Building Your Empire: Q&A Session with Russell Brunson

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What's up everybody, it's Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Alright, so a little while ago I did the very first ever Q&A show where I took the questions and answers that are happening on the One Funnel Away Challenge and I posted them here on the podcast episode and the feedback was insane. You guys were so excited to not just hear me having a planned podcast or teaching something but actually like on the fly doing Q&A and going back and forth and having fun with it and I, anyway, it was amazing. I had so much fun and anyway, every week now As you guys know, every Friday I'm doing these Q&A calls with our community. So if you're an active ClickFunnels member, you get these Q&A calls for free. You just gotta log into ClickFunnels and click on the link and go register for my calls. And also Trey Lewellen, he's doing calls every week as well. So you got me and Trey. Trey's teaching you guys e-com, I'm teaching you the expert business and how to use funnels. And anyway, the call's been fun. Like some of the questions you guys have been asking are just unique and fun and different and every time I get done I'm like, man, I want everybody in our community to hear this. I'm gonna start posting more of these Q&As here on the podcast, but they're not all gonna come here, so, and also, like, you're just listening to Q&A. If you want me to answer your question, come on the show. Come hang out, come be part of it. Again, if you're an active ClickFunnels member, you can come in just every Friday, I'm doing Q&A. If you are not an active ClickFunnels member yet, now's about time. I've been talking about this for a decade. It is time to get started. So if you go to onefunnelawaychallenge.com, and you can go register, you basically, for $100, you get access to the One Funnel Away Challenge, and you get 90 days of ClickFunnels for free. Greatest offer we ever put out there. So it's available for you guys, all you gotta do is go to onefunnelaway.com and go listen in. So that said, this is the second week of doing Q&As with the ClickFunnels and the One Funnel Away community. And again, there were so many cool ones that came out this time, hope you enjoy it. You have a chance to listen to a whole bunch of Q&As from me and the community. And again, if you wanna get your question answered next time, make sure to come hang out with us. Go to onefunnelaway.com, go register for $100, you get 90 days ClickFunnels for free, or just log in to your ClickFunnels account. If you're already a member, boom, you got this already. Alright, that said, I hope you guys enjoy this session of Q&As inside the One Funnel Away Challenge. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars 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.

Good morning, good afternoon, everybody.

Great to see you guys, great to be back with you here today.

As many of you know, my name is Dante Torelli. I'm going to be your host and your coach for this challenge. And today we have Lunch with Russell. All right, gang, without further ado, let's bring him out. Put your hands together for me and let's welcome Mr. Russell Brunson. How are we doing today, Russell?

So good. How are you guys all doing today? How are you, Dante?

I am living the dream, man.

Oh, very cool. Well, I'm excited to hang out with you guys. How's OFA going for everybody so far? Going good. You guys are on the right side of history. Everyone else is doing the e-com stuff, which is kind of cool, but the expert stuff I think is way more fun, way better. I don't know, maybe I'm biased, but I love it. What's the plan, Don? Can we just jump into stuff today or—

Yeah, hey, let's do some serious coaching today, Russell. We have tons of questions and let's knock down some roadblocks for people, right? Let's help get them over those mountains. Let's turn mountains to molehills. Here's how this session is gonna go, gang. If you're not familiar, Every single— this is experts— so every single Friday we're going to send an email out 3 hours before this session starts. If you guys go look in your emails, more than likely you'll see that email already sent to you. And in the head, in the subject of that email, it says submit questions here. So just in case you don't know, we send out a question form before every single session so that you guys can ask your questions ahead of time. And that form has done pretty well today. I think we have about 13 questions on that form. So just so everybody knows the layout, we're going to start with the form first, and we're just going to start rapid firing. People have questions, I'm going to read the question, you'll be able to unmute yourself when I call your name, and then we can have a conversation with Russell and talk about the thing. You can go to building and doing the thing. We're going to start with our form. After the form, we might still have some time, and if we do, we're going to hop over to the Q&A. So if you didn't already fill out your form or you didn't see it and it's your first week, perfectly fine. I don't want you to worry. You can always put your questions in the Q&A. But Russell, if you're ready, man, let's hop right into it. Let's go.

Let's have some fun, man. I'm pumped.

All right. Yeah, let's have some fun, baby. Absolutely. Okay, uh, so first question is gonna be from Kara Sue. Kara Sue says, how do you tell the epiphany bridge story when your business is B2B? I have a training program from my companies to provide their entry-level staff. So my story would relate to the staff, but not necessarily the business owner, but they're the ones who I'm pitching to in my marketing. I'm gonna copy this. I'm gonna put this question also in the chat so everybody can see and follow along. And it's also kind of hard to remember questions when Dante just reads them one time, right? So I just put that link in the chat, but go ahead, Russell. Can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Awesome. So the question is, um, the Dream 50 Rich story, the thing's B2B. She's got a story for the customer, or sorry, for the, for the end person, but not the person she's selling for.

Yeah, please.

Okay, that's a good question. So the thing is, like, a lot of times people tell the wrong story. In fact, when we first started teaching the Perfect Webinar and Expert Secrets, I used to tell people to tell their origin story. And when I started, like, watching, like, spot critiquing people's webinars, like, the origin story they would tell is, like, their origin story about their entire life. And that's what people's webinars, right? 20 minutes of like, I was born 1980 in Provo, Utah, and like they're telling this whole story. And I was like, whoa, I'm like, stop. Origin story is not your origin story, it's the origin story of like how you discovered this thing, right? And so the problem is like, if you're speaking to the, the business owner, like the epiphany bridge story you gotta tell them is the one that's, that's related to them. Now sometimes you're like, well, I don't have that epiphany bridge story. Okay, now you have to understand, epiphany bridge stories aren't always your story, right? It can also be somebody else's story. So I started looking like, who are your other clients? Who's somebody who had the same struggle, the same frustration, they were trying to resolve the same problem that the person who's listening to this right now that they're struggling with. And like, that's the epiphany bridge story you got to find, right? And so a couple of things usually happen. Either you got one, you're like, oh yeah, okay, that's easy. I'm going to use so-and-so's story because I worked with them. You know, they were struggling. I did this thing and this is how it all happened. Or if you don't have that person yet, then there's two other ways to do it. One is to go and like develop that story, which is like literally going and finding 2 or 3 people, working for free for them, doing the things so that they have the experience. So now you have a story to go back and tell. Okay. And I did that one. If you read the Dotcom Secrets book, that's how I launched my— I talk about in there, but Drew Canole was like, I didn't have any— I had success stories about my own stuff, but nobody else's yet. And so I was like, I need a story to like— so I found Drew Canole was the person I found. I went to work for him for free. We blew up his business, we did some funnels for them. And then that story became the story I told. I went and worked to find that story, to engineer it. So that we had that story because I didn't have one prior to that. And that's how I filled my inner circle. So don't think that's like, dang, I don't have a story for this. I'm out of luck. It's like, no, go create that story. Go, you know, go find it. Go put the people in place. That's number 2. And then the 3rd option that works really well is trying to find stories, like doing research and finding stories, like other people's stories. They don't always have to be your story. It can be like, for example, one of my stories that I tell when I'm trying to close somebody, I talk about like when there's a price objection about I have to invest, like why invest in this thing? Can't give it to me for free. I have a story that I use about my wrestling coach and my wrestling coach growing up. His name is Mark Schultz. He's Olympic champ, he's UFC fighting champ. And I tell a story about him and how he came to my house and you probably heard me tell the story before, but he came to my house and he knocked on my door and opened the door and like he had this VHS tape And he's like, go get your wallet, Russell. So I went and got my wallet. He took the wallet out, took all my money, put it in my pocket, and then he gave me the tape back. And then he told me, like, you know, I was like, Coach, why are you taking all my money? He's like, because if I just gave you this tape, you would never actually watch it. But now that I've given it to you, you can, you know, you're going to watch it because you've invested, because those who pay pay attention, right? So I tell that story all the time, but that's my story. But the reality is a lot of the people who I teach public speaking to and teach stuff, they use that story as well. They say like, hey, my mentor Russell Brunson, he told me the story. It's so cool. And then they grab my story and they insert it in there. So if you don't have a story yet, you can go look at like, you can look at like Elon Musk. Let's say he did something similar. It's like, oh, you guys, Elon Musk. And like, boom, there's the epiphany bridge story you're plugging in. Could be from some other external thing. You're borrowing somebody else's story, someone else's credibility. So number 1 is you already got a story. Number 2 is you gotta go develop and like create that story. Or number 3, it's like finding somebody else's story that illustrates the same purposes and like using it and plugging it into your epiphany bridge. That's typically the ways that I look at if I'm trying to create something. Is that helpful?

I love that. Yeah. And if you're with us, let me get that name again. Care Sue, if you're with us, feel free to unmute.

Hi there. I'm so sorry I'm late. I had another call that I just jumped off. But thank you so much, Russell. I, you know, I feel like my story completely will resonate with the actual, you know, the people that I would be doing the coaching to. I just, in my mind I'm thinking, so if I'm telling my story about how I was before I discovered personal development, before I started to like really learn and how it fully changed my life, that's what I want the 20-somethings to learn, right? And I feel like telling that story might not necessarily be the pain point for the, for the business owner because I feel like—

So what's the pain point for the business owner?

That, that their employees are, you know, the, the Gen Z, uh, they don't— they come to work whenever, they kind of slack off, they think they're entitled, they're all of those kind of things.

So it's good. So all you got to do is you just got to wrap that part of this, like you're wrapping your story around that. So it's like, hey, business owner, how many of you are sick and tired of your employees being lazy? And it's like, I was actually lazy back in the day until this thing happened. Now imagine And then boom. And then like, so now you're kind of painting that picture for them. Like, oh my gosh, like imagine my employees no longer being lazy. How would that change my life? You know what I mean?

Oh my God, Russell, you just hit it in that one sentence. Thank you so much.

Awesome. Go crush it. I want to go see it. I want to see that when it's done. Let me know.

I will.

I will.

Thank you.

That's awesome. Great to meet you.

So good. Off to a hot start. Okay, let's keep this train moving and grooving, gang. Next, we're going to go with Deb, Deb Kirsten. Deb says, Russell, Russell recommends choosing a hot market. What if the market for your course is not hot yet, but you think it will or could be in the future? Is that still a good option?

Ooh, interesting. Are they on right now?

Uh, Deb, are you with us?

I am.

Yeah, there she is.

What's up, Deb? How you doing?

I'm good.

How are you?

Doing awesome. So can you tell me what market the market is or the— you're thinking about?

Um, yeah, so I actually have like a literacy program for kids. And I've been— I homeschooled my kids, so I've run a live program for like 11 years now. I've been doing it, but I'm trying to get into the online market. Now I know, you know, like when I talk to people about it, everyone's like, that's a great idea, kids need that. But then it's like when I talk to people, they're like, you know, I've got dance class, I've got karate, I've got everything, right? So they don't always have the time or the money to do it right now. I think in the future that, you know, it's going to become more popular, but You talk about, you know, it being like a hot market. So I'm not sure if it is a hot market right now, but you know, like, could I make it a hot market?

Could I?

So that's kind of what I'm asking.

So what I would say is, um, you gotta look at like the, the, uh, how do I explain it? Like the tangential market that it's attached to, right? Cause like, for example, 20 years ago when I was like, sales funnels are cool. There was no market for sales funnels. Nobody knew what it was, right? Like there was no market, but there was a market of people who wanted to make money on the internet. And like, this was the hot market. And I was attaching onto this and being like, here's my spin on how to make money in this market, right? And now 20 years later, like funnels is a big huge market, but it was not 20 years ago. I would do an event, I literally did an event and 2 people showed up. And that was like tons of, you know, like it was, it was not a market. So it's like you had to find the market that is hot. So if you're talking about homeschooling is a homeschooling market.

It's not just for homeschooling too. I'd like to break into school kids as well, but You know, homeschooling is where I've, you know, been for the last 26 years.

And the homeschooling market, I got a lot of friends who actually sell stuff in that market. It's a good market. Like there's, you know, people are investing in courses because they got stuff for their kids. I have a friend who, she used to do these events, they're so cool. She'd do an event, she'd have like a real estate speaker, a stock speaker, an internet, like all these speakers. And then the kids would all, uh, part of their, they had to buy one course to be their curriculum for the next like 6 months. It's like, I spoke at one time, it's like half the audience bought my thing 'cause they had to buy something. It was like the greatest thing in the world. But that market, like they're great at buying and stuff. I was like, that's where I'd probably start with it just because that's a market that already is looking for that. And it's a big market. You can attach onto it. And then from there, as you start cultivating more case studies, then it's easier to start growing that into a bigger thing. But just starting like starting something from scratch, like a market over here is really, really difficult. It's like you have to come, Steve Larson talks about it's like a red ocean and a blue ocean. He's always talking about like, like the— like you want to be a blue ocean, but you're fishing out of the red ocean. So you like attach to the red ocean, you're pulling people out into your blue ocean. You're just a blue ocean by itself, it's hard to get the initial traction, right? You know, are you friends or do you— are you, uh, do you know all the different— the people in the homeschooling market that are selling things?

Um, not—

I, I don't really know in the kind of bigger market. Like, I, I kind of know in my own little community, but I had kind of wanted to— I was kind of like tired of the homeschool market because I was like, I don't know, I've been doing it for so long and I was hoping to get into a different one. But then I don't know, you know, like it's the market I know, it's the market kind of people know me in. So, you know, if it's a good market too, I think maybe I just need to kind of go to the bigger market of it, like get out of my own little community and, you know.

Yeah, I would look at that. There's a huge online community of homeschooling stuff that you can tap into. And again, you're still, you're still developing your own market. You're just fishing out of that market, bring people over. Like people that are known buyers that are known to do this. So don't think like, I have to go to homeschool markets. No, you have to go to homeschool market. You're developing your own thing, but like all of the potential buyers are in the homeschool market. So you're going to go like save those people and bring them into your world so you can do, you know, whatever you want to do with them. You know what I mean?

Right.

And you still, you still get to design and structure and create your market however you want it to be and position however you want it to be. You're just leveraging the known, the known market you can go back into.

Right. Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Yeah, no worries. Good luck on the project.

Thanks.

All right. Thank you for the question. That was fantastic. All right. I'm going to put the next one in the chat ahead of time so we can all read as we go. But this next question is from Karen. Uh, and Karen says, question 1, how do you structure to set up the funnel? For a travel affiliate website, eShop, or a blog, especially so that it counts for reaching the 2 Comma Club. I've seen your funnel templates and I've seen your funnel templates and video from opt-in funnel to e-commerce.

So the question is, structure.

Karen, if you're with us, feel free to unmute. I think, Karen, are you saying like basically you're gonna, you're gonna be an affiliate, you're gonna be passing people on somewhere else to make their money, and they're gonna be make purchases somewhere else outside of the funnel. So how do we structure this so we qualify for 2 Comma Club? Is that about right?

That's about right. So basically, I don't have my own product yet, but I want to have like print-on-demand stuff later on. But for now, it's just affiliate links. So basically, I create and curate a selection with those specific links, affiliate links. And I know that Russell, you always say like it's one hook, it's one product and so on. And I love that simplicity, but I see like I have like complex big pictures and I don't really know how to structure it. And now that you've also, we have now also the possibility of the hubs. I, I, I'm a bit lost there. So if you can help me, um, point me in the right direction. So set it up.

Of all the things you're selling, which— what thing is selling the most?

I, I'm only just starting. Okay. So I haven't, um, got traction, traffic yet.

Yeah. And guess what? I got good news and bad news for you.

Yeah.

The bad news is it's going to be hard if you're doing 50 different products. So even though you're like, I'm different because I'm doing affiliate marketing, it's still the same thing. We still come out to one product, one traffic source, one hook, because otherwise you're— it's almost impossible to be profitable because now you're driving traffic to 50, 60 different things and there's no process or no orders or anything. So my question, let's step back a little bit. So what is the end result that your affiliate site is going to give somebody? Is it helping them to find travel? Is it helping them to like— what's the end result that they're going to get?

So let's say it's travel, it's a travel niche. So basically they could save time and not need to scroll a bazillion offers. I do the selection for them so they can basically come to my landing page where I have only like, say for instance, 5 on that one page, and every of those 5 options is clickable.

So it's like a prebuilt vacation for them, or what exactly is it?

Yeah. Or at the moment it's basically just a very unique hotel, say, which you can't find just like that. And then I thought like later on, on the, on the side margin of the, on the very same page, I could also maybe put on print on demand, a t-shirt, say for instance. But then again, we are in, um, getting complex.

Yeah, you're getting complex fast. We're making money on it. So I come back to like, okay, we gotta find one thing to sell and we gotta sell that a lot before we pick up number two. So is the thing, the thing you want to sell is you want to sell like a dream vacation package, or is it, or is it, is it like, uh, you, you've got a bunch of unique hotels they can't find anywhere else that you want to share? And then you're like, what's—

that's more That's more like it.

Okay. So if that was the case, and I would look at, um, again, like your hook, pretend I'm just guessing, but it could be anything, but like, like I would make a hook. It's like, okay. Um, okay. Sorry. Here's an example. So there's a guy here in Boise, Idaho, where I live and he's a realtor and he's kind of struggled. He was selling houses all over the place. And then what he did is he created an email newsletter and it was like, um, it was like Boise's, uh, Boise's Luxury Homes for Sale newsletter. So, someone signed up and they signed up for free for this newsletter. And every week, he sends an email out that's like, "Here's all the most expensive homes in Boise that are for sale right now." And so, it's fun for me because every week I get an email, I see all like the most expensive houses. But anyway, after being on his list for like 2 or 3 years, I messaged him, I interviewed him, this is a decade ago, but I was like, "Tell me what you're doing." He's like, "Well, I was a realtor just selling little houses." And he's like, "I realized that I make more commission on bigger houses. So he's like, I started this newsletter, it's free. He's like, I got 10,000 people in Boise on this newsletter. He's like, what's cool is that every week all the affluent people who get the newsletter, like they're looking for expensive houses. He's like, so I just like, I sell all those houses. So I'm getting the highest commission because I have 10,000 people who are looking for expensive houses. He's like, and then anyone who has expensive houses on my list and whether they sell it, they message me because I'm the guy with expensive houses. So he's like, all the top expensive listings in Boise, I'm the buyer and the seller now because I have this newsletter. So I'm gonna say for you, like I would create a new, like an email newsletter that's like unique destination locations you can't find on blah, blah, you know, something like that. And making this value add that you have that nobody else can have that's exciting. Then your landing page is simple. It's just joining your email newsletter. They come in and then they, you know, and then they join your list and now you can start sending out emails once a week, once a day, however you want to do it. Like with the things you're curating. Oh, here's 5 cool things. Here's 5 cool places in Scotland. Here's cool places over here in Arizona. Here's cool places, you know, whatever that is, because, because you're also kind of a weird spot with travel where at least for me, like I decide where I want to travel first and then I try to find the spot, right? I think if it's like, here's 5 places to travel, someone's coming there. Like, I don't go, I don't go looking like, where should I travel today? I don't know if people do. Maybe they do, but I'm more like, like I know that my wife and I were going to Greece then this month. So like we knew we were going to Greece and then we're looking for stuff, right? But if you just gave me like, here's 5 cool places, one's in Italy, one's here, like I wouldn't have bought through you. But if you're like, you know, this month, this week we're talking about Greece and here's the coolest places I found in Greece or something like in the newsletter, then it's like, oh, I'm going to Greece, I wanna go to Greece. Like now it's, there's a destination tied to that thing where I'm excited about versus like, she gave me 5 locations, I'm not going to those 5 places. So I just, I leave, there's no way for you to get money. You know what I mean?

I was thinking the other way around because usually people set it up from like for specific destinations. And I'm, maybe I'm the only one on earth, but I sometimes like to just see the beautiful hotel and I don't really mind so much where it is.

Let's do a pop quiz on this, on the call right now. There's two options for everyone who's listening. If you are somebody who picks a destination and then looks for a hotel, raise your hand right now. If you're someone who just looks for a hotel and then you're going to go find that destination later, raise your hand. Okay. So, we're like probably 90/10. So, for me, I want to go in the markets where the most people are because I want to make money easy. There's always an easy way and a hard way. So, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a whole segment of the market. I don't know the travel world enough to know. So, I could be, I definitely could be wrong. I'm just trying to give you guys, trying to give you like, like the simplest path. Right now I feel like you're going a really complicated path. It's like, oh, this is going to be really, really hard versus like, let's do a simple one where it's like give you the best chance of success with least amount of pre-effort, right? Otherwise you're going to spend the next 6 months building out pages and t-shirts, dropshipping and affiliate links and all this kind of stuff versus like, I want you to make money this week. Like, how do we get you to make money this week? Like, you got to become an expert, right? You're curating the cool spots and locations and then like, let's get you on podcasts. Telling me why. I found 10 new places. Let me talk about it. Like, come join my email newsletter. Like doing something where you can start building a following and stuff quickly without waiting. And then from there you start building an email newsletter. Then you test all sorts of stuff. You can try this and try— you send an email every day, you can try something different. And the stuff that works, you double down on. Stuff doesn't work, you stop doing. But I'm afraid—

Basically what you're saying is you would focus on just use the ClickFunnels for opt-in. And then send newsletter. You wouldn't put like the newsletter kind of thing also on a landing page. Is that what you're saying?

Like after you send the emails or post it, you can post it in the blog post on ClickFunnels.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. There's a lot of things you can do. I just don't want you to spend 6 months trying to build something versus like, let's test the idea quickly and see if it makes money before you go and invest 6 months building something out. You know what I mean?

Like, on that note, Corinne, your second question is, how do I use flex containers versus the other? And just to piggyback off what Russell's saying here, which is a million percent right as always, like, flex containers are really cool and really powerful, but if I had to guess, 99.9%, I would guess you don't need a flex container right now to build what you need to build. We do not need it. It's amazing, it's powerful, it's a great tool. Let's go learn it after. Just focus on building that one thing, right? No distractions, no nonsense. All you need are rows and you'll be perfectly fine.

You see the headline, an image, an opt-in box, and then so start getting people join your newsletter and see what happens.

Yeah, I've done that. I just didn't understand what the flex is, so I, I thought I, I used the occasion to, to put that question. Thank you so much.

Good news for you, I don't know what it is either. I know my designers love it. I'm like, every time I see them, I don't understand how this is. So I'm sure it's cool.

I don't know.

It's not necessary for making money.

It's cool. It's powerful. I will teach you that in the future, I promise. But for now, we really don't need it. And really, I want you to just dial in on what Russell said there. Focus on the one thing. A print-on-demand shirt, we can send them an email after they book. How many times have we seen this ring true, Russell? The more decisions you give a customer, the lower the conversions go. Because we don't want them having to— I want to show them the one true thing that they need right now. We work on that thing. Go sell them a trip, and then after that, we can have an email sequence that sells them a print-on-demand shirt, and then we can position that as, hey, get a travel shirt. Do you want a great travel shirt that you can be comfortable in and you can feel cool in? Then we can sell them a shirt down the line. But here we're focused on just the one thing.

The confused mind always says no. We're seeing some more than one option. Your conversions drop to a fraction. You give them 3 options, it's even more. And yeah.

Awesome. Thank you.

There's a method to the madness, I promise.

Awesome. Thank you for the question, Corinne. That was great. I'm sure tons of other people have the same exact question.

My question is, how many of you guys are overcomplicating this, not sticking to the simple structure? I did a webinar last week on simple funnels, like simple. Simple. I always get in these debates with people who like use some of our competitor software and like, yeah, but we can do like all this stuff. And I was like, cool, how much money did you make last week? They're like, well, I'm still working out on my 45,000 email sequence. And I'm like, dude, simple sales funnels. Let's get you making money. Then you can complex things later. But like, even like my business has done over $1 billion in sales so far. My funnels are simple, simple sales funnels, simple sales funnels. Like it's, it's the way everything else is complex. Everything else is because, you know, like in the past we hired designers who get paid based on how many pages they create on a blog. So they want you to have 500,000 different things because that's how they get paid, right? I want you guys making money. Like that's how I get paid. Do you make money? Then you make some money, you're going to join my inner circle, you join my high-end coaching. Like that's why I get paid. So I'm going to make you guys money. Then you can complex things later, then join inner circle. And then first thing, when people join inner circle, they have to make $1 million to be in inner circle. And that was kind of like, Russell, check it out, I've got 6 businesses. I'm like, cool. Step number 1, you're going to pick one and you're going to kill the other 5 babies. And I was like, what? What are you talking about? Like, you join Inner Circle because you want to get to $10 million a year. The way you're going to do that is by killing 5 of your babies and focusing on one. And they're like, what? It always happens. Like simplicity, simplicity, every single level. And then they get to the next, next level. Inner Circle is called Atlas. Atlas, they make $10 million to get in there. And they always come in like, Russell, I got 3 things I'm doing. And I'm like, cool, which one are you keeping? Because we're killing 2 of your babies. And they're like, what are you talking about? Like, like every level, you guys just understand, it's like simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. Right. So if you're starting complex, which most people do, it's like simplicity. That's how we make money. My entire goal for you guys is just get you making money so you can give me more. So that's, that's my motivation. So let's focus on making money so you can give me more and then I'll make you more money. Give me more like that. Then we all win. But if you get so caught up in the complexity of it, then nobody's going to win. I'm not going to win. So I want to make sure I'm coaching you on what actually is going to work so you can give me more money in the future. There's my selfish motivations.

So love that. That, love that. All right, let's keep this going, gang. Who is having fun? Next one on our list is from, whoops, sorry, let me get this set up. It's from Luke, Luke Mattis. And Luke says, let's put it back in the chat so we can all read together. I have an email list of 900 people and I'm not seeing $900 a month. I'm also really busy and don't have much time. I have products, live trainings, and mentorship to offer, but I'm time constrained. What do you suggest I design so that I can see the $1 email standard and do it on autopilot so that every time doesn't matter and I can serve my audience better.

Hmm, okay. Is he on right now?

Luke, are you with us? We'll give him a couple more minutes, seconds here. He might be scrambling.

We can still address it anyway because I think this is something good for, for a lot of people.

So agreed.

Um, okay, so he's got email, that's 900 people. He's not making $100 a month. He's really busy, doesn't have much time. So that's kind of the, that's kind of the question, right? So my question is, what are you busy with? Because like, like this is the business you're creating. These are people you're serving. So if you're the way you make $900 per name, per email, you're serving those people. So it's like if you don't have time to serve those people, that's why you're not making money on it. That's my question is like coming back to like, okay, you know, and even the second question is like, How to do an autopilot? How to like— he's looking for ways to get out of the actual work of doing this. It's like, look, you want to serve an audience, you got to show up. Like, I am extremely busy. You guys have no idea. Like, I've got 400 employees. I've got a wife. I've got 5 kids. It's summer right now. My kids are going crazy. My wife, poor her. Like, she's got to deal with this. Like, all sorts of stuff. I'm going to Mexico for a week to run an event. I did a webinar yet. Like, I guarantee I'm more busy than anybody. And guess what I'm doing right now with you guys? I'm here serving. I show up for an hour hanging out with you guys. Right. And why am I doing this? Number one, I care. I care a lot. I want you guys to be successful. Um, but over time, if I keep showing up and keep showing up and keep showing up, guess what happens? You guys, first off, more likely have success, which means you're more likely to invest in things in the future, which means like, that's how you make money. That's how you make a dollar per name, per name on your email list. It's not by automating stuff and trying to hide from it. It's like showing up for your people. Right? Like that's the, that's the difference. I've been doing this. I've been in this game now for 20, 22 years, like 2 decades I've been doing this. And in the time I've been doing this, I have come and seen hundreds of gurus who've come and gone, come and gone, come and gone. And like the ones who don't show up for the people are the ones who don't last long. Right? Like, that's it. It's like, why do we do fun? And it's tough for me because I'm introvert too. Like, so I like, like I extreme anxiety before I click go. You guys don't. I show up a minute late. So I'm like, okay, here we go. Like, it's, it's, I hate that. That's about me. Like, I wish that I wasn't, but I do. I get nervous. Like I was nervous hanging out, like to come on to you guys, but like I still show up because like I care about you guys. I want to be helpful. And like, And this is me making deposits in the, in the piggy bank of my, of my audience, my people, right? I remember it's funny because I'm seeing your guys' faces. I love this too. Like, we didn't used to be able to see people's faces. Now with Zoom, it's so much cooler. But like, it's cool because I'm seeing your faces. Like, I guarantee that there's gonna be a segment of you guys who implement stuff, and I'm going to see you guys. Like, we do calls like this in, in different programs, Inner Circle and 2CCX. It's like, I'll see a section of guys who are, who are progressing and moving. I remember Dominic, actually, last name, he was an OFA way back in the day. I've never seen him all the time. He's like every call. He's like, just like you guys excited. He showed up every OFA call. So I'd see him every week. I gave him his space. He was so excited. He asked questions. And then eventually he had more success and then the business started blowing up. Then he invested in our Two Comma Club X coaching program and every single month he was on Two Comma Club X coaches for like 2 years. He was on there and they got his first Two Comma Club Awards, second Two Comma Club Awards, third. Then he ascended from there to Inner Circle and he starts up Inner Circle meetings like, Like, that's, that's how you make a dollar per name or $5 or $10. Like, it's like, it's, you're coming in, you're showing up. So I would say if the mindset is like, I don't have time to automate this, I'm not making any money, why not? It's like, that's why, because you don't have time. You don't care about the people. You're trying to automate it. Like, you got to show up. It doesn't be a lot. Like, I'm spending an hour a week with you guys, right? Like, like, it's not insane amounts of time, but it is taking the time. So like, for me, like, if I had 900 people right now and I'm not making any money on them, it's like, okay, how do I serve these people? I got to find out what they want. I gotta find out how to help them, like what the struggles are. And that'd be step number 1. Like, how do I jump in and start, um, start answering questions, being part of it? Um, and that'd be where my focus point would be, right? Like part of this, uh, you know, one of my other evil motivations to doing this is it's really cool. I get to hear you guys' questions, which gives me ideas for future books or webinars or trainings or at Funnel Hacking Live, what to talk about. Like, like all those things come from your audience, right? And so if you're not making money with your audience yet, you got to spend more time with your audience. That's what I would say. And if you're like, I don't have time for that, then it's like, then it's probably not the right business for you then. That's fine. There's different seasons in people's lives. And if it's not the right season, that's totally cool. But if you want something to grow, you got to nurture it. You got to plant, you plant the seed, you nurture it, you spend time with it. And yeah, there's times you can automate things, but it's not the very beginning. The very beginning, you got to put in the time and the energy effort to serve your people. And then everything else good will come on the backside of that. So, it's the law of the harvest, right? Planting seeds and then over time, it grows.

It is.

And you got to have faith as you do it, right?

When you first start watering that seed, nothing pops up. You don't see anything pop out of the ground, but you go there the next day and you water that seed and you wait and then you see a little pop and now, oh, we're so excited to go. Everybody encounters this, gang. And if you're listening and you're encountering it, you're like, "Man, this is really great. I didn't know I was even going through that." Everybody has this happen. I've had it happen in my life just like Russell has and everybody else. One thing I— this is like my own thing that I tell myself, but I have a concept, big fish by 12, because we have the time. I'm going to get a little— I'm going to get a little Dante version of Garrett White here because I get kind of passionate about this. We have the time. Don't— you can't look me in the eyes and tell me you don't have the time. Russell Brunson makes time for things, right? Russell Brunson, as busy as he is, we all have time, but we all decide how we use that time, right? So, if you find yourself— Big fish by 12. How many things can I knock out by 12 o'clock? I know you might have a consultation, you might have a business meeting, and that might be at 4, and you can't change that, right? So we can't do that by 12. But how many of the little mundane, minute tasks can we knock out by 12 o'clock, right? Get these things done and get us freed up. Oh man, Dante, I really don't have the time. I sat down and I honestly looked at my schedule, and I really do not have time. We do. We're going to wake up an hour early. We're going to wake up an hour early. We're going to change things up from how we're doing it. We're no longer going to just sit for the last hour of our night. We're not going to watch YouTube. We're not going to watch entertainment. We have the time. How do you choose to use it? And if you truly find yourself with zero time left, make more. Wake up an hour early, right? Everybody can do those things. It was an awesome question. Really great. Let's keep it going, gang. This is amazing. Let's hop over to Catherine and Catherine's question. Which we will put in the chat right now so we can all follow along. Whoops. Let's get that to everyone. Catherine's question is, should I build a separate brand and subsequent website and social media just for the sponsorship work courses and resource of everything else that I do? Catherine, are you with us? Um, salutations. Hey, Captain.

Yeah. So missing context to this is the question's already mildly been answered by Russell's passionate kill all the babies.

So I mean that very nicely, though. Yes.

I'm a dirt bike coach, so I got my start coaching. And then in order to become a coach, I had to gain sponsorships to pay for it because I quit my job to do that. And then people ask me, Catherine, how do you live it? So I started coaching people on motorsports marketing and sponsorship. So now I have two, two things happening. And the clinics that I do have a full team behind them versus the sponsorship stuff is just me. So right now I have the sponsorship stuff under all the clinic stuff because it's like some students that attend the clinics are interested in sponsorship, even though some aren't. So I was just trying to figure out if I should break them apart into two separate brands or like put one under my name instead of under the team name.

I don't know. So right now is it based— is it like, is it a personality-based business with you right now or is it a, is it a brand, like a company-based thing?

Leaky Mushroom Moto Ranch is the brand. Um, yeah.

Are you also the brand though or like—

Kinda. So it started with just me and now it's kind of integrated. So I have my own personal brand called Captain Hurley and then the rest of the team has their own brand. Called Splat Moto, and we both have our own separate identities under the Leaky Mushroom. And then I have a separate, separate brand called Don't Say Sponsorship. So it's like the— because we're both athletes, so we both race, so we have to have personal brand. And then because we do coaching, we do that coaching under the Leaky Mushroom brand. And then my sponsorship stuff is all under Don't Say Sponsorship.

Gotcha. Which business makes you more money right now?

Um, whichever one I focus on at the time.

By the way, this is like— if it makes you feel any better, I'm as bad as all the rest of us. So I literally— we just killed like 6 businesses in the last year myself. I'm like, I gotta take my own advice. So we all have this problem, I get it. Um, and I, I had, um, I remember telling my inner circle after I did the first time I talked to like kill the babies, and people were like all like kind of offended, and I was I talked about, I was like, I remember when I had a business doing $3 million a year and I got capped at $3 million a year. So I was like, I bet you that if I create a second business, I'll have 2 $3 million businesses. So I created a second one. And sure enough, this one got points making $1, $2, $3 million. But this was making less and less. And the end of the year, it's like I made $3 million. I'm like, huh, twice as much work, same amount of money. So I was like, okay, I'm not an idiot. I need more businesses. So next year I launched 12. And so I had 12 businesses and like all of them like were like, uh, and the end of the year we did the accounting and I made $3 million. And I was like, something is wrong. And so for me, it was like, it's because I wasn't like, it's like compounding interest, like compounding attention, right? Like everything has to fuel the next thing. And so it's like when you're splitting, it's like, that's the problem. So for me, it was like when I put it, when all my folks are in ClickFunnels, they knew everything was compounding. And there's things inside ClickFunnels, right? We have ClickFunnels, we have Funnel Hacking Live, we've got like, there's all these other pieces, but it's all based on one thing, right? So someone buys this and they're gonna buy this, they're gonna buy this, but it wasn't like, there's this business and there's like separate things, you know? And so that's what you got to kind of think. There's like that because as far as like, like a personal— like nowadays people connect more with personal brands than businesses. Like almost like if I was you, I'd be like, okay, you're the brand, right? Like that's the thing. And like, that's the thing you got to focus on to build up. And then from there it's like there's the coaching stuff, but like, does the coaching lead to the sponsorships or is it completely separate? That'd be the question. And it's like, you know, how do you make it where it's like everything's focused on one thing. Like for me, everything's focused on funnels. It's ClickFunnels, it's Funnel Hacking Live, it's, you know, funnel scripts. It's fun. Like everything's in this one, this one vein. And every time I introduce something that's like tangential, I start focusing. Then yeah, that's when the whole like starts happening.

Okay, cool.

Now, like, now I will give you one other caveat. Um, the people I know who are good at— because there are people who argue this, but what they've they found is they have to have different operating teams. So, and this comes back to like how much money and people, like, and I don't know any of those details, but if you're able to have like a different operating— I always try to do something. I always tried in the past, or like I had one team doing 12 things and that's when like nothing would work. It's the people I know who have had success is because they have a different operating team for each one. So like there's a person that's operating and running this person operating that, like, for example, with me, like the things I have that aren't ClickFunnels related. So it's like, I've got Dan Kennedy's business I bought. But there's a whole team and an operator, everything. It gets running independently of me, whether I do anything or not. Right. I can, I can add stuff to it. Like I can like promote it or Russell can talk about Dan Kennedy and it'll grow, but just without me, it functions and it lives and survives on its own. Same thing with Secrets to Success. These are kind of my side businesses, but they're separate. I can apply energy to them and they grow. But if I don't apply energy, they're still growing independently, but it takes separate teams. It's when, it's when my same team's trying to do this and they're jumping to this and they're jumping and they're jumping. That's when, that's when the whole like, juggling things starts happening. So that's what I look at. Like, if you do, like, if you're passionate, you do want to do it, only way I would do that is if you can, if you've got the resources to do that. If not, I'd probably pause something, blow up the thing you have, 10x that, and then if you're still passionate about it in 3 years from now when you've made 10 times more here, then take the revenues, build the team, and then, and then, you know, have it run like that.

Okay. Thank you, Russell. Thank you.

Like, sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but maybe it's something you need to do. I don't know. Hopefully.

Anyway, we may get a shirt.

Russell made me kill my baby.

Like, oh, sorry.

I gotta think of a better analogy for that because it's really— I don't even know. But yeah, you know what I mean. Hopefully. I don't know.

I love it. People aren't going to forget that, and that's what we need, right? When they go in and they're in the moment, they're in the heat, and they're going to hear Russell say the thing. That's perfect.

The problem is this entrepreneur's like This is like our superpower and the thing that we're the worst. Like for everything we have in life, there's always a double-edged sword. The thing is your superpower is also like your kryptonite at the same time, right? Like, and so for us, like we're entrepreneurs. It's like we have this idea and we birthed it. We love it. It's our little baby. It's so cute. We love it. And then we have another one, another one. Soon we got like all these babies and we love them all. And I'm the worst at this. Like I have these things that I love. They're just like, I create them and I love them. Like, I don't care if it makes money. I love this thing. I'm going to give it, I'm going to give like 4 hours a night. I'm going to quit sleeping to focus on this thing. Like, because we love it, but it's like sometimes they're drowning us. We have to remember like they're not, they're not actual people, you know, and we can put them on the shelf. And like, so I remember when I started doing this, I wouldn't cancel anything because when I canceled them, it was so such a, it was like losing a part of me because like this is an idea that I birthed, I loved. And so what I started doing is I started, actually I created a whole Trello board for this and it was called, it's called like the shiny penny or shiny object or something. So all these ideas that were done or partially done, that I was pausing. I didn't say I was killing. I was like, I'm pausing, putting over here, and I'm gonna come back to you later. So I put it over there that way. Like, I didn't feel like I lost this thing. Like, I'm going back to this, I'm not gonna focus on it, I'm gonna come back later. And then I kept stacking these things over here. And it's funny, you come back like 2 years later, you look at it, you're like, whoa, that idea was dumb. That was like— it was just funny because like in the moment they're so good, and then later you're like, huh, that was like definitely a big distraction. So, um, and then sometimes you go back, you're like, actually, this now makes perfect sense because now this fits over here. Now it's like You know, all those kind of things. So anyway, amazing, amazing. So good, so good, so good.

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Next is going to be from Ezra. And Ezra says, let me get this in the chat so we can all read together. Okay, Ezra says, what are some examples of measurements Russell uses to determine the viability of business opportunities? You want to talk about that before we go forward anymore, Russell?

So what measurements?

Okay. Um, yeah, yeah, basically how do we find the good ones and know which one's a dud? Yeah.

Um, this is a great question. So, um, it depends. Different parts of my career, it's looked differently. Um, the biggest thing I look for is, um, a lot of times what people do is they try to start with like the idea or the product or the thing. For me, the problem with that is like you spend all this time building the thing and then you go and you try to find traffic to apply to the thing. And that's where a lot of times it falls apart, right? I can't find traffic profitably or whatever. So for me, the way I start initially is I try to find the audience first, try to find like if I was to build this business where like if it was done today, how would I turn traffic on instantly? Like where can I find that, right? I remember A couple years ago, man, when was it? It was two election cycles ago. So if you remember, like, this is when like the whole prepper market went crazy where everyone was like survivalists and all that kind of stuff. It was, I can't remember when it was. Anyway, whenever that was, it was going crazy. And it was, that market blew up. There was people with huge blogs, huge email newsletters. Like there was like 200 email newsletters you could rent that all had like a million plus people on them. And so like, there's this huge audience. So like I didn't ever create like an offer in that market, but I was like, like this is the market I could go into because it's a hot market. They'll email, like I know exactly if I had an offer today, I would like, I go there and I could like buy ads, this person's list, that person, like it would be super easy to blow it up, right? It was very simple. Same thing when we, when I created my neuropathy supplement, this is pre-ClickFunnels, we created this neuropathy supplement and I didn't even know what at the time I did not know what neuropathy was. We hired a doctor to formulate something. All I knew is I knew exactly where to find neuropathy traffic. That's it. I knew exactly here's the traffic source. So they have an offer that's based on neuropathy. I can flip a switch and traffic's coming. So we built the whole supplement, turn the traffic on, and boom. So I think the biggest thing for me is like, do I know where the traffic source is at? Like right now we're working on a couple offers. They're ClickFunnels-related offers, but they're— anyway, you guys will see them soon. They're kind of keeping them secret right now, but I'm building these specifically. They're not gonna be like, you're not gonna see Russell Brunson's face on all kinds of stuff because I know a certain type of offer and I know exactly where to get the traffic. And I can get 1,000 ClickFunnels signups a day from the traffic source if I had this kind of offer. So like Found traffic source, create an offer to match traffic source, right? So that's the biggest thing for me. So if I was like, a lot of people ask me like, what market should I get into? I don't know what market to get into. It's like, well, go find the market first, right? And sometimes we think about the market like internet, like the online market, but sometimes make it simpler. Like I live in Boise, Idaho, and every Saturday downtown there's the farmer's market. So they take like 3 blocks of Boise and they wall off the streets and all these people come to the farmer's market and they all have different booths, right? There's someone selling corn, someone selling ice cream, someone selling soap and kombucha and like all these different things, right? All these things. It's like that is a marketplace, right? So if I go to the marketplace and first I'm going to look around like, oh my gosh, there's all these people coming here. Like the market, there's people that are here. I'm looking around like, okay, there's a booth selling this and selling this and this. Like if I want to go into the marketplace, like here's the existing traffic source. What am I going to create? Like if I had my own booth, what would I sell here? What do I think people want? Well, it's like, okay, I'm looking around and there's like, there's all these different things like, okay, what am I going to create that's going to be something that these people actually want? So that's like how I would do it if I was in a local business, right? The same thing online. It's like I got to find the market. So if you're interested in health, I look like, where's the biohacking market? Like, oh my gosh, this is a huge market. There's like 50 podcasts about biohacking, tons of email newsletters, tons of Facebook groups. Like all these people talking about biohacking. It's a known existing marketplace. I can go in that marketplace and see who are all the gurus, who are all the people that have booths, like what are they all selling? And I'm coming in saying, okay, what do I have that's unique that I can bring to that marketplace and I can blow it up? I'm not going and creating something on my own. Like, how do I get traffic to this now? How am I gonna find traffic? Right? That's the harder part. So for right now, I'd be, the question I'd be asking if I wanna make sure I'm gonna have a business with the best likelihood of success, for me it's like I gotta find where the market's at first and then look at what the people are already buying. And I'm creating something that's my version that's gonna go into that marketplace of existing audiences that are already there. So that's kind of how I look at it. Opportunities when I'm first jumping into them.

It's beautiful. I learned this from you a really long time, Russell, but I think a lot of people, this may be their first time hearing it. Go find traffic first, right? I just, I've been coaching for a long time for Russell, and I've seen it time and time and time again. Like Russell said, you have an amazing idea, this thing hits your brain, you're like, oh man, this is an awesome idea, I can turn this into a product and I can go help people do the thing. And they'll build the funnel, they'll write the copy, they'll design everything, they'll come up with the color scheme. They'll come up with everything before looking at their traffic source. And then they come to find out, oh, the traffic source is very minimal, or, oh, there's a huge traffic source, but now my funnel is very much so not congruent with that. We build for the traffic. That is a—

by the way, do you notice, I think it was, was it Deb talking about homeschooling? Like, that's why when she asked me a question, I was like, homeschooling market, like, there's this market. And the first—

my—

and then someone else had just asked, uh, where do you find the different traffic categories? So what I would do if I was like, okay, homeschooling is the marketplace, that's downtown Boise, walled off. There's a whole bunch of people there already. I know it's there. I'm going to go set up my shop there. The first thing I would do is I would go grab my phone, I'd open up iTunes podcast app, I would scroll through and try to find how many podcasts are there about homeschooling, right? And so I look at that and there's probably 10, 20, 30. So I find all those podcasts and I write them down. So there's, there's existing traffic. Then I would go to Facebook and I'd click on search and you can search for groups. I'd say homeschooling groups. I'd see how many groups. There's probably 100 Facebook homeschooling groups. But on Facebook, it shows you how many people. Like this one's got 20,000 people. This one's got 50,000. This one's got— so I look at that. Then I would go to Amazon. I'd start searching homeschooling books and see who are all the authors who wrote a book on homeschooling or some version of that. So here's all the authors. Then I would go and I'd find those authors on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, on LinkedIn, wherever. I'd go follow those people because like, oh my gosh, this person wrote a book on homeschooling and they got 300,000 followers on Instagram. I'd go follow that person. Right? It's like, this is how I'm finding the marketplace. I'm looking for the people that are like, who are the players in this marketplace? Who are the people who already have the traffic, who are already making the money? And so I'm finding all those people, connecting them all together. It's like, okay, look at this. Like, like I know where on Facebook, everyone homeschooling or they're on Facebook, everyone on Instagram. Uh, here's all the email lists I found. Here's the authors, here's the podcasts. Now I've got the known traffic. So now I'm gonna go listen to the podcasts. I'm gonna go get into the Facebook groups and join them. I'm gonna follow the Instagram people. And I'm just going to watch like what's happening as I'm trying to decide my product's going to be, how I'm going to position it, like what makes mine unique. I'm just going to start seeing what everybody else is doing. And also it's like, oh, this is cool. Like so-and-so's homeschooling, but they're teaching this. And so-and-so's doing homeschooling, they're doing this. Like I see all these different things. I start seeing like in this little ecosystem, where do I fit in, right? If I'm going to go buy a shop in downtown Boise at the, at the marketplace, if there's like 5 chiropractors, I'm not going to set up a booth as another chiropractor. There's 5 dudes doing chiropractor. Like, and if I am a chiropractor, I'm going to think, how can I position this differently? Well, I'm a, I'm a chiropractic acupuncturist who does massages while you— I don't know, I got to have a different— I position myself differently so I don't look like all the rest of them. That's what fun was, right? I'm positioning the thing I'm selling differently so I don't like— it's not 5 chiropractors. Because if there's 5 chiropractors in a row and someone walks by in the marketplace, like, like $50 adjustment, $50 adjustment, $50 adjustment. What's this person doing? Like they're doing adjustments with holistic stuff. Plus they're different, they're unique, right? Boom, there's your unique offer, there's your hook, there's something that's different, right? And that's your funnel. So, but for you to really create that and understand it, like it's very helpful to jump into the marketplace and see what's actually happening, what's already being sold and see like, you know, from there you start to get ideas. And then when your product is done, now it's easy. Now you come back to these podcasters and you're like, hey, 30 podcast people that run homeschooling podcasts, you know, I've listened to the last 10 episodes and like you had so-and-so on and talked about this and this, this. I have something unique that I do. I do this. Can I come on your podcast and talk about it? And they're like, that is unique. Yes, please come on. Right? Boom. Now you're in that podcast and the next podcast, next podcast, you're in the Facebook group. I find the owner of the Facebook group. Hey, this is really cool. Can I do a live web class for all your, for all the followers in your Facebook group? I got this really cool thing that I do that's unique. Nobody else does. Like, oh sure. Boom, in a Facebook group. Right. And then it's just like, that's the game that we play. And so I hope that was helpful. Um, just maybe a little different way to look at business, but, um, but yeah, when you start looking at it that way, it's like, oh, now I know the marketplace. I know the audience. Now I can start creating the offers that are going to get me the most likelihood of getting in front of these audiences because I'm unique, because I'm different. Again, if you think about it from the marketplace, like downtown Boise, maybe that helps. It makes it more simple in your mind as well.

And Russell, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what you do every single day when you want to break into a new marketplace. You don't go back to Boise State University and learn about a new industry. You just go find the people that are currently succeeding in the industry and watch them.

Is that right? 100%.

That's the game.

People are like, what do you want? Like, you're on social media, Russell. Why are you on social media? Are you wasting your time? Like, I'm doing research. I'm finding new audiences, new gurus, new, like, I'm just constantly using this as a research tool to find new audiences. Because like, you find one, like, you find one person, like, just to put some perspective, when I launched the DotCom Secrets book, I messaged like 200 or 300 podcasters. I sent them a copy of my book, like everything.. And none of them responded except for one guy. His name is John Lee Dumas. Uh, he runs Entrepreneur on Fire. He messaged back, this book's amazing. He's like, can I promote it for you? I'm like, yes, you can. And he had me on the podcast, his email list. He by himself sold over 1,000 copies of my book, which was crazy. But from that, they bought the book, they bought the upsells, they signed up for coaching, they bought ClickFunnels. Like it was, I mean, I would say conservatively it was at least $1 million in revenue directly to my bottom line. Cuz one person said yes. Right. So it's like, is it worth my time to like, research on Instagram, try to find people and build a relationship with them. Yeah, one yes, a million dollars. Like, that's great. What if we got two yeses this week? Like, you know, like, it becomes, it becomes a really fun game.

If you guys are on the fence, or if you guys are like, man, I'm still having a hard time positioning my thing for my people, that's my challenge for you. Take a week, take this next week, cut out all the fluff and the nonsense. No more entertainment. If you're on YouTube, it's only because you're researching your niche watching different video styles and looking at comments and seeing what people are saying. Go do that for a whole week. Obsess over that industry, obsess over that thing, and you will find the inspiration.

You—

it might just be one video, it might be one snippet, it might be one sentence somebody says. You're like, ooh, that was the thing. And now your brain starts going, and then you can go build that thing. Amazing. This is so cool. Okay, uh, Russell, really quick, there was a second part. You cool if we go over that? Yeah. His second part of the question is, how much revenue a business opportunity needs to be able to generate for him to move forward? And Russell's been doing this for a really long time, so I think I'd like to position this as if we're just starting out, right? If we don't own a multimillion-dollar company, if we're not Russell Brunson as is today.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Mine's different, like, and mine's pretty simple in my mind, like, If I'm going to create something, I need to make sure that during the launch it makes at least $1 million. And then I want continuity built into it where it's going to add at least $100 grand a month to continuity from the launch for me to be excited to like, okay, now we're going to drive more energy into it. So that's, that's my metric for you guys. It's different, right? Like, I think, again, I'm a big believer in like residual income. I know the OFA Challenge, we're not talking too much about that yet because we're trying to trying to, you know, everything's, everything's baby steps. My lead with like create a membership site and a continuity program, people get overwhelmed because it's a lot, right? So the simple one, like OFA focus is like creating a course, creating VSL, launching, like getting something out there to test it. But the goal is over time is like figure out how do you get continuity built in things, which continuity is just recurring income, right? So having something where you get paid every single month. I spent the first decade in my business just selling one-time courses, which was great. Made really good money doing it. But if I didn't show up and sell a course, then we didn't make any money, right? And we launched ClickFunnels. The first time I got my taste of like, oh, someone signs up for it, they pay every single month. This is great, right? So when I bought like Dan Kennedy's company, I bought it because he had a newsletter recurring business. When I launched the Secrets of Success brand, it's because there was a membership site, like the recurring, right? So for me, it's like, how do I create something where I can do an initial launch and I get money for doing the work and the effort, but then it puts people into some kind of membership site? And then for you, it's just kind of figuring out like, hey, what would this membership site need to make, to make me, you know, to be awesome? Some of you guys are like, man, if I make $5,000 a month, I could quit my job. It'd be amazing. Like, that would be a number. Then it's like, hey, could I realistically get to the point where it's making $5,000 a month where I can quit my other job, make this full-time? If so, like, that would be the number. Or maybe it's $10,000 a month. Like, whatever that number is where it's like, this is where I could go full-time, where I could go pro in this business, is if I had this much recurring revenue coming in, like that's what I'll be looking at. So how do I launch something? And then from there it pushes people in recurring and then that becomes now my, my retirement plan, like the money that's coming in every single month for the work and effort I'm doing. So those are the things I'm looking at.

Absolute gold. All right, let's hop into the next one. I'm going to put it in the chat for all of us right now. And I love seeing you guys in the chat. You keep communicating. This is amazing. This question is from Himanshu. Himanshu says, I'm doing a 30-day challenge which you, I'm doing a 30-day challenge which you posted on YouTube. Any tips or other challenges I should do?

Oh, very cool. So, if you guys don't know, this week on YouTube, I launched a video. So, I read Dave Goggins' book which is like 30 days or sorry, it was Jesse Itzler's book, 30 Days with a SEAL, where he literally hired David Goggins to live with him for a month and then David Goggins just beat him up for a month. It was a really good book, by the way. If you want a fun read, it's so good. So then I did a YouTube video like, if you were to live with Russell for 30 days, what would it look like? And so if you go to YouTube to my channel and it's the most recent video we just posted, so it's on there, you can see like, here'd be my 30-day plan. So that plan was pretty in-depth. I think like I went step by step, like I would like, and I even give a PDF you can download. It's just like, here's what I do every single day for 30 days. But yeah, I would just, I would go download that or go watch that video. As the core. But the reality is like, it's pretty simple. Like, I'm a, I'm a big Napoleon Hill fan, right? It's always like step number 1 is figuring out your definite purpose. Like, what are you doing and why and by when? Like, very specific. Like, 30 days, I want to accomplish blah. I want to get 6-pack abs in 30 days. Cool. We can do it. You just got to pick a thing that's like, that's tangible, that's doable. And then from there, it's all reverse engineering backwards. Like, okay, what are the steps to be able to do that? The reason that most people don't have success is because they don't have a definite purpose. They just are like, I want to make more money. Well, what does that mean? You make it, you find a dollar on the street, you made more money. Congratulations, you hit your goal, right? It doesn't help me saying like, I need to make $10,000 by the end of this month. Um, there's a specific goal, the deadline. Now we, now we have something we can talk about. Cool. How are we gonna do that? Let's reverse engineer it. $10,000 by the end of the month. Um, you've got 3 weeks of the month to do $10,000. Like, okay, we've got a couple ways to do it. We can sell 1,000 copies of a $10 product. We can sell 100 copies of a $100 product or 10 copies. My math might be wrong. 10 copies of a $1,000 product. Like me, it's like, oh, 10 copies of a $1,000 product is probably gonna be the easiest of all these different things. So I create a $1,000 product. So step 1, you create a $1,000 product. But before that, I need an audience.

Okay.

How am I gonna get the audience? Step 1, I'm gonna go find the marketplace. I'm gonna go do what Russell said a few minutes ago. Find every podcast, every YouTube video, everything, da da da da. And find those people and find out where's the audience. Okay. That's step number 1. Number 2, like if I want these people to promote for me in the next 3 weeks, I need to get to know them. So I send messages to all these different people on the platform, see if I can build a relationship with anybody. And hopefully one person responds back. One person responds back and they're like, I'd probably try to do some co-op with them. Like, hey, I got this really cool thing I can create. Let's, let's do a collab. We'll split 50/50. It's a $1,000 product we're going to create. You teach half, I teach half. We'll split the money 50/50 and let's do the big thing to your audience for it. And like, I'd be trying to reverse engineer like that, like figure out a plan, put it, put it in process, and then we just start running towards as fast as we can and see if we could execute on it. So that's the biggest thing. I think the biggest problem most people have while they're not successful is cuz they don't have a definite specific goal with a timeline. They're just kind of like, I wanna make more money. I wanna lose weight. Cool. You wanna lose weight? How much? I don't know. I just wanna, I wanna, I wanna feel better. What does that look like? Like, there's gotta be a tangible, like I feel better now. Like if there's not a tangible, like you'll never know if you get there. Right. And so like, that's again, you watch the YouTube videos, kind of like step, like day number 1, we would just spend the whole day figuring out like, what is your definite purpose? What are you trying to accomplish? By when? And from there we can reverse engineer. It's the reason why in ClickFunnels, why we created the Two Comma Club Award. People were coming in and they were building funnels, but they had no goal. There was like no thing. And this is when I was like, when you gain $1 million, you get your Two Comma Club Award. Suddenly people are like, that's my goal. By next year's Funnel Hacking Live, I want a Two Comma Club Award. It's like it became a definite purpose for them. And then holy cow, what happened was insane. Like, first year we did it, 79 people hit 2 Comma Club. Next year was like 3— or 250. Next year was like 300. It was like, it's grown every year since then because there's a tangible goal. They want to get on stage to get the award, and like, they all pursue it and they run towards it. So I hope that helps.

Absolutely, that was gold. Uh, do you have time for one more? We have a great question here.

Yep, we got one more.

Cool. Okay, let me put this in the chat for all of us. I love this question. And I want to say congratulations to Justin for doing the thing. Justin says, I left my job as an administrator and was told I was committing career suicide. How can I tell that story in a way to help parents see that success for their teen isn't always what they think?

Ooh, that's awesome. So career. So if this was me, I would start playing with career versus calling. Like, that's what I do. Like, I committed career suicide so I could pursue my calling. Like, having that be the transition. Because yeah, you hear career suicide, like, people's hearts drop. Like, oh, because we're in such a mindset, probably everywhere, but definitely in America. Like, you got to go to school, get a degree so you can have a good career, so you'd be safe. Like, you want to be safe, right? It's like, oh, you gave that up. So there's gonna be the fear of that. Be like, play off that fear. Like, I committed career suicide so I could pursue my calling, so I could change the world, so I could be like, so I could have the energy and excitement and be on fire once again, like that whole, that whole concept. But if you think about any— so this is a copywriting principle, um, good copy, and this is copywriting, storytelling, anything, um, the best storytellers, the best copywriters, uh, they master contrast. So light and dark, smooth and rough, happy, sad, like contrast is what sells things, right? So what gets people engaged in the story. So you got really good contrast here with like career suicide versus calling. Like, that's like— there's such good contrast between these kind of things. And so I think there's a really cool way to tell that story in a way that, that will get attention because you have the career suicide, but then gets people like the thing they need to move to pursue because the contrast there is really exciting and helping. Yeah, helping parents be okay with their kids going after their calling instead of their career. It's a big deal. The careers we had back in the '80s, nowadays people want a career, they want a calling. Absolutely.

That was gold. That's fun. All right. Well, man, Russell, we are at 1 o'clock.

Thank you so much. This is great, you guys. We should do this every week. How many of you guys want to do this every single week? I really enjoyed this. You guys got some value from it? Awesome, awesome. All right. Thanks, everybody. Have fun today with Dante.

Thanks, man. See you, Russell.

Thank you.