are keeping you from what you want to and create pleasure to help burst you through it, I promise you guys will see a ton of success, just like I just did. I feel great right now. Now, I am at the gym and I am excited. That is it for today. I am at the gym, and I am going to go work out. All you guys find out what your sticking points are and smash through them this weekend and have some fun. Thanks everybody. I will talk to you soon.

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How a tiny shift in your packaging can dramatically increase your sales.

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Hey everybody! It is rainy here in Boise today. This is the Marketing in Your Car, Podcast. Alright, so my wife had a really cool experience that has some definite marketing benefits, so I want to talk to you guys today. A couple years ago I was at the Tony Robbins event, and he talked about the evils of cow milk. Not really, but he did talk about how he isn’t a really big believer in cow milk, and gave some good compelling arguments why.

I am not saying he is right or wrong, but we decided at that point to try and wean off of milk. We shifted from milk. We initially tried soy milk which was nasty. Then, we tried the rice milk. Then, we fell in love with almond milk. We have been drinking almond milk probably two and a half, three years or so. Took us a little while to get our kids weaned off regular milk. Finally got it. Tried different brands, and finally my kids and my wife and everyone settled in on this one brand, which I think is Blue something.

Anyway, so yesterday my wife went shopping at the grocery store. When she’s there, she walks in and there’s these three dudes in big suits, like tall guys in suits. My wife is shorter anyway. These guys are walking around, and she is going around shopping. She gets back to the milk section, and she is going to buy some almond milk. These three guys are standing right in front of the milk and staring at the milk.

She’s like, how am I going to get in there? She said excuse me, excuse me and squeezes through the guys and goes in and opens it up, and grabs four or five of these big cartons of almond milk, and puts them in her cart. The guys turn around and says, “Excuse me m’am. Do you mind if we ask you a question?” She says, “What?” “How come you bought the Blue Diamond brand as opposed to Silk?” She picks up the Blue Diamond brand, and she shows the picture on the outside and says, “There’s raspberries on the picture on the front of this box.” They said, “What do you mean?” She said, “We tried to buy Silk, but my kids wouldn’t drink it because there’s no raspberries on the box. This one has raspberries, and they thought it looked good, so that’s the one that they will drink.”

The guy said, “Seriously? That’s the reason you bought that over the other one?” She said, “Yeah. The only reason why is because it has raspberries on the box.” The guy says, “It’s a dollar cheaper than Silk.” She said, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll pay a dollar more for it. It is the fact it has raspberries on the box.”

He said, “Whatever. I don’t believe you. How about this? I will pay you a dollar for each bottle of Silk you buy or each box of Silk milk you buy right now.” She said, “If I was to do that I would be out 10 bucks because my kids wouldn’t drink this milk, and it would sit in my fridge and go bad.”

He said, “That’s so interesting. We are actually representatives of Silk. We work for Silk, and we are here just trying to figure how to increase sales and placement, and stuff like that. That’s just very interesting. That’s the reason why. It wasn’t because it was cheaper. It was because the picture on the box had raspberries on it.”

I just wanted you guys to think about that, the power of perception. Isn’t it strange that my wife, we buy four or five boxes of almond milk a week, probably spend three or four grand a year on this almond milk. We buy one brand over the other is not because of the cost. It is because of the packaging, what it looks like on the outside. It is just really interesting.

I have seen people who have products who just change the cover of the product, and they see sales change. For example, Matt Furey. He created a product. It was actually the very first product I bought of his. It was called the Martial Art of Wrestling. I bought it, and it was this glossy book, and it looked really nice and exciting. I read it, and loved it and everything.

Five years later when I found out what he was doing, and I was learning about internet marketing and all this stuff I went listened to an interview. He was talking about his first product failure. He said it was this book he created called The Martial Art of Wrestling. He was like, “I spent all this money. It was nice and glossy. It was great, and nobody bought it. I had a huge bedroom filled with thousands of these books that nobody bought.”

It turns out I was the only person that actually bought it. Anyway, he was like, “Later on, I knew the content was amazing. Anyone who did read it, loved it. My next run of it, before the other one ever ran out, I decided to change the packaging, and made it more secretive and underground, and less like a book.

I made the cover black and white, non-glossy. Just paper. Instead of the Martial Art of Wrestling book, The Martial Art of Wrestling. Just made it more secretive and underground, just tweak the packaging dramatically increased sales.

If you have a product you are selling, and it’s not doing well maybe you just have to put some raspberries on the outside of the box. Maybe it’s not so much the product or the marketing or the sales funnel. Maybe it’s just you have to wrap it a little different, and make it so it’s a little more appealing to people.

I spend a lot of time in our businesses, I try to figure out the right hook and the right angle and the right thing. That stuff is very important. I can start working with somebody, and they have a product or business and they are struggling. We come in and not touch anything, just tweak their angle and hook a little bit and blow it up overnight. It is important. Think about that. Think about the raspberries on the outside of your box, what you can tweak and change to make it more appealing to your customers. That is it for the day. I am at the office. I am a little nervous to get out of the car because it is raining. I have a two foot step into the office.

Going to have a good day today, hope you guys will as well. We will talk to you all soon.

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Lessons in entrepreneurship Russell learned last night while shooting zombies in the head.

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Hey guys and gals! This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing In Your Car podcast.

Hey guys, so last night I had a chance to do something really fun. My wife and I went to this thing called the “zombie apocalypse.” Actually, it’s called Zombie Acres, where basically [laughter] I’m sure some of you guys, hopefully, have had a chance to do paintballing, which is very fun.

Where you go out in a field, and you have teams, and you shoot each other and try to kill each other, right? So what Zombie Acres was, was kind of like that except for backwards.

Instead of us going and shooting our friends, there’s a whole bunch of zombies attacking us, and we get to shoot them with paintballs, and it was a really fun thing, so we showed up there.

They had this huge bus, the Zombie Acres bus. And we get inside, and the windows are all busted out of the bus, and there’s a paintball gun out of every single window.

And so you go and you sit in the bus, and they drive around this haunted cornfield, and you get to shoot zombies.

The zombies are attacking you and jumping on the bus and coming in the doors and the windows, and you’re just pounding them in the face with paintballs, as fast as you can go.

And anyway, it was like, seriously, one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in my life. You know, I’ve been to a lot of haunted houses and stuff, and this trumped that by ten times.

So that was kind of what we did last night, it was super fun, and the reason why we did it, one of the guys who lives by me, he actually just started that as a company this year.

And I’m not sure how he got the whole idea behind it or anything, but they put the concept together and they found — first, they were trying to buy a lot, but it was too expensive to buy someplace to do it.

So they partnered with some people, and they found some land to do it at, and they started doing it, and they promoted on Facebook and did a bunch of cool things. And it was just fun watching this little startup growing, and them using Internet marketing and all these things to kind of grow their business.

What was interesting is, I’ve been watching these guys. This was their first season doing it, and last night was actually the last night. So I’m watching them, externally, kind of seeing what they’re doing from the marketing.

And before it launched, they did a big pre-launch through Facebook, just locally here, and they were getting people to guess where it was going to be at, and it’s caused all this hype in pre-launch, which was awesome, and then boom!

They announced where it was going to be at, and then they did their first day, and then from there they posted pictures and videos and got people excited and more people started coming.

And then about half way through the season, they hit an obstacle — and as most entrepreneurs, we know we hit obstacles a lot, right?

Yesterday, I hit like four new obstacles in my business that all are seemingly insurmountable. But we’ll figure out a way to break through them, right?

That’s kind of what happened to them. The city they were doing it is called Meridian, which is right next to Boise, and the Meridian City Council or whatever it was, came down and basically said, hey, you can’t shoot paintballs outdoors in Meridian or whatever.

So they had to basically shut down, and they were shut down for about a week or so, and I felt really bad for them. But I just kind of watched it just to see how… I don’t know. I like seeing how entrepreneurs react.

You know, it’s interesting. You go to a store, if the employee behind the counter has a little issue, they just give up, right? But the entrepreneur in a business is always a lot more stubborn and pigheaded, and they figure out ways to get crap done, right?

So I just kind of watched them, and I just assumed that they were going to be done for the season, and then boom! About a week later, they’re back up and running.

And sure enough, he didn’t let that obstacle stop him, and went and they found another place in another city, set up shop over there, partnered with this farm.

That’s a farm called Linder Farms, and they already a ton of people coming for their corn maize and things like that — and they set up shop right out there in the corn maize and kept going and finished through the season.

I just was impressed with their perseverance to kind of break through those sticking points.

And then, last night, again the first time that I had a chance to actually go. I had meant to go throughout the whole season, and things came up and then boom! They got shut down, and then it got re-opened, and just things keep happening, and we never got to make it.

Finally last night, we had a chance to go on the closing night, and we were on the very last bus. And it was awesome because when I was going there, I remember sitting there at first, and I showed up and I saw these two huge buses they had, like school bus style buses.

They’re all painted. The windows had been busted out. They basically had a paintball in every single window, and I was just looking at it.

And then, I saw like the staff that was, you know, doing tickets, and I saw the staff inside the buses, keeping people’s guns loaded and enough ammo, and I saw like all the zombies, and I was like, “there are a lot of costs involved with this little business that they’ve got.”

I was kind of doing the math, and I was, you know, looking at it. It was $30 a seat to be on the bus. Look how many windows there are, you know, and I’m looking.

They were making $600 — $500 to $600 per busload — and I was like, you know, that’s not bad money. But they’ve got a lot of costs, and I’m like, “I wonder how this is doing?

And I was noticing some things, you know, like when we went there. Like it was cold and I think they could have had some profit opportunities, if they would have sold hot chocolate or hand warmers or a bunch of things like that.

At the end, you know, they could take a picture, a lot of little things like that they could come back and really monetize.

But the brilliance came when I got on the thing, so I think it was, like I said, $30 per person to get on the bus, and then they give you 150 paintballs, which I assume 150 paintballs would last a pretty good amount of time.

I found out later, 150 paintballs lasts about three seconds, and so I’m at the brrrp boom! Balls gone! And they’re like, “Hey, if you want more paintballs, you know, the next 100 paintballs is five bucks.”

I’m like, “Yeah! Give me some more paintballs.” Pull out five bucks. Boom! Give me more paintballs. And about 10 seconds later, those are gone. So I paid another five bucks, boom!

Anyway, we ended up spending every penny that was in my wallet in paintballs, and by the end we were completely like… we were still not finished, and I was completely out of money, and I couldn’t buy any more paintballs.

And next to me there was a kid that was, man, probably 14, 15 years old, and he went and bought four refills of paintballs, so he spent an extra $20 on paintballs.

Again, everyone on the bus was doing this, and I started doing the math and that’s when I saw the brilliance of their business model: You’re getting in $30 is basically kind of covering their costs, and then when you’re in the bus, just keep buying more and more paintballs, is where they’re making money.

I mean, off of me they probably made an extra $80. They got us in and made $20, so there’s $100 between two of us, then there are 20 other people on the bus.

I was really impressed to see like how they were monetizing internally with the selling of additional paintballs, and I probably would have spent $200 or more if I wouldn’t have of ran out of cash.

They only take cash when your on the bus. I thought, you know, if they would figure out a way to do more, like a bar tab, where I’m like “another one, another one!” At the end bill me, I mean, I probably would have spent and extra… Goll, who knows, hundreds of dollars? I was having so much fun.

Anyway, it was really, really cool, and I started looking at that business model, and I started thinking like it’s kind of like the razor blade business.

You know, like if you go to the store, you buy razor blades, like the actual thing, the actual shaver thing isn’t that expensive, right? You can get those for like a dollar or two.

A lot of times they just give them away, you know, kind of like the bus ride. Then after you’ve got it, you got to buy razors, and you run a razor for a week or two weeks, and then it starts getting dull, and starts hurting, so boom!

You get a new one, a new one, and these keep replacing these razor blades, and that’s how that business makes a ton of money, and razor blades happen to be expensive.

Just like the printer business, right? They give away printers for free, and they sell ink over and over and over again. And that’s kind of the concept, and I thought it was brilliant, and executed perfectly.

Like I said, a couple things they could do, I think, to extract more money from me and the other customers.

At the end, I wish they’d had a professional photographer for taking pictures of us and the zombies; like that would have been something I would have definitely paid for, and I think most people there would have paid for.

Plus you could have used those pictures on Facebook, to help spread the message even further.

But as a whole, it was a fun night. An awesome to see entrepreneurship thriving and just see some people, who, obviously, went through a lot of trails and headaches to accomplish what they did, but to see them succeed last night.

And like I said, we were the very last bus, the last thing of the season, and afterwards they were out there taking pictures of all the zombies by the bus, and it was just cool — and I was proud of them, to see them succeed with their new little business.

So that’s kind of what I wanted to just talk about today. Just to share a really fun experience that we had here, and then to share some of the outward entrepreneur things that they were able to do to succeed.

I hope that gives you guys some motivation in whatever business you’re in because you’re going to come into all sorts of troubles and issues.

You know, you may not be kicked out of your city because of your business, but you’re probably going to lose your Internet or you’re going to get your autoresponder shut down.

I can’t tell you how many issues I’ve run into in my business every single day, and the entrepreneurs are the ones who figure out ways around it and figure out how to succeed.

And, man, that was a lot of fun! So if any of you guys are in Boise next October time, let me know and I’ll take you guys to Zombie Acres, and we will shoot some zombies and have some fun. It’s a good time.

So with that, I appreciate you guys. I’m at the office now. I’m getting back to work, and I’ll talk to you guys again soon.

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Is it possible to find a happy medium?

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Hey everyone! This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to the Marketing In You Car podcast.

Today, I’m not in my Ferrari because it’s freezing! But we’re here and we’re having some fun.

Hey guy and gals! So I appreciate you guys all being here today on the podcast and listening in. We have a very fun and exciting day today happening. It starts off, actually, yesterday. Well, maybe like even a month ago.

A month ago, for those of you who know me, I’m not like a very big video game guy. But I love like the old-school video games, and so I found this Nintendo controller, like one of the original ones, but it’s a USB based one.

So I bought it, and I really didn’t know what to do with it, and then last night with my kids I went and I found how to download an emulator, and I downloaded all of the original games that we used to play.

So I had “Mario 1, 2, 3.” We had “Double-Dribble,” “Contra,” “Milon’s Secret Castle,” “Legacy Of The Wizard,” anyway all the fun games, and we started playing it last night, and I was up till forever playing it.

And it’s Daylight Savings, and so I was actually up even… I was up to like 2:00 or 3:00, technically. I think it was like 1:00 or 2:00 I went to bed, but it was like 2:00 or 3:00 in my brain because of Daylight Savings.

So anyway, that was fun and I’m excited to get back tonight. I have to get home from the office and keep playing. I got to beat some of my old games again. Oh, “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out,” I have that one too.

Anyway, so it’s been a lot of fun. But I want to talk to you guys about what I’ve been thinking about this whole weekend. Because I’m kind of having a big shift, and it goes against everything that I thought I believed about marketing, and I think that I just sold myself on it.

For those who have been following me for any amount of time, you know that I’m kind of like a hard-core like Dad Kennedy style, outbound marketer, right? We’re very aggressive with our emails and our banners and our direct mail and our — everything that we’re doing.

And it works! Okay, like we’ve been very successful with it, but I keep watching like all these newer type companies that are coming out, and watching their huge growth they’re having. And what’s interesting, as I watch what they’re doing, and it’s very… kind of the opposite of what I’m doing.

In fact, they all kind of call like, what I do and what we focus on, the “outbound marketing,” what they do “inbound marketing.” And I’ve seen infographic about like how outbound marketing, you’re like “spammers” and “the email marketers,” and, you know, all these guys.

And the inbound marketers, the ones who “create good content” and “people come and listen to them,” and bla, bla, bla, and while I don’t completely agree with them, there are some valid, really, really, really good things that I have been getting from them that I enjoy.

I think there’s a blend of the two that you can really find a happy medium, and I think that using, you know, they would call outbound marketing techniques — promote your inbound marketing — is really where the magic is if you can find that sweet spot.

And so, I’ve been looking for the last month or so, for those of you guys who know, we’ve been publishing the DotComSecrets Labs print newsletter for, man, for a long time!

I think it’s been seven years we’ve been publishing a print newsletter. In the last five or six months, it’s been the DotComSecrets Labs Newsletter, and people will have loved the Labs newsletter.

They’ve been going crazy for it. Anyone who gets their hands on it, it’s just like “this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” And the problem is, though, it’s really a hard product to sell. It’s kind of like insurance, right? Like everybody needs insurance, but nobody really wants insurance.

Now if they get it, they’re grateful for it. It’s kind of like this: like we just really have a hard time getting mass appeal, and then about a month ago the girl that’s been doing our newsletter, she’s had her second baby and she just said, “Hey, I don’t have time now to keep dedicating to this.”

And so, I’m kind of at this crossroad, and what do we do? Do we find a new publisher? Do we just cancel it altogether, or what do we do? I kind of have this weekend, what I’m leaning towards, and I may not do it, so don’t hold me accountable to this if I don’t.

But I was like what if — like anyone who gets the newsletter in their hands and sees the split tests and the results and all this stuff, I get — it instantly makes them raving fans.

Mark Call said, “By far, it was the best Internet marketing product he’s ever purchased in his history online.” You know, everybody else that sees it, loves it. Like our Facebook reviews are just raving, from David Frey, from just everybody, right?

And so, I was like, “What if we just stopped selling that and just started giving it away? Like what if I made like a real blog, like people do in the blogging world, and I just every day blogged split test results? It showed cool thing, after cool thing, after cool, after cool thing?”

I’m always just like have a kind of fear. I’m like, “Well, why should I actually give all this stuff away? Like people will pay for it.” But I’m like, what if I did, though? If I give that away, it would create these raving fans who then come back and purchase everything else we have.

That’s been kind of my thought process over the weekend. I’ve got to talk to my guys and see what they think about it. They may think I’m crazy.

But I really think that, you know, one of the big shifts in my business over the last month or so is, bringing in all the social media and bringing in all these things that we haven’t been doing.

And I think that the reason why it’s so powerful is because, first off, it makes you relevant. Second off, it’s really rebuilding our platform.

You know, like I said, we’ve been building our platform for the last 10 years, but the platform shifted. And I’ve got to be honest: I’ve been slower to change over than I probably should have been.

So these are all the things that we’re trying to do to really rebuild our platform from the social media standpoint, and just doing cool stuff to get everybody raving fans where they just spend more time with us, and, in return, hopefully, spend some more money with us.

So that’s the kind of the game plot. I don’t know. We’re excited, and anyway I appreciate you guys listening. I just got to the office. I’ve got a fun-filled day of stuff I’m going to be doing. I’m fired up, excited. I found this company that does infographics.

You know, I’ve got tons of processes that we teach in our company, and I was like whiteboarding out. But I was like wouldn’t that be cool if we have an infographic for each one of them? So like the DotComSecrets X process, we take someone through it. You make an infographic of that.

Our DotComSecrets Local, our Micro-Continuity, our Underachiever, like making infographics of each of these different topics. The people can print them out. You know, put them on the wall, whatever. Pass them around.

Anyway, I’m excited about that too. I’m going to be having them do a DotComSecrets X infographic today, so I’m fired up! I’m excited for today. It’s going to be good.

I hope you guys are excited as well. If you’re liking this podcast, please go to iTunes and let me know. I love reading the reviews. It gets me excited, and other than that, you guys, I will talk to you all again very, very soon.

Thanks, you guys, and this is Russell signing off.

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Here are the core reasons why Russell is finally getting involved in social media.

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Hey everyone! This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to a very special Halloween Marketing In Your Car.

Everyone, so this Russell and today is… It just happens to be my favorite holiday, which is Halloween, and a lot of people think, “Halloween is your favorite holiday, Russell?”

But yes, I don’t know why. I just have so many fond memories of getting candy, and smashing pumpkins and everything else fun I did as a kid, and now it’s fun to take my kids out — not smashing pumpkins, I try to teach them respect.

We’re definitely going out and getting candy, making some witches brew, a bunch of other fun stuff, so it’s going to be a fun day today. Anyway, I’m really excited.

So today I want to talk about just the kind of stuff that’s been happening in our business. What’s been interesting is, as we’ve been trying to kind of shift up our business model and change a whole bunch of things, you guys will start seeing a bunch of changes happening over the next two months in our business.

We’ve been, you know, about six months worth of back-work, and doing stuff that no one can really see yet, but you will all be able to see it very, very soon, a whole new re-brand of all of our sites, all of our brands, things like that.

And one of the big pieces that we’re doing is focusing a lot more now on social media, things like that, and it’s interesting because I’ve always fought social media. I’ve never wanted to do… I didn’t want to tweet. I didn’t want to do Facebook.

I didn’t want to do all that kind of stuff, but it’s getting to the point now where I just can’t ignore it anymore, and we’re getting more and more involved. And it’s been interesting like, for any of you guys who are SEO type people or curious about SEO, it’s really interesting how much SEO has been changing.

We used to have full-time teams of people who did SEO, and now we’ve pretty much canceled and let go of all of them.

What we’re finding, and it’s interesting — and I think that this will be the trend, moving forward with SEO — is like it’s having a lot less to do with like backlinking and things like that. It’s having a lot more to do with like the actual social interactions that people are having.

I’ve heard stories and read things that talk about how the new future of SEO is, basically, social media. Where instead of someone going to Google and typing in, you know, “work at home,” instead of finding whoever has gotten the most backlinks, it will look at you and look at your social profile.

See the people who you care about, and then see if any of the people you care about, if they’ve liked something. Or they’ve commented on something, they asked who’s making work at home make money.

And if they have, then boom! That will show up on top, and it’s just interesting that that’s the direction that things are going, where search and social are now becoming one.

So I think that’s why we’re now focusing on that and trying to learn the game and trying to be engaging, and trying to build a Fan Page, and trying to tweet and all these nerdy things that I never wanted to do.

But we’re doing them now, and I think that right now they’re important but soon they’re going to be essential. I mean, look at like back in the day we’re used to go spend a ton of money for a backlink, right?

You get the perfect backlink and almost instantly you can get ranked very, very quickly. Where I think now it’s going to be a lot more like networking, and finding the social influencers in a space.

For example, lets say I’m in… like let’s say I’m in the diabetes market, right? Which we are… and so, you know, and now I want people searching for diabetes to show up.

So what I’ve got to do is I’ve got to go out there and network and find people who are big, prominent names in diabetes, whatever, and get them to comment about me on their social media, on their Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus or LinkedIn or whatever.

But if I get that person to do it, now all those people’s followers, in the future when they start searching for stuff, I’m going to pop up, and so I really think it’s interesting.

It’s moving away from like the technical SEO, you know, to get rankings where it’s X amount of links, and the link quality and the link density and latent SIMATIC index and all these things we used to focus on to try to beat the search engines, right? And now it’s not. Now it’s being social. It’s getting people to talk about you. It’s networking. It’s gone back to like organic business.

It’s really interesting, and so again despite the fact that I’ve been fighting it for years, we’re now jumping in and trying to focus on that because I think that’s going to be the future for all of us.

And I also look at like when I first got into this business, the way that I grew my business was networking. Like I was out there on the forums, meeting everybody in my industry. I was getting to know them.

I was going to events and meeting them, and I became very, very social, and then somewhere along the line I had kids and a wife and a company and we just stopped being as social, and so…

Oop, I’m pausing because I just drove past a cop in the Ferrari, and he’s looking at me now.

Anyway, we basically, as I said I stopped being as social, and luckily I built a lot of deep connections and relationships, and I had a lot of really good partners.

But if I look at my business now, and I think that nothing is stagnating at all. We’re still growing, but it hasn’t grown as it should because I haven’t been out there networking, and the new place to network is not the events, it’s not the forums — it’s social media. It’s Facebook, and I hadn’t been putting in my time there.

And so, just for you guys, you know, think about the same types of things. This networking stuff that we’re talking about, it’s good from so many standpoints. It’s now good for the social traffic, obviously.

It’s good for future SEO rankings and things like that, and it’s also really good just for finding partners and friends and networking and things like that, and so I just want to stress to you guys that now is the time to get social, if you haven’t yet.

Jump on the bandwagon with me. You know, I fought it for years, but now we’re jumping in and I think that all you guys should, as well.

So, anyway that’s what’s happening for our Halloween today. I’m really excited. I just got to the office. I’ve got my fake biceps. My Halloween costume is these fake biceps, and then a blonde mullet wig. [Laughter] Which is kind of fun.

I had it the other day, and my daughter said that I looked like a muscle woman because my mullet was long and blonde. So anyway, I’m dressing up like a muscleman, with a long mullet, and going to have a fun day today.

So I’m excited. I hope you guys are as well, and we’ll talk to you again soon.

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The question that Russell asked that helped him raise an extra $500,000 in extra cash by the end of the year.

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Hey everybody! This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to today’s Marketing In Your Car podcast.

Hey guys, so we just finished a two-day mastermind here in Boise. I just actually drove my brother, who’s our audio-video guy, back to the airport. He’s flying back home, and I’m driving back, to go hang out with my kids and my wife and stuff, and so I’ve got probably 15 minutes or so in the car.

I just wanted to talk to you guys about some cool stuff I’ve been thinking about. And what I want to talk about is probably one of the most important things that I think any of us could ever think about. It’s had a really profound impact on me the last like week, so I’m excited to talk about it.

So earlier this week — my wife and I have been planning on building a house for a while. We’ve been looking at a lot of stuff, and we finally found some land we like and everything.

And then just like last minute, I think it was on Tuesday, we saw this house. It looked really cool. So we’re like, “Oh let’s just call the realtor and go check it out.”

So we go check out the house and it’s amazing! It’s 11,000 square feet, it’s on five acres, it has everything we could dream of in a house.

Plus like the yard is amazing. There’s a swimming pool, there’s a hot tub, there’s like a full orchard worth of trees. Like seriously, the coolest house like I think I’ve ever seen, and so I want it really bad, right?

And the only problem is, to buy a house that size, we had to have a down payment of $500,000 to be able to move forward on the house, and I don’t care who you are, a half a million bucks is a lot of money, right?

So I’m like, “Well, how can I?” Anyway, so I started to just… like my wife is like, “I want this house. I want this house.” I’m like, “We can’t really afford it.” But I was like, “Don’t worry. I’ll start thinking about it, and I’ll figure out a way that we can get it.”

And so, all of a sudden I started asking some interesting questions. The question I asked was: “How can I make a half a million dollars in extra cash before the end of the year?

So the next two and a half months, and typically if someone says something like that, you’re like, “You’re crazy. There’s no way you can make a half million dollars in two and a half months extra on top of what you’re doing.”

I was like “there’s got to be a way,” so I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, and my wife’s like, “Don’t talk about something like that. It’s not good.”

You know, she thinks it’s like you. What I’m going to do is illegal or something, that she’s just kind of funny like that. She doesn’t like when I plot and scheme ideas, so I’m like, “No, there’s got to be a way that we can do that.”

So, I went back home and went back to the office, and we’re all working and I kind of told those guys, “You know, I love the house. I want to move in.”

And Brent and John share an office with me, and I kind of asked them, “You know, like how can I make an extra half a million dollars this year?” And they kind of just like are working and kind of commenting, and they’re not paying attention.

Finally, I was like, “Guys! Stop what you’re doing, like this is actually really an important thing. We need to be asking ourselves questions like this more often. Like how can we make an extra million dollars or half a million dollars cash in the next like two months?”

And so, they kind of put everything down and started focusing, and we started asking questions. We started kind of evolving this thing, and within about 45 minutes we created a very realistic, concrete plan that I honestly think we could execute to make a half million dollars in the next two months, and we got it done. And then I kind of stopped, and said, “You guys, we need to ask ourselves questions like this more often.”

I was like, “You know, an hour ago, we were working on these projects, and we never asked the question how can we make an extra half a million dollars. We just… we’re were just working on our thing.”

And I started thinking like, if we look at a squeeze page, and we say, “How can we improve the conversion on the squeeze page?” and we ask that question, we’ll figure out a way to make it better.

If we do a sales letter, how can we make this better? If we ask that question, we’ll figure out a way to make it better, and what I was thinking is like when you ask the right questions, the right things will come.

If you ask big questions, you’ll be able to figure out the solutions to big things. So kind of an example of what we were figuring out for our $100,000 offer, or to make a half million dollars, I was like:

“You know, we do a product launch and try to sell a $1,000 product, and sell 500 of them, I’m like, ‘Oh, that sounds like so much work!’ I was like, ‘We could do this… We could do this…’”

And all of a sudden I was like, “What if we… What if we created a $100,000 package and just sold five of them?” and like, “Oh, that’s a good idea. What can we sell for $100,000?”

I’m like, “Well, think about this… Like we launched this call center. We launched this little mini call center in our office. We’ve got two sales people. We hardly generate any leads.

It’s very few leads, very targeted. And right now, with two sales people, we’re averaging, not quite, but pretty close to $100,000 a week in sales.

And I was like, “Think about this. If we found five people who have a business, but they don’t have this little like mini call center thing that we just built, and it could literally make them $100,000 a week.

“What if we come in and say, ‘Hey, pay us $100,000, and I will come to your office, and my team will come and build out the whole thing. We’ll train sales people for you. We’ll get the whole thing done, and you will leave with a business that can make you $100.000 a week.

“Would you pay me $100,000 if I gave you business that made you $100,000 a week?” Everyone was like, “Yeah! I would. That’s a no-brainer. Of course I would.”

You know, obviously, it was just like, yeah, it’s a good deal. But I’m like, but still the same thing is I’m kind of scared. Like if you’re going to write a check for $100.000, there’s so much risk in that so much fear. And like, is that actually going to work or not work? I was like, “Well, what if we did this. What if we came back and said:

“Hey, give us $100.000, but don’t give it to us, put it in an escrow account. And we’ll look at it, and then we’ll come in, and we’ll build this entire thing for you for free.

“We’ll set it up. We’ll launch it. We’ll run it, and we’ll watch it, and we’ll help make sure it works, and we will wait until it’s made $100,000.

“And as soon as it’s made $100.000 in gross profits, then that $100,000 that you put escrow will be released to me, and then you’ll have a business that you can keep running to make $100,000 a week.”

I was like, who would say no to that? Like as long as you have the ability to put $100,000 in escrow, who would not do that? Like I’m going to make you $100,000 before you ever give me any of the money, and so it starts being like that.

I’m like this is actually really good. Like this is something I would have paid for in a heartbeat, and it’s got to be the right business, the right company, right?

But if it’s the right fit, we could literally come in and in less than a week we could build this whole thing out for somebody, and have a new asset hooked to their business and make them $100,000 a week.

And so, I started getting excited. So I was talking to some guy, and this guy, I kind of mentioned it to him. And he was like, “Dude, I know tons of people who would go for that.”

So he started calling some people, and we got two or three people lined up that may do it. Then by mastermind group, when I kind of pitch it, and soon as I do everyone’s going crazy, and one person is like… they’re like:

“We’re not on spot yet. We can’t do it, but I know somebody who would be very interested, who wants to do it,” so then we got one potential client.

Then Daegan told me, he’s like, “There’s a guy who was talking to me two weeks ago, who said, ‘All I want is the call center. I want somebody to come and set the whole thing up for me, and I’d pay anything — any amount to do it.’”

Boom! We got a lead right there, and then the guy in the room also said he wanted us to do it for him.

So within two days of me just asking that question, of how I can make a half a million dollars in a month, I’ve already got six people, potentially, who are able and interested in giving me $100,000, for me to come set this thing up for them, and I was just like, how cool is that?

And it’s just interesting like, most of us — the difference between successful people and not successful people is successful people ask the right questions — and I’m really kind of ashamed of myself. I haven’t been asking better questions lately.

My questions lately have been stupid. They’ve been like… they haven’t been big enough questions, you know, and so I’m going to start every single morning, waking up, and like asking a big question or multiple big questions, and then using that throughout the day, try to answer those questions.

Because my question is like how can I get my work done today, or how can I whatever, nothing good is going to happen. If my question is like how can I make an extra million dollars, how can I change more people’s lives, how can I double the size of my list?

Like if I ask questions like that, then suddenly my focus goes there. And as Tony Robbins says, “Where focus goes, energy flows,” and we just started to start picking the right questions. And if you pick the right questions, you’ll start growing correctly.

I think we focus too much on trivial things that don’t really matter, as opposed to picking the right questions to help us grow our business the right way.

It’s kind of funny… and then later that night in the mastermind — seriously I need to learn to take my own advice sometimes. But we were at dinner, and I was talking about how the Ferrari, we would probably do a contest and give away the Ferrari, and do a fun kind of thing like that.

I was talking about that, and one of my friends, who works for ClickBank said, “Hey, you should have ClickBank. Use part of ClickBank to give away your Ferrari.” And I’m like, “Well, there’s no way they’re going to do that.”

He’s like, “Why not?” and I’m like, and I told him all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. He’s like, “Dude, you’re just not asking the right question.” I’m like, “There’s no way that will ever work.”

And he kept like making fun of me. He’s like, “You just ask. Ask a better question! Like you’re asking the wrong question.” And I kept telling him, I was like — his name is BJ.

I’m like, “BJ, this… ClickBank would never in a million years go for this. Like it’s a mute point. Doesn’t even, like it’s not worth even discussing.

And he kept saying, “Dude, you’re the one who talked about, say, ask a better question,” and I was just kind of upset and annoyed with him, so I kind of ignored him.

Anyway, the next day we’re sitting in the mastermind meeting, and all these discussions are happening, and then after talking to BJ, and all of a sudden boom!

It hit me. A way that we could partner with ClickBank on the Ferrari launch, and I said, “BJ, like I just answered the question.” I said, “Because you forced that question into my head, annoyingly, it was in there and my brain figured out an answer.”

And within a day we had the answer to this thing that, potentially, can make me insane amounts of money — an actual quarter million dollars a month — because I had that question forced into my head.

If I would have asked the question, I probably could of figured it out a lot quicker. So I just want you guys to all just start thinking about the quality of the questions you’re asking, and how often you’re asking them.

I teach a Sunday school class today, and I teach the 15 and 16-year-old kids, and so today in class I was just talking about this concept about questions, and I was like, “What are your goals and your dreams and your desires?”

And they kind of were telling me things they’re trying to accomplish, what they’re doing, and so what we did is we took a minute. I had everyone pause for just a minute, and I actually timed it.

I said, “I’m going to give you a minute right now. I want you to pick one big goal or one big question to be your focus for this week, and then I want you to come back next week and report back to me what happened, because you focused on that question for an entire week.”

And so, we paused, and then had everyone sit there and think for a little bit, like what would be their question, and I didn’t have them tell me what they were because I don’t want to…

You know, since with people that age, they’re embarrassed to show their real desires and their dreams, what their questions are, so I didn’t ask them to share it with us.

But I gave them a full minute to think about it, and I ask them, “Do you all have your question?” And I said, “Okay, I want you guys to go home tonight, think about a question, and when you wake up in the morning, I want that question to be the first thing on your mind.

“And throughout the day, I want you to be thinking about that question, and then tomorrow, the next day, I want you to wake up in the morning and for an entire week I want you to focus on that question.”

And I said, “For most of you guys, I promise you, by day one or day two, this big, huge question that you didn’t think was even possible to answer, you’ll be able to answer, and it won’t take you a whole week.”

I was like my “how am I going to make a half a million dollars extra in the next two months,” which — it’s a big order that I was asking my brain to come up with — but sure enough, within hours, we had the answer, okay?

The question of how can I get ClickBank to completely promote my launch to all their affiliate base is a big question! Not even logical! And within a day we had the answer.

Okay, so just start thinking big, thinking way bigger than you’ve ever thought before, and figure out that question that you never thought you’d ask and you probably shouldn’t ask.

If somebody knew you were going to ask it of yourself, they would make fun of you, and tell you it’s not possible. Or tell you that things like that don’t happen to people like you. And if you do that, I promise you cool stuff is going to happen.

And I think about the Ferrari… I’m like when the Ferrari contest came out, at first I looked at it and I was like, “I imagine a lot of people competing. “I’m not going to win,” and then the second I looked at it, I said:

“Huh! How can I win this?” and as soon as I did that, it opened up my brains to a pathway, and suddenly a month later we won a Ferrari, okay?

If you’ve ever read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, he talked about the difference between financially rich people and financially poor people. He said, “Poor people say, ‘I can’t afford that,’ and rich people say, ‘How can I afford that?’”

Just a change in the question, how do you position it differently, how do you do it so that your mind doesn’t say, “Oh good! I’ll think about this” and relax, but instead, you put your mind in a state where it’s got to think, and got to figure it out.

And our minds, our subconscious minds, are so much smarter than we give them credit for. We just don’t ask because we’re so lazy, and it doesn’t want us to ask. It wants us just to hang out and watch T.V.

But if you turn the T.V. off, ask the question, then ask the question and keep asking and keep asking it, you’ll be shocked at how fast the answers will come.

I’m convinced of that. I’ve seen it twice this week, with seemingly impossible goals and dreams, coming about in reality in a matter of hours, after we asked the question, so ask the question and see what happens.

Anyway, that’s it for today you guys. I am actually just back from the airport, and I’m grabbing my wife and my kids from church, and then we’ll be heading home.

I hope you guys had a great weekend. It depends when you’re listening to this, but I hope everything has been great for you guys.

If you’re enjoying these podcasts at all, please share them with your friends. Post it on your blog.

Come and comment, and we love it, it’s fun to do, and I hope you guys are getting some ideas that will help effect your lives and your businesses, positively.

Thanks so much, you guys! This is Russell Brunson with the Marketing In Your Car podcast.

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Russell is driving home a 2 AM in the morning and sharing some of the insights they got building out their new SAAS products. Russell also shares with you what it’s like being a super hot girl!

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Hey everyone! This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to an exciting edition of the Marketing In Your Car podcast.

It is actually 2:00 in the morning. I just dropped off Todd at the hotel. Todd is our developer. You guys heard about him in the last episode, and I’m in the Ferrari driving home at 2:00 in the morning. It is freezing cold! And the top’s down, and I just passed a cop.

But the top will remain down because we’re driving a Ferrari. You don’t put a top up. I don’t care if it’s two in the morning, if it’s freezing cold, that’s how we roll and run the Ferrari.

So in the last episode, I was talking about developing software is a service type product, and what’s been fun is basically the last two weeks Todd has been here in town.

We’ve been developing a brand new product, and I’m super fired up about it because I think it’s going to change the way that people do marketing. I know it’s going to change the way I do things.

It’s going to make it where, basically, I can do all the marketing by myself without any webmasters, developers or anything, which is exciting. So anyway, I’m excited for it. But I’m more excited just to talk more about you guys, about software as a service.

And we talked about it last time, just some of the benefits of it. But the reality is like it’s been interesting is we’ve developed this product.

You know, in the past when we developed products, we tried to give it so many features and so many things that it’s just overwhelming to customers and to us to support it, and to create.

And we’ve really been following this model just like making a strip-down, bare bones, as simple and as easy as possible, and as we’ve done that it’s just making a tool that I think people will use and stick with long-term.

One of the cool concepts we talked a lot about tonight, that I think I want to kind of focus this on with you guys is, when you’re creating, if you decide to create your own software — if and when you’re creating your own software.

One of the biggest keys in the long-term success of your program, whatever you’re creating, is if you can create something that has pain and disconnect.

And it makes me laugh… I’ve been doing membership sites now for, man, seven or eight years. We’ve made millions of dollars off membership sites. But one of the constant dilemmas we have is there’s always this constant churn and burn. We’re always just adding people into the funnel.

I just passed another cop, so I might go onto the side street here. Anyway, it’s a constant burn and churn when you have a typical membership site because content is good, but it’s not essential.

Like when somebody — you know, their credit card comes up, and they’re looking at their bills — like when they look at like “Oh, it’s a membership site. I enjoy it. But, hey, you know, it’s… I don’t have to have it.”

So it’s creating something that if somebody wanted to cancel, there’s huge pain and disconnect. And that’s really what — you know, not that we’re trying to develop things that cause pain, that would hurt our client’s business.

But is something that is so valuable and so useful that if they ever canceled it, would be very painful. So, you know, if for some reason their credit card failed, they’re just going to think, “Oh my credit card failed, no big deal.”

If their credit card failed, within two minutes they would call you because they’re using your service so much that they have to have it to function. And that’s the kind of product that you’ve really got to create, and I think that’s really the big secret.

I really think that next year, with this product rolling out, I think we could do $10-million pretty easily next year. And it’s just because we’ve created something that’s so powerful and so useful that the pain and disconnect is just so much, and so I really want you guys thinking about that.

Like if you do decide to develop a software program, like what kind of product or service can we create that ties our customers in so deeply that they just love it so much that they can’t cancel?

It’s kind of like our supplement. Our supplement has been interesting because I think it’s kind of the case with any supplement you have. There is a percentage of people who it doesn’t work for, and there’s a percentage of people who it works great for.

And that’s how it is right now. If we have people, we have clients who are literally calling us saying:

“My bottle is empty, and my new next shipment hasn’t come in! I will pay you whatever it costs to overnight this thing. And make sure that I have that bottle here tomorrow because I don’t want to go through a single day without this in my system.”

We get those kinds of calls all the time, which is awesome and exciting. And so, again, it’s pain and disconnect. If those clients stop having our supplement, they’re in so much pain that they can’t function, and so they don’t want to go without it.

And I think that, you know, in the past in the Internet marketing world, what people have taught and talked about it is just, you know, “create something that’s good and people will stick on it.”

But I think you’ve really got to create something that has such a big pain and disconnect that they can’t leave you. They won’t leave you because it’s so important.

And that’s the kind of businesses we’re really trying to focus on, and I think you actually should be focusing on as well, and so, I just want to kind of throw that out there because that’s what we’re talking about right now, and it’s been a lot of fun.

The other thing that we are kind of playing with that I think is interesting that I want to throw out just an idea for you guys is:

If you do have a membership site or something that doesn’t have that big, huge pain and disconnect, you know, one thing that we’ve been looking at a lot recently is like, what’s our average customer value?

You know, and we did this before on our membership sites. You know, the average customer stays for one month or three months or six months or whatever it is.

When you find that number out, it’s very important to kind of just start focusing on that. Say, “okay, our average customer is staying for just three months at a time, you know, or six months at a time, whatever that is, if you know what that dollar amount is.

We’re going to be instituting one of our membership sites coming up next month, and I’m really excited for is… We’re going to give people the ability to buy out their membership site.

So if we know the average person stays for three months, that means that month number two or two and a half, we’re going to start a campaign basically saying:

“Hey, you’ve been a member for two months. So far, I hope you’re really enjoying the site. What we want to do is, we want to offer you the ability to buy out your contract.

“So basically, for an extra $100 or $200 or whatever it is, you can get a lifetime access to the site. So longer do you have to pay us $97 a month, just pay $200 and boom! You get lifetime access.”

And suddenly for anyone who takes that, we just basically increased, you know, we took that person from the average two to three months, to six or eight or twelve months of revenue.

Anyway, it’s a cool concept I’m really excited for, and I can share stats and results, as we get deeper into it and kind of see what happens.

But just think that. Think about what’s your average stick rate, and right before that average stick rate, give people the ability to buy out a membership at a discount.

Or people who cancel give them the ability to buy out the membership at a discount. Same kind of thing that, you know, they’re probably just tired of seeing the monthly payments. They probably still like what you have, so you said:

“Hey, you know, you may not like paying $97 a month. But for how about $200, we’ll give you lifetime access. You never have to pay again.”

And just some fun things to start looking at, just different ways to look at your numbers when you’re doing reoccurring revenue, continuity, and things like that. So anyway, I hope these are just a couple fun ideas.

Again, you know, I am so tired right now. We’ve been going like, literally the last two weeks that Todd has been here, we been going late nights like this almost every single night.

I’m pretty sure my wife is ready to kill me, but sometimes that’s what you do as an entrepreneur. You burn the midnight oil to create something really cool that will pay you for the rest of your life.

And so that’s what we’ve been doing and just having that kind of fun, so my brain is kind of all over the place. I just wanted to share with you guys some interesting ideas while I’m driving home, so it’s been a lot of fun.

I’ve also had a lot of people email me, asking what it’s like driving the Ferrari, now that I’ve been in Boise driving it for the last week or so. It’s been interesting.

Like the first day we had it and parked at the office, we probably had four or five different sets of people who came to the office, parked, came to the door and asked like, “Who’s Ferrari is that? Who’s Ferrari is that?”

Like it wasn’t just someone driving by, like they actually came into our office, and asked to see and ask me questions about it. This one kid that drove by, and the guy got so excited he called all his friends.

We had this group of like all these teenaged boys outside our office just checking out the car, and they literally sat outside for over an hour, taking pictures and just looking at it. I thought it was the funniest thing!

And then, the other thing that’s been interesting is I kind of know what it feels like now to be a really super hot girl. Like, literally, when I’m driving down the street, I have guys driving — be honking their horns, waving, yelling catcalls at me.

I had people like, pulling into parking lots and asking me questions, like I’ve never felt that. I’ve never had the opportunity to be a super, smoking hot girl, but I could imagine that’s probably what it’s like for them.

Like they get approached, they have people yelling at them; here people are just like staring. Literally, I can watch as I drive down the road and almost every guy has this like really weird like whiplash, you know, where they’re following the car.

And so, I can kind of empathize now with super hot girls, and I feel bad for them sometimes because that would be really, really hard and annoying. At first it’s kind of cool and flattering, but after a while it would be annoying.

So anyway, I’m still in the stage where I like being the super hot girl, and I’m enjoying everyone yelling at me in my car. But I’m sure it will go away, and we keep talking about, you know, what are we going to do with it?

Obviously, I don’t think I want to drive a Ferrari the rest of my life. I would like to, but… You know, winning a Ferrari is cool, but I think we told you guys in one of the other episodes, it’s just the tax liability is like…

Basically, Joel, he won. You know, he gave me the car so he wrote it off on his taxes as a $130,000 loss. We basically incurred a $130,000 gift, and so I had to pay taxes on $130-grand. Which in my tax bracket is like $60-grand or something crazy like that, so by winning the car I’ve got to pay $60-grand, plus I’ve got to pay sales tax. I’ve got pay like another eight or nine grand as soon as I register it, which I’m doing tomorrow.

It’s kind of just an expensive machine, so I think after like the thrill of driving, it wears off. We’re going to do a contest and give it away. We talked about selling it, but selling it…

Let’s say I sold it for $130- $150-grand, you know, after paying taxes I still would make $70- $80-grand. Whereas, if I did a contest, and if I execute it correctly, we could make a lot more than that.

So we’re actually going to, using the Ferrari in a contest, to give away our new software we’re launching. So who knows! We’ll see. Time will tell. It’ll be a lot of fun.

Anyway I just got home, you guys. I’m ready to crash and go to bed. I hope you guys are having a great day, having a fun time being an entrepreneur.

Think about some of these cool things I’m sharing with you. Hopefully, you guys implement it in whatever your business you’re in, and I will talk to y’all again soon.

Thanks so much, you guys!

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What I learned when launching our first real SAAS program.

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

I hope you guys are having an awesome day today. I’m actually not driving to the office today. I’m driving to a hotel to pick up our programmer. He is a stud. Some of you guys may know him.

He is in town for the next couple of weeks working on some cool projects, so I am going to grab him from the hotel. I have kind of a little longer drive today, so I thought I would do a podcast and talk to you about what we are doing right now, because it’s exciting.

Just to get the wheels in your head turning if you are doing any software as a service products, SAAS (software as a service). This is kind of an interesting time in the internet world.

When I first got online, the thing to create were these little .exe files, desktop-based. I remember Armen Morne things like E-cover Generator, Header Generator, Sales Letter Generator, all these different products.

When I first got online, I saw all the things that Armen was doing, and I was like, “I want to do software too.” I did Zip Brander and Form Fortunes and all these other little software programs.

Back then, the cool thing to do was create these little downloadable software programs to download and run on a computer. That’s what we did. People would pay for it one time and we would end at that point.

I remember the very first software as a service we ever had was called Digital Repo Man. It was this really cool product where basically if you had an ebook or some product that you were selling, you would use Digital Repo Man to lock it down. Then you could give it to your customers and when your customers wanted a refund you could turn their license key off so they couldn’t give it to other people.

It was a cool thing. For whatever reason, it didn’t sell that well. I think it’s one of those things where it’s a prevention versus a cure. People don’t really want to buy a prevention. They want to buy a cure.

They wanted to buy something for after someone steals their book so they can go out there and beat up the customer that did it, but they’re not willing to pay money to lock it down ahead of time.

Anyway, it didn’t do that well, but it was the first time I had sold software as a service, where people log into a members area, they pay you monthly. It was kind of cool.

My favorite thing was that if I made an update to the software, it automatically made the update for everyone. Whereas with Zip Brander when I made an update I had to contact all my customers, give them something to download a new version.

90 percent of our support questions were because people hadn’t downloaded the newest version. It was kind of a nightmare. Software as a service became really big for a while, and we started doing some things in it, but I never really paid a lot of attention to it.

Then a little while later WordPress came out and we started building three or four different WordPress plugins and themes and stuff like that, because the WordPress is so big. I’ve got a friend who is probably listening to this podcast, Stu McClaren and he runs a site called WishlistMember where they sell membership plugins for WordPress.

They’re doing awesome. They’re making an insane amount of money with it. I was talking to him back when we were in Kenya and he told me one of the biggest issues with it is that their support is kind of a nightmare.

Everyone has different servers and different hosting and different version of WordPress, all these different things that can happen with WordPress. Then if you make an update, everyone with your software has to go download the update.

In January this year, we kind of mapped out this idea for a really cool plugin, and that’s what we were going to do. Then we found someone who had something kind of similar and they went and looked at it. The service we had created is a really cool thing that will go and backup your entire website.

It’s this really cool thing, but it’s kind of hard to explain. It’s awesome. The company saw they had something similar and they built a WordPress plugin. They had it for about six months and then they took it down.

We contacted them and said, “Why did you guys take down the WordPress plugin?”

They were like, “Our software doesn’t need the WordPress plugin. We just used it to get into the WordPress community. But it’s a nightmare. We have to support a billion different website. It got so support-intensive that we just couldn’t do it anymore. Now we’re back to our normal software as a service thing.”

I was like, “Isn’t that interesting?” A company like that had huge VC money and they couldn’t even support a WordPress plugin. Again, this year we were planning on building this WordPress thing out and we finally decided not to go that direction.

We’ve been focusing on three software project simultaneously, which probably isn’t the right way to do it, but they all go hand-in-hand so we did it that way.

One is a shopping cart that we are calling Backpack. One is an analytics and follow-up tool called Actionytics. Then one is this really cool front-end website creator, and we don’t have a name for it yet. Hopefully we’ll think of a name soon.

After these programs are finished, we’ll be excited to start rolling them out. My focus for next year is 100 percent this new software company and these three products we have. I think the potential is really big with it.

That’s kind of the direction that we’re focusing on. As we’re developing software programs, for any of you guys who are thinking about developing software, I wanted to give you some tips and tricks and ideas to think about that we have found helpful and might be useful for you guys if that’s the way you’re going.

By the way, if it’s not the way you’re going, you should look at it. If you get one really good software program, it will feed you for the rest of your life.

One of the big things is the first version of our landing page creator was actually an automated webinar site. It was called ClickFusion.com. I loved that domain name, I love the logo, I love everything. We built this automated webinar software which I think is the best out there by far.

I think the problem is we have way too many features. We can do anything for everyone. Because of that, no one ever adopted it. It was too much stuff.

A little while ago I read a book called Rework by 37 Signals. Of all my marketing books, it’s probably the one I’ve read the most times. Stu, who I was talking about earlier, actually recommended it at Pirate’s Cove.

Rework is a book written by the owner of 37 Signals, and they have Base Camp and a lot of other products like that. They’re all software as a service kind of things, and they were talking about their methodologies to create software.

One of the big takeaways I had is that they draw out their feature list, and they cut it in half. Then they cut it in half again and again, and they try to make the most bare-bones, simple thing as possible.

When customers come and ask for features, they say no. If people are looking for this or that, they tell them to go try their competitor. They basically say they try to keep things so simple and easy that you really can’t mess it up.

It’s a different mindset. Most software people I know look at software like Bill Gates and they want every feature in the world like Microsoft Word with a billion features that no one knows how to use except the bold, italics and underline.

I just kind of thought about that from our side. Let’s make things that are simple, easy, that everyone can use. As we’ve rebuilt this new automated webinar/landing page/funnel generator, this time around we’ve built it way differently, where it’s stripped-down, bare bones.

It does one or two core things really well, and that’s it. It’s turning out amazing. I’m excited to start marketing, because I think people are going to really jump on it, because of how easy it is to use.

That’s kind of what I’m doing right now. I’m at the hotel, going to grab Todd right now. I may do part two of this tomorrow or even tonight. I want you guys thinking about first off, creating some software, but second, creating it very simply, very easy.

If you’re thinking about that at all, I would go read Rework by Jason Fred. You should read that no matter what. Every mistake I’ve made in business, when I read that book I was like, “Crap, I made that mistake and that mistake.” I found tons of them.

That’s about it for today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and I will talk to you all either later today on part two of this one, or tomorrow. Thanks everyone.

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There’s no school like the old school. Start using the old marketing methods that still work.

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

I am doing something exciting today. I am promoting a teleseminar. The last time I did a teleseminar was years ago. It’s been so long since I’ve done a teleseminar. Let me tell you why I decided to do a teleseminar instead of a webinar.

I’m lazy. I don’t know about you guys, but webinars take a lot of work to create and design and get the slides and all this kind of stuff. While I could do that, I don’t have enough time. I’m too busy right now to go and create another webinar.

I was thinking, “How do I do this a lot easier?” and I thought of teleseminars.

It was funny to me, and maybe this is just me, but I think a lot of us do this. We find something that works really well, and for some reason we stop doing it. I made my very first million online by doing teleseminars. Every single week I was doing teleseminars.

When I started creating the registration page for this teleseminar, I was looking at my old hard drive that had all my old websites and stuff on it. I found one that had every single one of my old teleseminars. I started looking at all these pages.

I remember seeing a teleseminar page with Marlon Sanders, Matt Basac, Vince James, all these people I used to do teleseminars with. We made so much money doing teleseminars, and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as doing a webinar.

We would get on a teleseminar, we’d start talking and hanging out and at the end of it we would sell something and we always did awesome with it. It makes me laugh because I haven’t done a teleseminar in years and years and years.

It’s this tool, a profitable tool that we have that we never use. I don’t know if you’re like me, but if you are, I want to challenge you guys to do a teleseminar for your list. Again, the prep time is about a thousandth of a percent what it takes to do a webinar.

Just see what happens. I’m doing one this Friday. My plan is, now that I’m back from winning the Ferrari and everything, is I want to just do a breakdown with my list going over the seven or eight steps of what they need to do in the next 30 days.

I’m going to show them that blueprint. At the end of it, I’m going to have an application for them where they can apply for our coaching program. It will be fun, it will be no stress, we’ll hang out, we’ll have a good time and I’m excited for it.

I want to throw that out there as another marketing tool for you guys to bring back into your arsenal. If you haven’t been doing them for years like me, we should try them out.

We talk about pattern interrupts. Pattern interrupts are huge. If we are doing webinars every single time, webinar, webinar, webinar, after a while our audience starts realizing there is going to be another webinar and this is how the process works.

You’ve got to interrupt the pattern every once in a while. That’s why I’m excited for teleseminars. I’m not positive, but I’m guessing that you’ll see me doing a lot more teleseminars over the next few months, just because it’s going to be fun to mix it up a little bit.

When everyone else is zigging, we’re going to zag. Same thing as right now: everyone is doing email and social media and we’re going old-school with direct mail and telephone.

Just have some fun mixing up your marketing messages, hitting people with different media, different ways. I think you’ll be surprised at the results. I know I’m excited for this, excited to see the results. Maybe I’ll share with you guys on a future podcast.

My recommendation for today is to start thinking about the telephone, start thinking about teleseminars. The service we use is www.InstantTeleseminars.com. It’s a really simple, easy system to use to do a teleseminar.

They probably have a trial, so go test one out, make a bunch of money with it and then pay the first month’s bill. That’s about all I’ve got today. I’m actually not heading to the office. I’m heading to the gym right now. This is Russell Brunson and I will talk to you guys all again soon.

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Hear Russell’s story about their drive in the Ferrari from Las Vegas back home to Boise.

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Hey, everyone, this is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to a very special episode of the Marketing in Your Car Podcast. Today I am driving in my brand new Ferrari.

Well, it’s not brand new, but it’s brand new to me. I don’t know if you can hear that. Can you hear that? That is the engine. It is very loud.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you guys the story of the Ferrari, because we’re having a lot of fun. Give me one second and we’ll get started.

This will be less content and more entertainment; because I thought it was a fun weekend. We won this Ferrari in the Pure Leverage contest, which was pretty cool.

I’m driving and everyone is staring at me. It’s kind of fun. At the event, they called us onstage at the last day and said, “We’re taking a break. You can take a break if you want to, but we’re going to go down and give Russell a Ferrari.”

They took me and my wife outside and we had about 250 people following us down the hall, out into the lobby, out in front of the hotel. Then Joel who gave us the Ferrari pulled it up next to everybody, revved the engine.

Then we got in and literally our car got surrounded by 250 people, all with cameras and iPads and iPhones. It felt like paparazzi, like I was someone famous or something like that.

Then we got in the car and took off and sped around the corner just to kind of hide. When we got around the corner, it was just this dead-end parking lot, but they told us to wait until the crowd came back in. We sat there just waiting for the crowd to come back in.

When we got back, sure enough, there were some lingerers who came over and ambushed us and wanted pictures. It was kind of crazy. That was what we did that night. Then we took it to the valet and they parked it.

The next day we decided we were going to drive home, all the way from Las Vegas to Boise in it. We came back to the valet and they brought the car back to us.

It was funny because this sweet car pulls up and everybody is waiting to see who it’s for, and it’s my wife and I. I look like a little kid with my backpack, and we walk over, jump in and take off.

I’m not much of a car person, so I don’t really know how to drive a car like this. It’s kind of different. We’re driving away from Vegas and we need gas, so we pull into this gas station outside of Vegas.

As soon as we pull in, we get swarmed by people from in front, behind, all of them coming around taking pictures of the car and asking if they can look at the engine. I even had a guy ask me for money, which was really exciting.

It was kind of creepy though. We weren’t ready or used to that attention. After we filled up with gas, then all these people are swarming us. We were trying to start the car and leave.

The way you put it in reverse is weird. I was trying to put it in reverse to back up because there was a car in front of us filling up with gas and it wouldn’t go in reverse for anything I would try. I was like, “What in the world?”

Then another car pulls up behind us and we’re stuck here with all these people taking pictures, cars in front of us, cars in back of us and I can’t reverse the car. I start the car and then it dies. I’m like, “This is a nightmare.”

Finally, the car in front of us started pulling forward so we started the car again and took off. We were kind of at a truck stop, so we were stuck behind all these trucks. We got out the owner’s manual and spent 30 minutes reading and trying to figure out how to put the car in reverse, how to put the top back up and all these things.

We finally figured out how to learn it. We jumped on the freeway and started driving. Three times, people would speed up next to us and take pictures of us while we were driving. It was kind of crazy.

We brought a Go-Pro camera and mounted it to the front of the car, so we’ve filmed the entire drive home. On our way home, we were going through Utah. I grew up in Utah, so we stopped in St. George and saw my sister and her family and took them all on rides. Then we stopped and took all my cousins on a ride.

We ended up stopping eight times in two days and gave everyone rides in the car and everything. It was fun. It was a long drive, though. It took us pretty much two days to get home.

Then when we got home, it was raining in Boise, so we got home in the rain. Then we picked up my kids and took each of them, one at a time, for a ride. We found this little place behind our house where there are no cars, and I took it there and I just floored it.

We took off and my youngest kept saying, “Daddy, I want to go in the racecar.” That’s what we’ve been doing and it’s been a ton of fun.

Anyway, there’s not much content today. I just wanted to tell you guys a story about the Ferrari. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m at the office now and I’m having a guy come to detail it today. We’ll get it all detailed up and I’ll have a nice car to drive around town, so that will be fun.

Anyway, that’s about it. I hope you have a great day today. This contest was interesting. Even though everyone was competing for it, there were a lot of people who had no chance. Why should they even try to win a Ferrari? Why should they even try to win it?

I just say, for you guys, think about 10 years ago. 10 years ago I was in the exact same situation you guys are in. I was looking at these contests and I never had a shot to win them, but I tried. By trying, I learned different things. I learned that if I give bonuses, more people will buy.

If I do webinars, more people will buy. I tried to figure out different ways to sell stuff. To win the Ferrari I had to basically do a blend of most of those things. We gave away bonuses, we did webinars, we did teleseminars. We did all sorts of things to do this.

It’s taken me 10 years to get to a point where I can win a prize like this. For some of you guys, I would start now. Look for contests that are happening online in your market. I guarantee most markets have some kind of online contest happening. Go enter and try to win them and see what happens.

We had a chance in Vegas to hang out with my buddy Dave Gardner. Dave is an interesting guy. He came to Kenya with us last year. He won a prize that we were doing to take one of our students to Kenya. He won that.

I was reading this book he wrote, and he was talking about how he won that prize and he won three or four prizes. I’m like, “How do you win all these prizes?”

He said, “I just enter them and do my best.”

A lot of people don’t enter because they don’t think they can win, so they don’t, whereas someone like Dave tries a lot of them and he wins a lot of them.

I guess that’s my motivation for today: go out there and try. You never know what’s going to happen a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now. Heck, one of you guys might win this Ferrari when I give it away in a year or so. Who knows?

Thanks, you guys. I will talk to you all tomorrow.

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Most entrepreneurs get into business to create the perfect lifestyle, but within a year or so have created nothing more than an over-worked, underpaid job. How to structure the lifestyle of your dreams while you are building your business.

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

Hey, guys and gals, this is Russell. Today is an exciting day. I am actually heading to Vegas to go pick up my Ferrari that I won, which is pretty exciting. Then we’re going to jump in the car and drive it all the way home.

I’m not sure if I told you guys this or not, but I had a really cool idea. I went and bought a Go-Pro camera. I’m going to mount the camera on the dashboard of the Ferrari looking out and I’m going to record the whole trip driving home.

After I get home, I’ll take the footage of that and make a time lapse video of the footage and use it as a background of a sales video. I thought that was kind of fun.

It’s interesting. I’m about to go do this really cool, exciting business thing. I actually went and dropped my three-year-old at pre-school. All that’s going through my head right now is a quote from a religious leader named David O. McKay.

He said, “No success can compensate for failure of the home.”

Today I want to talk about that, how important our families are. I’m as guilty as anyone, but we get in this business initially because we’re like, “If we do this, we’re going to have time freedom and we’re going to have money and we’re going to do all these things.”

We get into that with that goal. But what happens at first? We quickly find out that being entrepreneurs is not quite as easy as we thought it was going to be when we get signed up, which is a good thing. If it was super easy, then everyone would do it, right?

We go from doing the typical thing where people are working 8 hours a day to working 20 hours a day. The goal is, “After I make it, I’ll cut my hours back to a 4-hour work week or whatever.”

That’s kind of what our goal is. The problem is, there are a lot reasons, but I think we get addicted to the business. You get significance out of it. You get love and connection. All these needs you have are being met by your business.

Because of that, it starts growing, you start having success, and after a while you realize, I like this and I’m having a good time. I’ve been spending 20 hours a day building this business up to this point and I really enjoy it, I’m going to keep on doing it.

The next thing you know, one year turns into two, two turns into three and eventually it’s been 10 years and you’re just killing yourself over this business. The reason why you got in, to be able to have the time freedom and to be able to spend more time with your kids, what you get is the exact opposite of that.

You get basically a glorified job where you’re working more hours. You’re probably making more money, but not having the freedom that you got in this business for. I’ve been really recently thinking about that.

I was listening to this really cool course that I found on eBay. It’s actually J. Abraham, Chet Holmes and Jake Carter Livingston. They put this product together called Gorilla vs Gorilla. I found the cassette tapes on eBay. I couldn’t find the actual product anywhere, but I found the cassette tapes.

I was super excited because I love new marketing courses. All three of those guys are awesome. I was listening to it and Jake Carter Livingston said something interesting.

He said all of us get into a business thinking, “After I do this, I’m going to start working four days a week. After I do this, then I’m going to do this.”

He said the problem is we’re creating habits. Whatever habit you create right now, that habit is going to stick with you even after you’re successful. If you make a habit of working 20 hours a day, you’re going to continue to work 20 hours a day.

When I listened to that tape set, after I went and found a tape player to listen to it, it made me think about myself. What are the habits that I’m in? I realized that for probably five years I’ve been saying that myself: “I’m going to do this after this happens,” but that thing never comes.

I kind of made a conscious decision a little while ago. I said, “I’m going to start crafting my day the way I want it to be when I feel like I’ve achieved whatever dream I’m chasing.” I want to do that now because I want to create that habit.

I readjusted some of my life, and it’s bene really cool. You can probably tell my voice sounds kind of funny. It’s because part of it is I realized I missed my wrestling. It’s hard. There’s no one who really wants to wrestle a 33-year-old dude. It’s hard to find any wrestling partners.

But it turns out everyone in the world wants to be a cage fighter, so everyone wants to do Jujitsu and grappling and stuff like that. I was like, “This will be fun. I’ll find someone who’s really good and I’m going to start adding Jujitsu into my weekly routine.”

I hired a black belt and twice a week I go in and I get beat on by a black belt. I’m learning Jujitsu from him. That’s why my voice is so scratchy today. He brought in some other dudes to roll with me. I’m not a slouch. I was a top 15 in the country wrestler in college. I took second in the country in high school.

I can hold my own, but this new sport may be similar to wrestling, but it’s not the same. He brought in some brown belts who have been doing it for 15 years and we rolled yesterday. I did all right, considering all things. I hung with them well, but as a whole I got beat bad.

I jammed my ring finger and it’s swelling up to the size of a watermelon. I can’t fit my wedding ring on right now. I got chocked out probably eight or nine times. Typically you do a carotid artery choke, a blood choke. Those aren’t that bad. It cuts the blood off from your brain and everything goes dark and you pass out, or you tap out.

But he caught me on three front chokes, which are more like windpipe chokes, which cuts the oxygen off, and it thrashed my voice. It’s kind of crazy since I’m going to be speaking tomorrow at a seminar with 1,000 people. Hopefully my voice will last.

I made it a part of my day. I said, “When I’ve arrived and I’m happy with where I’m at, that’s what I want to do. I want to be wrestling and doing Jujitsu and lifting weights.” So I crafted my day to kind of do those things.

I said, “I want to spend more time with my kids,” so I changed the time I come home every night. I changed what I do when I get home. I started changing up my life to be what I want to be when I get to wherever I’m going.

I would encourage that for you guys. That quote from David O. McKay is powerful: “No success can compensate for failure of the home.”

I truly believe that. For all of you guys, I want you to take that to heart. Start today to create the lifestyle you want, because it’s going to be a habit, whatever you do.

Don’t get caught in the whole 20-hour workdays that most entrepreneurs do. Obviously, there are times you need to do that, especially when you’re first growing and first building, but really make sure that you structure your time and structure your life so it will be the way you want it to be when you get there.

Otherwise, you’ll get so addicted to this journey, because it’s fun, this whole entrepreneurial journey. If you get addicted to it, you’ll miss out on what it was you were actually going for to begin with.

That’s it for today. I’m going home, I’m packing up my bags and I’m about to jump out and head for the airport. All I have for you guys is remember, “No success can compensate for failure in the home.”

Thanks so much. This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

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Russell covers a fast way to learn anything you want in a condensed period of time, plus get paid while learning!

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

Hey, everyone, I am on my way to the office this morning. It’s really dark outside today. I don’t know what’s going on, but it looks like the seasons are changing. I hope you’re having a great day. I’ve got some cool things to talk to you about today.

I actually want to talk about the coolest strategy in the world to learn anything you want and make a whole bunch of money while you’re doing it. The reason why this was brought to my attention was I had done this two or three times when I got started in this business, and it’s how I learned a lot of my internet marketing stuff and it’s how I started making money.

For some reason that still makes no sense to me, we stopped doing them, which is always smart. One of my friends and mentor David Frye, he went on and took this concept and did two and a half years’ worth and made over a quarter million doing it.

The thing that I’m talking about is telesummits. You guys may have seen or heard of telesummits. I actually have two telesummits I’m planning on doing with the sole purpose of learning a whole bunch of stuff from really smart people, and I want to make money while I’m doing it.

This is an alternate route to going to college. I think it’s a lot better and will serve you way better. This is kind of like my college alternative. I think you should go to school, mostly because that’s where the girls are at if you’re a guy, and where the guys are at if you’re a girl. If you’re in sports, there are a lot of good reasons for college.

But I don’t think learning how to make money is one of the things on the list. This is the process. For example, two things I really want to learn more about right now: first is the Kindle. I want to learn how to publish better on the Kindle. Second, supplements. We’re doing well with our supplement business, but I really want to take it to the next level.

That’s the two businesses I want to grow. What I plan to do is basically do a telesummit. This is how it works: for example, in the supplement space I know maybe 10-15 people who are doing really well in supplements, anywhere from $100,000 a month up to $1 million a month and beyond.

My goal, my plan is to basically contact each of them and say, “I’m doing this really cool supplement telesummit where basically I’m going to pick the brains of people that are doing well in supplements and ask them a bunch of questions. I’m curious if you’d be willing to jump on and let me interview you for an hour.”

Usually, most people when you ask them something like that, will say yes. You’ll get some no’s, some people are very secretive, but for the most part they don’t really care. They don’t mind sharing their business because it’s fun for them and they like talking about it.

I say that the big famous gurus, when they go home at night, they go home to a wife who doesn’t really care what they do. They usually enjoy talking to people who actually care what they do. It’s fun for them.

We’re going to line up basically 10-15 interviews with the top supplement guys in the world. Again, I could just do it and have that be it, or I could do a telesummit where I can say, “This is a supplement telesummit. If you’re interested in supplements, come register. It’s free to register and you can listen in on these calls with me.”

Afterwards we can either sell the transcripts or the mp3 versions. There are a lot of different ways you can monetize it. There’s that, plus you get the chance to pick the brain of 10-15 people that are doing exactly what you want to be doing.

Same thing with Kindle. I really am intrigued by the Kindle stuff. I haven’t done any of it yet. But the way I look at it, it’s an easy way to publish products. It’s a really good way to do lead-generation and stuff like that. I really want to learn the ins and outs before I dive into it.

Instead of what most people do, which is try to just figure it out, I’m going to find the 10-15 best people in the world who each have their way they do Kindle stuff. I’m going to interview them all and pretty quick I’ll get a picture of how I want to go and attack that world.

If I was going to go into SEO, I would do the same thing: find 10-15 people who are the best in the SEO world, do a telesummit, make some money selling tickets to it, and I have a chance to learn from 10-15 of the smartest people in the world.

I learned this concept from Howard Berg. He’s the world’s fastest reader. We’ve done a lot of work with him. Some of you were in the course we did with him. What was interesting was he told me most people will go and buy a book and they get that author’s perspective on the topic.

Usually, after reading one book that becomes their truth. “I read a book and it said this.”

He said, “What I’ll do is I’ll go and read 10-15 books on the topic. I get 20 people’s opinions, and from there I can base and create my own opinion.”

I really thought that was a powerful thing. I really like that. That’s how I try to approach things: not to just read one dude’s thing and go out there and follow it, but to go out there and find 10-15 different people, different ideas on how something works.

Then, after learning from all of them, take that and figure out what my game plan is, what my strategy is, based on that kind of stuff.

If you haven’t done a telesummit yet, I recommend doing it. Again, I’m doing it for a couple reasons. One is to make a little extra money. Number two is just to have the ability to learn very, very quickly a topic that is very specific and learn directly from the horse’s mouth, directly from people who are actually making a ton of money doing it.

And it will be a lot of fun as well. If you haven’t had a telesummit yet, they’re very easy to execute and pull off, and they can be very profitable for you. Go and do a telesummit.

I could tell you stories and stories about how much money people made doing telesummits. David Frye just started doing over 100 telesummits, and now he’s selling off all his domains and telesummits.

I have a friend, Sonja Ricotti, she makes millions every year doing telesummits. It’s a very good business model. Worst case, you have the opportunity to pick the brains of some of the best people in the world. I really think that’s the power behind these telesummits.

Go out, try one, get some information, learn some stuff, and we’ll talk to you all again next time.

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Russell maps out how he has structured his coaching programs to automatically ascend his customers to the next level of coaching!

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

Hey, everyone. I am driving to the office now this Monday morning. I am very excited for this week for a couple reasons. First off, I’ve got some fun projects I’m working on. Second off, I am actually this week flying to Vegas to go pick up a Ferrari I won.

I won it in a sales contest for Pure Leverage, a new auto-responder company that was launching. We sold 1,100-1,200 people to it within a month, which was enough to win a Ferrari. I’m going to go pick it up and we’re going to drive it all the way from Vegas back to Boise, which is going to be pretty fun.

In fact, I bought a Go-Pro camera and I’m going to mount it on the dashboard of the Ferrari looking out and record the entire drive home. Then I’m going to time lapse that drive and have it as the background of a sales video. I’m pretty excited. It’s going to be fun.

What I want to talk to you guys today is I want to give you guys an idea and it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot as we’ve been rebuilding our coaching programs. One of the last podcasts talked about how we have been dabbling with starting back up some of our coaching programs, selling high-ticket stuff but doing it much differently.

Instead of having 60 sales guys like I did back in an earlier version of Russell, we’ll do it pretty small where we pre-qualify and basically only call a few people who make the cut to work with us. So far, it’s been really good.

We’ve been learning a lot along the way and it’s exciting. One concept I wanted to talk to you guys about, since it’s something I’m implementing and anyone can implement it, is really focusing on your value ladder.

You’re bringing someone through some sort of chain of offers. Someone comes in initially at a smaller price and then you upgrade them to a higher price and you’re trying to get them up to your high-ticket things.

If you’re looking at the Dan Kennedy world, where I used to spend a lot of time with Dan Glazier and stuff, he calls it the ascension model, how to get your customers to ascend naturally.

As we’ve been building this whole program out, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that ascension strategy, how we get them to move from one to the next to the next.

When we create our packages, our first coaching package that we have is about $5,500. It’s really like a fast-start 30-day coaching program where they get 30 days working with me directly and with one of our coaches to get their business launched. I don’t think it takes more than 30 days to launch most businesses if you have some sort of product already. It’s just marketing and that kind of stuff.

That’s our initial offer. After that happens, my goal is to put people through a program called Decade in a Day. I you look at Tony Robbins, at his events he talks about how you can compress decades into days.

For example, you have someone who spent the last decade learning about the stock market or whatever their passion is, and they spent a decade learning that stuff and they wrote a book. You take that book and you can compress what they learned in a decade down into a few days.

I thought it was a cool concept, so we launched our second tier, which is called Decade in a Day. It’s not as expensive. We’re only charging $3,500 for it. Basically it’s a one-day program with me virtually, where you and the five or six or ten other people who signed up for Decade in a Day get on a virtual webinar with me.

For an entire day, I sit down and I rebuild your business, and then the next person’s business, then the next person’s business. You have a chance to have your own business re-tweaked and rebuilt on top of going and watching me critique and rebuild nine or ten others’ during that day.

The whole goal is to compress a decade of learning into a day. Basically, to kind of take you on whatever path you’re going, lift you up and shift in the right direction or make the tweaks or whatever it is. That’s our second program: a Decade in a Day.

The goal at the end of Decade in a Day is to upgrade people to our $25,000 a year mastermind group. That’s the progression we’re taking people down. What’s cool about it, if you look at what we’re doing, each program is designed to sell the next program.

It goes from quick-start, and after that 30 days their business should be done. The next offer is, “Now you need our Decade in a Day so Russell can go and critique your business. Now that we’ve built this thing, let’s put it on autopilot.”

We give them a voucher toward that so they get a discount on the second if they bought the first. Then after Decade in a Day it’s like, “Now that we’ve done this, let’s go over to this yearly program so we can do this more frequently with me meeting you in person, etc. etc.”

That’s the direction we’re going in. The takeaway I want you guys to have is positioning and creating your program so that each thing sells the next thing.

The first time I really saw this was with Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes’ business, the Business Breakthroughs. Basically they sell you into a webinar, and on that webinar they sell you into their coaching. In their coaching, they sell you into their high-ticket coaching.

Each one is created and structured to ascend you to the next one. I don’t think many of us think of our business that way. I know even when we had our call center of 60 people and we were doing crazy numbers, we were never trying to ascend anybody. That was the end of the value ladder. It ended there.

I think it’s important to look at something and say, “How can I help someone? How can I take them to the next step?” and really focus on how to ascend up and providing enough value that they want to and are able to.

Especially if you’re in a how to make money business, they should be able to make enough money during the first program to afford the second one and so on. If not, there’s probably something wrong.

That’s what I’m working on in my business. I think it’s interesting and I hope you guys found it interesting as well. Just think about how you can create your product line so that each offer makes someone want to ascend up to the next offer.

That’s about it for today. I’m at the office, ready to go have some fun. I’m actually going to be working with the first set of people who signed up for our quick-start 30-day coaching. If you’re listening to this, I will talk to you later today.

If not, you guys should get into the program. It’s really fun and exciting. It’s actually closed down right now, but we’ll probably open it up in a month or so now that we’ve taken this first test group through.

I appreciate you guys listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go to iTunes and search for Marketing In Your Car and give us a thumbs up, because it’s fun when people rate us. It gets me excited. It makes me want to keep on doing this. I appreciate you guys and I’ll talk to you all again soon.

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Lessons Russell learned from Tim Ferriss at Joe Polish’s 25K group.

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Marketing in Your Car Podcast. I am so excited to be with you today. Today I want to share with you guys a story of what happened to me a little while ago in New York. There was this group I wanted to check out and join. It’s Joe Polish’s $25,000 group.

There was an initiation meeting in New York where you pay $10,000 to go there for two days. If you like it, you pay the extra $15,000 to join the $25,000 group.

I wanted to go out there, but there were a couple issues. One, it was the same time as my anniversary. Two, it was in New York across the country. And three, I had to convince my wife that we should be in New York instead.

I pulled off an elaborate scheme to convince her that we needed to be in New York for our anniversary, me and her, then I could go to the meeting. Luckily for me, it all worked out and we were able to do that. We went like four or five days early to New York.

My wife and I got to hang out and have fun the first couple days. On Monday morning we went to the today show and we jumped around behind Natalie Mirales and the others. It was cool, we were on TV. Our kids thought we were rock stars.

That night, we went and saw Wicked the play, and that was really cool. I had never even heard that story before, so that was really fun. The next morning we went to the Kelly and Michael Show. Kelly was gone, but Michael was there, and the co-host was Rebecca Romaine, which was awesome.

The guest was Carrie Underwood, so we got to be two feet away from Carrie Underwood, which was cool. And once again, we were on TV and our kids saw us.

That night we went to a taping of America’s Got Talent, so that was really cool. That was the fun part of the trip for my wife and I. Then the next two days we had the mastermind meeting.

We were there and the mastermind was really good. At the end they had a guy who a lot of you guys have probably heard of. Tim Ferriss got up and spoke.

I really enjoy reading Tim’s stuff, but I don’t think he’s a very good presenter. When he speaks, he’s a little dry and boring for me. I remember he was talking about venture capitalists and stuff that doesn’t really interest me at all. I was zoning out a little bit.

At the end, he opened it up for Q&A, and one person got up and I’ve had people ask me this question before so I kind of almost rolled my eyes when they said it.

They said, “Tim, what question should we be asking you?”

Tim sat there and thought for a minute and said, “Ask me how come I will never let the media follow me around for a day, because they ask me all the time. They want to see a day in the life of Tim Ferriss.”

The guy was like, “All right, how come you never let the media follow you around for a day?”

He said, “Because if you look at my day, I wake up in the morning, I do some meditation, then I eat cereal, then I go on a walk. Then I read some books, then I surf on the internet. If you were to look at what I do every day, you’d think I didn’t do anything.”

He’s like, “I don’t work like most people. Most people have a to-do list of all their tasks for the day. They try to go knock out each to-do one at a time, and at the end of the day if they’ve knocked them all out, they feel accomplished.”

He said, “I work way differently. I like to sit back and look for the one big, huge domino that if I push that domino down, it will knock down and make every other domino obsolete. That’s how I can accomplish so much. I’m not racing and running into the next thing and the next thing. I sit back and I look for the big domino.”

That was his advice. It was interesting because I am very much the opposite. I am someone who sits there and just tries to get tasks done. It has served me well in life, just doing thing after thing after thing. But it also has gotten me in trouble multiple times.

One day I woke up and I had 100 employees working for me, and it was because of that: me running and running and running and not really sitting back and looking at the strategy behind things and waiting to find that one big domino.

I remember when I got back from New York I went on a trip to the Dominican Republic. After I got back from that, I came back and I told my team that. I spent the next three or four days sitting in front of a whiteboard.

We have a wall in our office that is just a big whiteboard, and there’s a couch in front of it. I sat in that couch for days, trying to figure out what is our big domino. What is the one thing we can do that makes everything else obsolete?

It was hard, because I wanted to go and check my email and check the next task. I’m always a hustler, trying to go on and speed to the next thing, and in this case I didn’t do that. I tried to sit back and look at it strategically. It was interesting.

It’s kind of cool if you think about it. I’ve been doing Jujitsu for the last little while, and Jujitsu is kind of a similar concept. In wrestling it’s very aggressive and you’re always going, going, going. But in Jujitsu it’s a lot different.

Jujitsu is a lot slower, a lot more methodical. You’re just looking for the next strategic thing. I enjoy it a lot, but its way different than wrestling in that way.

This kind of feels like the Jujitsu style, where you’re slowly looking for that move that will get them to tap out, as opposed to trying to score point after point after point.

It’s interesting, the different mindsets. I’m in the wrestler mindset, the to-do mindset, let’s knock things out as quick as we can and accomplish stuff fast. I’ve been trying over the last month or so now to focus on what is that one big domino that I’m going to knock down.

It’s been interesting. It’s been fun to look at my business from that standpoint. I just encourage you guys to slow down a little bit, sit back and think about what’s the one big domino you can knock down that makes all the other dominoes obsolete?

If you can find that, you can make a lot more money in a lot less time. That’s what I’ve got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed it. If you do like these podcasts, please go to MarketingInYourCar.com or go to iTunes and give some feedback. I’d love to see it. It’s exciting for me. I appreciate you guys and I’ll talk to you all again soon.

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We’re testing a new backend selling system, and so far we’re loving it! Get the details on today’s podcast!

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

Hey, guys and gals. It has been a little while since we’ve done a podcast, mostly because I’ve just been gone. We did some crazy trips, spent some time in New York. I went to the Dominican Republic. I was gone for all of August. It’s just been crazy.

I apologize, I’ve not been as faithful. But I am back now and ready to rock and roll. It’s been an interesting last couple of weeks or so. We’ve been trying to figure out ways to separate our businesses. I didn’t really think about my business very well when it got started.

We launched DotComSecrets.com and this other thing and this other thing, and now we have like five or six other brands under DotComSecrets.com: DotComSecretsLocal, DotComSecretsX, DotComSecretsLabs.

Every one of those really caters to a different market. DotComSecretsX is more for beginners and internet marketers, whereas DotComSecrets is more for startups. We’re trying to think about how to separate everything and still keep it together.

We finally figured out a way. I’m excited. Over the next month or so you’ll see us roll out this new model I am really excited about. That’s cool.

Another thing I want to talk about today because I’ve been in the middle of it for the last little while: some of you know we had a call center that we built up to about 60 sales guys with about 12 coaches fulfilling what the sales guys were selling.

It was a big operation. It was kind of a nightmare, not going to lie. But it was fun and we had a good time with it. About three years ago we shut it down. There were a lot of reasons why we shut it down. Liability was one of them. It was interesting.

For the last two and a half or three years, we haven’t sold really high-ticket back-end stuff. I always missed that money. I’ve been trying to figure out what is the best way to do it. I tried selling high-ticket stuff off of webinars. It didn’t work so well.

One of the nice things about the phone is you can sell really high-ticket stuff, but I do not want to sentence myself into having 60 sales guys.

I’ve been watching a lot of different people and a lot of different markets. I’m one of those guys who buys from everybody and watches what they’re doing and listens in to see what is working right now.

I’ve seen people in a bunch of different industries who are doing call centers and doing similar revenue numbers to what we were doing when we had 60 people, but they’re doing it with one or two people.

It’s really interesting. Basically it comes down to just a couple little things. The first one, and this is the big key, is laser targeting who it is you want to sell to.

When we were doing the call center with 60 sales guys, we made our offer so low-barrier that it opened up the world to everybody. Everybody would want it.

We called every single person in the world trying to sell this coaching. The hard thing about that is we had 60 guys to call every single lead and filter and find out who these people were, whereas most people are doing it very small-scale.

They are laser targeting their audience, primarily through Facebook and direct mail and things like that. When we had our call center, I had to get between 5,000-8,000 buyer leads a month to keep the floor open, which is crazy.

With this new model, you only have to get about 60 applications a month to make similar numbers. In laser marketing you’re not trying to sell to everybody in the world. You’re trying to figure out who is your perfect ideal client who would really want this. That’s who you go and you target. That was the first thing that was interesting.

The next thing is that, instead of trying to sell them something, when we would call them blindly and try to upsell them to coaching, you switch around and you make them apply for it.

You make them fill out this huge application. The more questions, the better, because you want them to actually think about it. Again, it’s just another filtering technique that pulls out more and more people.

Then we do the call. The call is a lot easier, because at that point they know they’re going to be sold something. They are interested in the topic anyway and it becomes really easy.

We launched our first new call center yesterday and it’s been interesting. We sent out some messages and we got about 100 and something applications back so far. We are calling those and the conversation is really different.

It’s not us trying to convince them to buy something. It’s about just trying to see if it’s a good fit. It’s been interesting.

I’m really enjoying it so far. I’m sure over the next few weeks and months I’ll report back as we sort of master this thing. So far, that’s where it’s at. Anyway, if you’re looking at selling high-ticket stuff, it’s interesting for me to look at these models and play with them a little bit.

Look at that. Look at putting up an application for some high-ticket thing you have. Send an email to your list or go on Facebook and target the perfect, ideal buyer for yourself, and then have that application for them to call on the phone and have that happen.

It’s been working pretty good for us so far. I just got here to the office. I’m hoping we’re going to close a whole bunch of deals today and change people’s lives with the stuff we do for them. It’s going to be exciting. Anyway, I appreciate you guys. I hope you enjoy this podcast and I dare, you I double dare you, to go out and test some of these strategies. Thanks, everybody, and I will talk to you soon.

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How you can use your online influence to make money from advertisers.

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This is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in your car Podcast.

Today I’m heading to the office and actually my son Dallin is coming with me today. You guys heard about Dallin on yesterday’s podcast. Dallin has been saving up money for the WiiU. He asked this week if I would hire him, the day after the 4th of July, which is today. I just hired Dallin and he is coming to the office with me today. He’s got his chalkboard with him and his crayons and his whiteboard and he is going to make some money. He’s excited.

The other thing I wanted to talk to you today about is, yesterday we had our 4thof July parade and there were some lessons that were really fun with it. I remember as a little kid going to parades, and they were insanely awesome. There were big ole floats and all kinds of crazy stuff. Yesterday we went to the Boise parade. The Boise parade was a little disappointing, not going to lie. It was mostly cars with banner ads stuck to the side of them. I realized very quickly that all a parade really is, at least the kind of parade we went to yesterday, is a marketing tool. They talk about getting excited and hyped up.

A whole bunch of people show up in this one spot and these cars with banner ads come by that basically tell you to go do things. We saw banner ads for all sorts of things. Every float had some kind of advertisement on it, and there was no purpose for a float other than they were trying to advertise for whatever their thing was.

I thought it was interesting. Then what was kind of cool was at the end we saw the Costa Vita car drive by and we were hungry and said, “Hey, let’s go to Costa Vita.” We thought the only one was far away, but we saw on the car an address for one that was about a block from where we were at. We walked over and had lunch at Costa Vita. It actually worked. The advertising worked on us. It made me think about, there’s a lot of ways to make money online. There’s a thousand different ways to make money online.

One of them that works really efficiently and really effectively is to get a website that has tons and tons of visitors just like a parade, and have good content or good floats or things that are there that get people’s eyeballs there. Then on the sides and middle and all over the place you just sell banner ads. It’s kind of interesting. That is an amazing business model. That’s how parades work. That’s how a lot of businesses offline work. It’s the same thing online.

For a lot of you guys, if you think about it that way, for you to make money online is kind of a two-step process. The first thing, just like the parade, you’ve got to get a whole bunch of eyeballs there. If you get a whole bunch of eyeballs there, the advertisers will come.

There’s a really cool book that I read recently. It’s called Trust Me, I’m Lying. I highly recommend it, you guys should read it. It just talks about how media is passed through online, back to the traditional media outlets. It’s a pretty controversial book, very interesting to read. One of the things he talked about is how bloggers make their money. They write unique, interesting stories that get a lot of attention and get a lot of views, because bloggers make money for every view that comes to their site, or if they work for a company it’s the same thing.

They get their base salary, but they get a penny for every person who comes and looks at it. They are not incentivized by sharing true stories; they are incentivized by sharing controversial stories to get people talking. That’s why the media channels are so messed up these days. It’s kind of interesting. I’m saying that because for you, if you want to start getting eyeballs, you can start selling advertising on your site. You’ve just got to be exciting or controversial or whatever.

That’s the biggest key. If you put out that content and put out videos and start blogging and all those things, that’s when you start getting eyeballs. It’s like a parade, and at that point you can go and sell advertising, either your own products or other people’s products. That is the key.

We are now at the office. Dallin and I are here and we are ready to work hard. I hope you guys are as well. That’s about it for today. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go to iTunes.com and look for the Marketing in Your Car Podcast. We would love to hear from you. That’s about it. Thanks, everybody. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.

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Lessons in entrepreneurship from my 7 year old son.

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Hey everyone! Welcome to the Marketing In Your Car podcast. This is Russell Brunson, and I’m going to welcome you to today.

Okay, so today’s a beautiful day. Yesterday it was 108° here in Boise, which in insane, and it’s supposed to be 108° again today. It’s going to be hot, but I woke up this morning to a really funny experience.

About 7:30 the phone rang, and I picked up and answered it and it was a lady asking for Dallin. Dallin is one of my twins, he’s seven-years-old, and I said, “Well, Dallin is one of my seven-year-old sons. Can I help you?”

She said, “Oh, sorry. Somebody had filled out an application for a job for him, and I was just calling to return the call. I’ll take him off our list.”

And I was like, “What in the world? Someone filled out a job application for my seven-year-old son?” and so then my wife stumbles out of bed to come find out, who it was that called, and I told her.

She starts laughing hysterically, and anyway… So here, let me tell you the backstory to this story because it’s actually pretty awesome. So Dallin, actually both my kids, Dallin and Bowen, both my twins.

A little while ago, whenever I’m like dad, my wife’s out of town where she gone wherever, I like to take the kids treasure hunting. Which basically means we go to pawn shops, and I try to find silver coins and then they try to find treasures too, so it’s really fun.

So anyway, one of the pawnshops we were at, probably six months ago, they found Super Mario Brothers U, which I thought that meant Super Mario Brothers University.

And anyway, it turns out all it means is it’s Super Mario Brothers for the Wii U, and the Wii U turns out to be a whole separate console, so I bought this game at a pawnshop, take it home. We can’t play it, and we find out we have to spend another $350 to get the console.

Now, I already think my kids play way too many video games, and I’m not really into having them go and have another console. So I said, “Hey, well, if you want this money, you’ve got to earn it.”

So I went and got a jar and on the front of it we wrote “Wii U $350,” and they’ve been saving all their pennies and their coins and their money in this jar to try to earn enough money for the Wii U.

And it turns out one of my sons, Dallin, is a lot more entrepreneurial than the rest, and is just trying all sorts of things to figure out how to make money. For example, we went down to St. George, and we found this gypsum mine, and we found these gypsum rocks. We collected all these rocks, and he’s been trying to sell these really cool looking rocks to everybody he sees, to get money for the Wii U.

In fact, he sold one of our neighbors a rock for $10, which was amazing. So he’s out there closing sales, and hustling and doing deals. He keeps telling me like, “Let’s just go to the store, and we’ll just give them all these rocks. They’ll trade me for a Wii U.”

But he can’t quite understand that, so we keep trying to do stuff. So on Sunday night, this was two days ago, he wanted to figure out how he could make the money, and so my wife put together a chore chart for him.

So he’s been waking up early every single morning and scrubbing the toilets, folding the blankets, making his bed, dusting the house, everything in the world he can do to figure out how to make money.

And so, he’s working, you know, all day yesterday and he earned a dollar from all his work, and he’s all excited. Then he realized like, “Man, it takes a long time to earn a dollar. I’ve got $350 I’ve got to make.”

So he’s talking about doing garage sales. He asked me if I had any work, he could come and work for me, and he says he’s really good doing drawings so he can draw for me.

But every morning he’s been begging me to come to the office so he can make money. And anyway, it’s just fun seeing this little entrepreneur.

So I guess yesterday, he was on the computer and he went to Google. He typed in “jobs for kids.” He clicked on some link, and a form came up, and he went and told my wife, and just said, “Hey, I need…”

You know “what’s our address,” “what’s our phone number,” and just asked all this stuff, and she didn’t really know why, but right now they’re at the age where they’re learning how to spell and how to do stuff.

So they always come and ask us like, “Dad, how do you spell roses?” “How do you spell this?” “What’s my phone number?” so didn’t really don’t think too much about it.

He wrote down all this, you know, then the address or the phone number and wrote down everything. Went back into the computer on this form, and actually filled out a “Help Wanted” for online, and that was the phone call, was them following up with his call.

My guess, it was probably some kind of call center trying to sell him a business opportunity, but it made me kind of laugh. So that was my young son’s entrepreneurial journey, so far today.

It’s two days into his thing, and he’s trying to make money for this Wii, and it just made me smile, because it reminded me of me when I was his age.

I was doing everything I could think of to hustle for money, because I just had these dreams of all the stuff I wanted to buy, and what I wanted to do and be in life, and I knew I needed the money to do that.

And it kind of makes me smile because I know that’s how I got to where I’m at today, is because of those types of things, and I just want to encourage all of us right now, depending on where you are in your life.

Look at my son, Dallin, look at his example, and I want you guys to emulate that. I want everyone to be out there hustling and striving, and trying to figure out ways to start businesses, and make money and work extra hours and things like that.

Because that’s how you get ahead in life, that’s how great things start happening. It’s always interesting to me how many people tell me that they don’t have time to start a business because they don’t have, you know, the resources or things like that.

Where I’ve got a seven-year-old out there scrubbing toilets to try to earn money so that he can get what he’s looking for, and I think too many people — too many of us — use copouts and use excuses like, “I don’t have time” or money or resources or whatever it is to start a business.

Whereas, if you just go out there and do it and hustle and try and stay up late, and work a second job and do extra work for, whatever it is, to be able to get to whatever it is your dream goal is at the end of the rainbow.

So I just want to kind of leave off with that, and the other thing is I was writing a sales letter yesterday. One of the things I wrote in there was about how good is the enemy to great, and I just want to kind of touch on that as well.

You know, like a lot of us, if you’re not where you want to be in life in whatever aspect, it could be business, it could be personal life, it could be religious life, whatever it is, the reason why most of us don’t live great lives, the reason why most people don’t have great marriages is because they have good marriages.

The reason why most people have great business because they have good business, and if you’ve ever read the book Good to Great, that’s what it talks about is just how good is the enemy to great, and it keeps us a lot of times from achieving what we want.

And I just wanted to let everyone know that you shouldn’t settle for “good.” There’s too much amazing stuff that this life has to offer, and good really is the enemy to great. So set your goals high and work like crazy. Do whatever it takes.

If you’re a kid who can’t even type yet, figure out how to get online, get your address from your parents, whatever it takes. But do what Dallin is doing and go out there and hustle, and if you do, good things can happen.

So that’s where I leave it off today. I appreciate you guys listening to my podcasts. If you go to DotComSecrets.com, you’ll notice that I started getting these images designed.

I found this really cool guy in the Philippines. He’s making these little podcast images, and he’s doing a great job so far, so there’s going to be a whole bunch of little podcast images all over our site for each one.

Like there’s, for Mary Poppins, the last steps, I talked about Mary Poppins. He’s got a picture of me holding an umbrella and just kind of some fun stuff.

So come check out our blog! Come say “hey “over there, if you like the podcast. I appreciate you guys, and we’ll talk to you again soon!

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Cool lessons learned while watching Mary Poppins with my kids.

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Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to today’s episode of Marketing in Your Car. I want to talk about something kind of fun. Last weekend, my family and I had a chance to go down to St. George, Utah which was fun. We had a great time.

While we were down there, there’s a place called the Tuacahn Theater where they do plays every single year. This year, they had four or five different plays they were doing. While we were there, the play they were doing was Mary Poppins. I got to admit, I was kind of disappointed.

I heard last year, they had Aladdin, and Princess Jasmine flying through the air and all sorts of stuff. The year before was Little Mermaid, and they flooded the stage and water came down. I was like, “What can you do cool with Mary Poppins?”

I wasn’t really excited to go see it outside of the fact that it was fun to go to an outdoor theater and be with my family, my kids came, and everything. We went to it and it was actually – the production was amazing but just the story of Mary Poppins, I hadn’t heard that story for a long, long time since I was a kid. This one was based more off of the book so there were a lot of things that were in that that weren’t in the movie.

Just a couple of really cool things that popped out to me that I wanted to share with you guys, I think they relate to us. They relate to business. They relate to your personal life. They relate to whatever it is you’re dealing with. The first one that was fun was when they sang the song, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” when I was a kid, the only meaning I got from that when I was a kid was if you have medicine and you put some sugar in it, it will taste better going down.

As I saw the song and the play and everything like that, I realized that there’s so many more meanings to that, just talking about any kind of work you do that if you can add in the element of fun, if you can add in that sugar into it, it changes it from being work to fun. It talked about how a spoonful of sugar changes toast and water to cake and juice or whatever it was.

I started thinking about that. How many things in our life, if we look at it and it’s miserable but we go back and add in a spoonful of sugar, how do we make that now a fun activity? I think that we’ve had three or four people that have come and done internships in our office. That’s one thing they consistently say.

I had a call with one of them the other day. I was talking to him after he left. He just said, “Your office environment is so much fun. It’s fun to come to work, it’s fun to be there. Just the environment, the atmosphere you’ve created has been a lot of fun.” I thought that was kind of cool.

That’s one lesson I learned from Mary Poppins. The next lesson I learned from her, this is actually more from Bert, just talking about the chimney sweeps, when he was doing the whole chim-chimney, chim-chim chiroo song, and them on top of London dancing around made me really think about you look at somebody like a chimney sweep.

You’re like, “Oh, he’s in dirt, he’s in mud all day. It’s horrible.” Then for him, he’s looking at it like, “I have the best view in the world. Chimney sweeps are happy as happy can be.” I just thought about that in our lives. Wherever we’re at, you can look at a chimney sweep and it seems like a miserable thing but if you look at the positive parts of it, how cool and how exciting, how fun is that.

I thought that was kind of cool too. Then the last big one, this one really had an impact on me in that I don’t remember it from the movie. It may have been in the movie but it was part of the play, where the kids, Michael Banks and I can’t remember the daughter’s name. They went to the bank to go see their dad.

The dad was all flustered because he didn’t want them to show up. He was there with a client trying to get a loan. The client was there trying to get a loan from the bank or whatever it might be. The client, the guy who was in there, walked over to the kids and said, “Here, I’m going to give you guys sixpence. I want you to have your first money.”

Michael said, “I know what that is. That’s worth sixpence.” He said, “No, no.” He said, “It may be worth sixpence but the value is what you do with it.” I thought that was really cool, not just money financially but any part of our life. It may be worth this but the value is what you do with it. The value is how you help someone.

What are you going to do with that money? Are you going to give it to go feed the birds? Are you going to give it to go start a charity? Are you going to give it to help your dad? We know what it’s worth but its value can be completely different. I thought that was a profound thing if you think about it.

Just a couple of fun things from Mary Poppins; if you guys haven’t watched that movie yet, we went out and bought the movie. I’m going to watch the movie again. It was really a cool thing. Everywhere you look around in life, there’s always these cool little lessons you can learn that you can relate back to your business and back into your life.

I hope you enjoyed that. I’m at the office now you guys. Have a great day and we’ll talk to you all tomorrow.

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You may have heard the first part of Russell’s Olympic journey, would you like to hear the “behind the scene” story?…

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Hey everyone, this is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. I’m Russell Brunson. I’m excited to talk to you guys today. I just got back from the Boise State football stadium today. We picked out our season tickets. We were planning, last year, we got season tickets that were clear on the very back row of the stadium.

Because we got season tickets last year, we were able to go in earlier this year and pick some and we got third row tickets, so we have six seats on the third row about the 35, 40 yard line, and it’s going to be awesome so if anyone wants to come visit Boise, let me know, and we’ll take you to a game. Just kidding.

Today, what I want to talk about, I got up early this morning and started working out and just thinking about life and about things. I was thinking about what I should talk to you guys about today on the podcast. I thought I would talk about something that I have no idea if it’s going to relate to you or not but I thought it would be kind of fun.

It’s kind of something I’m nervous to talk about because I haven’t talked about this publicly too much, mostly just people that I know that have asked me. A lot of you guys, if you’ve been following me for the last four or five years, you know some of my back stories but I was a wrestler. I wrestled in high school.

I was a state champ in high school, and then went to the high school nationals, took second place in the country there, got a scholarship to BYU and I wrestled for a year at BYU. Then they cut their wrestling program and I transferred to Boise State and wrestled my last four years at Boise State.

One of the sad things for me was I had some big goals. I wanted to be an All American in college like I was in high school, and ended up not making it. In fact, my senior year before the Pack 10 Tournament which is where you qualify for nationals, I lost and it was one of those things where I wasn’t ready to be done yet.

I was planning on going to nationals, planning on doing well. I had my last match and I lost. That was the end. My dream just got taken away from me. There was nothing else I could do. It was over. Something I didn’t know was going to be my last match was suddenly my last match.

For anyone who has ever gone through something like that, it’s hard. You’ve focused 10, 12 years of your life on a goal, and then all of a sudden, it disappears overnight. It was hard. For me, I think my release, my outlet was business. I jumped into business and started trying to build a business like crazy.

That’s how I got my mind off of the pain from losing and being done with wrestling. I did that and jumped into business. Luckily, I had a lot of success. Just like anything in life, I didn’t just dabble. I jumped in a million percent and just went crazy with it.

That’s how I think I became successful in the business world. I built the business and got to the point where our company was really big. We had about 100 employees. We had a big sales team. We had everything. It was fun. Everything was going really well.

About that time, I started thinking about wrestling and thought, “I really miss wrestling a lot.” One of my buddies had been competing for the Olympics. Three different cycles, he had tried or two cycles at the time. The last thing, he was favored to win American and go to the Olympics and in the Olympic trials, he lost to a guy that he had beaten very easily multiple times.

He ended up not qualifying for the Olympics, so the other guy got to go. I didn’t really know what had happened to him. He kind of disappeared and I hadn’t heard much from him. Then one day, I went to his blog. On his blog, it had been about a year since the trials. On the blog, he was saying that after the trials, he was really depressed.

He left. He moved to Wyoming and started doing some work there. One night, he came home from work. He went on YouTube and he was looking for stuff. He saw a video of the match that he had lost. He said he watched that match, and afterwards he said he started crying uncontrollably for hours. He couldn’t stop.

He said, “I’ve got to try to do this Olympic thing one more time.” He said, “Basically I’m trying to figure out a way to do it so if anyone has ideas or can help support me, whatever, let me know and I want to try to compete again.” I read that blog post and was really touched by it.

Because he’s a close friend, I was like, “Man, what can I do to help?” Anyway, a couple of weeks later, I was at a movie with my brother who is another wrestler. We were talking about how cool it would be to start wrestling again and how much we missed it and stuff.

That night, I went home. I was looking and said, “What would it take for me to be able to compete in the Olympics?” I went to the freestyle Olympic stuff and looked at everything. The Olympic list was really big. The weight class was deep, how good people were.

I was looking at people who were three and four time national champs who were tenth string in freestyle. I was like, “Wow, that’s going to be tough.” Then I went over and looked at the Greco. Traditionally, Greco is a much harder and actually a much more fun type of wrestling but in America, a lot of people don’t wrestle Greco.

I looked at the lineups in Greco, and the weights were not nearly as deep in America which was interesting. I knew a lot of the guys who were ranked in the top two or three, and I thought, “Wow, this is kind of cool. I could do Greco.” What else was cool was I actually knew the Olympic Greco coach.

We were good friends. He used to coach my little brother. I just thought, “You know what, I’m going to try to compete for the Olympics. I’m going to do it in Greco. I think it will be really fun.” The next day, I called up the Olympic Greco coach. His name is Ivan Ivanov. I hadn’t talked to him in like 10 years.

I was like, “Hey Vaughn, I want to start wrestling again. I want to hire you to have you move to Boise and train me.” He kind of laughed and said, “Russell, I’m training the Olympic team. Everything is really good. I get paid a lot of money. I’m not interested.”

He said, “Maybe if you had a team or something or there was more than just you. I don’t want to get involved and six months later, you decide you’re not going to do the Olympics and I’m out of a job.” I said, “Okay, that makes sense.” Instead of giving up, I hung up the phone and then I started thinking.

I said, “You know what? I should. If I’m going to really do this, I should go get a team of people.” The first person I called up was Justin, my friend who had lost in the Olympic trials. I called and left a message for him. He called me back a few hours later.

I said, “Justin, I have a crazy idea. You’re not going to believe but I want to compete for Olympics and I want you to move out here to Boise and train with me, and I think we should get a gym and bring up a bunch of guys. If we have a bunch of guys, I think we can convince Ivan to come out here and coach us. What do you think?”

He smiled on the phone and said, “I’m in, let’s do it.” I don’t think I had even told my wife at this time what was happening. This was on a Friday. Justin and his wife jump in the car from Montana or Wyoming, wherever they were at, drove eight or nine hours. The next day, they’re at our house.

My wife is sitting there like, “You told me this six hours ago and now these guys are in our house talking about starting an Olympic club. Are you really doing this?” I said, “Let’s do it. I’m in 100 percent.” Justin moved up here. We launched the club. He called a bunch of people he knew. They moved up as well.

We created some jobs for these guys so they could make money while they were here. After we had a bunch of people, we called Ivan up, flew him up. He saw everything, made him an offer. He moved to Boise, and that was where we were going.

For about seven or eight months, it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever been through. We had our own Olympic team here in Idaho. We had our own facility, we had our own mats. We were training everyday. It was so much fun. I was having the greatest time in my life.

I think I was getting to the point where I was doing really well. I remember in December time, I was wrestling a guy who actually ended up taking second place in Olympic trials. I wrestled him and actually beat him for the first time. I was like, “This is amazing, I’m not that far away from the goal, and we still have two more years before the Olympics.”

That was in December. I was just fired up, really excited for this whole thing. Then what happened after that was kind of crazy. It was a whirlwind of events. In January, again, I haven’t told this story publicly but here it is. In January, about the 15th of January, one day we’re at the office.

Everything is cranking and all of a sudden, one of my programmers comes in and says, “Hey, all of our sales are failing.” I said, “What?” A few minutes later, the call center guys run up, “Hey, we’re trying to bill people’s credit cards. All of our credit cards are failing.” We looked and I couldn’t figure out what had happened.

Our merchant accounts weren’t working so I called our merchant account provider. We had 16 different merchant accounts with them and they had shut down every single one of them without any kind of warning. If you can imagine, at the time, we had 100 employees. Our overhead was north of $600,000 a month which means I had to make $600,000 before we broke even.

All of a sudden, we had no ability to process money. People wanted to give us money. People wanted to buy our stuff but we couldn’t process their money. It took two days before I could get someone on the phone to actually tell me what was wrong. Basically what had happened, this is the time, for those of you who are familiar with what happened, anybody who was doing any kind of continuity trial, continuity based offers all got shut down.

I think PowerPay shut down 300 or 400 merchants overnight without any kind of warning. It took us three days to find out what happened. After that, they turned our merchant accounts back on but they put us on 100% reserve. We were scrambling.

In the next seven days, we made $200,000 and PowerPay had 100% reserve which means they wouldn’t give us any of that money. We kept calling them and begging them. Finally, after about seven to 10 days, they said, “Okay, we’ll take you off reserve and put you back on normal 10% reserve because you’ve proven you’re a legitimate vendor.”

They did that but they said, “But we’re going to keep your $200,000 you just processed in reserve,” which means that $200,000 we had made, I couldn’t use to pay salaries or anything. It was just thing after thing after thing like that. For the next year, it was just a nightmare. Costs were so high. We had no money.

We had money coming in but we had no money to process. Because there was money coming in and we didn’t get the money, we couldn’t pay salaries so sales guys were quitting, we lost programmers, we lost designers, we lost coaches, and it was a nightmare. For a year, we tried to keep everything open.

I paid every penny out of my own pocket to keep things open. It was really the toughest year and a half to two years of my life. It was crazy. Eventually it ended with us shutting down the call center completely. The wrestling team, basically, I was paying for it out of my pocket, my personal pocket because the business couldn’t support it at that time.

I was paying about $30,000 a month to keep it open. After about a year of that, it had depleted my personal accounts. I couldn’t keep supporting it anymore. I still remember by far the most depressing day of my life, worst than when I lost my wrestling match was me calling up Justin and the coach and saying, “I can’t support this anymore. I have no more money. We have to shut down the wrestling program.”

That’s all from one December to the next December. It was December when I wrestled that guy and beat him, and it was a year later that I had to call and shut down the whole program. It was really tough. Then after that, we came back and we had to leave our office. We shut down the call center. We fired most of our staff.

We moved to a small office and had to start rebuilding. It was about another year of rebuilding before we were back to where we were really doing well but it was the most stressful time of my life. It was hard but we were able to keep pushing through that. We restarted our business, relaunched it, and now we’re at a spot where it’s kind of fun.

We’re actually with six employees, we’re doing the same volume we were doing with 100 employees before. It’s been amazing. Now, I’m a thousand times happier than I ever could have dreamed about being before but the reason why I think I wanted to tell you guys this story, and surely there’s different messages you can get out of it.

One of them is don’t hire a bunch of staff. Another one is being diverse with your merchant accounts; make sure for any product you have, make sure you have at least two different merchant accounts and two different banks. I can’t tell you how many people I know that have gotten merchant accounts shut down.

There are so many lessons I could talk about and share with you guys along the way about hiring and the people that stick beside you, and those that walk away when adversity comes. The main lesson I really want to share was when all is said and done, as horrible and tough of an experience that was, the fruits of what happened have been amazing.

I think that the reason why I’ve had ups and downs in my life, the ups and downs are interesting because ups and downs are the things that define you and the things that make you who you are. The reason I’ve had the big ups and downs is when I get into something, I go in 100 percent. When I was wrestling in high school and college, I was in 100 percent.

When I started my business, I was in 100 percent. When I wanted to do the Olympic thing, I was in 100 percent. I didn’t say, “I’m going to wrestle for the Olympics,” and then go and sit down and watch TV. I went out and within a day, I had hired the Olympic Greco coach, I had built the team, I had gotten a facility. I had done everything.

Again, sometimes it bites you in the butt but that’s the nature of life. Those who risk a lot are the ones who reward a lot. I just want to encourage you guys, whatever it is in your life you’re doing, and this could be in everything, in your relationships, in your family, in your religion, in your business, whatever it is, if you decide you’re going to do it, do it.

Don’t just dabble. Nothing drives me more crazy than people that dabble. We had an event a little while ago and I had someone come that had been dabbling in internet marketing for as long as I’ve been doing this stuff, and they’re still not successful. It’s because they dabble.

I want you guys to commit to yourselves to whatever you want to do, whatever you’re passionate about, be all in. I don’t care if it’s business. I don’t care if it’s weight loss. Whatever it is, don’t just dabble. Commit yourself and be all in.

Do what I did and go in, hire coaches, do whatever it is, just commit and go 100% in. If you do that, you’ll be amazed at what happens. The journey you go along is so much more exciting. I had someone tell me the other day, “Man Russell, you’re only 33 years old and look at how much stuff you’ve experienced, seen, and been able to do in your life.”

I really think it’s because when I get into something, I go all in. Most people, they don’t. They dabble and they sit on the sidelines, and they don’t want to get hurt, and they don’t want to screw up, and they don’t want the pain that can be associated with things but I promise you guys that that pain is there for a reason.

It’s there because it makes the other stuff so much better and so much happier. Don’t be afraid of it. Embrace it. Go all in with whatever you’re doing, and quit dabbling. That’s my message for today. It’s a little longer than normal but I hope you guys got some good ideas, and we appreciate you guys.

Everything we do in our Dot Com Secrets business and our other businesses is because we care about our customers. As scary as it is for me to share stories like that, I’m hoping that it will get you guys some thoughts and insights, and some things that you can apply in your life and in your business.

Let’s go from there. Again, if you guys like this podcast, please share it with others. I’m doing it for free just because I enjoy it and I want to help people, and if you guys are enjoying it, please blog about it, leave a comment about it, whatever it is. Thanks so much and we’ll talk to you guys all again tomorrow.

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Are you curious what Russell’s doing today to double his business? If so, listen to this episode and copy exactly what he’s doing.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson from DotComSecrets.com and this is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about a thing called KPIs. In the theme of my podcast from yesterday, I know it was a short one, but just talking about taking stock of where you are in your life right now and making a whole new list of what you need to be happy, and then going and just getting it, and not letting anything get in your way.

I hope a lot of you guys took that to heart yesterday and did that. I know I’m having a ton of fun with mine today. I got a bunch of things on my list I’m doing today, just because I wanted to to be happy, and now I’m going to go do them. I hope you guys do the same thing as well.

Today, what I want to talk about though is now tying that back into business a little bit and I want to tell you basically what I’m doing today. You guys should copy me because it’s going to work and make me a lot of money.

One of the things that I’ve noticed in my business is when I have something that I’m tracking and I’m looking at, and I’m watching the numbers on, it tends to grow. When I just forget about them and I don’t have those things, then it tends to not grow. I’ve always looked at things from month to month, our numbers and our profit and loss, stuff like that.

In fact, that’s what the accountants were at my office yesterday showing us. They come once a month and go over all those things but recently, we hired these guys to do some traffic generation stuff for us. Every Friday, they send us what they call a Friday report. It shows us how many clicks, how much money was spent.

It shows a really detailed report of how many sales came in. It was really exciting to get that. I thought, “You know what? We have a lot of divisions in our company and a lot of different offers we’re running, and things like that yet we never really, I don’t have numbers like that in front of me all the time.”

What we decided to do and what our task for today is to kind of sit down and figure out what our KPIs are for each of our different sub-companies. A KPI is a key performance indicator. For example, in most of our businesses, the key performance indicators are similar. One of them we’re looking at very heavily obviously is traffic, how much traffic are we getting in, from what source.

A KPI could be we need 500 visitors a day from search, 500 visitors a day from Facebook, whatever that number is. That’s a key performance indicator. As soon as we started tracking that, then we can help improve it, making it go up and down.

Another one would be how many subscribers we get each day. Are we getting 100 a day, 1000 a day, 5000 a day, whatever it is? The next one is how many sales we’re making, and not just random sales but what is the front end product we have. I don’t know about you guys but we always have for each of our businesses, Dot Com Secrets X, Dot Com Secrets Local, Dot Com Secrets Second Up-line, Girlfriend in a Week, all of our websites, all of our properties, whatever you want to call them, they each have a front end product that we’re trying to put people into.

Usually for us, it’s a dollar trial type product. That’s one of our key performance indicators is how many dollar trials did we give away today. Is it 10, 100, 1000? That’s a big thing we look at. That is a key performance indicator.

The next one is how many active members. If we have 3000 active members right now, or 2000, whatever that number is, and then how much we sold other back end products, those are the KPIs that we have for basically each of our companies. What I’m doing today is making a little template that basically has those KPIs, and each person in our office is in charge of different sections.

Basically each Friday, I’m going to have it where everyone on my team goes and puts together their Friday KPI reports and send them in. That way, we can see week by week how we’re improving, what’s going up, what’s going down, and those types of things. That’s what we’re doing.

I’m really excited for it. What I’ve noticed is that any time we track something, it tends to get bigger because we see it and our brain automatically starts thinking about, “Man, I got 100 visitors yesterday. How can I get 120 tomorrow? How can I get 150? How can I get 200?”

Just the fact that we’re tracking it, I guarantee we’ll see numbers go up. I want to recommend the same thing for you guys. If you aren’t tracking stuff yet like that, it’s time to sit back and start looking at what those key performance indicators are in your business, and everyone’s businesses are different.

Figure out what those things are, and then track them and plot them. Look at it so you can see day by day what’s happening, has it gone up, has it gone down, and things like that. Another fun thing that you can start doing is after you do this for like a year or so, and we’re doing this with our revenues, profit and losses and stuff, is looking year by year.

Last May, we did X amount of dollars. This May, we did this amount of dollars. We increased from month to month, year by year which is fun. The biggest thing I think is having the tracking ability so you can see it and improve it every single day.

There is your homework assignment for today, you guys. Figure out your KPIs. Figure out your tracking system, and start watching those numbers because when you watch them, then they can improve. That’s about it, you guys. I’m at the office today. I’m going to go start making some KPI sheets. It’s going to be a ton of fun.

If you’re enjoying this podcast, please tell other people. Go ahead and blog about it. I won’t mind, or just go into iTunes and leave a review. I love seeing the reviews. It makes me happy. I would appreciate that. Thanks so much. We’ll talk to you all soon.

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Russell just got back from vacation and wants to challenge all of us to radically change at least one pattern in your life and see what happens.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. Hey everyone, this is Russell. I know it’s been a little while since you guys have heard from me but I was actually on a vacation with my family down in St. George and had an awesome time. I’m back now, ready to get back to work.

I don’t know about you guys, but when I leave for a little bit and I come back to get back into working, it gets me so excited and fired up, and today, I’m pumped to be here. A couple of things, I’m actually late for a meeting with the accountants. I completely blanked it.

Going to the accountants for me is like going to the dentist. It’s the most painful process of the day so I’m heading there right now, but just wanted to talk to you about a couple of things I’ve been thinking about this weekend, or actually this whole week. It’s been a lot of really fun stuff.

One of them is just at the beginning of the year, we always set New Year’s resolutions, and then we never keep them. About two years ago, I remember one day I put together a list. I was like, “What I needed to do to be really happy in my life,” and I listed everything I could possibly think of. Then I made a conscious effort to go out and get all of those things.

It was amazing what I was able to accomplish during the next month or so afterwards. It was all sorts of things like I want to whiten my teeth, I want to lose some weight, I wanted to go to an acupuncturist, everything I thought of that I thought would be cool to do, I listed all those things out and then went and actually did them. It was fun.

I haven’t done that for about two years, so I actually just this weekend did the same thing. I said, “I’m going to go back through and figure out everything that I wanted to do to be a little bit happier in life.” One of them was juicing. This morning, I woke up, cranked out the old juicer which I haven’t used in years, and juiced some stuff.

It turned out really nasty. I put way too much of something in there but I did that. We just got a Whole Foods here in Boise, and went to Whole Foods. I bought some quinoa because one time, I had that and it’s a really good grain with lots of protein, so I bought that. This morning, I woke up at five o’clock in the morning.

I remember going to Tony Robbins’ event. He talked about jumping on a trampoline every morning, so I woke up, jumped on a trampoline, and he talked about trying to be grateful every morning. I sat there for about 10 minutes while I jumped on the trampoline, thinking about my kids, my wife, and everything I could be thankful for which was really cool.

Then I did some studying this morning, both from a religious standpoint and also from a marketing standpoint, and resetting my whole life. It feels amazing. It’s 8:41 right now. I’ve been up for almost four hours already and I just feel fantastic. I feel fresh, I feel like I have a ton of energy, and it’s awesome.

I want to give you guys that same gift that I gave myself. Right now, we’re about the middle of the year. Use this as your New Year’s resolution or your midyear resolution, and go home tonight or today, whenever it is, and sit down and write a list of the 10, 20, or 30 things you want to do to make yourself happier right now.

It could be dumb things like I said juicing sounded like fun and jumping on the tramp in the morning, and just things like that. Then go and start doing them. Give yourself permission to do it. It’s amazing what you’ll feel like.

Just some recommendations for you guys, one recommendation is I recommend trying something different with your eating, just totally radically different. If you’re a hard core meat eater, become a vegetarian. If you’re a vegetarian, become a meat eater.

I don’t care what it is, just something radical, shift what it is what you’ve been doing, and see what happens. See how your body feels by the change. I recommend waking up earlier, and using that time, not so much to check your email or to work but use it as a time to sharpen your saw.

What I mean by that is focusing on learning something, either for your business, for your religious life, whatever it is. Just focus in the morning on doing more of that, doing some exercises early in the morning. If you need to get a gym membership, just do something to radically change your physiology, to change your mindset, change your eating behaviors, your patterns, and just see what happens.

I promise you, if it’s at all like what I’m feeling like this morning, it’s going to be amazing for you as well. That’s the gift I want to give you guys today. Just make some radical changes, and if you do that, I promise you you’re going to feel a lot better.

I’m at the office now. I’m late for my meeting with the accountants. I’m going to go talk to those guys. I’m going to do a lot more podcasts this week because I got some really cool stuff to share with you guys but that is your task for today, to radically change the patterns that you’re doing in your life right now for the better, and test it out and see what happens. Thanks everybody.

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Are you using a sales video, a sales letter, or a webinar to sell your product? We suggest testing out a few of these unique options to increase your conversion rates.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing in Your Car podcast. Today, I want to talk about a topic that I think is really fascinating. I’ve never really seen anyone else talk about it before but it’s been a big part of our business. The basic concept is people learn and consume information in different ways.

I’m not talking so much like the products that you sell but more so about how you sell them. For example, what we found is there are some people who love to watch webinars. That’s their favorite thing in the world. They’ll sit on webinars all day long. They get on every webinar that happens. They buy off webinars. They love webinars.

There are other people who can’t stand webinars. No matter how much benefit is going to be on a webinar, they’re not going to get on it. That’s kind of like me. I think webinars are cool. I love selling through webinars but I don’t like getting on webinars. I can’t take an hour, two hours, three hours of my time usually during the day to watch a webinar, so I don’t typically like that.

That’s one sales style. Another sales style is sales videos. Some people love watching sales videos, and they’ll watch them all the way through, and that’s how they prefer to consume the information. Me on the other hand, I normally can’t sit down and just watch a sales video. It drives me crazy.

The third modality is reading. Some people like to actually read a sales letter. That’s the way that they consume and are more likely to purchase the product. There’s other things as well. There’s phone calls. There’s a lot of different things you can do.

What I want to talk about is just the importance of selling your clients in multiple different modalities, meaning for example, we’re tomorrow launching a product in the weight loss industry, and we’re also launching a product in the internet marketing industry. Both of those products, we’re leading with a sales video.

We’ve found that traditionally, a sales video will make us more money than a sales letter or things like that so we’re leading the front end of both of those offers as a sales video, which is kind of cool but a lot of people, like I said, aren’t going to actually watch a sales video for whatever reason. It’s too long, they drive them crazy. Maybe they’re at work and they can’t have the volume up. There are a million different reasons why someone may not.

What we’ve found is that we’ll lead with what we think is our strongest modality, the version of the page that’s going to be the best, and we’ll put it out there, and then what we’ll do is if somebody doesn’t purchase from that, we’ll have an exit pop-up. The exit pop-up will pop-up the sales letter version for those people who don’t want to sit through a video.

Boom, it will pop it up, and they can read the whole, it’s basically the transcript of the sales video. We’ve found by doing that, we’ve seen huge, huge increases in response rates. I think it’s because, like I said, people like to consume things in different ways. When we first launched our Dot Com Secrets local webinar about two years ago, the way we launched initially was an automated webinar.

That did really good. After I think 10 days, maybe seven days, something like that, if they hadn’t purchased from the webinar, then we sent a sequence of emails pushing to a sales letter version of the webinar which is basically the same message but in sales letter format. That dramatically increased our sales from people who just didn’t watch the webinar, didn’t have time to watch the webinar, whatever the reason was.

Then boom, they saw the sales letter, and that gave it to them in a format and a fashion they could actually consume. We also for a little while there, we stopped doing it mostly because it was a hassle but it worked. It’s one of those things we probably should have kept doing but when people would opt into the webinar, we’d have a small upsell for five dollars.

If they bought that upsell, we would actually ship them out a DVD of the webinar which was kind of cool so they could watch the webinar through DVD, and we’d give them a printed out version of the sales letter of the webinar, just a couple little cool things like that just to get our message in people’s hands in multiple different ways because you have no idea what the person that clicked on your ad, what type of person they are, what type of way they like to learn, what form of communication is going to be the most likely to close and sell something like that.

I guess my message for today is just have a little fun with your sales stuff. Don’t just have a sales video, just a sales letter, just a webinar. Take those elements and make other versions of it. Traditionally, our sales letter is just the transcribed version of our sales video or our sales webinar so it’s the same message, just in a written out format so they can actually see it.

We’ve even done it before where we had people pay for the transcripts of a webinar and it was amazing, people pay for the transcripts. They would get that and they would basically be reading the whole sales letter, and boom, those people were more likely to purchase as well. That’s just my message for today.

I’m at the office now and ready to have some fun today with our two product launches we’re working on, but again, both of those, we’re using different modalities, and you should as well. Have some fun with it, you guys, and we’ll talk to you all soon.

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What is the secret message I’m trying to get to you?…

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Hey, this is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing in Your Car podcast today. It is a beautiful day. Hey everyone, this is Russell again. It’s Friday today and I’m excited because we’re heading out of town for Memorial Day weekend. We’re going to have some fun out at the lake with my family, so I’m excited for that today but on my drive in to get some stuff done this morning before we head out of town, I want to give you guys a quick message.

This message has to do with becoming a student of marketing. There’s this guy I got some text messages from yesterday. He’s someone who I met in the last six months or so and someone who I think is a really cool guy, who wants to be an entrepreneur. He’s trying to learn this stuff. He’s got his first app he’s been creating, and I’ve been helping him, steering him the right way.

When Rippln came out, which obviously a lot of you guys probably know what Rippln is. It’s a new viral app that we’re helping launch and stuff like that. I showed him that. He got excited and signed up, and started talking about it to some people, and started doing some stuff. Then last night, he texted me and said, “Hey, can you take me and my wife off of Rippln?”

I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “I’m tired of getting all the text messages and emails, and it’s not for me,” all this stuff, “please cancel it.” So I wrote him back and said, “Yeah, just go contact support@rippln.com. They can take care of it.” I sat there. It really bugged me. I wanted to write him back but I didn’t because I knew if I did, it would be kind of out of me being upset a little bit.

It just makes me sad because I know someone like him, he’s trying to learn this internet marketing thing and trying to learn apps, trying to learn how to launch his own app. I gave him behind the scenes access to the fastest growing social network app launch in the history of the world. He got behind the scenes access to watch it going live.

He’s getting all the marketing material texted and emailed to him every single day, and instead of looking at that and saying, “Wow, this is a really good case study about how to launch an app,” he got annoyed with it and asked to leave and to cancel it. It just blows my mind how many times people who are trying to learn marketing get upset at marketing.

It drives me crazy. I can’t tell you how many emails we send out doing cool marketing, showing cool marketing, and actually marketing to people, and instead of people looking at that and saying, “Wow, that’s a good idea. I’m going to go and implement that in my business,” people come back a lot of the times and just get upset and say, “Oh, I can’t believe you keep emailing me. I can’t believe this.”

They’re upset about whatever it might be, and it just makes me laugh because the reason why they joined my list, the reason why they listen to this podcast, the reason why you come to my teleseminars is to learn how to make money. Sure, I’m going to be selling you stuff along the way but watching the process is worth as much if not more money than the actual thing we’re selling every single time.

For example, yesterday, we did a webinar that in the first 90 minutes or whatever, in the 90 minute webinar, we did $80,000 in sales. Now, a lot of people were on that webinar and they got excited by the product and they bought it, but if you were just to have watched the process about how we got people on the call, what happened on the webinar, the words we said, the slides we used, the process, the close, the takeaway, the offer, I would have paid $1000 just to have seen behind the scenes of that webinar, what I did.

Everybody had a front stage pass. Everyone is on my email list. They all got the emails. They all sat there on the webinar. They’re watching the replay cycle right now. From this webinar, we’ll probably make a quarter million dollars and there will be people unsubscribing from my list because they’re annoying I’m marketing to them.

Why did you get on my list in the first place? You’re trying to learn marketing from me. Watch what I’m doing. Anyway, I just wanted to stress that because so many times, I think that we’re looking for something and we’re missing what’s right in front of our eyes. If you want to learn marketing, you cannot be annoyed by people marketing to you.

You need to watch that and study it. With my friend, I started texting this back but then I deleted it but I wanted to tell him, “Look, if you want to be passionate about this career, you should be throw away all your marketing books, quit going to college, whatever it is but every one of those emails that Rippln is sending out or that I’m sending out, you should print those out, put them in a binder, and study them every single day because that will make you more money than anything you’ll ever learn in college.”

I feel bad because he missed the mark. He’s so focused on trying to launch his app that he missed the marketing lesson I was trying to give him about how to launch his app. It’s a shame and a tragedy but that’s what happens with so many people. Please you guys, be students of this game, the marketing game.

If you do, you will succeed. You’ve got to become passionate about it. Daegan Smith and I talk about this a lot. Until you become obsessed about marketing, and obsessed with how we drive traffic and how we do conversions, and cool sales processes, and that kind of stuff, until you become obsessed with that part of it, you’re not going to become successful online, at least not to the level you want to be.

Everything else is just going to be a chore. It’s going to be a headache. It’s going to be whatever it’s going to be but if you really focus on that part and make it a passion and a love, then you can be successful. On a Hangout I did the other day, I was on a Hangout with Anthony Morrison who had one of the best running infomercials for four or five years straight.

I told everybody, “Look, Anthony’s infomercials are awesome, so awesome that I recorded them, I had them transcribed, and I’ve read the script over and over again to learn what he said and why he said it.” There’s so much value for me in watching the infomercial. You can ask my wife. It drives my wife insane but when we’re watching TV, guess what? My favorite part is the commercials.

She always wants to fast forward. I’m like, “No, this is why we’re watching the show, so I can watch the commercials.” When we listen to the radio and the commercial comes on, she wants to change it. I’m like, “No, you know this is the part of the show I’m here for, to listen to the commercials.” That’s where I learn, that’s where I grow.

It’s because I’ve become a student of this marketing game, and you need to become a student too. Quit getting annoyed when people market to you and look at it as saying, “Wow, that’s a cool idea. That’s a cool way I can implement something in my business.” When you start doing that and your perspective changes to that, you guys can become even more successful, but it really takes that leap from I’m trying to figure out how to make money to I’m becoming a student of marketing.

When you do that, like I said, everything else will change. For all you guys who are out there, for every email list you’re on, don’t get annoyed anymore. Please start printing out the emails, putting them in a binder, studying them. That is your homework. If you do that, I promise you guys you’ll be more successful.

That’s it for today. I hope you guys all have an awesome Memorial Day weekend. Maybe, if my wife and kids pass out in the car, I’ll give you guys a four hour long podcast while I’m in the car driving. If not, I’ll talk to you guys when we all get back.

If you’re enjoying the show at all, please go to ITunes.com and leave your comments, leave your feedback. I love seeing it. It’s probably the most exciting thing of the day for me right now so go back and look at the comments. If you’re having a good time with this, please leave feedback and let everybody else you know know about the Marketing in Your Car podcast. Thanks you guys, and we’ll talk to you soon.

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Are you an A level marketer in a B level opportunity? Let me show you how to change!

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Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson and we are on my way to work today. This is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. In today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking about what type of opportunity are you in right now. Today, I want to talk about types of opportunities that we’re in. this is something that I’ve never really thought about.

When I first got in the business, I just started moving forward. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know what was happening. I had an idea for this software, so I made that and I started selling it. Then I had this idea for potato gun DVDs so I made that. Then I had an idea.

I started having ideas, and then just making that stuff and trying to sell it. I had no real plan or purpose or anything. It was just things started happening. We started moving forward. I think that a lot of times happens with a lot of us in our businesses.

Last summer, my wife and I had a chance to go to Kenya for about 10 days. We were doing a project with World Teacher Trade which is a really cool charity that two of my friends, Stu and Amy McLaren started. We had a chance to go out there. It’s one of the most amazing experiences while we were out there, helping build schools. It was a really cool thing.

While we were out there, there were probably I think 10 or 15 other high end internet marketers who had all donated money to build these classrooms that were all there with us. We were building schools and hanging out with the kids, and having a great time together. I remember one day, I was sitting next to Bill Harrison.

If you guys don’t know Bill, he’s a brilliant marketer, one of the coolest guys from a marketing standpoint. He and I sat and talked for 20 hours straight without even a break because the guy has read more books on marketing than anyone I ever met, a really cool guy. I really enjoy my time with him every time I have a chance to talk with him.

When we were in Kenya, he started talking about the type of opportunity he was in. He said, “It’s kind of frustrating me. I feel like I have A level skills but I feel like I’m at a B level opportunity.” He said, “I have these friends who have B or C level skills who aren’t that good at marketing or business, yet they somehow got plugged into an A level opportunity, and a couple of them just sold their businesses for $100 million.”

He’s like, “Our company does well. We do $10 to $12 million a year but that’s kind of the peak. We maxed out everything that’s possible in our business because it’s a B level opportunity. We can’t really get outside of that.” He’s like, “Also, the other issue is that I built a company that was based off of,” actually his brother’s brand so it’s based on his brother’s.

He’s like, “It’s a business that’s very difficult if not impossible to sell. The problem with that, when you build a company completely off of your face and your name, at first, it’s a lot easier to get traction and make sales, and to grow a business but long term, it’s harder to sell because you sell it, then the personality dies behind the business.”

He said, “I always felt like our business is like a rental. No matter what, we’ll never own it to the point where we could sell it. It’s like a rental home. We could make good income on it, have good cash flow but it’s not something that we own and could sell someday.” Between those two things, talking about the opportunity and talking about basically we’re in a rental business if it’s that type of business, I really took that to heart.

I thought a lot about it. That was last summer. In January, I was at the traffic conversion event and I saw Bill again. We started talking. I told him, “What you talked about really had a big impact on me with the whole level, what type of opportunity are you in.” He asked me, “What are you doing about that?”

I said, “You know, I’m not sure yet.” I remember I had this conversation with the guys on my team. We were all there at the event together, and kind of said it looked like we’re in a good business. We’re at a I feel a B level opportunity.

First off, our business does well. Our best year ever, we did over $10 million so it’s a really good business but I feel like our skill set, what we bring to the table is a lot more than that. I really feel like we were in the same situation as Bill where we had a B level opportunity with A level skills, and we wanted to figure out a way to increase that.

We strategically sat down and figured out with what we have right now, how could we change our business to actually make it an A level opportunity where we could apply our A level skills, and really make what we think what we’re worth in what we can do. Because of that, we basically took a business that was doing $10 million a year and completely transformed it and changed it.

Some of you guys probably on the outside can see a few of the changes happening but you’ll see more and more over the next six months or so, and where Dot Com Secrets is not the focus of our business. Again, I think Dot Com Secrets is a B level opportunity. Sure, it makes us $10 million a year but I think that there are bigger opportunities. That’s what we’re pursuing right now.

You’ll start seeing these transitions and changes as we’re trying to shift away from a B level opportunity into an A level opportunity where we can really start scaling it. My thought process for this podcast I wanted you guys to think about is what type of opportunity are you in right now? Just because you’re in the business you’re in right now doesn’t mean you have to be in that.

You can change it or you can sell it, or you can move onto something different, but make sure that you’re in an opportunity that can reward you sufficiently for your level of skill. If you’re in a business, maybe you’re doing a million bucks a year and you feel really good about that. Just by tweaking the business you’re in could completely tweak how much money you’re making, just by shifting the opportunity.

I want you to be aware of that because until last summer, I wasn’t even aware of that. I was just moving forward in the opportunity that I’d fallen into and didn’t even think much about it. I was good at making money but now that we’ve made a shift and we’re focusing on an A level opportunity, it gets me more excited because I can see the big vision, my team can see the vision, and we get more excited because what we’re building is ten times bigger.

Again, that’s my focus for you guys. Just look at the opportunity you’re in now and realize that if you’re not happy or it’s not what you think it could be, or it’s not big enough, whatever it is, you can change. I remember two years ago on New Year’s Eve, Tony Robbins put out this video. It was very inspirational for me, and it was actually the catalyst for me firing a ton of employees, shifting my whole business model around, and moving my offices, and shifting.

He basically said, “As New Year’s is coming up, this is the time when people can make changes and do whatever they want.” He said, “Look, if you’re not happy in your relationships, change them. If you’re not happy with your weight, change it. If you’re not happy with your business, change it.”

It really gave me permission, saying, “You know what, why do I have to keep doing this? If I’m not happy, I can change.” I think that that’s something that a lot of people, as simple as it is, you don’t give yourself permission to do that. Look at your life right now, all aspects of it.

Look at the opportunities in everything, not just business, but your relationship opportunities, your spiritual opportunities, things like that. Just look at are you at an A level opportunity in all areas of your life? If not, then change it. I’m giving you guys all permission right now to make that change because I know it’s a scary thing but you have my permission to do it and my encouragement to go do that as well, and seek after the A level opportunities.

Guess what? It takes the exact same amount of effort as the B level opportunities. That’s what’s interesting. When Bill was talking to me, his buddy that sold his company for $100 million, he didn’t work as hard as Bill is, he didn’t work as hard as I’m working but the opportunity he was in allowed that.

Just realize that the conscious choosing of your opportunity is huge because most of us don’t consciously choose it. Most of us just go out there, and whatever we stumble upon, that’s what we start running with. I’m giving you permission right now to consciously choose the opportunities in your life, again, from relationships to business to personal life to spiritual life, whatever it is.

Consciously make the choice and then I also give you permission to make those changes because I know that a lot of times, we just need that permission. You have my permission. Go and do it. I hope you enjoy this podcast. I hope it gives you guys some inspiration.

I know that this little concept has changed our business, the direction of our business substantially and it’s made what we’re doing a million times more fun and more fulfilling. I hope it will do the same for you. Thanks, everybody.

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How to use controversy to create a fan-base and to sell more of your stuff.

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Hey everybody, welcome to the Marketing in Your Car podcast. This is Russell Brunson and I’m excited for today’s podcast. I hope you all had an awesome weekend. I had a chance to go on a family trip down to a wedding, which was always fun. While I was driving, my thoughts were upon marketing.

I wanted to give you guys an eight hour podcast. That’s how long I was in the car but I was dealing with a bunch of crazy kids and a beautiful wife, so was not able to do one but I was thinking a lot about it. I got some good topics for this week coming up. I want to go through a bunch of them.

Right now is the one that I was most excited about, and it’s the topic of polarity. This is one of the keys in your marketing. If you learn how to master this, it will mean more traffic, more sales, and a lot more repeat sales and raving fans. The back story behind where this concept came from today, I got a Skype from one of my close marketing buddies who makes a lot of money but is very conservative, very neutral type personality.

He Skyped me and said, “Man, I can’t believe how much drama you’ve been involved with in the last month.” At first, I was trying to remember, “What drama was he talking about?” Then I remembered all the drama we’ve been involved with in the last month. It’s been really interesting.

One thing in the drama, some of you guys remember I was competing for a Ferrari which I won. I thrashed the guy who took number two, and the number two guy did not take that very happily. The last four days of the contest, he went out there and started this whole hate smear campaign against me which was kind of funny. It was like a two year old girl crying after getting beat up by a bigger kid. That’s kind of what it reminded me of.

He was doing all this stuff, and there was all this controversy was caused, and there were people that were really upset at him, and people upset at me but what was interesting is the last day of the contest, I didn’t really say much. He was the one out there ranting and raving, and posting stuff all over Facebook and trying to trash me, and tell everyone he was a better person than me.

We had three times the sales the last day than we had the entire prior last week combined, so it worked in our favor tremendously. In fact, I had a bunch of JV partners who were so annoyed at what he was doing, they actually went out there and were promoting, without me even asking, were promoting my bonus package just so that he wouldn’t win which was kind of funny. It all kind of comes around.

Then we were in the middle of this launch of Rippln which I’m sure some of you guys have had a chance to see that. I was brought under to write the whole sales and marketing part of the company launch, help orchestrate all that stuff. It’s been going amazing. We’ve gotten over half a million people to sign up in the first 30 days. It’s been fun, but with that, there’s been a lot of controversy written about it.

We had Tech Crunch, this big huge tech blog, go and write. They don’t really write anti articles but they wrote a huge anti article about my video, the pre-launch video which made me proud. Then we got Salty Droid did a write-up on it, and some other guys who think they’re cool wrote big write-ups about how we’re scam artists, and all this stuff.

It kind of made me smile because all this fuel has just been great for our business, for our brand, for everything that we’re doing. The controversy behind things has been awesome. Now, what I want to talk about today is the concept of polarity. Polarity is the opposite of neutrality. A lot of people in their marketing want to be very neutral. They don’t want to offend anybody.

They are very careful not to step on anybody’s toes but the problem with being neutral is when you’re neutral, you’re boring. Nobody listens to you. Nobody pays attention. As much fun as it is to make everybody happy, that’s not the way to make money. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not in this business to make everybody happy. I’m in this business to make money.

The neutrality behind most people’s marketing is what keeps them from really succeeding. It makes them irrelevant. It makes them so that people don’t really talk about you. You may have some people that are interested but nobody talks about you. That’s what causes your business and your brand to grow.

It was interesting, I was talking to Mike Filson about this awhile ago, and Mike said one of his biggest things he’s always trying to do is figure out how can I stay relevant. He said, “You know, guys like me and him have been in this market for 10 years and so, and you look at how many people and personalities have come and gone in that time,” and he said, “most of them just aren’t relevant anymore. What are we doing to stay relevant, to stay top of mind, to stay on people’s radar?”

Because literally, in the internet world, if you’re quiet for a week, you’re pretty much gone. You’ve disappeared off the radar, which is a whole other story in of itself, why it’s important to contact your audience more often, email at least daily. Daegan, one of my close buddies, he preaches emailing twice a day.

Staying relevant is a big thing. Back to the neutrality part of it, I was reading this thing awhile ago. This is a couple of years ago so I’m sure I don’t know the stats but the concept, I remember. It was talking about Howard Stern and about people that watch his show. They did surveys.

They found the average person who liked his show listened for 35 or 40 minutes at a time, and the average person who hated his show listened for over an hour at a time. When they surveyed both audiences to find out why they listened, the reason was the same in both cases. It was, “We wanted to hear what he was going to say next.”

That’s really a key here. You look at the great figureheads, you look at the people that have the big brands, just in the celebrity world. We just watched the finale of Celebrity Apprentice last night. Look at Donald Trump. When he was doing this whole campaign against Obama when he was going to run for president, this whole thing about Obama, trying to bring out his birth certificate, that for me, I don’t care which side you’re on or anything like that, but it was interesting.

It got people talking and noise, and all this stuff. People hated Donald Trump for it, people loved him because of it but he caused polarity. What happens when you cause polarity is there will be a group of people who despise you and who hate you. Most people don’t do that in their marketing because they’re scared of that. They don’t want that.

That was always really, really tough for me. It was really tough for me to see people talk bad about me. In fact, it’s still hard for my employees when they see stuff like that. For me, it doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s been happening long enough, I get it. There are going to be people that don’t like me. I’m okay with that.

The other interesting fact about polarity is when you create a group of people and make them dislike you, it also takes another group of people and makes them love you 10 times more. That’s the power of polarity. When you switch from being in a neutral state where you’re trying to please everybody to a polar state where you pick the things you want to do and not want to do, stuff like that, again, you get people who despise you and you’ll get people who love you.

Those people who love you will spend so much more money with you because of that. They’re attracted to that polarity. I look at all the people that I spend money with. I buy things in a lot of different niches. The people I buy from are always the kind of crazy people a little bit. I always joke the crazy people have the best ideas.

I always like to subscribe to what they’re doing and they’re talking about. That’s what I spend my money on because me and everybody, even if they won’t admit it, you like the people on the fringes. You like the heretics. You like the people that are kind of pushing the envelope because it’s more interesting. It’s a more interesting conversation to talk about, to think about, to participate in, and people are attracted to that.

At the same time, like I said, there are going to be people who are not attracted to that but if that’s happening, that’s a good thing. Dan Kennedy, one of my mentors, he said, “If you haven’t offended somebody by noon each day, then you’re not marketing hard enough.” I know that’s going to be hard for a lot of you guys but it’s the key.

One thing I want to mention about polarity is there’s a right and a wrong way to do this. The right way, at least the way that I subscribe to is I don’t go out there trying to pick fights. I just do what I’m going to do, and then I stand behind it. For example, the whole Rippln thing, we did it and I stood behind it.

The launch for Pure Leverage that we won, we did our thing, I stood behind it but I wasn’t going out there picking fights. I look at the guy who we thrashed in the contest, and I look at the way that he was trying to create polarity. I think it backfired on him. He went out there and started a hate smear campaign against me and made videos, and posted on Facebook every 30 seconds for two days about how much he hated me, and how he was going to steal my Ferrari, and all this stuff.

It was really distasteful, and maybe he got some audience from that. He probably did but all I know is that he was polar so far to the other opposite, to the other extreme, that the people in our market, our peers were so turned off by what he was doing that they started promoting my stuff without me even ever asking.

I think there’s a level where you can go way too far and you outcast so many people that they don’t want to become part of what you’re doing. There’s kind of a fine line there. With the two campaigns this month that caused all of our controversy, I wasn’t doing anything really. I was just doing my thing.

Because we were doing it and we were doing it aggressively and we were doing it well, it caused people to become upset and it caused people to become huge fans. That’s what I want to say about polarity. Don’t go out there. You’re not trying to be a thug. You’re not trying to go cause fights and that kind of thing.

People can see through that. It’s not the right way to do it. It’s just coming out there and being yourself, not being nervous about who you are, and just doing it. It was interesting, two days ago, I was in our garage. I rented a power washer and power washed our whole driveway. It was super fun. If anyone hasn’t done that, it’s a fun project.

I power washed the whole driveway. Then I found these boxes that got wet. In some of the boxes, there was this tube. I pulled the tube out. I remember seeing when I was a kid. I pulled it out and there was a picture of my ninth grade graduating class inside of it. I opened it up and saw all of my friends, all these people that meant so much to me.

I looked at it, and there wasn’t a single person in that picture that I’ve kept in contact with over the last, I guess ninth grade was probably 13 or 14 years ago now. There wasn’t a single person that I kept in contact with. I remember sitting there looking. I remember being the shy, awkward ninth grader who was so concerned about what everybody else in that picture thought.

It’s all I could think about, “What if they don’t like me? What if they make fun of me? What if whatever?” Because of that, I didn’t thrive in that environment. I was an awkward, shy teenager. For me, I didn’t start thriving until I started wrestling in high school. That’s when I found my thing. I just stopped caring about everybody else and focused on that thing.

I think that so many of us in our business, we’re like that shy, awkward ninth grader in the picture who wants everybody to like them and because of that, they stop bringing their own personality into the game. They’re so concerned about nobody making fun of them that they’re just neutral and just sitting there.

Because of that, nobody knows who they are. I was so neutral and I was so boring in ninth grade, that I guarantee you if I showed that picture to everyone in that graduating class, most of them would have no idea who I was because I was that shy, awkward, neutral person who didn’t want to offend or talk about anybody.

You look at the high school graduation, it was different because I had picked my thing. Wrestling was my thing. I focused on that, and people knew who I was because of that. It’s the same way in your business, you guys. Quit worrying about what the haters, what the people who don’t like you are thinking.

Quit worrying about everything else. Just be yourself. Who are you at your core? Just go out there and do that. Whatever it is that gets you excited in the morning, go and do that kind of stuff. The way you talk to your audience, listen, this podcast was me talking in my car. It makes me laugh because I did a news segment the other day on Huffington Post.

It was really cool. Our PR person afterwards messaged me and said, “Russell, you really need to learn how to clean up your ums and your ahs.” I thought, “You know what? Yeah, I could do that but then I’d be losing who I am.” I want to connect with you guys at a personal level because that’s where you’re coming to me.

You’re coming to me with personal issues. You want your business to grow. I could give you the textbook answer or I could give you what actually works. That’s my goal is to be real with you guys. I want you guys to do the same thing, to be real with yourself and not be scared of polarity. It is a good thing that’s going to help you win this game.

Step off your neutral line. Quit trying to please everybody, and just be yourself. If you do that, like I said, you’ll find a group of people that don’t like you and they’re going to be mean to you, and there are going to be hate blogs about you. Who knows how extreme it will get.

The more aggressive you get, the more exciting you are, the more people will come out of the wood works to write hate blogs about you. It makes me laugh nowadays when I see the ones that people write about me but at the same time, because of that polarity, just by the nature of how polar opposites work, while one group will move away from you, another bigger, larger group that’s more passionate and more willing to spend money will move towards you. That is the key, you guys.

That is the key to this whole attraction marketing game. That’s what I had for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed it. I’m at the office now. I have a fun day. I’m going to try to ruffle some feathers, do some fun marketing, and hopefully it makes people angry and in the interim, makes some people really, really happy. If I can do that, I’ve succeeded.

If you can do that, you’ve succeeded as well. Thanks you guys. Again, if you had any good experiences with this podcast so far, please go to ITunes.com, go to the comment section, leave your comments, leave your feedback. I love it. Right now, it’s my most exciting thing everyday to go look at the comments. Please leave comments, love to hear from you guys, and we’ll talk to you all soon.

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One little tweak, to increase the results of everything you do.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson from DotComSecrets.com and this is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. I wanted to thank everybody who left feedback and comments over the weekend on the podcast. I think it was like 174 people commenting which is awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. We even hit, I think we’re at number fortieth top podcast last week which was pretty cool. Thank you guys all for that.

I got some funny comments in there I’m reading. One person said that because of me, it’s the first time they ever subscribed to iTunes which was pretty cool, so Apple should be giving me a percentage of anything you buy in the future. I also saw somebody say that the loved the podcast because they have the ability to slow down my voice on their phone. That’s a good thing I think.

I obviously have about a six minute commute to the office but I try to cram in about 15 minutes worth of content, just how fast I talk. That should give you guys the ability to slow me down if your commute is longer and get all the stuff out of it. Today, my podcast is going to be a little different than normal.

Usually, I’m sharing marketing tips or tricks, things like that but I want to talk about something that’s a little different but some of you guys may even be like, “This has nothing to do with anything exciting for me,” but I promise you that it has everything to do with marketing in your business.

What I want to talk about is the word awesome. We’ve got this little guy, he’s about 22 years old that lives by us. He’s got, I’m going to pronounce it wrong, he has cerebral palsy so he’s handicapped. His legs don’t fully function. He can walk with braces on his legs but very, very slow.

In fact, every time I pick him up, he wants to walk from his doorstep to my car and he wants me to time him. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to walk that distance. He tries to talk but his speech is really hard for him to talk and get things out. I have to listen very, very hard to be able to understand what he’s saying, just this cutest little kid.

We take him every week to church and hang out with him there. About once a week, we bring him over to our house for dinner. His name is Jesse. I just want to talk to you a little bit about Jesse because Jesse is someone who is amazing. Every time I call him, I say, “Hey Jesse, how is it going, man?” and his response is always, “Awesome.”

Everyday, every time I hang out with him, he says, in his broken language, he says, “Russell, I love my life.” It’s really amazing to me because he’s someone who has so many things against him, so many disabilities. He can barely walk, can barely talk yet any time I ask him about how he’s doing, he’s always doing awesome.

I think it’s such a great lesson. I started working on my kids. I told my kids, “Look, most people live their lives everyday in a state of good. You ask them, ‘Hey, how are you doing today?’ ‘Good.’” Have you noticed that? Every single person you do says, “Good.”

About three or four years ago, the first time I went to a Tony Robbins event, I made a conscious decision that any time somebody asked me how I was doing, I would never say good again. I would say awesome. I started doing that and I started saying awesome. It’s so funny what happens.

When you’re at the airport at five in the morning and the person is checking your ID, “How are you doing?” “I’m doing awesome,” and it always catches them off guard, “Wow, what happened to you today?” What was interesting is it just changes the whole entire dynamics of your day and about every situation you’re in when somebody asks how you’re doing.

Instead of saying good, you say, “I’m doing awesome.” I started training my kids that. I said, “Look guys, when someone asks how you’re doing, you can’t say good. Everyone else in the world is good. We don’t want to be good. We want to be awesome.” I got all my kids doing that now.

It’s funny when they hear somebody saying, “How are you doing?” “Good,” they say, “Daddy says we are awesome,” and they always tell everybody we’re awesome. You may think that’s such a little insignificant thing but what’s interesting is I don’t think it is.

I think it has to do with everything about how you produce, how you perform in life because everything we’re doing, every situation we’re in, we’re bound by the state that we’re in. If I, for example, when I was wrestling, if I would go in a wrestling match and if I was in a bad mood or if I thought I might lose, or if I wasn’t excited and I walked down the mat, a lot of times, I would lose because the state that I was in.

What I found is it really correlates over into business, athletics, business, relationships, whatever it is. The state that you’re experiencing whatever you’re doing in has so much to do with your outcome.

If I got a hard day of work that day and I show up, “Oh man, I got a lot of work to do,” instantly, because of the state I put myself in, “Ugh,” I can’t perform to my top level. It’s just impossible. If I come back and I shift it where I wake up in the morning and I walk in the office and say, “Awesome, excited to be here today,” suddenly the state you’re in is different and your performance level completely changes.

It’s shocking. You’ll notice how little of a thing that is but how huge of an impact and how big of a result it is. I remember when I was wrestling in high school, I had a coach. His name was Mark James. I remember I think it was my sophomore or maybe my junior year, we had a really hard practice.

Afterwards, he took everyone in the back hall. He was talking to us. He talked to us almost an hour. I don’t remember a lot of what he said but there were a couple of things that really stuck out to me. One of them he said was just talking about the power of our attitude. He said that the attitude you have is going to drive everything one direction or the other direction.

He said, “Look, everyday we’re coming here for practice, we’re working out anyway.” He said, “You’re going to be doing the work no matter what so you can either do it with a negative attitude and make the whole thing miserable or you can have a great attitude and everything feels positive.”

He’s like, “You’re going to be here for two hours a day anyway in the room working out hard. Just choose your attitude. Choose the right one because if you do, your results will be 10 times better because of it.” I remember taking that to heart.

For those of you who know much about wrestling, in wrestling, we used to cut a lot of weight. This was back when I was in high school, it was before, it was actually my senior year in high school, there were three kids that died cutting weights so they changed all the rules and made it a lot more difficult but prior to that, we used to cut a lot of weight. I was cutting about 30 pounds every single week of water weight.

That was a lot of work. It would take about three or four days to lose 30 pounds of water weight, and then we’d go weigh in, boom, we’d eat, and three hours later, we were back to the same weight we started but I was doing that every single week for an entire season. It was draining. It was hard.

I remember thinking about Coach James, what he told me about, “You’re going to be here no matter what. Just have a good attitude and everything will be different.” I remember I used to put my plastic gear on. I’d put my sweats on, and I started jumping rope. I’d try it with a big smile on my face.

Everyone is like, “Why are you smiling? You’re cutting weight.” I remember I used to tell people, “Look, I’ve never lost with a smile on my face.” I said, “When I lose a match, I’m depressed, I’m angry, I’m frustrated. I might be crying, whatever it might be but I’ve never lost a match with a smile on my face so I’m going to have a smile on my face while I’m doing this because I don’t want to lose.”

That was the attitude that I had in wrestling. It took me very, very far in high school and also at a college level. It’s also really helped me a lot in business as well. That’s something I’ve tried to do when we’ve had ups and downs. What’s interesting about my business is we’ve had some big, big ups and some big, big downs.

I know everybody out there struggles in business. Some of you guys are struggling to make your first dollar. Some of you are struggling to figure out what product to sell. Some of you guys are trying to struggle to figure out how to get to the next level but I’ve had some big wins and big losses.

We were at the point with our company, we were doing a million dollars in sales a month and all of our merchant accounts got frozen. If you can imagine making a million dollars in sales a month with over 100 employees, that’s a lot of overhead. I think our overhead at the time was about $700,000 to $800,000 a month.

When suddenly your merchant accounts get shut down, you have no ability to collect cash, man, that’s a scary situation. There are different ways to look at it. One is depressed, frustrated, and the world is picking on me type thing but what happens when you put on that attitude? As soon as you do, everything shuts down and you can’t produce, or you can step up and wake up in the morning and say, “Today is awesome, I’m going to go attack this thing and figure out how to beat this thing,” and you walk in.

Suddenly, the state you’re in is a little different. Because of that, you can produce, the ideas come faster, the energy of the people that are around you changes, and it just changes the whole dynamic. For all you guys out there, I guess my point of today’s podcast is I want you guys to be like Jesse.

I want you guys waking up every morning and when somebody asks you how you’re doing, don’t be good. Good is the enemy of greatness. Don’t be good. You be awesome. Next time somebody today asks you, “How are you doing today?” just see what happens. Tell them you’re doing awesome, and look at the strange looks you’ll get on their face.

A couple of things will happen. First off, you’ll put yourself and keep yourself in a peak state of performance that you need to be in in order to be able to produce in whatever you’re doing. Second off, you’ll start raising the level of people around you, whether it be your employees, the people you’re interacting with but as soon as you tell somebody you’re doing awesome, it puts a smile on their face and changes that person’s attitude as well.

You’ll start affecting other people and kind of like a bee that flies around from flower to flower, all they’re doing is trying to get their nectar, trying to get their pollen but because they’re doing that and they’re spreading the stuff around, that’s what makes all the other flowers blossom and bloom, and makes it all possible. Do that for yourself. Do it for the people around you but give yourself that gift of awesomeness.

Just be excited. Be happy. I don’t care how depressed you are or what situation you’re in, whatever it might be.

If you can just change your state, instead of being good, be awesome, just like Jesse, I don’t care what situation you’re in and how tough life could possibly be, you can weather those storms and come out victorious and on top. Also remember, you can’t lose with a smile on your face. That’s what I got for today, you guys. I’m at the office.

I hope you guys have an awesome day today. Again, make sure you let other people know about this podcast if you’re enjoying it at all, and if you got any feedback or comments, we’d love to see them on iTunes. Thanks everybody, and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.

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On this episode, Russell discusses how to properly use preframing in every step of your online sales sequence.

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Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing in Your Car podcast. I hope you guys are doing awesome today. I actually just got out of the gym and I’m driving back to the office and had something really exciting happen today that I wanted to share with everybody, actually, a bunch of exciting things.

First off, we had almost 100 of you guys comment on the podcast yesterday which is exciting because I asked everyone to give some feedback. I appreciate it. Keep the good comments coming. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and hopefully we’ll get more people to learn about our podcast because I’m sharing all this cool stuff and we should share it with everyone. I want to see everybody’s businesses grow. That’s my passion in life.

With that said, if anyone has been studying my stuff for awhile, I did a really cool talk at StomperNet four or five years ago. I did another one kind of similar at Dan Kennedy’s event about two years ago, not so much talking about internet marketing but talking about the sales process and the psychology behind it. There’s something that happened in our business today that was really exciting that re-reminded me of that.

If you guys saw that presentation, and if you go to YouTube I think, at least Google, if you type in “Russell Brunson StomperNet presentation,” you can hear the whole 90 minute presentation. I was talking about just all the different things that happened, the lifeline of your customer. Somebody comes to your website and what website do they come through to get to your website?

When they’re there, what do they see? What’s the next step, and the next step? I talked about all the pieces that you need to have in place to maximize your customer value. One of the big things I talked about was the concept that if you’ve ever studied NLP before, neuro-linguistic programming, you learn about a topic called framing which is basically the frame that somebody enters a situation will have a huge determining factor on the response they have on the next site, the next page.

For example, if I’m going to frame you to my friends, introduce you to my friend, I’ll introduce you through a frame, “Hey, this is Joe. He’s a really cool guy. I think you’re going to like him.” The frame that I introduced you to my friend through, now he’s going to think, “Oh yeah, Joe is a cool guy.” If I say, “Hey, this is Joe, he’s a total jerk. He stole money from me. I want to introduce you to him,” that frame is going to be different and their whole experience with you is going to be different.

In fact, there’s a really cool book. I can see the cover in my head but I can’t remember it right now, but in that book, they shared a case study of a teacher that was tested in a college classroom. They had a substitute teacher for the day. Before the substitute teacher came in, the principal or whatever came in and said, “Hey, we have a substitute teacher. Before I introduce him, I’d like you guys to read his bio really quick. Then I’m going to have him come in.”

They handed out the bio to all the students in the class, in a class of 900 people or so. The surveys were exactly the same of the bios except for each of them had one word different. Half of the bios said, “Mr. So-and-so is a very warm teacher,” and the other half said, “Mr. So-and-so is a very cold teacher.”

That was the only difference between the frame that these guys had to meet the teacher. The teacher came in. He gave the entire class, and at the end of it, they surveyed all the students. What was interesting was that, again, all the students heard the exact same lecture, all of them read the exact same bio.

The only difference was that half the bios said he was a warm teacher, and half said he was a cold teacher. When they surveyed the students, the students that the paper said he was a warm teacher, the vast majority said, “He was an amazing teacher, he was great, I learned a lot.” The people whose paper said he was a cold teacher didn’t like him, thought he was talking down to him, he was a rude person.

It was interesting how that little tiny shift of a frame, how much it affected the reality of that class afterwards. I’m always talking about and I always teach and do, when you’re sending somebody to your website, what’s the frame they’re coming through. The ad that they click on is a frame they’re going to your website through.

If you land them on a review site before they come to your site, that was a frame you were taking them through. There’s a lot to do with different frames that you’re taking someone through and how it affects the outcome on the other side. We did this test just in the last two or three days. It was really interesting.

We have this squeeze page. On the squeeze page, it’s kind of like a multi-step squeeze page where they first land on it, and it has a headline and it says, “Step number one, where did you learn about us?” There’s radio buttons they can choose, “Did you learn from this source, this source, or this source?”

They click on the button. Then boom, it says, “Step number two, give us your email address.” Then step number three said finish. That was the way that this squeeze page worked. Step one, two, three, and step three was finish.

The only test we changed was we changed the word finish to “Get Instant Access.” That was the entire test. What was interesting, and I almost got this wrong, we ran the test. What was interesting was that when it said “Finish” at the end, we had 40% bump in opt-ins because the last step is when they actually give you their email address, and then it says, “Click here to finish.”

We’re like, “Wow, this is a great test. We found out we increased our opt-in rates by 40 percent.” I was even telling my guys, “We should change all of our opt-in buttons that said, ‘Submit here,’ to, ‘Click here to finish.’” We were really excited, but then after they opt-in, then we take them to the next page which takes them to a video sales letter where then we sell them the product we were trying to sell them. Then they land on that page.

What was interesting was when we looked at the data between the two, we had a 40% increase in people who opted in clicking the finish button, but then we had almost a 40% decrease in sales across the board, dramatically. It actually more than, the sales more than cut in half percentage wise, the people who clicked on finish versus the people that clicked on “Get Instant Access.”

You never really know why that works but psychology teaches me, what I believe is that the frame I was taking somebody through with the finish button was saying, “Hey, this process is finished. You’re done.” In their mind, it’s saying, “Okay, it’s complete, I’m finished,” and then off comes this page trying to sell them something, and I’ve closed that loop. I’ve closed that gap.

Now they’re not in a buying position because just that little tiny, just the word on the button closed the gap on their mind which decreased sales by 50% whereas the “Get Instant Access Now,” then took them to a page where the loop was still open, they were trying to see what the next step was, and they were more in a state of mind where they could purchase.

It was a very interesting test. Just think about how you guys can apply that into your business. It’s all about pre-framing, opening and closing loops, a whole bunch of really cool NLP stuff that I wrap into one little five minute lesson but just think about that, guys, on your sales processes. What are you doing? Are you keeping the loop open? Are you keeping them excited, or are you shutting them off and keeping them from making the sale you want?

I remember on a one-time offer before we did a test awhile ago, similar type concept where they purchased the product and a one-time offer came up. It said, “Thank you so much for ordering. Your product is in the mail. By the way, we have this other special offer.” We tested that versus, “Wait, your order is not finished yet. Finish order customization, step one of three.”

The “Wait, your order is not over yet, order customization,” that text dramatically thrashed the other one. It’s all about keeping that loop open, keeping the frame you’re taking someone through in the correct way that keeps them in the buying mood. Anyway, I thought it was really interesting. That little tweak is going to make me a lot of money this year.

I hope you guys apply that into different sales funnels, squeeze pages, sales processes. Whatever you’re doing, think about the frame that someone is entering your website through and you can manipulate that. When you do that, you will manipulate and affect the outcome dramatically. I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. If you do, please tell your friends. Tell anybody that likes marketing. It’s a lot of fun.

Again, if you like this, please leave feedback. Again, this is Russell Brunson with Marketing in Your Car podcast.

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After you have an offer that’s working in one channel, how do you scale it fast? Russell shows you how to use other marketing channels to scale any offer fast.

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Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. I’m excited for today. It’s a beautiful day here in Boise. I am excited about everything that’s happening. I hope you guys are having a good time in your business as well. Yesterday, I shot a trailer video for the Marketing in Your Car podcast which is kind of fun so hopefully I’ll get a lot more subscribers coming in which will be fun. We appreciate all you guys.

Today, I want to talk about what we’ve been working on the last few days which is not so much what we’ve been working on but what we’ve been focusing on. We’ve been working on our supplement but what’s been fun about it is we’ve been over this past two or three days, we’ve been really focusing on shifting the channels that we’re marketing through.

We found that, just in my business as a whole, there are a couple of channels that I’m really, really good at. By channels, I mean like a distribution channel, a different type of traffic. For example, a channel could be TV, newspaper could be a channel, radio could be a channel, things like that.

Obviously we’re online. Most people just lump the internet together as one big huge, it’s the internet but it’s obviously not. There are a lot of channels on the internet, almost more than you can even count. There are three or four channels that I personally am really, really good at. One is the joint venture affiliate channel. I’m really good at that channel.

The next one is email media buying. We’re really good at that channel. Direct mail, we’re pretty good at that channel. Those are channels we’re good at. We’ve focused primarily as we’ve rolled out our supplement on those channels. So far, it’s doing really, really good.

We keep adding in more pieces to that. For example, with email media buying, we found some lists that are converting, their offers are converting really well to. What we do because we want to make our offer evergreen is instead of sending out just one solo ad that goes out to the entire list once and then moving onto the next list, we set it up so that our solo ad goes out to a portion of that list every single week.

For example, we have an ad running with World Net Daily right now, and I think their list is like a million people or something like that, so right now, our ad goes out to one seventh of the list every Monday, which is cool because every time it goes out, we make 50, 60, 100 sales, and it’s just consistent though as opposed to we could send out one email, get a whole bunch of sales and then it ends.

This way, we can do that and it rotates through it every seven or eight weeks, we’ve hit the entire list and then it starts over and keeps going. It’s an evergreen type thing. We have something similar with our Dot Com Secrets local offer. We have a couple of people that mail to a percentage of their list every single day, it just rotates through their list.

That way, it’s more of an evergreen thing as opposed to just a one-time strategy. We’ve been doing those, studying the lists for it, finding joint venture partners, a bunch of stuff like that and it’s been going really, really good but now that we’re getting these channels dialed in and the numbers are working good, and they’re consistent, what other channels can we add to this?

It’s been really fun looking at that because there are so many different ways to drive traffic. You have Facebook, we have Google, we have the other ad networks. We have PPV stuff, CPV, there’s so many different channels and ways to do it. It can get overwhelming.

What we’ve been doing is just really strategically looking at the ones that we want to test first. Some of them, again, that we’re really good at doing and some we’re really bad at doing so we’re finding partners in each of those spaces like someone who is a lot better than me at Facebook because I don’t think I’ll ever be good at Facebook just because I can’t stand logging into Facebook, so finding somebody who is good at that and let them run it, test it, and try a bunch of things, and maybe invest $1000 or $2000 in that source trying to see if we can make it work, testing it, trying it, and just perfecting it until we can get that channel to work.

If we can’t get that channel to work, that’s fine too. That’s one thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that just because it works in one channel doesn’t mean it’s going to work in another channel. If we can’t get it to work, then move on, try another channel and keep going through but it’s just kind of fun.

The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because about a year ago, I had a really interesting conversation with Perry Belcher who is one of the smartest marketers I’ve ever met, and a really cool guy too but he was talking about they had hired Mary Ellen Tribby to be their CEO for a year, year and a half, something like that.

I remember when they first hired her, I said, “What was the reason why you brought her in to be your CEO?” He said, “Mary Ellen always says that us internet marketers, that we’re crazy because we go out there and we spend all this time, effort, and money creating an offer, getting it out there. We launch it, make a bunch of sales, and then the next day, we’re onto the next project.”

He said, “The way Mary Ellen looks at business is more like a play. How crazy would it be if you were to make a big play, you go to hire the actors, the directors, and you guys practice for six months, and you go on, you go in Boise, Idaho, and you put on this play. It’s a smashing success and everybody loves it, and then you just go home.”

He said, “No, if that works, and you’re making a ton of money off it, then you take that play on the road. You take that show on the road and you go to Chicago, and then Dallas, and Denver. You take it across the country and across the world. You turn that success into tens of millions of dollars.”

He said, “That’s the way that she looks at internet marketing is you create a good offer, and then you got to take it on the road.” That’s what we’ve been really focusing on with our supplement is we created the good offer. Now we’re taking it on the road and we’re focusing on taking it to Dallas, Denver, and Chicago, and all these different channels.

We’ve got direct mail going forward now. We have all these different things. We’re just adding channel after channel after channel and taking that from an idea that right now is doing good money to by the time this year is out, it should be doing insane amounts of money just because we’re really dialing in channel by channel, and perfecting each of those.

Just something to think about in your own business and your own marketing is after you’ve got something working is taking that and changing the channel, and focusing on different areas, and really scaling it, taking your show on the road. I’m at the office. I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you like the Marketing in Your Car podcast, please go into iTunes and rate us. I would really appreciate it. I appreciate you guys. We’ll talk to you all soon.

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We spent 2 hours today looking at ways we could improve our sales funnel and were able to almost double how much money we make on every single new customer. This episode reveals ideas you can use to strengthen your funnel.

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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and this is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. I want to welcome you guys to today. I don’t know about you, but it’s a beautiful day today and I’m having a good time. Yesterday was one of the most fun days I’ve had at the office in a long, long time. I want to talk to you about what we did because it’s really exciting. It’s something that everybody else should be doing in their business as well.

We’ve got a supplement that we’ve been selling for the last six months or so, and it’s been doing really well but we’re always trying to figure out ways to increase how much money we make per customer so that we can spend more on advertising because as you know, whoever can spend the most money on advertising wins in this game.

Right now, we’re spending about $30 to $40 to get somebody to sign up for a free trial, which is good and right now, what we’re doing is the trial is 14 days long so after about 14 days, actually at day 14, we’re a little bit above break even right now. It’s working good but it’s still kind of scary because we have that two week float that we’re waiting before we make our money back.

That’s where we’re at right now. We’ve been trying to figure out how do you, what can we add to make it so that we can make money for every single customer. We started looking at our entire sales process, and that turned into something where I was actually at the office last night until one working on it because we had so much fun with it.

We looked first at our sales process. We looked at people coming to our site, they see the offer, step one, we ask for the shipping, step two, we ask for the credit card. Now, what are things we’re missing? What happens about people that come to page one but they leave? We’re not following up with them.

We put banner retargeting on that page so that when somebody comes and then they leave, we follow them around with banners everywhere. That was the first thing. Then we said, they come, they opt in, but they don’t buy, what do we do? We built out a whole email follow-up sequence to try to close them.

Then if they do buy, what do we do? Some of us were thinking, “What else could we sell them?” Right now, we’ve got our supplement and we’re trying to figure out what other products we could sell. We’re looking out on the market trying to find all different things that other people were already selling to our customers.

Finally, we found a skin cream that actually related really well to it. We called the company up and within about five minutes, they agreed to private label it for us. Boom, suddenly we had our own skin cream to go with our front end supplements. Now we had an upsell. Then we went out there and tried to find some other products.

We found a website that had ten different products for people in our target market, and we called them up. Sure enough, they agreed to let us sell every one of the products that are on their website, and we get like a 75% profit margin on all these products. Then we found a couple other things we could add in the funnel.

Anyway, pretty quickly, within two or three hours of us just asking that question of what else can we do? When we look at our sales funnel, somebody comes in, what pages are they going to, what are they doing? Then we try to think, how do we maximize, how do we make each of these steps better?

What can we add here to get more people, to close more people, to convert them or to get people who leave, to get them to come back, and people who buy, how to get them to buy again, at what price points, and stuff like that? Within a couple of hours of asking those questions, we were able to change our funnel.

Obviously we haven’t had a chance to drive traffic to it yet. We just finished six or seven hours ago, but now, you look at our funnel and it’s much more robust. I think right now, we’re looking at if we get 20% of the people to take our upsell for our skin cream, our front end profit doubles. That means we could spend $60 to $70 to acquire a customer, and we’d still be okay.

It’s just interesting and it’s been so much fun. For all you guys, I want you to take a look at your sales funnels, your products that are already doing well, that are already converting, and just think, “What else could we add here? What kind of upsell could we add? What kind of downsell could we add? What kind of exit pop-up could we put in here? If we follow these people with banners if they leave, what’s our follow-up sequence look like? Do we add more messages to our follow-up sequence?”

These are all the questions you should be asking. When you start asking those kinds of questions, it makes a good sales process very quickly become a great sales process. It’s really been exciting for me and for everybody here on our team. I woke up early again this morning. I haven’t slept very much but I’m excited to get back in the office and keep on cranking it out, and doing some more because it’s just so much fun right now.

Anyway, I just got to the office. I hope you guys enjoy that. My goal for all you guys though right now is to look at your funnel and figure out how to strengthen it, and what things you can add. If you do that, that will be some money you’ll find today, and you’ll do what I tell you guys to do a lot of times. Give yourself a raise everyday.

You do that by these little tweaks, little changes that are going to change your business. Thanks to you guys. It’s Russell Brunson from DotComSecrets.comand the Marketing in Your Car podcast. If you’re enjoying these podcasts, please, please go to iTunes or all you got to do is go to MarketingInYourCar.comand it will redirect you to iTunes where you can go and leave your feedback. We would really appreciate it, and we’ll talk to you guys all again soon. Thanks.

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The forgotten power of adding Scarcity to your offers and Segmenting your lists.

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Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson with DotComSecrets.com and the Marketing in Your Car podcast. I want to welcome you guys to today. It’s a beautiful day here in Boise, Idaho. I’m excited to drive to the office but I want to share with you guys something that happened yesterday.

I’ve been involved, the last 30 days have been kind of crazy in my businesses. On top of everything else, we were in a contest for this one network marketing company that we’re involved with for a Ferrari, and it’s been crazy trying to win that. Then we also launched a network marketing company called Rippln which has been going crazy, which has right now growing faster than Facebook did.

It’s been a crazy 30 days, and the month just ended for us so I’m excited to get back and start focusing on some other projects as well. Today, we’re focusing on our supplement which will be fun, but I wanted to share with you one interesting thing that I remembered last night. Back in the day, we used to do a lot of product launches.

We haven’t done a product launch in a couple of years because of the stress behind them and all the stuff that goes with a product launch, so we just kind of haven’t done them recently but I forgot that when we used to do product launches, we do the big launch. Usually they would be a seven day launch. What was interesting is we would normally sell as much product on the last day of the launch as we would on the first day.

If you looked at the graph, it’s almost like a big smiley face, tons of sales, and then it slowly dropped down in the middle of the week, and then the last day would spike back up. For the Ferrari contest, I was beating the other guys pretty well until yesterday. I think we had sold 750 copies of the product, which is pretty dang good.

That’s a lot of sales for a 30 day period of time, especially thinking in the middle of it, we spent two and a half weeks launching a network marketing company so I only had basically two weeks to even compete at the contest. Basically, we had sold a lot. I was proud. We were doing really good.

Then yesterday, the contest was ending at midnight Eastern time so the owner of the affiliate program that we’re promoting, he basically told me, “Russell, if you can get 40 more sales today, you got a pretty good shot of just winning it pretty easily.” I’m like, “Alright, we’ll try to do 40 more sales.”

We started promoting the last day. We had some scarcity obviously because the bonuses we were offering and stuff were going to disappear at midnight. We did a couple of things that were strategic that I think worked out really well for us, but when all was said and done, we sold 188 copies yesterday, yesterday alone, which still blows my mind that we sold that many.

We sold more on that by far than we did on the first day, almost first week. Scarcity played such a huge role in it, 188 copies, just blows my mind. The way we did it is basically a couple of things. I had done webinars leading up to the launch and stuff like that. I’ve been replaying those webinars.

Yesterday morning, we send an email to the entire list basically saying, “There’s 12 hours left. You got to hurry,” then we went through and started making segments of our list. We looked at the webinar. We had about 4300 people that registered for the webinar. We took that list and scrubbed out everybody who had already purchased.

That dropped it down to 3500 people, whatever it was. Then we looked at those who had attended the webinar but didn’t buy it, and those who had not attended and didn’t buy. I went through and actually made a personal video for each of those segments saying, “Hey, this is Russell and I noticed you registered for the webinar but for some reason, you didn’t show up,” and then made one that said, “I saw you registered for the webinar, you were even on it, but for some reason, you didn’t buy.”

I made these personal videos. Then I sent it to each of those segments with about six hours left, saying, “There’s six hours left. I made a personal video that’s important for you to go watch, so go watch it.” Boom, that video went through again that aspect of it to help close people. We used that.

Then I did a two-hour warning just to everybody who had registered for the webinar. I knew that I didn’t want to email my whole list again but those 4200 people were the people that were the most interested out of everybody. We sent our two-hour warning right before, and said, “Two hours left, you got to hurry.”

That last two hours, we sold 80 just in the last two hours alone. Then it closed down. It was just a shock to me how, we always talk about having scarcity in your offers but having scarcity when you orchestrate it correctly and you do it right can sell so much product so quickly, that fear of loss people have is such a big thing. Fear of loss, I talked about this before, not on a podcast but a seminar, talking about my kids, how when I try to get my kids to come to dinner.

I’m like, “Come to dinner,” and they just lay there, and nothing you can do to get them off the floor, get them from whatever activity they’re doing to come and eat dinner except for one thing. If I come back and I tell my kids like Bowen, “Bowen, Ellie is eating your dinner,” boom, he jumps up and sprints and runs in because that fear of loss is the biggest driving force for little kids. It is for us too.

My message for today is just to think about that. Think about fear of loss and scarcity, and how you could add that to your business. I almost think it’s intelligent to pull your products off the market once a month just so you could have a fear of loss. With the Rippln launch, I talked to Brian the owner about this.

I said, right now, they’re in this NDA phase. It’s all this prelaunch stuff but I was like, “If we, a week before launch, if we shut it down and just said nobody gets any NDAs for seven days, and let them know that a week in advance or two days in advance, ‘Hey, we’re going to shut this down and you’re not going to get any NDAs until actual launch day,’ that two day prior, I guarantee will be 50% of the growth of the entire company because of that fear of loss, again, I need to get this now, because in two days from now, I won’t be able to lock anybody in.”

It’s just interesting. Think about different ways you can use that, whether it be sales, whether it be bonuses or value adds, or upsells, or whatever it is. If you can think about different ways to increase that fear of loss in what you’re doing, it will do big things for you. That is my message for today. I’m at the office now. I hope you guys have an awesome day today. Have fun working on your businesses.

If you are enjoying these podcasts at all, please go to the iTunes store. If you just go to MarketingInYourCar.com, it will redirect you to the iTunes place. Please leave us some feedback. We’d love to get some more ratings and reviews in there. It would be fun. I appreciate you guys, and we’ll talk to you all tomorrow.

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This is the #1 secret to breaking free from the fear that is keeping you from the success you want.

---Transcript---

Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the Marketing in Your Car podcast. Today, I actually just got my haircut and I’m driving back home. It was kind of fun, before my haircut, I had somebody call me and they’re writing a book, and they want to interview me about success and about stuff like that for the book.

One of the questions that they asked me sparked a thought that I wanted to pass on this podcast. Any of you guys thinking about it as well, basically, the question had to do with why do most people not succeed. What’s the reason behind it? Is it fear of success? Is it fear of failure? What is it that causes most people not to succeed? What do you do different that has made it possible for you to have great success?

I started thinking about that. It reminded me of one night, one of my close friends, he’s a chiropractor. He just started his chiropractic clinic. It was kind of struggling. He called me one night and asked if I could talk, so we went over to his clinic and sat down and just started talking for a couple of hours.

I could see he was in a really bad place. He was just very concerned and freaking out, and all sorts of stuff. He was just very scared of all the stuff that could happen. Because of that, he didn’t know what to do and he couldn’t move. He was kind of stuck in this really bad spot. I remember I sat there and thought for a minute.

Then I asked him, I said, “For you to be successful, you got to do what I do. You need to look at what is the worst case scenario.” He said, “Worst case scenario, I go bankrupt.” I’m like, “What does that mean?” “If I go bankrupt, then this, this, this.”

I’m like, “You got to dig deeper. What are your real fears? If bankruptcy is the worst case scenario, what are your fears about that?” “Well, if that happened, that means I would probably lose my house, and if I did that, I would lose this, and this would happen.” I made him sit down and we actually mapped out what was the worst case scenario.

What was that thing? He listed it out. I said, “Look, if you’re going to be successful in this venture, you have to be okay with the worst case scenario. Until you are completely okay with the worst case scenario,” I said, “you will be so scared, you won’t be willing to gamble the dice and do what you need to do in order to be successful in this business.”

After awhile, he said, “You know what, you’re right. I’m okay with that. If that’s the worst case scenario, I can live with that. If that’s what’s going to happen, that’s what’s going to happen.” As soon as he was able to accept that, then he was able to start producing and start getting out there and actually doing what he needed to do to be successful in the game.

I think that that’s a lesson for people in any area of life. In wrestling, I had the same thing. In business, I’ve had the same thing multiple times where if I don’t know what the worst case scenario is, I can’t be successful. A little while ago, we had our merchant account shut down. We had 100 employees that had almost a million dollars a month in payroll, overhead, and expenses, and we lost our merchant accounts.

I remember I went to this paralyzing fear. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know how to move or how to react. I was just stuck. I remember sitting there thinking, “Man, I’m kind of in a bad spot.” It wasn’t until I sat down and did this same exercise myself and I said, “What is the worst case scenario?” I said, “Worst case, I’ve got to shut down our company or I kick out people. I got to file for bankruptcy,” whatever it might be.

I listed those things out and I had to become okay with that. The second I was okay with that, saying, “Look, if that’s the worst thing that’s going to happen, I can deal with that,” suddenly, that paralyzing fear disappeared and I was able to step up and to produce and do what I needed to do to break through and create something better than the worst case scenario.

That’s I think where leadership really comes from. As leaders, we have to have a vision of where we want to go, and then we have to be willing and able to guide ourselves and our team and get there, and be willing to act and move but if we’re scared of the worst case scenario, and we keep pushing it to the back of our mind because we don’t want to think about it, that will paralyze you and keep you from taking the action you need.

Step number one for any of you guys is list out what’s the worst case scenario in the situation. Then become okay with that, and then build a vision to make something better than the worst case. Make something as great and amazing as you can but realize that the worst thing that could possibly happen is that, and if I’m okay with that, then I’ve got the ability to move and to really shine.

I look at my wrestling. When I was all the way through high school and all the way through college, I was the kind of wrestler I was good in practice but I was much better on the mat. I think part of it was because of my attitude where it was kind of like if I lost, I didn’t really care because there’s always the next match and the next tournament.

I just competed at a higher level than I think my skill set was. I would always, if you look back at high school and college, I always upset people that I shouldn’t have beat because I stepped on the mat and I would just go out there. I think the reason is because a lot of times, people didn’t want to lose so bad that I was able to beat them.

For me, my senior year in college was the first time I ever experienced that. I knew people had this problem but I never experienced it until my senior year. My senior year, my very first match, I wrestled a kid who ended up winning the NCAs and was a two-time NCA champ, three time or four time finalist.

I wrestled in this match. I lose to him by one point. I was frustrated but I was like, “Man, I’m at that level. I’m close enough that I should be in the All American this year.” That was my goals. After that match, everything started going downhill. I ended up losing insane amount of matches afterward.

It was so embarrassing to me. I realized later on in the season, luckily I was able to pull myself out of it about halfway through the season, but I realized that my fear of the worst case, because this was my last year, I had to prove it. Everything in my entire career was on the line for this and I had to prove that I could do it.

Because of that, I wasn’t able to produce. I wasn’t able to succeed and I didn’t wrestle as well as I should. I think my senior year is probably my worst year because of that, because I was so afraid, “This is my last shot.” I just want you guys to think about that, if you’re in athletics, if you’re in business, and in your personal life, your marriage, your family.

Whatever it is, you’ve got to become okay with the worst case scenario because as soon as you do, it’s the most freeing experience you will experience. It gives you the ability to step up and produce, and do what you need to do to get your job done. That is my words of wisdom for today. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that you got some value out of it.

If you like this, if you like our podcast at all, please go to iTunes and rate us. I would love to see some feedback. It’s kind of fun to see some of the reviews coming in. We appreciate you guys. I hope that you get a lot of value out of this, and I will talk to you all tomorrow on our next podcast. Thanks, everybody.

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Learn a few strategies for making a ton of $$$ by using Google hangouts. This will work for any business to double your sales immediately and increase long term sales.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson again from DotComSecrets.com and this is the Marketing in Your Car podcast. Today, I’m going to talk about a tool that we’ve been using like crazy. I would say this year, I bet you this tool makes me more money than anything else that we’ve had. That tool is called Google Hangouts.

Google Hangouts are like this cool new thing. They’re awesome for a lot of reasons. If you haven’t been on one yet, Google Hangout is basically, you jump on your webcam and you can have four or five, I think you can have up to ten other people jump on as well. You see all their little webcams. Whoever talks, it shows their video up top and little head shots of the people down below. Then when they talk, it jumps them up. It’s pretty cool.

Last night, I was actually interviewed by the Huffington Post through a live Google Hangout. It was me and three other experts who are on there, along with a host. It was a really fun experience because it was just like I was in the studio getting interviewed for the news, except for I was sitting in my bedroom with my laptop, and it was really cool. I saw how they were using it.

They’re using it on a big scale. They’re actually publishing a live 24 hour a day news show using Google Hangouts. They had a producer and people. It was really exciting, really cool actually. First of all, I want to say anyone who wants to start your own news channel, you can do it with Google Hangouts. These guys, obviously Huffington Post is a huge company but they were able to do it.

They have the same technology we all have. Google Hangouts is completely free so it was pretty cool, but then we’re using it in our business in a lot of other ways. Right now, some of you guys know with Rippln we’re going to be rolling out, we’ve been doing tons of Google Hangouts. Everyday, I do a Google Hangout and have everyone on our team bring their teams to the Google Hangout, kind of like back in the day with network marketing companies, they were grown through hotel meetings.

This is kind of like a hotel meeting that we do every single day at noon for 30 minutes. We get people on, get excited, we sign them up, and then the next day, they bring back their friends. We just keep doing this process over and over again. Our team is growing. We’re at 26,000 plus this morning and growing like wildfire. It’s pretty exciting.

Now, some of the other interesting things, we’ve been using Google Hangouts also to sell product, a lot of product. In fact, we had this friend and they did a webinar. They put it on for a week ahead of time. They did the webinar, and then on the webinar, they sold $70,000 worth of product. They did pretty well.

Then the next day, they did a Google Hangout. The Hangout was basically just with everybody who had been on the webinar, and it was to answer questions. They sat on there for three or four hours just answering questions, talking to people about it, getting them excited, and ended up almost doubling the sales during the Google Hangout which is pretty amazing.

Then the other exciting thing is Google Hangouts are run like they stream live on YouTube so as soon as the Hangout was over, it was kind of cool because people during the Hangout can ask questions and all that kind of stuff. People were asking questions and they were responding. As soon as they’re done, all those questions, all those comments instantly turn into YouTube comments.

The second the video was live, there’s 1000 comments that pop in there. It’s just amazing that because of the comments, because it’s YouTube and because Google wants to award people for doing Google Hangouts right now, they’re ranking those videos very, very high. This guy, he had done $70,000 on the live webinar. I think he did a $60,000 on the Google Hangout but that Google Hangout was archived on Google and he was ranked number one for the product name, for what he was selling.

For the next three or four months, people kept searching for that product name and he told me he sold over $50,000 more in stuff from people who would just stumble upon his Google Hangout that is now there and archived for the rest of time and all eternity. It’s kind of interesting because he did that work once, and that sales presentation he made will continue to sell for him forever.

Really, that’s one of the magical, powerful things about Google Hangouts. After you’re done, those things are archived forever and they’ll keep closing sales for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week for forever. When you’re dead and when your kids are dead, and your grandkids are dead, those things will still be closing sales for you.

It’s exciting. For those who have not tried Google Hangouts yet, they’re completely free. Just go into your Google Plus account. On the right-hand side, there’s a big button that says Hangout. You click on it, boom, you invite some friends to it, you name it, you stream it live, and you can do it. I just recommend jumping in and doing one.

Just do one for fun. I’m going to do one today with just myself on it just to create the video that I can then use in a promotional video. That’s the other thing is you make quick promotional videos by making Hangouts. There are a lot of really cool ways to use it but it’s by far one of the most powerful tools we’ve ever used for converting customers, for driving traffic, for sustaining your sales message, and it’s a super powerful tool.

If you haven’t done a Google Hangout yet, go and do it. I’m at the office right now. I’m going to be doing three or four Hangouts on queue for myself to do today so I’m going to go jump on one right now, and make some money. You guys should be doing it as well. Thanks everybody.

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I hate when people give their opinion on what is good and bad. The only thing that matters is what works in an actual test. The writers at TechCrunch need to understand that the only thing that matters in a new company is results… Not what they think is cool.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson with DotComSecrets.com, and this is the “Marketing in Your Car” podcast. This is the first podcast where I haven’t actually been in my car. I’m actually at my office right now, because today I’m going to go on a little bit of a rant. The title of this rant is “Your Opinion is Irrelevant” [laughs]. The reason why I’m doing this, and you may think I’m upset, but I’m actually really, really excited.

Rippln got written up in “TechCrunch”. TechCrunch is a huge tech blog, and most people dream about having their company, their startup, talked about in TechCrunch. So that was an exciting thing, except for the fact that the TechCrunch articles says, “What Not to Do in Your Startup Promo Video”. Now this made me smile, because I was the one who created the startup promo video. I wrote the copy for it. We got it animated, and we’ve used it to roll out. Now I’m going to read you this article first. I’m going to bleep out the curse words, because he uses a lot of them, but this is what it says.

It says,

“Thanks to my job, I get to see a lot of stupid B.S., most gets filtered out, but every now and then, something just rises up that’s so ridiculously stupid, it’s just begging to be called out. That’s the case with this promotional video from the kind folks at Rippln , which is more or less a two-minute case study for how not to pitch your soon to be ultra-viral app to the general public, or to the press, or to potential employees, or investors.

So, here’s the step-by-step of what not to do in your video. First, don’t tell us your app is going to be viral before it’s even friggin’ released. Second, don’t expect the press to cover your stupid app before it’s been released, except for maybe in posts parodying it. Number three, don’t assume your friends or family members will be talking about it. Likewise, don’t assume strangers will be coming up to you on the friggin’ streets to talk about it. Number four, don’t say your stupid app is going to change the way we communicate, or call it “the biggest breakthrough since e-mail”. Next, don’t promise that your app will change how commerce, either online or off line, is happening – definitely not both. Don’t promise again that your stupid app is going to go viral. Don’t compare its growth to Facebook or Twitter. Don’t pretend to know how people were talking to Mark Zuckerberg in the cafeteria at Harvard or how he would respond. Please don’t bring Adam D’Angelo into this. Also, if you must, don’t say he looks like a thirteen-year old. Don’t try to impress me with Adam D’Angelo’s net worth. Wait, why are we talking about Adam D’Angelo again? Don’t make your stupid app sound like some sort of exclusive club with an inner circle, and talk about how lucky we are to be able to be invited in and “curse word”. VELVET ROPE? INNER CIRCLE? F*, NO. INVITE FIVE LEADERS? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU? Don’t say there’s a brief window for me to join, but please, if there is, let’s hope this abominable window closes soon, because this startup sucks. Don’t pretend to have trade secrets. Trade secrets? Don’t refer to an NDA when you really mean personal information collecting form to use in our B.S. marketing. Also, who signs an NDA on YouTube? And don’t participate in the general douchebaggery which pretty much describes this entire video.”

When I read that, at first I was kind of upset about it. Then I started thinking about it. I want to show you guys some of the stats, because if you haven’t seen what’s been happening behind the scenes in Rippln, it’s going crazy.

In the first seven days, we had over 150,000 people register for this site by filling out an NDA. Now this is through a manual process. No one has been able to mass-promote it, so it’s kind of cumbersome to even have happen, yet, holy cow, it’s working. Right now, it is growing faster than Facebook or Twitter. Right now, it is going viral. The press is covering it, including TechCrunch [laughs], whether they like it or not. Most people’s friends or family members have talked to them about it, and total strangers have been contacting us about it, as well. Right now, the app is changing how we communicate, so it’s kind of funny that all of these things that he’s angry about have all been prophetic. Every one of these things is happening and has happened.

The fact that there’s this huge divide means that the copy on the video worked perfectly. The goal with copy and with a video is never to unite everyone into your cause. It’s to split people in half. When you split people in half, there is polarity, and polarity is a good thing. It creates an “us versus them” situation, and it’s good, so when all is said and done, he’s giving his opinions about why he does not like the video, yet the video is working. It’s working like crazy. It’s helping this grow out faster than any other tech company, any other startup that I’ve ever seen. Based on our current numbers, projections for month number one, when Rippln goes live, are $100,000,000 in month number one, which is interesting, considering most startups that are featured on TechCrunch don’t make any money. In fact, there’s one guy’s comment down here that I really appreciated, and so I’m going to read them to you guys, too.

He says,

“One of the biggest problems you have in the tech scene is lack of marketing ability. You have people who have amazing products, apps, software, et cetera, but nobody ever hears about them. One of the big reasons behind it is the aversion that people in the Valley seem to have to effective direct marketing. People see that firms like Google and Apple hate direct marketing, so they figure they should, too. Well, Google and Apple both have billions of dollars at hand. They can afford to hate the most cost-effective form of advertising in the world. People are afraid to sell, because they don’t want to look like jerks or douchebags. Well, personally, I feel like more of a douchebag if I couldn’t make the mortgage than I would by aggressively selling to people. Amazing products go undiscovered and companies go broke in the Valley every single year because people are afraid to push the envelope a little bit with marketing. There are billions-of-dollars companies in the Valley that could have an amazing impact on people’s lives, but they will never get the chance, because people in the Valley are afraid to sell.

Anyway, back to my starting point here. In my original post, I acted like a jerk towards the author, and I apologize for that.”

And he goes on about how he’s not a part of Rippln, and blah, blah, blah. Again, I want to come back to how someone can write an article about why something doesn’t work, which this guy’s trying to do, but it’s working. He says, “What Not to Do in Your Startup Promo Video”, and this happens to be the most successful startup promo video in the history of the Internet, and he’s telling us that it’s a bad case study. Yet it’s working perfectly, so I think it’s ironic, and it makes me smile and makes me laugh.

I just want everyone to understand that your opinion does not matter. Right now we’re finishing up our first issue of the new “Dot Com Secrets” lab’s newsletter, which has been all about the split test we ran. In ninety percent of the split tests we ran, I assumed that the other version would win, and I was wrong. Our opinions do not matter. The only thing that matters in the marketing world is what works, and this obviously is working. Today we should pass 200,000 people in Rippln, and again, we are eight days into this thing, so I’d like to see TechCrunch or any of the other companies featured in TechCrunch do something that’s even close to that with their startup videos. Yeah, it’s not going to happen.

So if you want an example of good copy and what’s working, and you don’t care about your opinion, you just care about what actually works in this world, check out the Rippln NDA video, or just go to TechCrunch and read their article, and tell them your opinion about the fact that, “Your opinion doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is results, and, holy crap, this is getting results.”

So there’s my rant, you guys. Don’t be shy about your marketing. You’re right. They’re wrong. Do whatever works. That’s how you’re going to change the world. You don’t change the world by being scared of selling and by hiding behind fancy company names and a bunch of other crap like that. There’s my opinion. I hope you agree with it. If not, I don’t really care, because, again, your opinion doesn’t matter in this situation. The only thing that matters is what works, and this is working like crazy.

I appreciate you guys. If you liked this podcast, please tell your friends about it, and also, I’d love if you would leave any feedback on our channel. We’re trying to get some more feedback, because we’re a brand-new podcast, but we’re having fun so far, and we’ll talk soon. Thanks, everybody.

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Want an idea for a business reality show that would actually be worth watching?

---Transcript---

Hello, everyone. This is Russell Brunson from DotComSecrets.com, and this is the “Marketing from Your Car” podcast. I’m on my way to the office right now, and I wanted to make you guys a podcast. I guess this is a bit of a rant, a little bit.

Recently I’ve been watching TIVO’d episodes of my favorite shows [laughs], and I’m sure you guys know how it is. You record them all, and when you actually have the time then you watch one and knock it out. I just watched one of the most recent “Celebrity Apprentice” episodes. My first rant is that I wish they’d get rid of Celebrity Apprentice and go back to the real “Apprentice”, because that show was a lot better.

But even with that, this is my real frustration with that show. If you guys ever watch it, each week they have two different teams. The teams get different tasks, and what’s interesting is that the way they choose the winners is, basically Donald Trump – or they’ll get a company, like they had Australian Gold Suntan Lotion on this the last one I was watching. They each get to make a commercial for the company, and then they pick the winner based on whose commercial they like more. As a direct response marketer, that drives me crazy, because it’s not based on what converts more, or what makes you more money, it’s based on one person’s opinion.

It makes me laugh, because we’ve been doing a lot of testing lately in our company, and most of the times, the test that I think is going to win, loses. It’s really interesting. In fact, there’s a site called WhichTestWon.com. It’s really a fascinating site. Every day they give out different tests, and they show the “A” and the “B” – the split tests, and you get to vote on which one you think is going to win. Ninety percent of the time, we pick the wrong one. I’m somebody who’s been in this business for a long time. I’ve had my head in this more than most people, and we still don’t pick it right. What drives me crazy is that they base those tasks not on performance or on anything, it’s based on which one we like better.

If we were going to make a show that was actually legit and actually was a good show, they should do it like “Pitchman”. I don’t know if anybody’s ever seen Pitchman before. I believe Billy Mays passed away. That show was awesome. What they would do at the beginning of the show would be to pick five or six different products that they wanted to make infomercials for, and they’d narrow it down to two or three. They would show the process of making an infomercial and filming it and all that kind of stuff.

Then what they did, and this is the cool part, is they’d actually take that infomercial, and they’d air it live. They’d air all of them. They’d give them a $20,000 test budget, and they’d test all three of them. Then they’d come back afterwards, and they would show the results. They would call each person. It was cool. They would call each person up on the phone and say, “Hey, we ran your show and [pauses] unfortunately the numbers didn’t back it up. It’s not going to be a winner,” or they’d call them up and say, “Hey, just so you know, we went three times over on the front end. You’ve got a winner. Congratulations, you’ll be a millionaire within six months,” that kind of thing. It was, “That’s awesome. That’s exciting.”

That’s something to get motivated by versus, “Hey, Gary Busey made a commercial and he didn’t have a hero shot in it, so he lost.” –“Seriously? Who says a hero shot is going to get anything to convert better or make more money at all?” It just fascinates me, and so I just want all of us to be thinking about that.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m addicted to ads. I’m addicted to watching what’s happening on TV and on the radio. It’s fun for me to watch, not because I care about the creative part of it, but because I care about what’s going to work. What can I pull from that and use in my own advertising? We need to become accountable to our ads. If we’re not, and we want to pull them and make a Donald Trump and just throw crap out there, we have no idea what’s actually going to happen.

I had a chance to go to a Super Conference, one of Dan Kennedy’s Super Conferences, and they had a guy named – I think his name was Lenny Liebermann. He’s one of the owners or the founders or partners – I’m not sure which, in – what’s that company? They have the skincare stuff for night. That’s funny. I’m going to blank out right now. It’s a billion dollar brand. I can’t remember what it is now. Anyway, it’s all of this skincare. You can wash your face, and you get rid of acne and zits, and all of that kind of stuff, and I respect that company so much. But what’s interesting about that is they are $1 billion brand, and he said, “We never will run any type of advertising where we can’t track the ROI. Believe me, it’s been so tempting at times, where in the playoffs they want you to rent the backboard and things like that, or they want you to buy an ad here and there. If we can’t track the results, we will not spend money on it,” and that’s why they’ve grown to a billion-dollar brand.

They’re one of the few brands that I actually respect, because they’re doing it the right way. They are not like a lot of the brands out there that you see that have, “Here’re our advertising budgets. We have $4 million for the year. Blow it on whatever you want,” which is how most of these guys’ budgets work. That’s how Burger King, McDonald’s, all of those are. There’s no accountability whatsoever. It’s just, “Hey, let’s spend some money on ads,” and that’s just fascinating to me.

I just want us all to realize that as direct response marketers, that’s what matters – what converts better or not. It’s not, “What do you like better, or what’s prettier, or what does your mom or dad think is cool, or what Donald Trump thinks looks the best?” It’s what actually is going to convert better when you put it out there in the marketplace.

I think it would be a lot better show if that’s how it ran – where everyone makes their ad. They run it, see who wins, and go from there. In fact, that’s a good idea for a reality show. If any of you guys want to do that, that’s the game plan – basically make an infomercial. Do the whole concept of getting two teams and having them each build an infomercial, run some media, and see which one wins. That would actually be a fascinating show. It would be fun to watch, because then you could dissect it. –“Why did this one win? Why is this one better?” As opposed to, “Oh, the executives thought this was cooler [laughs].”

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on it. If anyone wants to make that reality show, let me know. I’ll be part of it. It would be awesome. It would be a lot of fun.

That’s it for today, guys. I’m at the office. I hope you guys enjoyed this, and please leave comments down below. We’d love to hear back if you like the show, or if you have any ideas or topics you want me to discuss on my drive in. We’ll talk to you all soon.

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On this episode, Russell talks about his 8 hour marathon hangout and the ONLY thing you need to get your business to 7 figures a year.

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Hey, everybody. This is Russell Brunson from the “Marketing in Your Car” podcast at DotComSecrets.com. Right now, I’m actually headed to the gym, because I don’t want to go the gym this afternoon, so I’m going this morning [laughs]. This is actually the “Marketing on Your Way to the Gym” podcast this morning. It’s been a couple of day since I did a podcast, mostly – oh, I just hit a squirrel. Oh, he survived. Good, he missed me [laughs]. That was close.

I’ve been gone. I was out of town, in Dallas, because there’s a new network marketing company launching. I’ve spent the last seven months or so building out all of their sales processes, and scripting their videos, and all of that kind of fun stuff with it. They actually went live on Saturday, so it’s been kind of a whirlwind nightmare and exciting all at the same time. I’m sure that if you were on Facebook or on Twitter that you have been pounded by it, which is probably kind of annoying to some people, but it’s a good thing from my standpoint, because the word is out, it’s growing fast. It’s on the first leg. This is Tuesday morning, so it’s been live basically two and a half days. We’ve had over 35,000 people sign the NDA to find out what it is, and it’s been exciting watching it. It’s just growing like wildfire. I’ve had messages from people trying to get close to me. My voice is on all of the videos, so it kind of makes me laugh.

What was interesting, and what I want to talk about today is that there is a really good book written by Michael Masterson called “Ready, Fire, Aim”. In that book he talks about the skill sets and the things that you need for a business going from zero to a million dollars in a year, from a million to ten, from ten to fifty, and from fifty to a hundred. For most of us, we are not going to get past the ten million dollar mark. You might, but for me, I don’t even want to. We got to ten million dollars once, and it was kind of a nightmare to manage.

But anyway, it was interesting – the skill set to go from zero to a million dollars – the whole book is funny. Most people will be focusing on getting the website perfect, getting their office set up, hiring the right staff and all of this stuff. He’s like, “The only thing that matters, if you want to go from zero to a million dollars, is sales. Sales are the only thing that matters. Getting in there, and cutting your teeth, and just selling, selling, selling, selling.” If you’re going to read that book, it brings you back to that, because in all of our businesses, we make money when we sell. Most of us, when we start our businesses, if we’re entrepreneurs, that’s how we get our start. It’s us out there selling and doing our best, and then somewhere when we start growing, we get away from that. I know for me, we always come back to that. When everything starts getting going down a little bit, you can come back and sell, and, “Boom,” it brings it back up.

Selling obviously is happening in a lot of different formats. You’ve sales letters, webinars, tele-seminars, videos. There are so many fun ways to sell online. Yesterday I did a kind of a fun experiment. Because this whole new company is launching, and we want to get a bunch of market share as quickly as we can to get a lot of people on our team, we decided to do a big huge Google hangout yesterday. We ended up doing Google Hangout for six or seven hours long. I can’t remember. I was beat up by the end of it, but basically we got me and four or five other people on it, and we put it out to our list. For six or seven hours, we did this huge long hangout, closing people one at a time on why they should sign the NDA. It was actually really fun. It felt almost like we were on PBS – one of those telethons, because we’d be on there and get people to text us their information. We’d go and we’d fill out the form, and say, “congratulations, Mike. You just made it in. Go sign the NDA. Okay, so and so, I just got your text. We’re doing you next.”

Everyone was going back and forth, and there was a lot of energy in our office. It was really fun. But it reminded me about getting back to the roots of selling. We put everything else on hold the entire day, and did nothing but have our entire team all selling for the entire day. I look at – you know most days in the office, I’m working on a project. They’re working on their little thing, and things slowly move forward, but the times we make huge jumps is when everybody’s selling. The energy in the room is from when all of that stuff is happening at once.

I think that in my company, we’re going to do another telethon today, which is going to be fun. I would really set it up at least once a month where you get everyone on your team selling – something in place where that’s the mindset and the culture of everyone – that selling is the most important thing. It’s the lifeblood of our team. Whether it is, if you have an e-mail list, you sending an e-mail out to your list and having people calling in, or something that causes that to happen. You can get everyone on your team doing that. When you do it, it brings your team closer. Everyone understands that the way that they make money and get paid is by selling, and it just changes the culture a little bit.

Yesterday was such a neat, magical day. By the end of it, we were all tired and beat up, and we all just wanted to go home and crash, but that experience bonded us altogether, and I think it was really neat. That’s what I recommend.

Again, first off, I’d go read Michael Masterson’s book, “Ready, Fire, Aim”, and even if you just read the chapters, the beginning two or three chapters, where it talks about going from zero to million dollars a year, that stuff is powerful, and it will get you back into the mindset of selling, selling, selling. Then do that with your team. Do that if it’s just you. If you’re a one person team, figure out a way you can just sit down and sell all day long, because when you start selling, you’re going to see what works, what doesn’t work and it’s by far the best way to start growing. If you have an existing business relationship, it will really expand if you just get back into the sales mindset.

That’s about it for today. I just wanted to mention all of that stuff. That’s what’s going on in my life and at the top of my mind right now. I’m at my gym now, so I’m going to go. I appreciate you guys. If you enjoyed this podcast at all, please comment on it. I think I need a couple of more comments, and then I can actually get some stars showing on this thing which would be exciting. All right, talk to ya soon guys.

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“If you haven’t offended someone by noon each day, then you aren’t marketing hard enough…” -Dan Kennedy

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson from DotComSecrets.com, and this is the “Marketing in Your Car” podcast. I’m actually heading to the office right now. It’s a little early today, because I’ve got a fun project I’m working on, and I wanted to get started before anyone else showed up.

Today I wanted to talk about something that hit me last night. The title of this podcast would be what we call “Dealing with the Haters.” If you guys watch “The Office,” which is wrapping up its last season, this week they had an episode where, they’ve been filming The Office for the last ten years as a being kind of like a reality show, and they released the trailer of that reality show on YouTube.

It was funny, because after they released it, all of these comments started coming in. One of the people mentions Andy Bernard and says, “Andy, are you the guy playing the banjo at minute 6:31? That guy is awesome.” He gets all excited and starts commenting back to people, and then when he does, someone comes back and says, “No, he’s not. He’s not cool. He’s stupid. We hate him,” and Andy takes this so personally. He’s like, “Arg!” and he starts responding back, and then the guy’s responding back to him, and there’s a big huge fight that’s going back and forth. Andy makes all of these personal response videos, and the people that hate him are going back and forth with him. It’s just the funniest thing how he deals with all of the people that hate him [laughs] and how it affected him so much.

I know what he’s talking about, because I had something like that happen last night, at the end of my day, and it just kind of put me in the wrong mood for a while. Now it actually got me into an even better mood today, because I had someone that sent me – and I get stuff like that. Anyone who’s out there, you’re going to get hate mail every once in a while, and I got some yesterday. Usually I don’t see that kind of stuff, but somehow they got to my personal e-mail inbox and so it really frustrated me.

Anyway, it was interesting because stuff like that used to really, really be hard for me. In fact, I used to do all of my own customer support, and there was a time when I was ready to just quit because I’m like, “I’m out here serving, and doing my best, and trying to help people as much as I can, and people are sending me hate mail. I don’t get it.”

I remember I had a mentor named Dan Kennedy, and I heard him say something once that really helped me a lot, so I’m putting this out here for you guys. If you’re in the limelight at all with your business, you’re going to get some of this. Dan Kennedy said that if you haven’t offended somebody by noon every day, then you’re not marketing hard enough. When he said that, it really gave me permission to blow those people off, and I want to give you guys that same permission.

When I was working with Tony Robbins, one thing he said to me was really interesting He said that there’s two ways to build the tallest building in town. The first way is to go out there and put a lot of sweat and effort and all of this stuff into something, and build the tallest building in town. The second way is to go around to everybody else’s buildings and knock them down, and that way you’re the tallest one.

That’s really the way that people are. Most people do not want to go out there and work their butts off to build the tallest building. They want to go and tear everybody else’s down because it makes them feel bigger, and that’s kind of how I felt with this thing yesterday. It was funny. They guy sent a nasty e-mail, “F-bomb this,” and what a horrible scumbag I am and all sorts of stuff. At first I couldn’t figure it out, like, “Who in the world is this guy?” I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. Finally I realized that he was commenting on a promotion we did.

For those who are on some of our lists, we did this really cool local marketing webinar series where we had seven of the top local marketing experts in the world come on and basically show you exactly what they did in their business, and reveal the behind the scenes and show everything. They did each one of them like a two- or a three-hour webinar, so in all we had twenty hours of webinars. People could get on the webinars for free when they were live, and then at the end of the webinar, some of the speakers sold stuff, which is obviously how we monetized it.

What we did is we offered replays. –“We’re not showing anybody the replays, so if you want the replay, you’ve got to pay for it. It’s $97. You get the replay of all seven events, then you can go back and you can rewind it, you can listen to it, and learn all kinds of stuff. Plus as an extra bonus, I’m going to transcribe all seven of these events, so if you’re the kind of person that likes to read along, you can have the transcripts with it.”

I thought it was a good offer. I think for someone like me, I’d be like, “Man, if I can hear twenty hours of people doing the business that I want to be doing or the business that I am doing – seven people, some of the best in the world, and then I can actually have replays. I can watch it over and over and over again, and I can read the transcripts. That’s valuable to me.”

And so we priced it at $97, which I thought was a steal, and that’s what this guy was so upset about, saying basically, “How in the world dare you sell something digital for $97 where people can just… It’s something that’s just streaming off of your website. You shouldn’t be doing that,” and on and on and on and on. I was just shocked, and again, it really offended me at first. Then last night and this morning as I was getting ready, I was like, “You know what? He’s coming in and trying to knock down the tallest building in town. Why doesn’t he go out and provide his own value? Why doesn’t he go out and do something, as opposed to coming in here and just yelling at me and other people?”

It made me feel a little bit better, so I wanted to give you guys permission, right now, that if you get hate mail, if you get people that are upset or frustrated, don’t pull an Andy Bernard. Don’t go and complain and fight back and comment back on YouTube videos and stuff like that. Just ignore it, and then give yourself permission, like I said, from Dan Kennedy, “If you haven’t offended somebody by noon each day, you’re not marketing hard enough.” Let me give you that permission to go out there and do what you need to do. Just stop focusing on the people that don’t like you, and focus on the people that you’re serving. Focus on people whose lives are changing because of the good, the value, and the things you’re putting out there in the world.

We had over 10,000 people register for that webinar series. We’ve got hundreds of people sending e-mails and thanking us and success stories and all sorts of stuff coming in from it, and then there’s one dude who’s upset because we’re selling the replays. Don’t focus on the one dude that’s going to make you upset. Be grateful that you upset him, because that means you’re working hard. Focus on the people who love you. Focus on providing value to them.

I hope that helps you guys, and that’s about it. I’m at the office. I’ve got a fun day ahead of me today, so I’m excited. I hope you guys do, as well. If not, find a new job. Find a new line of work. Do something that you’re so passionate about. Right now, at 6:25 in the morning – I woke up early today, because I’m so excited to come in and start working on this project. Find something you’re that passionate about, and if you’re not yet, just go out there and seek it. You don’t have to do whatever you’re doing right now.

I have a close friend of mine who I love and care about a lot. He told me flat out, “This is what I wish I could do with my life,” and I said, “Why don’t you do that?” He said, “Well, I can’t because this.” He always had an excuse for why he couldn’t do it. He said, “I used to envy you, Russell, because you go out there, and you just do whatever you want to do.” I’m like, “Why don’t you just do it? It’s just a choice. You just have to do it.”

Figure out what you want to do. I ask myself probably once a month, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” and then I go and I work towards that. That’s a good thing to do –“What do you want to be when you grow up?” If you’re not passionate and in love with whatever it is that you’re doing, figure out what you want to be when you grow up, and go and do it. Just quit everything else and focus on that. Well, don’t quit everything else – obviously you’ve got to pay the bills. If you’re doing something, you know you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, but work your face off to get towards whatever it is you want to be doing when you grow up, because this life is way too short to not do that.

Anyway, I appreciate you guys. If you liked this podcast at all, please comment on it. We’re six or seven episodes into this thing. , I think, and trying to get iTunes to give us some love. They ranked us on the first page. This is really cool. I was on iTunes the other day, and I was scrolling through the home page, and our podcast was in there, so congratulations, you guys, the listeners. We’ve got people listening, which is exciting. I just need you to go and review it so that we can get some stars in there and people on iTunes can find us. I appreciate you guys, and I will talk to you all tomorrow.

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Russell talks about how fast a new idea went viral when it was locked behind NDA’s…

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Hey, this is Russell Brunson with the “Marketing in Your Car” podcast from DotComSecrets.com. I am actually driving home from work today. I’ve had a really fun experience, and I want to share, because I think there’s some value in it for everybody.

This is what I want to talk about –the power of secrets [laughs]. Our company name is “Dot Com Secrets”, and I remember at one of my events that I did, I was telling someone, “Find some secrets, and that’s what you should be selling.” Someone told me, “We hate the word ‘secrets’. We want to change it to ‘strategies’.” I’m like, “You can do that, but secrets works.”

So here’s some more proof that the whole secretive concept is awesome. I do webinars, and we’ll promote them to our list of half a million people. From that, I might get five thousand people to register for a webinar, which is great. We make a lot of money with 5,000 people on a webinar. Last night, or actually it was two nights ago, we did a webinar, and this one I didn’t promote. I personally texted a couple of people, and I said, “Hey, this is this thing I’m doing. We’re rolling out this new app. It’s going to be really cool, and you may want to be part of it. I’m doing a secret webinar. If you want to come to it, show up.” That was my text, and there was a link to register for the webinar. I only sent it out to maybe twenty people. I had two of my friends send it out. Between all three of us, we maybe sent it out to fifty people – maybe, but probably not even that many, and we specifically said, “Do not tell anybody else about this. This is just for you.”

That night, we had over a hundred people register for the webinar, and about eighty-five of them showed up. Almost everyone showed up, and it was interesting because I was like, “Man, I specifically told you not to invite anybody, but you invited five people.” Each of them did, and it was interesting. We’re doing another one tonight, and it’s been amazing to watch how fast something grows when they’re not supposed to tell anybody about it. And it’s funny.

There’s this new network marketing company rolling out, and they hired me to come and do the sales process and the scripts and stuff. It’s kind of fun. I’ve never been on the inside of a network marketing company to see how something like that rolls out, and how the whole process works, but they are some of the best at using this concept. They’re rolling it out in about two weeks from now, and they’ve been telling people, “Don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t tell anyone about that,” and so specifically nobody’s been able to tell anyone. To learn anything about it, you have to sign an NDA to find out about it.

They’re doing this event in a week from now. Nobody knows what it is still, but they have to pay to come to this event, and they’ve got twenty-five hundred paid people coming to this event without knowing what it is. All they know is they can’t tell anybody, so it’s this interesting…I almost just hit a squirrel. You guys who are listening in live while I’m driving, I barely just missed a squirrel [laughs]. Anyway, it’s interesting the power behind that.

I saw one guy do this with a webinar. It was Trey Smith, in the app industry. He does the same thing. –“I’m doing this webinar. It’s so secretive. If you want to know what it is, you’ve got to sign an NDA.” I don’t know his numbers, but I’m sure his turnout rate was amazing and the sales rates were amazing.

Figure out how you can use that in your business. Figure out if you want to do an event for whatever it is you’re doing – a new rollout of a new product, or a new project, or a new whatever. I promise you, if you tell people that it’s a secret and that they can’t tell anyone else, magically the word of mouth will start working, whereas if you ask somebody, and you bribe someone and you say, “Hey, I’ll pay you twenty bucks to tell your friends,” a lot of times the referral marketing stops there. They don’t tell their friends, but you tell them not to tell anybody and it’s amazing what happens, so that’s kind of an interesting concept.

I’m sure you guys can use that in a lot of different spots in your business. I’m seeing the power of it right now, and it’s fantastic and really exciting. In fact, with the rollout of this network marketing company, their goal is to get a hundred thousand people on NDAs before it ever goes live – a hundred thousand people to sign an NDA to find out about something that they can’t tell anyone else about. That’s the interesting. It’s a powerful strategy, so I hope you guys can use that. I’m going to be using it, and you will see it coming from me in my marketing in the very near future.

Thanks, everybody. Oh yeah, and to end with, I learned from somebody who actually does podcasts a lot that you should always tell people on your podcast to go and to rate your show, so if you’ve like anything you’ve learned so far, please go back to iTunes and rate it. I would appreciate it. This is still a kind of a new project for me, but I’ve noticed we’re in the top, I think, eighty-sixth new and hot podcasts, so we’re rising in the ranks, you guys, so if you’ve enjoyed this at all, or enjoyed any of them, please go and leave some feedback. It would be much appreciated, and I’ll talk to you guys again tomorrow. All right, ‘bye.

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During this podcast you’ll learn the difference between a $100 a month client and a $50,000 a month client (and the funny thing is the work for both is the SAME!)

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson again with the “Marketing in Your Car” podcast from DotComSecrets.com. Normally I do these podcasts when I’m driving to work in the morning, but I didn’t this morning. Right now, I’m just out driving around actually. I had a cool experience happen today that I wanted to share, because I thought it would be a good lesson for everyone.

I had a chance to go to lunch today with a guy here locally in Boise who does local marketing on a really big scale. He’s a really neat guy. It’s funny, because he’s been in Boise for two years, and I’ve never even bumped into him or met him. It’s always unique and fun when you meet someone who’s in the same business as what we’re doing. I met with him, had lunch with him, and I had a great time.

I had one take-away at the very end of the conversation that really just jumped out to me. He said, “Russell, there’s no money in local marketing, going to businesses that are B2C. That’s what most people are focusing on. If they’re a local consultant, they’re going after chiropractors, dentists, and things like that. I focus, one hundred percent, on B2B companies. With those kinds of clients, what’s interesting is that basically – let’s say you have a client, and they sell a widget. Maybe for that widget they’ve got, they’ve got five or six customers total, but those five or six customers make them $5 million a year. I come in, and I start to work with those kinds of clients. I just have to get them one new client, and when I do, that’s worth a million dollars to them, and so for that, I take a percentage, so maybe $100,000 a year.”

He had one client. –“I have all year to focus on just getting them one client. In that kind of business, you don’t have to worry about SEO, PPC, social media, any of that kind of stuff. All you focus on is getting them another client through whatever means necessary,” and I thought, “Man, that’s interesting. Everyone’s going after these smaller businesses, and obviously people are making money with it, but that’s the hustle – going after smaller businesses, where this guy is doing the exact same business. He’s just focusing on a different market, and he’s got a lot less clients and making a lot more money.”

Anyway, just kind of a big “aha” for me, and it made me think about how in my own business, I’m always sharing stuff with small businesses. That’s been my passion – helping small businesses grow. Then I look at someone like Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s a mentor of mine, and a really neat guy. Gary teaches very similar stuff to what I do. I don’t think he teaches it as well, and I don’t think he executes it as well, to be honest. But one thing that Gary does is he focuses on bigger clients. His average client, I think, pays thirty to fifty thousand dollars a month, where my average clients – our high-end clients are like ten grand a month. It’s just interesting. He’s doing the exact same thing I’m doing. He’s probably not working as hard as I am, but he’s going after a bigger market and a bigger client, and I just thought it was really interesting.

For all of you guys out there, including myself, this was a wake-up call for me today. Just look at who you’re targeting. Who are the customers that you’re going after? Just by shifting who you go after – who else? Just think about this right now. Who else would your product or service help? Think about that. What if you targeted them, instead of just the people you’re currently targeting? Like Gary Vaynerchuk, go and land one client. –“Boom.” You’re making fifty grand a month. This guy I had lunch with today, his name’s Diego. Go out like him, and, “Boom.” Get a client, and get $100,000 contract to get one new client.

We’re all doing the same amount of work anyway. We might as well get paid what we deserve, and so target bigger customers, whatever business you are in. A lot of you guys are selling different things, but just think about that. Right now, if you’re not going after the customer you keep focusing on, who would that new customer be? Hopefully that will be some food for thought for all of you guys. I know it was for me today. It gave me a big wake-up call and got me excited to start looking at my business and start re-picking my target market. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

I hope you guys liked this, and I will talk to you guys again probably tomorrow morning. Have a great night.

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You’ve heard the #1 reason you succeed or fail in real estate is “Location, Location, Location,” but what is the #1 reason when you’re online…?

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Good morning, everyone. This is Russell Brunson again, from the DotComSecrets.com “Marketing in Your Car” podcast. For me, the weekend just ended. I hope everyone had a great weekend. I’m rebounding from winter today, and I’m actually wearing shorts to work, so I’m excited.

I want to talk about something that’s on my mind a lot. We had Easter break this weekend, so my family and I went down to where my wife’s parents live. It’s interesting. We live in Boise, Idaho, which isn’t a huge town, but it’s a good-sized town. We drove down two and a half hours to a city called Burley, which is where my wife’s family is from. It’s a lot smaller town, and from there we drove out to a smaller city called Alpine, which has about five hundred people. From there we drove out to this city called Almo, which I think has about eight people in the whole city, and that’s not really exaggerating all that much – literally eight people.

I had some interesting thoughts along the way. First off, we were driving down to Burley, and on the side of the freeway, there’s this hill. I’ve seen this every time we drive by it, and I’ve always wondered what it is. It’s this huge hill, strangely huge, and it looks like something that just popped up out in the middle of nowhere. They have these two huge waterslides coming off of one side, and a zip line that comes off the other side. It’s on the side of the freeway, out in the middle of nowhere. There’s no city within fifteen miles of there – it’s just this random, weird thing. I keep thinking, “What is that?” I always want to stop and go water-sliding down it, but you’ve never see anyone there. It’s just this random thing.

That was the first thing we saw, and then we went out to Almo, which again, is this little podunk city, literally, with a population of eight or nine. We’re driving out there, and all of the sudden, there’s this huge hotel. That’s where we stayed. We called every night for an entire week before someone answered the phone. We were driving down there, literally, and someone finally answered the phone, and they go, “Oh yeah, we’ve got tons of rooms. Come stay.” We go and stay at this place. We’re the only people staying there. There’s nobody else. It’s just interesting.

My brother-in-law was down there with us. We were hanging out with him. His family owns one of the local banks, and he told me that both of those projects – the big huge hill on the side of the road – that the people had come in and tried to finance with them. They turned them down, because they said, “Look, nobody is going to go to a random water slide on the side of the freeway where there’re no exits close by [laughs]. There’s no city.” They turned the guy down. The guy was all excited. He was so passionate. He knew it would be huge, so he went and borrowed money from his friends and family, built this huge waterslide thing, and apparently it went bankrupt because nobody could even get to it. Literally, there’s not an exit close by. I don’t know how you’d even get to it.

The other one was this little hotel in the middle of the desert that the bank actually did finance. There’re probably twenty rooms or so. There’re more rooms in this hotel than there are people in the city, and it’s not like there’s a tourist spot close. It got me really thinking about how so many times, we get passionate about an idea, and we think it’s the greatest thing in the world, so we go and we dump all of this money and time and effort into something when there’s nobody around. In the real estate days, they used to always say that the most important thing about real estate is “location, location, location.” I remember hearing that from my dad when I was a kid. Now obviously for this, these guys built a waterslide hill on the side of the freeway – horrible location. Nobody shows up. Bankrupt. These other guys found this little city with a population of eight and decided it would be a great spot for a hotel. The spent probably a million bucks building this hotel, and guess what? Nobody shows up. Location, location, location.

So how does that relate to you guys? When we used to do our big high-end seminars – some of you guys probably came to them. We used to do seminars where we would charge between five and ten thousand dollars for people to come to our office in Boise. We’d spend three days working on their business, and I’d say half of the time, if not more, people would come to these businesses, that they weren’t businesses – there was no market. One guy I remember vividly. I felt bad for the guy. He spent ten grand to come. I tried to talk him out of it, but he kept telling me, “I want to create a product to sell to Boy Scout leaders, because there’re X amount of Boy Scout leaders across America, blah, blah, blah. Nobody else is tapping into this market,” and I said, “The reason no one taps into it is because there’s not a market there. Boy Scout leaders usually aren’t really getting paid for that. They’re volunteers. They’re not going to spend their own hard-earned money to go and buy more stuff to learn how to become a better Scout Master, unfortunately. I wish they would, but they just don’t. It doesn’t really go hand-in-hand.”

The way I look at this is, in the real estate world, its location, location, location. In our world, it’s, “You’ve got to find a hot market ahead of time.” I luckily learned this lesson early on when I bought a product from Frank Kern and Ed Dale called “The Underachiever Method”. In fact, two years ago I bought that whole company, and I bought that brand from them because I was so passionate about it. I still am. We’re going to be publishing it as a book and a bunch of other really cool stuff here in the near future.

One of the core things they taught in The Underachievers Method was that there’re basically three steps. Step number one is to find a hot market. Step number two is to ask them what they want. Step number three is to give it to them. So many of us go around and do it backwards, where we will have an idea for a product. We go and create the product. We spend time and energy and money and effort creating the product, and then we go and try to sell it, and ninety percent of the time, there’s no market there.

In my business, we’ve been really trying to reverse engineer it, and go the other way. Find the hot market first, find out what they want, and then create it. That’s how we found our diabetic supplement. We went out there – and I don’t know anything about diabetes. In fact, ours is a niche within diabetes. It’s neuropathy. I don’t know anything about neuropathy, but we were able to find out that there’s a market there. People are buying stuff, and so we went, and we found out what they wanted. They wanted a natural supplement, and so, “Boom,” we created it.

We did it the correct way. Find a hot market. Ask them what they want, and then give it to them, as opposed to what most of us do, which is have a product idea, create it, and then go try and shove it down people’s throats. For people that are doing that, you’re just like that dude on the side of the road with the huge waterslide, and nobody’s around. It’s important to sell stuff you’re passionate about, but that’s not the first step. The first step is to find that market. Find the group of rabid, hungry buyers first, and after you’ve found it, then, again, it’s not like you go and create something. Find out what they want. Ask them questions.

If you find that existing traffic stream, you can put up what we used to call fly catcher pages. We’d put up a little page, and say, “What’s your number one question about this topic? What’s the most important thing? What’s the number one thing you’re trying to do? The number one struggle with your diabetes?” or whatever it might be. You ask people that, and they let you know, and then you create the product. Just like in real estate, it’s location, location, location. In Internet marketing world, it’s find a hot market – the market, the market, the market.

So I just want to encourage you guys that wherever you are in your path right now, if you haven’t started yet, make sure that you’re doing it the right way. Find the hot market first. If you already have a business, and you’re trying to grow it, go out there and start looking for those markets. Go and find the place that there’re already people at and set up shop there.

Another thing – we were in Albion, and these guys were building this beautiful bed and breakfast, out in Albion, Idaho, population, again, three hundred or something like that. I was like, “Why? You’ve got to spend the same amount of money building a bed and breakfast in Albion as you would in Boise. Why wouldn’t you build in Boise where people are actually at, and people are visiting and traveling to?” I think the only visitors to Albion each year are my wife and I, because we have family there, but most people aren’t going to Albion. It’s going to be very difficult to keep that bed and breakfast busy all year round, but for whatever reason, people fall so in love with the idea, they fall in love with the location, that they do crazy things that just don’t make sense logically from a business standpoint.

For you, I want you guys to be thinking logically. I don’t want you to fall in love with a product. You can fall in love with a market, because you know that there’s so much traffic, there’s so much business, and so many people there, and if you do that, then you’re going to be fine, but if you go about it the other way around, and you spend all of your effort building the most perfect product in the world and hope that there’s a market later, you’re going to be sorely disappointed when you find out that you’ve spend a lot of time and a lot of energy.

That is my rant for today. I’m now at my office. I’m planning to have a really exciting day today, so I hope you guys enjoyed this and I hope that you got some value out of it, and we will talk to you guys all soon.

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Do you struggle to get stuff done each day? Russell talks about how to shut off active communication, switch to passive communication and how it can make you 200 – 300% more productive every day!

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Hey everyone. This is Russell, and I am actually going in tonight to the office. It is almost nine o’clock at night, but I’m working a late night tonight, because sometimes that’s what you’ve got to do. I’m going out of town tomorrow with my family and so I’m heading out to a late night session at the office to get some stuff done so I can take a couple of days off and goof off with family

I’ve been thinking about something a lot today, and I’ve been ranting with some of the guys who work for me about it. I just wanted to get everyone’s perspective on this and put it out there. When I first got into this business, one of my early mentors was Dan Kennedy, and I went through his time management course [laughs], which is different than most time management courses. If you’ve ever gone through it, he talks about time vampires and how to distance yourself from customers or anyone who wants to suck your time.

For example [laughs], with Dan, if you want to get hold of him, you have to fax his assistant. Once a week his assistant collects all the faxes, puts them in a FedEx box and FedExes it to Dan. When Dan gets it, he then writes his responses on the faxes and then shoves them back in the FedEx box and FedExes them back to his assistant. His assistant actually will respond back to each person who contacted him, so [laughs], if you’re going to ask him a question, it’s a two-week process. It may be annoying on your side trying to get hold of him, but it also makes you, when you ask questions, very, very efficient.

That’s my biggest issue with phone calls. I hate phone calls. You can ask anybody [laughs]. I hate answering the phone. The only person I answer the phone for is my wife. On the phone, everyone wants to be like, “Hey, how’s it going?” They try to catch up, and twenty minutes into this conversation, they finally get around to what they’re going to ask you.

Then e-mail came around, and at first, the way e-mail worked is we just told people what we wanted, they responded back, and it was great. But now e-mail has become so informal that to write an e-mail, I’ve got to go through this chitchat – the same stuff I’ve got to do on a phone call. It takes so much time and energy.

Then text messaging came out. I love texting, because I can text people and the response is really quick. There’s a new app I’ve been using called Vox which is great, because I can Vox somebody and leave a message, and then when they get it, they can respond back to me. If I have time, I can respond back.

I really like that type of communication. I hate active communication, where we have to be actively engaged, because it takes me and you having to be stopping everything we’re doing at the same time to connect and have that conversation. It’s so inefficient for me. It drives me crazy. A lot of people ask me, “Russell, how in the world do you run twelve companies. How do you do all this kind of stuff?” The way I do it is because I don’t have inefficient communication.

My people on Skype – I try to train people I work with and it’s very difficult, because they don’t understand. If you’re on Skype and you message me it will be like, “Hi.” –“Hi.” –“Hi.” I will never respond back to a “Hi”. If they leave me a question, I will respond back with the answer next time I’m on, but I hate the active communication, because it opens up a door that wastes so much time. It makes you so inefficient. If I’m respond back to someone who skyped me, “Hi,” it would become at least a ten minute conversation, talking about the weather and everything else before we got to the point.

For me, for time management, for example – I want you guys thinking about this, too – how can you shift your communication? To set active communication, where you’re sitting there talking in dialog with somebody, to inactive, where they send you messages and you respond on your time, kind of how e-mail used to be.

The tool that I’m using when I do that is Skype, for the most part. I’m still struggling to train some of people whom I work with on that, but that way you message me on Skype. When I am ready to focus on that project, I will find that thing, and I will respond back to them on that topic. Text messaging is still great, because of that. Voxer, if you haven’t downloaded the Voxer app, it’s great. I can leave voice mail. It’s almost like a voice walkie-talkie text message. I text message somebody what I want to tell them, and they walkie-talkie me back when they want to.

I encourage you guys to figure out ways to break up active communication and train your partners, your staff, your employees, into the inactive kind. You will get so much more done. I set my day out, so I know, “Hey, today from this time to this time, I’m working on this business, or this project, or this, whatever it is,” and I only look at e-mails and correspondence and things related to that. I shut off everything else. I’m not perfect at it. I’m still getting better at it [laughs], but I get so much more done when I do that. It’s amazing.

I promise you guys that if you will cut out active communication, cut out phone calls – you don’t call people. Don’t do meetings. Meetings are the worst thing in the world. Do not do them, especially the “Got a minute?” meetings. If you’ve got a staff, then you know what “got a minute” meetings are. They always end up being eighteen hours long.

Figure out ways to break up the active communication and turn things into passive communication, where you communicate back if and when you want to. And notice I said, “If.” That’s a big thing. You do not have to respond back to everyone. I would say probably ninety-nine percent of my e-mails go un-responded. I’d say probably fifty percent of my Skypes go un-responded. Just because somebody messages me, doesn’t mean I have to respond back to them. I want to give you guys that permission as well, to understand that you don’t have to respond back to everybody. Just respond back to the people that you need to communicate with for the project that you are trying to move forward at that time.

If you do that, you will get so much more efficient. If you will train your partners, and train your staff, and train your employees to do that, you will become so much more efficient. I’ve got three partners right now that I’m trying to train on that. They’re like the talkers who want to just get on the phone and hang out and network and talk, and I’m the opposite of that. We have this thing where they will call me, and then I will text them back. But that’s the way you’ve got to be. You’ve got to be so protective of your time, because people will dominate your time. They will devour it, and they don’t care. If you don’t care about it, people will run you over and so that’s my message today, for tonight.

Again, I’m going in at nine o’clock, probably planning about three hours of some awesome stuff, and then I’m going to go and take a couple of days off and party with my family, and it’s going to be awesome. I hope you enjoyed this. Again, if you like these podcasts, please leave your feedback. This is brand new. I’ve never done one of these before, and I would love to hear some feedback, hopefully positives. If they’re negatives, please don’t leave comments [laughs], but if they’re positive, I’d love to hear your comments. In the iTunes place would be really cool and also at our DotComSecrets.com, for more information about us and how we can help your business. Again, you guys, just take care of your time. It’s your only precious commodity that you have. Protect it. Don’t let people suck it. Don’t let people be time vampires and suck it up. Be very protective of it. I hope this helps. Thanks, everybody.

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Russell Brunson talking about the hidden business inside of everyone’s businesses…

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you back to the “Marketing in Your Car” podcast. I hope you liked our intro song [laughs]. If you listened to the first podcast yesterday, I told you I’d been talking about doing this for 4 years, and I was having my brother do my audio/video stuff. He was going and he was putting up the first podcast, getting it all installed on iTunes, making it all work, and he was like, “Hey, do you want to use that intro we had done about four years ago for the ‘Marketing in Your Car’ podcast?” and I was like, “Oh, yeah, I forgot. We hired this dude to make an intro,” so I listened to it. It was super corny, super cheesy, but it sounded like a cool radio show, and so we’re going to use it for a while. Congratulations. You guys get to hear our awesome intro.

Right now I’m actually not driving to the office. I’m actually driving to go to wrestling practice right now. One of my buddy’s kids is in town and wanted me to beat up on him a little bit, so I’m driving there, but I just had some ideas I wanted to let you guys have some fun with. It was the thought process I’m going through.

Yesterday I talked about the power of things being rare in your business, and so when I was sitting there that day when I got to the office, I was thinking about how I could use that on anything I’m working on right now. We recently launched a new supplement, and if anyone’s ever been in the settlement business, I’m learning all of the headaches that come with the inventory management and stuff [laughs] like that.

When we first launched, we had no idea if it was going to sell, so we ordered a thousand bottles, and it sold really well. When we went back, we ordered twenty-five hundred bottles, and it sold out, so then we went back and got another thing, but the thing that’s annoying is that we have a six-week delay before the next order comes in. If I put in an order today, six weeks later is when we’ll get the bottles back in, so it’s a huge timing issue.

I’m a good entrepreneur. I’m not so good with timing and all of that kind of stuff, so all sorts of headaches has been happening. We decided to test something in the last day or so, and I don’t have extensive results yet to show you guys, but so far the numbers look really good.

On our phone number, if you’ll call in to order, we have a voice message thing that we’re doing, and we are also tweaking the copy on the page, which basically just talks about the fact that the supplement is rare right now, which is true because we ordered our last batch of whatever it was, and they’re almost gone, so we spoke to that. We talked about that and basically said, “Hey, this is a trial run. We’re making sure that it sells well.”

I can’t remember exactly how the script went as I’m sitting here in my car, but we did a couple of tweaks with the script, talking about how it was rare. Eventually it will be something that we have full production runs of, and at that point, the price will be X, but right now, because this is a newer thing, we want more case-based success stories. Until we sell out, this is the new price point. So far, in less than a day now of results, that’s going really, really well, so I’m intrigued and excited to watch what’s going to happen over the next little while.

The other thing I want to talk about today, and hopefully this will give you guys some ideas, but one of my favorite books that I’ve read recently is a book called “Rework”, by Jason Fried and the team over at 37 Signals. They are the guys that invented Basecamp. They also brought Ruby on Rails, that language about, and anyway, they’re really neat guys, and I had a chance to interview Jason a little while ago.

One of the concepts he talked about was selling your byproduct. He talked about a coffee shop which sold coffee, and they made a bunch of money, but they had all of these coffee bags they were just throwing away, and so they started selling the empty coffee bags and started this whole new business just selling that. He was talking about his business, the fact that these books they’re writing are the byproduct of all of this stuff they’re learning.

I thought it was kind of interesting. For almost the last five and a half years now, we’ve been running the publishing and print newsletter “HeadDotComSeekers.com”, and we’ve had tens of thousands of subscribers from all around the world. Tons of success stories have come from it, but it’s just been that everyone in our office wrote an article about what they’re doing, and we published it.

Recently I came back and said, “Look that stuffs been good, and people like it, but how do I create a product that’s just phenomenal and exciting?” I kept wondering, “What are the things that people in our market really want? What are they interested in?” What was kind of cool is that in January, I was at an event. It was Ryan Deiss’s and Perry Belcher’s Traffic and Conversion event. Listening to this thing, and after, one of my friends came over to me. He’s from Israel, and he said, “Hey, why aren’t they sharing more of their split test results? That’s the main reason why I flew all the way from Israel to here, because I want to see the results from the testing.”

I thought, “Isn’t that interesting? That was his main driving point.” In our business, we test stuff all day long. We’ve got split tests on thousands of awesome, exciting, crazy, different things. I was trying to think of that could be the byproduct of our business, sharing in our split test results. I don’t know anyone that’s as much of an entrepreneurial ADD as me and has so much happening in all of these different markets. I think right now we’re in twelve different markets, I believe, unless you count the Thai company I’m trying to roll out. That would be number thirteen [laughs]. But we’re doing stuff in all of these different markets.

I think we have the unique perspective that most people don’t have, so we share stuff that’s happening in our supplement business and in our “keep running” business, and in our dating and our weight loss, in our Internet marketing, and all of these different businesses, and share the results. So that’s what we’re now rebranding our whole newsletter around, around testing results, and in about two months from now, we’re re-rolling out our newsletter under that new direction, new angle, and I think it’s going to be really cool.

Just for you guys to think about in your business – what are the byproducts? What are the things that you’re doing that just by the nature of your doing it, it’s creating something? That could be an information product. It could be creating waste. Whatever it’s creating, what other side businesses are there that you can do, that you can spin off of that? I thought it was kind of an interesting topic and something you guys could think about in your businesses as well.

That’s all I had for today. Again, I don’t want to make these long. I want to keep them small. My goal is I’m going to be recording these while I’m driving either to work or like right now [laughs], driving to the wrestling room. Hopefully these things will be something that you guys can plug in to your car while you’re driving. You can download them in the morning. I still don’t know how podcasts work. I’ve never really been a part of one before, but download them in the morning, and when you jump into your car, driving to work or when you’re driving around during the day, listen to them for ten or fifteen minutes.

My goal is that if I can give you one little idea or just get your mind thinking about something different each day, then I feel like I’ve succeeded and that’s what my goal is. I appreciate you guys listening in, and I will try to keep giving you some good ideas. If you want more information about me or our company, please go to DotComSecrets.com. That’s where we share most of our Internet marketing. Cool stuff that’s going down. I appreciate you guys, and we will talk to you again soon.

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Russell Brunson talking about how the power of “rare” is more powerful then scarcity…

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the DotComSecrets “Marketing in Your Car” podcast. This is episode number one. This kind of makes me laugh, because this is something I’ve been talking about doing for five or six years, ever since I first learned what a podcast was. I have never actually done it, so this is the first podcast.

My game plan in this is that basically I have a five minute drive to work every day. I’m just going to dump some marketing ideas and concepts on you on my drive. It’s not going to be long or extensive, just about five to six minutes long, and that way, while you guys are driving to work every morning, hopefully you can listen to this as well and get some ideas for your business. That’s the game plan.

Today I want to talk about something that was kind of interesting to me. Saturday night, I was working on my computer late, and probably at about two in the morning or so is when my resistance to buying is at its lowest. Of course I decided, “I’m going to swing by eBay and see if there’s anything cool that I can buy,” which is usually a bad idea. Most days when I do that I end up a thousand dollars poorer, by the time it’s all said and done. That night was no different.

So I’m in there. I’m searching for stuff. I’m trying to find something to buy. I’m looking for different marketing things and typing all of my favorite guru’s names. Finally I found this product. It’s called something like “Guerrilla versus Gorilla”, like Jay Conrad Livingston’s guerrilla versus a gorilla. There was a whole CD course from Chet Holmes, Jay Conrad Livingston, and Jay Abraham.

When I first saw it, I was like, “Oh, this is cool,” and then I passed it, but I had it in my watch list. I went back later on that night, and I looked at it. I was looking closer. It was a cassette tape set, but Tape 2 to and Tape 4 were missing. I’m looking at it, and I’m going, “Oh man, it’s missing some tapes, so I’m probably not going to buy it,” but I was like, “I kind of want to buy it now, because this is kind of interesting to me. Let me go and see if I can’t find it anywhere else.”

I started searching everywhere else, and I kid you not, there is no copy of that product you can buy anywhere online at any site, even at their own site. It’s impossible. I searched for another hour trying to find a copy of that product. I couldn’t find it anywhere, so finally I came back to eBay. The only copy that’s there is missing 2 tapes, and it’s $200, but I go and I buy it really quickly, for $200, because I want this information. There’s no one else in the world that has it apparently. You can’t buy it anywhere, and so I bought that.

I told my brother. I’m like, “Scott, I just bought this thing, but Tapes 2 and 4 are gone. I need that information,” and so he searched for another hour or two trying to find a torrent site that would have them. We couldn’t find any torrent sites that had them, but finally there was this Internet marketing torrent site that he was able to find it on, and we were able to download it.

I’ve been listening to it this week, and it’s been great a great product. It really got me thinking a lot about the power, not so much of scarcity, but the power of rarity – of it being rare. I started thinking about how I could use that more in my business. I remember when I first got into this business, and I started learning how to do speaking, I started speaking at every single seminar. The very first seminar I ever spoke at was amazing, because they introduced me as this rare underground guy who never speaks, blah, blah, blah. Because of the fact that I was rare, the response was amazing.

After a year of me traveling the speaking circuits and speaking all of the time, I wasn’t that rare. Some of that disappears because they can go see you anywhere. After about a year and a half, I quit speaking, and now I only speak maybe once a year. Again, when I speak now, it’s kind of that rareness that comes out, and it’s different. I started thinking more about my marketing. How can I cause that?

One of my mentors and someone I’ve worked with a lot over the last years is Dan Kennedy, and Dan always talks about positioning yourself as the guru on the top of the mountain. People can see where you are, but they can’t get there directly. They have to buy things to get closer and closer to you. With Dan Kennedy obviously, you have their $40 or $50 a month newsletter, and then their $200 a month newsletter, and then their Mastermind Groups. The more money you pay, the closer to the guru you get. I just wanted to kind of throw that out there, not so much to tell you what to do, but just to get the wheels in your head spinning.

How can you become more rare, which will increase the demand for you for your time, for whatever it might be? If you’re in a consulting business, the rarer you can make your time, the more you can charge. From a publishing standpoint, if you’re blogging all of the time…

I’ve been watching recently – Ryan Deiss has been launching his Authority ROI product. I’ve been watching his prelaunch and stuff, and it’s interesting. He’s talking about bringing in a whole bunch of guest bloggers to post on your blog. I think what’s interesting about that is that fact that now you can keep consistently updating your blog and having new stuff happening so that there’s content, there’s excitement, there’s stuff still happening, but you can step back yourself and become more of a rare commodity where now you come maybe once a week or once a month and post. At that point everyone’s waiting to hear what the guru has got to say. He’s finally coming down from the mountain, and now he’s going to grace us with his presence, and talk.

I think it’s a really interesting strategy, so I just want to throw that out there for today. It’s something that’s been on my mind a little bit. Again, I’m not sure of the perfect way to execute it yet, but I’m going to start working on it more and more in my business from all sorts of different levels, from a consulting standpoint, when we do consulting work, from a product standpoint, from a blogging standpoint, just, “How can I make myself more rare?”, because again, it increases the demand and the excitement for you.

But how do you do that without becoming irrelevant either? If you’re not out there for too long, then you become irrelevant, and so it’s this mix of, “How do you do it? What’s the perfect formula?” Anyway, something for you guys to think about today.

I’m now at the office. I’m going to end this recording, and I hope you enjoyed it. We’re about six minutes and eight seconds long, because that’s about how far away my office is from my house. Now I know. I hope you guys enjoyed this. If this is your first time ever listening, we’re going to try to figure out how to get this thing on iTunes, so please subscribe there, and then also check out our site DotComSecrets.com to learn how to increase your business. I appreciate you guys, and we’ll talk to you again tomorrow.

Marketing Secrets (2013-2014): Recent Episodes

Russell Brunson