3 Roles of Business: Entrepreneurs, Technicians, and RainMakers

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What's up everyone? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I was looking through the archives today and I was trying to find something special for you guys and I found a video from a couple years ago. The title of it was How to Make It Rain, how to become a rainmaker, how to be the person in an organization that has unlimited earning potential no matter where you are. And it's actually a video I made for one of my friends, one of my high school friends who was struggling. And anyway, I refound it last night. I started listening to it. And it's just such an important timely message. And so I wanted to play it for you guys today on the episode. Like I said, it's from a couple years ago. In fact, you'll notice in the intro, I'm driving around a lake on a family vacation with Nora, who's now almost 10 years old, which is crazy. And back then she just, we were weaning her off the bottle. So some funny stories in the beginning about that. But anyway, like I said, this is timeless stuff for anybody who is Maybe you're like just trying to figure out entrepreneurship or how to like be in sales or how to make more money or how to increase your net worth or how to increase like your earning potential. It's just a little mindset shift that I think will be powerful for a lot of you guys. And so if not for you, it might be for your kids, might be for someone on your team. So anyway, I wanted to give you guys this episode. It's kind of a flashback from a few years ago, but it's one of the most powerful I think lessons I ever did about how to actually become a rainmaker inside of either your business or somebody else's business. So you have no ceiling on your earning potential. So I hope you enjoy this episode. About how to be a Rainmaker. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over $1 billion of my own products and services online. This show's gonna show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. All right everybody, so hope you guys are doing amazing. So right now, my little baby Noor and I are on a mission. It's a secret mission to get her to hopefully fall asleep. We started weaning her off the bottle about a week ago before our family vacation 'cause I thought it would be so much nicer to not have to have bottles on this trip. That was the good idea, huh, Nora? But what we did think about was the fact that she's insane and now she won't go to bed at all. And so she won't take naps and so her naps happen where she finally passes out. So today, basically, we got back from the lake, we're on a family vacation, we're on a lake And we had a really good time. And then, and then she wouldn't fall asleep and we were driving back and forth and finally like, I went to go to the store to buy something for dinner tonight and when I was coming back she passed out. And she slept for like 3 hours 'cause she was so beat and then she woke up and now she won't go back to bed. So this is the second night in a row. Last night I was also out driving until midnight, actually 12:30 she fell asleep last night. So it's 12 o'clock right now. So hopefully in less than 30 minutes she will be asleep. But I am on vacation having a good time. And if you listened to my last Marketing Secrets podcast, I talked about how vacations can be so, it can be really tough for entrepreneurs 'cause you're not, it's like we're moving, there's no momentum, we're kind of just stuck in this spot. And so that's somewhere that I definitely feel. As much fun as vacation is, it's also hard for me 'cause I'm just like, ah, like, you got stuff to do, people to see, places to go. Actually, it was interesting, as I was packing the car when I was about to leave, between hiking stuff in and out to the car and everything, I was just checking Facebook. It's interesting, there was a friend who I don't think I've seen him, I think the last time we talked honestly was in elementary school. I remember 6th grade, this kind of funny story. 6th grade, we were moving these big huge boxes and I remember he had this big huge box and he dropped it. I don't know why I vividly remember this. I remember him saying, he was super embarrassed that he dropped this box of stuff and he was saying, "Someday this is gonna be one of those things people remember me by. Remember that one day you dropped this huge box?" And I remember thinking that was really, really interesting and now, it's like what, 30 years later, I remember that day. It's kinda funny. But anyway, I remember he was in junior high with me and high school but he was a basketball player, I was a wrestler so we didn't really cross paths a lot but I knew who he was in the group in elementary school and always had respect for him and everything. When the Book of Faces came out, Zuckerberg, it was kind of fun 'cause you go back and you start remembering all your high school and junior high and elementary school friends and people from wrestling and all these different aspects of your life and you start adding them on Facebook, you know? And so he was one of the names that popped up years ago and I added him and then hadn't thought much more about it. And every once in a while I saw posts from him so I kind of knew a little bit what he was doing but not a lot. Just kind of knew that he shifted his job or his business or his career a couple times and it didn't seem like he was having having a lot of success. And I remember, it seemed like it was last Christmas or something, he posted something really, really negative and I was just like, ugh, I felt bad for him. But it's also one of those things that, it's one of those weird things. When I first started my business and started learning about entrepreneurship and started learning how to sell things and all this world became open to me, I remember at first I wanted to share with everybody and I did. I tried to share with my friends, my family members, people at church, like everyone I bumped into, I was so excited. I'm like trying to tell this thing that I learned how you can, you know, and I was so excited. I would share with every single person and it was so mind-blowing to me as most people just like, "Oh cool, yeah, it's nice." I'm like, "No, you don't understand. It's not just nice." It was so frustrating to me. But it's just funny because that was like, I always tried to change everybody and save them and help them because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. After a couple years, I realized that most Most of the people, actually none of the people I ever tried to help ever did anything with it. It was just, it was really depressing to me. So that's when I shifted back and started doing the business for a long time. I think I got into coaching because I wanted to share it and it was cool when I started coaching people because it was like people that would come are people who, it was their idea first and they came to me to learn how to do it. Those people I could mold and I could like help and I could change because they had the desire first, right? And so it's because I've been very cautious in the last probably decade of my life going out of my way to talk to people about this stuff unless they've raised the hand first, right? So I saw him last December say something and I was just like, ah, it's not really my spot to say anything so I didn't say anything and then anyway, as we were leaving, I was just scrolling through Facebook to get her back in the car and you know, so I'm sneaking out, you know, do what you do with phones. I look in the phone real quick and I see this post from him and it was this long post. It was again kind of a negative thing. He was talking about how she was struggling and like trying to make money and like all these things and I think he said that this last year he made $25,000 and all that and that was what he made the entire year He was really struggling and he was trying to like better things for his family and for his life and for his wife and for like all these things but just couldn't figure it out and he was just frustrated and he was just kind of venting. How you doing, Nora? She's so cute back there. Anyway, hopefully she falls asleep soon. Anyway, and I felt for him and I was just like, do I say something, do I not? And for whatever reason I decided to just kind of reach out to him. And I was just like, hey man, like the problem, I'm like, we've been talking like 20+ years. I don't even know if you remember who I am. But like, the problem is like you're not focusing on the right thing. And he wrote, and I was like, I can help you, but like, I don't wanna kinda intrude, like sort of like my business, but I can help you. I know what's wrong, like it's an easy fix. I was like, in the last year and a half, 2 years, we've helped, I've been able to coach over 200, almost 200 people now to become a millionaire. And you know, thousands, tens of thousands of people to make $100,000 and more in a year. So it's like, I know the game. I know what it takes and when it doesn't take and all those kind of things. I was like, I don't wanna be that guy who's like, it's like, and I said something like that and then my next post was like, I can't freaking read right now. I was like, and I'm not trying to pitch you on some MLM. I honestly just like, if you want help, I can help you 'cause I know what's wrong. And he was like, really? He's like, yeah, I wanna know. And so I kinda told him a couple things and I said that if you do those things, then what I'll do is I'll record a podcast for you while I'm on my trip, kinda going into more detail. And so for the last like 3 days I keep thinking about that, I'm excited, so that's what I'm actually doing right now. And I hope it's a benefit for all of you guys because I think for most people that are stuck, like it's not something that's unique to you, it's not, a lot of times we think like our situation's unique and it's not, it's a pattern, it's a pattern that happens over and over and over again and the key to like breaking patterns, just recognizing them and then realizing what the correct pattern is and then replacing it. It's not hard, it's just hard because it's the first time most people have gone through it personally. Anyway, that's kind of the context. I just want to share this message is really for him. I'm not going to go super specific, but I think it'll be helpful for everybody. I know that typical people I talk to on this podcast are people who are entrepreneurs already. This is kind of, I guess, for someone who's on that line between like the job maybe and the entrepreneur, like that line, right? Where it's like you're not fully like, I'm an entrepreneur running this way, but you're struggling at the job thing and you're kinda in between. That's what this podcast is for. I hope it kinda helps. Alright, so with that said, I'm gonna jump into this. So the first thing that I kinda told him in this message, I said, alright, first thing is you're focusing on the wrong thing. And he's like, well, I've been focusing on like perfecting my craft. And just kind of some perspective, he's, the industry he's going into going into was like film, so he's trying to do movies and videos and all that kind of stuff, right? So he's like, well, I'm focusing on getting better at my craft and I'm also doing a lot of networking. I was like, okay, yeah, so you are completely focusing on the wrong two things. You are focusing on things to help you get better at your thing, but I was like, you have to shift your focus to making money. And that's a weird concept, 'cause like, it's something like, I remember the first time I had that epiphany of like, I need to learn how to make money. I was in school and I'm learning all this crap and I'm looking at this stuff I'm studying and I was like, I'm not actually learning how to make money. I still remember one of my biggest gripes with college is I took 2 semesters of accounting and 2 semesters of finance and they never once taught you how to do your own taxes, which is insane. Insane! School sucks. Anyway, throw that out there for those who were wondering my thoughts about the whole thing. But it's crazy, the fact that they don't teach you that thing, right? And I realized, you know, I'm not learning how to make money here in school and I started studying, how to make money, it was interesting how different it was, right? It's not what you're learning in school. And now fast forward, I think it's been, man, let's see, it'll be my 15-year anniversary in like a month from now. And we got married with a year left of school, so like 14 years, whatever, I've been graduated from school. So kind of looking back on it now from this side, sorry, I thought I was waiting for a stop sign, or a stoplight, there's no stoplight, Lil' Nora's still awake. Anyway, so as looking at it now from this lens, looking back, it's interesting, like a lot of times we want something, right? I remember growing up, you always hear your parents, people say, "Hey, you gotta get a good job so you can," or, "You gotta go to school so you can get a good education so you can make good money," right? We all hear that, that's a thing that parents say a lot, right? And so we assume that those two things coincide, like good job, good education equals more money. But not necessarily, like now I look at it again from my perspective, you know, 15 years, 14, 15 years later, it's interesting. So I was thinking about this a lot over the last 2 or 3 days especially. If you wanna look at like the structure of how people make money, 'cause there's definitely, Like there's places you make money and there's places you don't. And most places we're focusing on, like when he said like, I'm focusing on getting better at my skills and networking, like he's focusing on something that's good, but it's not making money, okay? And so I'm gonna start at the top. So the top is like a pure entrepreneur, right? So top of a business, say it's like a hierarchy chart, right? So boom, the top is like the entrepreneur who starts the business, right? And typically, at least the entrepreneurs I like to work with, they're entrepreneurs who are passionate about something, but they're mostly passionate not just about that thing, but they're passionate about getting that thing out to people, right? That's what defines an entrepreneur, okay? If any of you guys have read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, he talks about what happens with a lot of people is that they think they're entrepreneurs, right? Like they get a job at a bakery shop and they start baking cakes and they see the dude who owns the bakery shop and they're like, this guy's an idiot, I can do better than him. And then what Michael Gerber says is that they have an entrepreneurial seizure and then they think, I'm smarter than this person, I'm gonna start my own bakery. So they start their own bakery. He said the problem is that they're not an actual entrepreneur, they're a technician. So they're somebody who's in the business who's doing it, right? Like they're making the bread, they're making the cakes, they're making the stuff and so, but they look at the entrepreneur who they think is an idiot and so they say, they have the entrepreneurial seizure and then they decide they wanna become an entrepreneur and then what happens, they start their own business and they're like, I can make bread better than anybody else or whatever, I can make cakes and they're passionate about the thing And they create this business and what happens to this business? It fails. Guess what? It's like whatever, 90+ percent failure rate of businesses is because it's technicians, it's people who think that the key is the thing. They think that the cake is what runs the business. They're passionate about the cake, about the creation of the cake. They understand that's not the business. The business, the entrepreneur's job is be passionate about getting the cake out to as many people as possible. That's where the money's at. And so that's why most businesses fail. It's not an actual entrepreneur running it. It's someone who had an entrepreneurial seizure and is a technician who's trying to do that thing and thinks that they should start a business because of it. So my first question for you, for everyone listening to this, is like, are you the entrepreneur? And now the good news is we go deeper into this this. Holy cow, a deer just crossed the path. There are ways to make money not as an entrepreneur in a business, but it's not where you probably think that they are. A lot of people think that— anyway, I'm just thinking for example like a doctor. Doctors make good money. How many times did you hear like you have to become a doctor to make good money or a dentist to make good money? Those people make good money, but not like there's no limit to your income money. Because a doctor is a technician, right? They just happen to be highly paid technicians, 'cause a lot of schooling and things go into it, plus like, but they're still a technician, right? They're not an entrepreneur. They have a definite cap on their income growth always. And so just depending on what technician you pick, let's say you're going into a company to get a job, like you're capped by the earning potential of that role you take on, right? If you're a doctor, if you're a dentist, if you're a baker, if you're a support person, if you're like whatever, like you're capped at like whatever that thing is, which is fine. It's just knowing that that's where you're kinda capped at. If you want no cap, the first spot you gotta look is being an entrepreneur. But to be an entrepreneur, you have to understand it's not being passionate about the creation of the thing. It's being passionate about the selling of the thing. There's a big reason why I read the Expert, or wrote the Expert Secrets book, and because typically experts who are really passionate about about their topic are also passionate about getting the topic out. By definition, they're entrepreneurs because they're trying to get the message out about that thing. They own the bakery, they made the cake, but they're more excited about telling people about the cake. That's what makes them successful entrepreneurs typically. That's why I love working with experts. All right, so there's the top of the— flip this car around, I'm getting out in no man's land now. So that's the top of this pyramid. This, I don't know what you call it, pyramid scheme of business. I don't know if you would call it that. But the entrepreneur's at the top, right? And that's almost what we look at. The entrepreneur's the person who makes all the money. But they're also the people that have to risk all of everything, right? And so entrepreneurship is like a scary thing because you have the earning potential at the top, but you're also the one who all the risk is on your back. And for a lot of people, you can't just go out there and become the entrepreneur immediately. Especially if you have a wife and kids and things like that. Because you have to have security. There's this huge draw with people who have entrepreneurial desires, but they also have these security needs between their family. So it's like, that's a hard thing to go and gamble and just jump in that game. I'm gonna become the entrepreneur. And so I understand that. So a lot of times, like, entrepreneurship is not the first place for people. Like, I feel super blessed. I started my entrepreneurial journey about the time I met my wife, and I was able to do a lot of things because she was supporting me. I was going to school. We didn't have kids. We didn't have all the— we didn't have this need for security to the point that I was getting started, which I'm so grateful for. I have so much respect for those who step into the entrepreneurial role when they have all those things because it's so much harder. It's always easier to start being an entrepreneur and risking everything when you don't have a wife and kids and things. That's one thing. That's one spot. Again, there's different places to make money in companies. There's the best spot. Maybe not the best spot. That's one spot is the entrepreneur at the top. That's number 1. Then underneath the entrepreneur inside of an organization, there's gotta be the technicians. There's gotta be people doing the thing. There's gotta be people baking the cakes. There's gotta be people cleaning the teeth. There's gotta be people cutting the people open. The technicians. Technicians, this is what schooling is actually, the only reason why school is actually good is 'cause it creates technicians. If you wanna become a doctor, you have to go to school. If you wanna be able to drill teeth, you gotta go to school. If you wanna become a baker, if you wanna become a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, I don't even know, any profession. Oh, another deer just ran by. I don't wanna hit a deer. That'd be scary. But any profession, there's like, that's what schooling's for. And so when you're going into school, you're looking at that, you're saying, okay, like any major you decide to go after, like there's kind of an associated salary range that you're gonna fit into, right? And sometimes it's big, like doctors make good money, but like you're always capped, like a technician will always be capped by definition of what they are. You just, you are like, and so if you're coming into a business and you're like, I'm a technician looking at this, like you're capped, like your salary is capped. So my friend who's doing video stuff, he's looking for jobs in a business that are this, he's a technician, right? So again, he was saying in his post, he made $25,000 last year. It's like, well, the reason why is because the need that you are fitting inside whatever company you're trying to plug into, that's what they got budgeted for that. So that's what you're able to make. You're capped. You can't go above that. Right, unless you work more hours, more days, or find a, you know, sometimes you find another company that has a bigger budget. So that's another thing. And again, there's nothing wrong with the technician, just understanding that there's a salary that's set for that thing. There's a budget set. And that's what happens, right? The goal of a business is not to make the technicians rich. I had a finance teacher at Boise State. I'll tell you what, most teachers I had in school were always like, what's the job of business? Oh, to create jobs and to stimulate the economy. They always had this happy-go-lucky, tree-hugging attitude about business, right? I had this one finance teacher who said the only goal of a business is to make money. To make the owner's money. That's it. If the entrepreneur, the owner, is not making money, the board of directors, whoever running it, if they're not making money, business dies. That's the only purpose and only point of a business is to make the entrepreneur money. Everyone's gotta understand that. If you use a technician, there is no desire for anybody for you to make more money than what your set salary is. Now, you're gonna find entrepreneurs, and like in my company, I'm very compassionate towards people and I love what they do, creating things without ceilings for people and having incentive plans and stuff like that. But for the most part, you're kind of like, as a technician, you're in that range. So you understand, if you're going to school, that's the earning range you're gonna be in. Are you okay with that? If you are, then cool, go for it. And that's awesome. But don't complain later when you come back and like, I'm not making what I want. It's like, well, you picked a profession, you're a technician, you picked this piece that's all it's worth. It doesn't matter how much school you went to, how much time and effort you put into it, like that's what that task is worth to the entrepreneur. So you gotta understand that, okay? So technicians, but they're essential to a business and they need to be there. And that's what colleges and universities and programs are all created to create those people, okay? Those people are important. But again, that's kind of the pros and the cons of that. Check it out, guys, look at this. Flip it over. She's asleep, woo-hoo! It's 12:19, so that's a good sign. This podcast might not be 3 hours long now that she's asleep. Otherwise it could have been a really long one. Anyway, alright, so there you go. Entrepreneur, unlimited potential, tons of risk, and the role, the reason why an entrepreneur is successful is because they're passionate about the selling of the thing, getting the message out out, not just the message. Not just passionate about baking cakes, they're passionate about getting cakes in as many people's mouths as possible because they're obsessed with the end product. That's the difference. Okay, there's entrepreneurs. Number 2 level down in this pyramid is the technicians who are the ones doing the jobs to make this whole thing happen. Super essential, but have huge earning caps. And depending on what technician role you pick depends on your earning cap. Okay, there's one more. 4th spot. And this is the spot I want everybody to understand because this is the other spot inside of a company where you have no earning potential. Excuse me, I said it wrong. You have no earning ceilings. You have unlimited earning potential. Scratch that, that could have been really bad and messed up the whole thing. You have unlimited earning potential. Literally the sky is the limit. And that last piece, so we have entrepreneurs, we have technicians, and then the third are the rainmakers. They're people that make it rain. They're people that bring leads, and money into the business. They're the rainmakers. Now entrepreneurs love rainmakers. Why? Because they make it rain. Do you understand that? Like, that's the secret sauce. Now most technicians don't understand that because all they know is like, I went to school to learn this thing, to do this task, and they do it and they go and then they do it. Okay, but the person that get rewarded the most outside of the entrepreneur of the company are the rainmakers. Rainmakers. Typically in most, not most, but a lot of businesses that I own, that I'm involved with, the rainmakers a lot of times are entrepreneurs who maybe if they would have started their entrepreneurial journey 10 years earlier, they would have been the entrepreneur in the business. But for whatever reason they're not, and it's okay because they can have, a lot of times I call them intrapreneurs. In their role in the company, like they have the ability to grow and expand as much as they want, okay? 'Cause they're rainmakers. So what do they do? They make it rain. They bring in customers and they make money, right? They bring money into the company. So if you look at this from an outside perspective, like if you were to sum this up like in college terms, it's like marketing and sales. Marketing brings people in, sales takes their money, right? Like that's kind of what it is, right? And it's funny because I don't know what it was, even like, Most technicians, if you go to school and you tell someone you want to be a salesperson, the viewpoint, or even like marketing, I'm in marketing, or I'm in sales, the technicians are the ones who always look down on you. Like, oh, well, I'm a doctor. Like, oh, well, I'm a blah. They look down on the rainmakers because they think it's like a sub, I don't know, whatever it is. They think it's not as good or not as dignified or whatever. Whatever. What they understand is like the rainmakers make the money, okay? It is the most dignified, most important position in the entire company. Without the rainmakers, the technician has no job, okay? Without someone bringing people into your business and then getting the money from those people, there's nobody then to be a technician to. You make as many cakes as you want, but some dude did not bring those people into the store and take their money, then they're not going to take— they're not going to buy a cake, okay? It is the most important role in business, outside the entrepreneur who sets up initial risk to get it going. Even though the technicians talk down on us marketing and salespeople, it happens to be the most important role in every single business. You can tell when businesses are stupid when the recessions come and they cut their marketing teams, they cut their sales teams. It's insane to me. I had a chance in my life to live through one of the recessions, the whatever 2008 thingamadoo, and I had a bunch of friends who were in marketing jobs. Jobs and they were making it rain for a company and the company started struggling so they cut the marketing. And I'm like, you're insane. You're not— like, cut the technicians, they don't do anything. Like, don't cut the blood coming into your company. Like, marketing and sales is the blood. It is the rain. Like, the rainmakers are the key. Okay, so rainmakers, they don't have a ceiling, okay, in most businesses nowadays, okay? Especially if you become good at it and not Not like a little bit good, but really good. You come to a company and say, look, I can bring in unlimited leads for you. Guess what they're gonna do? They will give you anything you want. That's all companies need. They need leads. The other thing they need, they need sales. They need to take those leads and turn them into cash. They turn them into money. That's how the entrepreneur gets paid. That's how technicians get paid, is by the rainmakers. Bringing people in, taking their money. That's it. We can try to be romantic about it, but that is it, you guys. So you have to understand, if you wanna be, If you wanna become wealthy, I'm not talking about making a good income as a technician, 'cause you can do that, you gotta go to school, that sucks. If you wanna become wealthy, become rich, you wanna make a lot of money, you have to shift your focus from becoming good at being a technician to shifting your focus to understanding how to make it rain. If you can make it rain in a business, you are infinitely valuable. As a technician, you're only valuable as that task is to the person person to the company, right? Okay, and they know, they got a budget for it, okay? So there you go. So like if you're working at a company, you're like, hey, I do video, then guess what? They have a budget for that. They're like, cool, we pay video guys $3 an hour, $12 an hour, whatever that is, right? $20 an hour, okay? For my friend, like the company he's working for, they budget $25 grand, so that's all the money you're able to get because you're a video person, right? You're a commodity. That's the other problem about technicians is they are commodities. You understand that? It was funny, I was talking to my sister the other day here at our family vacation or whatever, and she teaches piano lessons. And I love my sister, she's honestly probably my top 3 favorite people on planet Earth. And anyway, she teaches piano and she's like, "I'm so busy, I can't keep up with anything." I said, "Well, you should double your prices." She's like, "I can't double my prices." I'm like, "Why not?" She's like, "Couple things. First off, if I double my price, I'll lose half my people." I'm like, "Okay, if you lose half your people, you double the money. It means you get double the free time, make the same amount of money." She's like, "Well, I can't do that because that's like the set price what people charge for piano lessons where I live. So if I raise my price, they'll just go to somebody else." And I was like, "'Cause you're a commodity." I'm like, guess how much people pay for marketing consulting advice? And she's like, "I don't know." I'm like, "Neither do I, but I know I don't look what everybody else charges and charge the same thing. I charge the most I possibly can. For example, the other day we had somebody who contacted our office and they wanted to do a 1-day consult with me. I was like, I don't have time for a 1-day consult. They're like, well, how much would it cost? So I told Brent on my team, I was like, tell them it's $100,000 and they can do 8 hours, but they have to come to Boise and I'm going home at 5 o'clock at night to go get my kids. He was like, he kind of laughed because he knew they wouldn't say yes to that, right? And then he went and pitched it to them and he came back like 5 minutes later and he's like, they said yes. And I was like, there you go. Wanna know why? 'Cause I'm not a commodity. When you are a video person, you're a commodity. When you are any type of technician, you are a commodity, okay? You are a doctor, you are still a commodity 'cause guess what? Another doctor comes along and he's better than you, less expensive than you, whatever, they can replace you with the other person 'cause you are a commodity, okay? The rainmakers are not commodities. That's, we have to understand, okay? The rainmakers are unique, okay? 'Cause they understand something that that they can't just learn in school. All right? They know how to get, and especially in school, 'cause there's no school that I know of yet that teaches a marketing program that actually is good. Okay, so there you go. So if you're in school trying to become a Rainmaker, like, you should drop out today. If you wanna be a technician, stick in school. You wanna be a Rainmaker, it's time to leave. Okay, other than if you're in school, like, honestly, if you're trying to do a sport, that's why I was in school, like, do that. If you're trying to get, find a beautiful spouse, like, school's a great place to meet great-looking women and probably Really good looking men, I got no idea. But that's a good spot to be a technician, or excuse me, to be in school, but just till you find your spouse, then leave. It's time to go. If you wanna make it rain, it's time to go. The rainmakers are the ones that are not a commodity. There's no cost associated. People don't budget that out 'cause they're like, I don't know, like, okay, how would you, like if I came to a company, I'm like, hey, all right, so I'm gonna build you guys a sales funnel, and this funnel has the potential to bring you unlimited leads for forever, and make you unlimited money I'm like, well, how much does that cost? I'm like, well, how much do I wanna charge you for it? They can't go and price shop me. How are you gonna price shop me? Russell Brunson charges $100,000 for a day. How do you price shop that? Go to somebody else, ask GaryVee, what do you cost? And he'll give you his price. He's way different than I am. If you want what I got, I'm the only dude that's got it. So you gotta pay me what I wanna charge you for it. I'm not a commodity. Sydney, if you're a great salesperson, you are not a commodity. Great salespeople are rare, so if you're an amazing salesperson, You walk into any organization and say, "Look, hand me your leads and I just want 20% of everything." You know, eat what I kill. I'm going to take 20% of what I kill. And there's no business on earth that I know of that if you walked in and said, "Look, don't pay me a penny, just give me all your leads or 20% of what I kill," almost all of them will say yes to that. Okay, because you're a rainmaker. So you have no ceiling. Just go kill a whole bunch of stuff and you get your cut, right? Same thing with the person that's making it rain, is bringing the leads in the door. Okay? And so a lot of times you're like, well Russell, I'm the video guy. Russell, I'm whatever. I'm not, I don't know how to make it rain. Like I'm, like right now I'm basically, I'm a technician. Like I'm plugged in this technician thing. I said look, you gotta start studying not how to become a technician. Like you gotta become good at your craft. Okay, I agree with that. Like you gotta become obsessed with it. But you have to become good at understanding how to make money. Okay? The study of making money is the key. Okay? So how do I make money? Well it's understanding like if you're a video person, doing video is a commodity. If I can understand to use video to bring in leads, it changes things. 'Cause now I'm not a commodity, okay? I've got a friend who charges $100,000 to make you a video, plus 10% of any money that video ever makes you. Okay, now technically he's no better than anybody else. In fact, I've got friends who would argue he's a lot worse at video than most people. But he knows how to trick that video and how to turn it into cash and bring in customers. He knows how to use it to make it rain, all right? Now for those of you guys who are in my world, I've got some tools to help you learn how to take whatever technician skill set you have and learn how to make it rain. So I told my friend, I gave him some advice, I said, I'll record you this podcast but you gotta do some things for me first. The first thing you need to do is go back to this podcast, which initially was called Marketing in Your Car. The first 100 episodes there's a really cheesy jingle. Next 200 episodes there's A less cheesy jingle, still a little cheesy, and then recently we transformed it into the Marketing Secrets Podcast, which I really like that name, and the new jingle is freaking amazing. Don't you guys agree? So we've got that one. I said go and listen to every episode. Start episode 1 and go through all of them. And I said what's gonna happen is you're gonna immerse yourself in how to become a rainmaker. I said you're gonna learn a bunch of random crap and none of it's gonna tie together, but it's gonna get your mind immersed immersed in this mindset. If you don't like me or my voice, you can go find somebody else. But find someone who's obsessed with marketing and sales and the stuff that people pay unlimited money for and start immersing yourself. Listening to it all day, every single day so your mind is just wrapped into the concepts. I said with geeking out and going deep in my podcast, your mind's gonna get into it but you're not gonna have a blueprint. You're just gonna have all these thoughts starting to go through your head. It's kind of like all over the place. And there won't be like a path, but it'll be immersion, right? And immersion's the key. Like you gotta get your mindset, like as you, I mean Tony Robbins talks about this a lot. And I'm a big believer in pretty much everything Tony says because he's a giant and he's got stage presence like nobody else and he's amazing and like a billion other reasons, right? But Tony's the man. And he taught me like immersion. If you wanna learn something, don't dabble. Like there's dabblers out there all over the place you dabble, okay? And my guess is that things in your life that you struggle at are things you've dabbled with. And things in life you excel at are things that you immerse yourself in, right? That's just how it works, right? And so if you want to learn how to make it rain, you gotta immerse yourself in just the concepts of people that are making it rain, okay? So good, so good, so good.

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Number 2, I told my friend, I said, there's 2 books you gotta read, and I shipped them out to him. So first book is Expert Secrets. Okay, now in this business, there's There's two sides of this business. There's the art and the science. The art is like how to, like the art really is kinda like the selling and like the messaging and the positioning and all those kind of things. The storytelling and that kind of piece. That's the art. So I said read the Expert Secrets book first 'cause that's the art. And second, read the DotCom Secrets book 'cause that's the science. It's the art and the science. The science to making it rain. And so when you read both those books, you're gonna learn, like there's two different perspectives you'll feel in the book. One's very much like, here's the structure of how, like the science of it. That's the DotCom Secrets book. The science of how this game is played. And then Expert Secrets is the art. Now, what a lot of people think is like, I have to go and master all this, and you don't. Especially if you are someone who would love to be an entrepreneur, but you're, for whatever reason, you're not able to. You wanna be an intrapreneur in a company. You say, okay, I'm gonna go into a company, I'm gonna become an intrapreneur for a company. And then look at that I don't need to know all this stuff, but I gotta understand it all. I gotta understand the art and the science, and then with that I gotta figure out where does my skill set fit into that. Okay, so my friend that's doing video stuff, like, you have a skill set that in the right hands is worth a lot of money. In the wrong hands it's worth $25,000 a year. Okay, you find a company that's growing, you find the right company, the right person to plug into to come and say, look, I wanna make it rain for you. Okay, Brandon Fisher, who started doing video video stuff for us 2 and a half, 3 years ago. He came in and said, look, and I met him and my brother does video stuff for me and we didn't really need another video person but he came into me and was like, hey, I wanna learn what you're doing. I'll just do video stuff for free for you. I'm like, alright. So he started doing video stuff for free and did some amazing stuff and started capturing stories for me. He captured Liz Benny's story of her telling her experience with Inner Circle. Basically, He didn't come to me as a video guy. He came to me as like, I can capture the story that's gonna make your company look a million times better so you can make it rain. And he captured the story of Liz Benny. We took that video, put it on the website, started driving traffic to it. Now Liz Benny video, I couldn't track it today, but that video's probably made me, I don't know, I would say at least $2 million if not more. That video helped me to make it rain. So that video asset to me wasn't worth $25,000 a year, it was worth a heck of a lot more because it helped me to be able to create customers and convert to get money from those customers, right? Okay? But he didn't come to me as I'm gonna be a video guy. He came to me like, let me serve you first. Okay? The best thing about rainmakers is if you're good at what you do, which is why it's important, we talked about earlier, like it's important to get really good at your craft, right? Like that is important. Like become obsessed. Like literally become so obsessed with what you do, you become the best in the world at it, right? Or at least the best best that that person's ever met, right? Like, become obsessed with that. Like, that's important. The second thing is like, is like figuring out how to use your skill to make it rain. Become obsessed with that, that connection piece. Like, that's the missing key, right? Because then you become an entrepreneur, you own a company, and then you come to company and don't come in and like try to negotiate a huge fee for a couple reasons. Number one, you try to negotiate a huge fee, the first thing you're going to do is you're locking yourself in as a technician, okay? Technicians get paid a salary, okay? Understand that. Like, and so as soon as you negotiate in You lock yourself in and then you're there. You come in the other way and say, look, I'm gonna work for free, I'm gonna make it rain. And then I just want a piece of what I bring to you. Okay? You bring it that way and you come in and you help make it rain, then it's completely different. Jay Abraham, one of the greatest marketing strategic minds of all time, his whole thing, he'd come to companies, look, I'm gonna come in, I'll work for free, I just want 20% of the increase. Come to a company, he had 40, 50, 60, $100 million in their company and just took 20% of the increase. That's what rainmakers do. That's what salespeople do. You are creating opportunity. You're creating money for them. You're taking a percentage of what you create. That's the key, you guys. That's the key how to be an entrepreneur inside of an organization and have no limit. Guess who they don't fire in a company? The person that makes it rain. You come to a company and you make it rain, that's it. You write your own paycheck at that point forward. So how do you do that? Do that. Number 1, immerse yourself in this stuff, in the marketing and sales. Immerse yourself. I would recommend do it through the podcast, 'cause that's, I think, I'm obsessed with podcasts. It's the best way to have it ring through your mind all the time. I say start at episode number 1 of my podcast, click play, and go until you're done. And then, a lot of you guys start over. And again, this is not for my own ego, partially, Alright, partially for my ego, but mostly it's for you guys, okay? And again, if for some reason I talk too fast or I'm annoying or whatever, I don't care, plug into somebody. Plug into Grant Cardone or Gary Vaynerchuk or plug into John Lee Dumas, I don't care. Find some Pat Flynn, whoever you resonate with, plug in and go. And don't unplug. Like every single day, like all your free time, your driving, your walking, your bathroom breaks, you should be listening to podcasts, like constantly, okay? That's gonna give you the immersion 'Cause immersion's the only way for you to get the connections of like, whoa, this connects to this, and like you'll start seeing this big picture. Number 2 is then you need a strategy and a blueprint, okay? So for each of you guys, there's 2 books I've written. I've put my heart and my soul, I've read thousands of books, sold like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff to be able to figure out like what actually works, and I put it into a book you can read in like a day. So read the Expert Secrets book, number 1, and then read the DotCom Secrets book. Expert Secrets teaches you teach you the art, dot com secrets teaches you the science. Then you gotta look at what your skill set is and where does that plug into the art and science. You don't have to do everything, but figure out what you are good at. And then what I would recommend doing, this is kind of the next step of it, is like those who've gone through my certified partner program, we certify people to build sales funnels, the ones that are the most successful, the ones that realize that they're not the best at everything, Henry Kaminski, one of my buddies, he was in the inner circle for last year. He talked about when he first came in, he was a graphic designer. He's like, I'm a graphic designer. He's like, I came in and he's like, I kind of come back, he didn't say it this way, but it was like similar. He understood like art and science, okay. He's like, I'm really good at graphic design. I don't know all this other stuff. So he starts studying it and learning it and you realize like, there's pieces pieces to this. Like if you read DotCom Secrets and Expert Secrets, you'll realize there's pieces, right? And you can go and become an expert at all of it, or what he said he did, he's like, I built a Voltron team. And some of you guys, if you're young and you don't know what Voltron is, you can go Google it, or you may remember Power Rangers might be a better one for you guys. Anyway, there's different versions of it, but Voltron was basically, there were like these 5, and same with Power Rangers, same storyline, probably same everything. But there's 5 people, each had their own superpower, right? And they went out there and they were really good, but then like, there'd be some big bad guy that'd always come and they couldn't defeat him individually, so they had to group together and become Voltron, and all 5 pieces came together, and then they'd go and they'd fight, and then they could come and they could win, right? And so Henry said, he's like, I realized I was a good designer, but I'm bad at strategy, so I had to find a strategy person to partner with. So he partnered with a strategy guy, Dave Arsarnault, And he's like, I need somebody who's good at selling. So he partnered with a salesperson, he partnered with 3 or 4 people, and they built this team, this Voltron team, and went out there, and in less than a year, Henry made over $1 million with this little company. Right? 'Cause he understood the art, he understood like, we're rainmakers, and I'm good at this piece of it, but I need a couple people together so we can really make it rain. I need someone who can drive traffic, someone who can do the sales, someone that can do these things, and I'll do the art. Okay, and he did that. So, for you guys, and for my friend, After you understand the art and the science, you've immersed yourself so you're learning all these kind of things, right? Then you buy the Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets book and you read both of those. Now you understand the art and the science of how to make it rain. Now you're looking back, say, okay, now where do I fit in this? What am I passionate about? Am I good at the storytelling part? Am I good at the funnels? Am I good at this? Figure out those pieces and then you can go to companies and look at that and say, look, I'm really good at this piece, I can bring this thing thing to you, okay? Or find a partner, find two or three people, come in and say, look, we can come and do this thing, okay? A good example of this, you guys, and I don't normally share these kind of numbers, but I want to just to kind of help, right? So some of you guys have seen the Harmon Brothers videos. Some of you guys know that we are about to launch our Harmon Brothers video, which I'm really excited for, but they did Squatty Potty, Poo-Pourri, chatbooks, FiberFix, whole bunch of great videos, right? And they make these videos and they're good, right? Really good, they go viral and they're amazing. But if you look at the whole thing, like, well actually let me step back. So I wanted to hire them to do a video for me so I messaged them 2 days after they'd actually messaged me, which was kind of funny. And they had this funnel, the FiberFix funnel, they said the video went viral but then the funnel wasn't converting and they wanted my help. And I was like, funny, I just wanted you I wanted to email you to see if you'd do video for us. And as we got on the phone to kind of talk through it, and I was like, and both of us are rainmakers, right? They look at that, it's like, our videos make it rain. We know what they're worth. And so I was like, well, how much does it cost to create a video? And I was like, I was thinking maybe $50,000, $60,000 or whatever, and with a very straight face, he's like, well, we charge $500,000 up front plus 20% of ad spend. And I was like, buh-huh, what? And he looks at me straight, And he's like, he didn't say this in so many words, but in the words of this episode, he said, you know, we know how to make it rain. So that's what we're worth, and that's what we charge. And, you know, a few months later, I wrote him a check. And now they're gonna make it rain for us, right? And same thing, they came to me, it's the Fiverr fix funnel, they're like, hey, we want you to fill Vic's funnel, how much does it cost? He's like, we can hire someone, and most funnel consultants, $10 grand, but for me it's a quarter million bucks. And he's like, whoa, why are you so expensive? And I was like, well, I know how to make it rain. The Rain. Okay, and so then they did their deal, right? Because it worked, right? And so, and then as I went with the Harmon Brothers and we did the video, it's been the most amazing experience. I can't wait to show you guys the whole behind-the-scenes video. There's some clips on Funnel Hacker TV, you can see little bits of it here and there. But like, it's amazing, like, it's not like two brothers who do this whole thing, right? It's these guys who started the business and then when, their process is really cool, like when we had They hired them and basically said, okay, we're gonna do a writing retreat. And they found 3 amazing writers to write 3 different scripts for us. So we go to this cabin and they have the 3 writers come and each writer reads their script. Each script was like insanely amazing, right? But 3 different comedic scripts. And these guys again are writers that they hired. They're sketch comedy writers. So they each wrote 3 and then they came back and said, okay, which 3 do you like, of the 3 which do you like the best? So we picked the one we liked the best and they said, okay, so all 3 guys, and then we took those 3, this is this cabin, We went back and all three of them went and then they took the best script and they took all the jokes and weaved in all the best jokes and they wrote a new script and came back and showed it to us again. It was even more funny and they went back and forth and back and forth for two days to write the script. Then after we had the script approved, then they went and then they said, "Okay, well for the script to happen, we have to have props." So they hired someone to build stages and they needed videos and they hired video people and they needed this. They hired all these people to make this amazing thing. Last weekend went and filmed it, and then hopefully we're about a little ways away from launching it. But again, with them, it wasn't just them. They had built a Voltron team of people who could go and execute to make it rain. So you have to start understanding that, again, come back to where we started, hierarchy of business. There's the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur's there. They are obsessed with getting the message out about their thing. Not about the thing, but about getting the thing into other people's hands. That's why I love entrepreneurs, because they're tied in this whole marketing thing. Good entrepreneurs are obsessed with the marketing and selling of the thing. They are like the ultimate rainmaker. Number 2 is the technicians who do the thing, which are essential to the business. But again, you've got a cap. Right? And you're a commodity. So understand that there's a cap and you're a commodity. But you're in there. Right? And you're gonna have a good, typically secure financial thing, like all those kind of things, like you get security, you get things like that, but you're not gonna have like unlimited income. And then you got the rainmakers. So for you guys, it's looking, it's understanding what a rainmaker does and what it is and how the process works and figuring out how to take your skill, your superpower, and uncommoditize yourself, make you unique, make yourself rare, make it so people pay you half a million dollars if you make them in a 3-minute video. Is that crazy? Okay? So he pays me a quarter million bucks right now to make him a funnel, okay? For me, not that it takes me that long, I just know what order the pages need to go and what messages need to be on each page. I know how to make it rain. I've been obsessed with this thing for over a decade. Okay, so if you guys, it's like, it's time to become obsessed. Become obsessed in your own company. And if you're the entrepreneur in your company listening to this, okay, become obsessed, okay? You've gotta be the lead rainmaker a rainmaker, okay? Find the technicians, plug in the right people, and like I always say, find A players, not B. A players are 3,200 times more effective than the B players. Find A player technicians, pay them well, 'cause you don't want to go find other technicians. Like, plug in the best technicians you can find, okay? And then go find rainmakers. And if you try to like cap rainmakers, they will leave you. Understand that. So you, as an entrepreneur, like, find rainmakers and give them the ability need to have unlimited ceilings in their income. 'Cause if they do that, again, a rainmaker's just an entrepreneur who, for whatever reason, life circumstances, isn't able to go out on their own and do it, which is totally cool, there's nothing wrong with that. If it wasn't for all the entrepreneurs in my business, like our company is like 99% entrepreneurs. If it wasn't for my entrepreneurs, we would not be where we are today. And I try to like create our businesses in ways that people can grow and have unlimited earning potential. It's like that's the key. And if you guys listening who that's you and maybe you're stuck in a technician role or you want more or you're in this thing where you wanna be an entrepreneur but you can't or whatever, this is where to focus on. Learning how to make it rain. And then building a team around you, finding people, finding other pieces and networking not so much like finding jobs, networking to find people that help you to be able to make it rain. As soon as you have a team, as soon as you personally or your team can do that, you can go to any business on planet Earth and write your own paycheck. And then it comes down to picking the right businesses and that's a whole nother lecture for a whole nother day. But you know, 'cause I've seen some funnel consultants who go in and they'll get paid $10,000 to build a funnel, other guys paid $100,000. The only difference is who they're pitching to. If somebody is— and it's interesting, I was— and I'm not privy to share the details, but the Harmon Brothers campaigns, right? Like, if you look at them, one of them was Purple Mattress, which is a $1,000 mattress. Because every sale makes them $1,000, that's been one of their most successful campaigns. Chatbooks is an amazing— probably the most viral video they had, but each sale doesn't bring in, you the value of each customer is a lot less, so it's harder to pay to bring, it's harder to continue to make that one rank. And so, and the same thing with all you guys, like if the customer or the client that you're working for, if their average customer value is $30, like if you're working for a restaurant, like making $30, it's not good, but if you're working for a company where each customer's worth $25,000, it's a lot easier to justify what you wanna charge people, stuff like that. So, alright, well, it's late. It's almost 1. I gotta be up in like 6 hours to go to the water park. So I'm gonna end today's podcast. I hope that helps you kind of look at how business works and understanding that for you to be successful and make money, you have to understand how to make money. You gotta learn how to make money. Don't just learn at your skill, 'cause if you do that, you'll become a technician, which is fine if that's where you're happy with, but if you really want financial freedom and wealth and no limits and no ceiling, you want to be able to grow, it comes down to studying money and understanding how it works and understanding the marketing and the sales. Getting people in the door and getting their money from them is the most valuable part of any business. I don't care what the hoity-toity doctors tell you, I don't care what all the people in school and colleges, like it's the most dignified, most important role in business. If it wasn't for it, without it, like, business would stop, the economy would stop. And so it's figuring out how to plug in your skill set into that piece of business because that's where the money is made. When you're part of the people making the money, it gives you the ability to have a percentage of that. And yeah, so I hope that helps. So, for my friend who's listening and for everyone else listening, once again, immersion, get the blueprint, Figure out where your unique abilities and unique talents can plug into that blueprint to make it rain for a company. When you do that, you got what you need and a whole bunch more. So, hope that helps you guys. Hope that helps, buddy. I won't say your name 'cause, you know, but appreciate you and hopefully hang out someday again. And everybody else, have a good night. Talk to you soon. Bye, everybody.