Do You Ever Take A Break?

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing in Your Car. Welcome to the Marketing in Your Car podcast where you can increase your traffic, conversions, and sales in just 10 minutes a day. And now, here's your host, Russell Brunson. All right everybody, welcome to today. I hope today has been amazing for you. I had an awesome morning routine. I'm working on trying to perfect my morning routine, make it a consistent part of my day and try to figure out what things I like and things I don't like and a whole bunch of really Fun stuff like that and had a good one today. Had a really fun, woke up early in the morning with Nora about 6:30 and then played with her while I was getting my supplements ready and then she fell asleep and went out into the new wrestling room and worked out and then I got back from there, went and woke up all my kids and went and jumped in the pool and swam and anyway, it was amazing. So, really liking the new morning routine and trying to get it perfected 'cause I might, I may have just bought whatyourmorningroutine.com and I may be making a video here in the near future showing it. So I'm trying to perfect it right now. 'Cause what I have found is that what you do in the morning is kinda what the rest of your day's gonna be like. So how do we perfect that? So I'm excited. Anyway, I had a really cool question this weekend from a friend and a listener and I thought it was something that is probably good that I should touch upon. His question was, Russell, do you ever take a break? Or are you always working? Do you go home for a little bit and then try to sneak back out to go back to the office and things like that. And I thought that was a good question that I wanted to address for a couple reasons. First off, I don't want you guys thinking that all I do is work, even though I do a lot of work. And second off, I want to kind of just address what the purpose of our whole, our whole reason why we got in this business is for. And so that's kind of my game plan for, for today's message. And so the question is, do I ever take a break? And the answer is yes. In fact, I try to take more breaks than I do all-nighters, a lot more of them. You know, I'm a big believer, in fact I spoke this weekend at one of my friend's events and one of the people asked me a question like, Russell, how do you get so much stuff done? And I kinda told him, I said, you know, the way I get a lot of stuff done is probably kinda messed up compared to how the rest of the world gets things done. I talked about when I was in college, a lot of you guys know I really struggled in college, but I remember I had this, I think engineering or some kind of class, and I remember in that class they talked about a concept called JIT production, just-in-time production, where you get everything done just in time for things to be done. I remember when we talked about that, it made sense to me, and I remember thinking about, as a student, I always struggled with like, hey, you're gonna have finals, you know, at the end of the semester, and a lot of my friends who were really good students would be good at, every night they'd study for 20 or 30 minutes, and then by the time the final came, they just knew the information and they would pass the test, and I could never do that, I tried. In fact, that's why I think I hated high school. It's always just like trying to stay like, "What am I supposed to study about?" Like, "Well, just study, so you know all this stuff better." Like, it seems so pointless. Like, why am I— anyway, it drove me crazy. And I remember my first year in college, I went to BYU. And I shouldn't have been in BYU for a lot of reasons. But the main one was I wasn't like an academic smart kid. In fact, I applied for BYU and, and I got a letter back saying, "Sorry Russell, you're not smart enough to attend our university." And I was like, "Oh, that sucks." And then 2 weeks later I was at the high school national finals, or tournament, and I ended up taking 2nd in the country, became an All-American. And when I was there, all these coaches started like, "Hey, we want you to come to ASU, we want you to come here, we want you to come here," all these places. And then I remember that day I saw the BYU coach and he said, "Hey, we want you to come to BYU." And I said, "Why can't I? I applied, I failed." And he laughed and he said, "Don't worry." He's like, "We take care of our athletes." And then the next week I got a letter from BYU saying, "Congratulations, we've reevaluated you." We evaluated your application and you're in. And I ended up going to BYU. Anyway, I was there and school was not a little bit harder, it was a lot harder. Way over my head. And I had to really, really work hard and focus to be able just to pass. Whereas high school I could just do what I needed to do and I would pass. Where this is like, just to get a passing grade I had to work really, really hard. And BYU, they have a testing center. So what happens is final weeks, everything shuts down, you can pick whenever you wanna take your finals. So I'm gonna take my math final Monday, my science final Tuesday, whatever that is. So what I would do is I would schedule my test. Okay, so Monday night at 8 PM I'm taking the math test. And so I'd wake up super early Monday morning and I'd lock myself in the basement. I would read the entire math book in a day so everything was in my head and then I would go and take the test and pass it. And then next day I'd say, okay, today's science. And I'd wake up super early and I'd study for 18 hours, learn everything, read the entire manual again, and then jump in, take the science test and pass. And I would do that through all my tests. And it gave me the ability to like compress, you know, what most people were doing over, 6, 8, 10 weeks, whatever, and get it done in a day and still be able to pass. And I actually got really good grades while I was at BYU. I actually even made, you guys will be proud of me, the honors list. I was on the athletic honors board, which was pretty cool since I never got over a 3.0 in high school. And I think I had a 3.4 at BYU and I was on the board of the smart athletes, smart student athletes, which is still funny to me. Anyway, and I look now at my business and it's very similar. Like, I don't plan things well. Like, we have our certification program coming up in 2 weeks and everyone's like, Hey, what's the plan? What's happening? We need to schedule, we need dates, we need times, all this stuff. And I'm like, do you guys honestly think I've started preparing it yet? Like, that would be foolish of me. If I started preparing now, a couple things would happen. First off, I'd get scope creep. It would keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I would somehow magically fill all of the time it would take for the next 2 weeks and nothing else would get done. And that's what, by the way, is why most of you entrepreneurs are failing in life. It's because you try to plan things out 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks in advance, and because of that you spend so much time doing all this stupid stuff that doesn't matter, you never have success. For me, I say, "Okay, the certification program is this date." I backdate how long I think it's going to take for me to get that done. For me, it's about 2 days of planning and preparation. I know the 2 days prior to the certification program starting, I'm going to start working on it. During that 2 days, I'm going to call my wife and she will know ahead of time, plenty of time, 2 weeks in advance, that I will not be home these 2 nights. I'm going to be pulling all-nighters, whatever it takes to get the stuff done, and she'll be okay with that. This is a lesson for the men. If you call your wife at 6 PM the night of and say, "Hey, hun, I've got to pull an all-nighter tonight," she will resent you and be upset and be angry. You tell her 2 weeks in advance, she's She's cool with it, not a big deal. And so that's what I do. I tell her 2 weeks in advance what's gonna happen, then I get in there and I lock myself down and I don't leave until it's finished. Okay, now most of the time you guys hear from me are during times like that when I'm in crunch time and I'm pulling all-nighters because that's when it's really fun to talk to you and share the stories. And so that's, that's what's happening. But that is not an all-the-time type thing. That is, they're very finite periods of planned crunch time. It's just like me going to college and I'm locking myself in the room and reading the entire exam book so that when I take the exam, I'm prepared. And that's how I kind of work on my life. And so in between those times, I have a lot of things that are happening, right? But I'm very big on deadlines. I know that this is due on this date and then I backdate what I need to get done. And if it's gonna be one of those things where I know it's gonna be a lot of extra time, then I know it's gonna be all-nighters, whatever, I just plan that ahead of time. But most of the time I don't. Most of the time my goal— and I'm not perfect at this, but I'm trying to, I'm getting better at it— is that I try really big to be present wherever I'm at. And so, for example, this week my goal is I'm working, it's about 10:30 right now, I woke up this morning, did my morning routine, hung out with my kids, had some fun, head in the office now at 10:30. I will be leaving the office at 5 o'clock today. On my drive home I'll walk some of my coaching clients, get that done, and when I get to my house I will turn my phones off, I will leave them in the car, and I will be present for my wife and my kids. And that'll be my break. And that night I will come home, We're gonna goof off, we'll have some fun, we'll jump on the trampoline with them, we'll have dinner, we might go on a walk, put the kids to bed, I'll hang out with my wife, we may watch TV, whatever it's gonna be, but I'm present and I'm there for them at that time. And that's my breaks. And the reason why my wife is okay with me saying, "Hey, these 2 days I'm not coming home because I gotta get stuff done," because the other days she knows that I'm there and I'm present and I'm hanging out with them. And I'm trying to make those times as amazing as possible. And so that's kinda how I do it. So yes, I do take breaks as often as possible. In fact, every day I'm trying to take a break from 5 or 6 o'clock at night until midnight. Some of my friends always tease me like, "Russell, you watch, like how in the world do you do all this stuff plus have time to watch all these shows and all this other stuff?" And that's why, is because I know that when it's time to get crap done, I get crap done. And when it's time to have fun and just be present, I make that time and I try to protect it and guard it as much as I can. Again, like I said, I'm not perfect. If you ask my wife, she'll say, "I know Russell sneaks out. He checks his phone sometimes." And I'm not perfect by any stretch. By any stretch, but I'm trying to be and I'm getting better and better at it. And so while you guys hear a lot of the crazy all-nighters and those kind of things, that's not the majority of my time. If it was, I would burn out and I would crash and I would be really, really tired and I wouldn't be able to have a functioning wife and family and kids and everything else. That's really the reason why we got in this business. I tell entrepreneurs all the time that one of the biggest challenges they're gonna have is not not becoming successful. It's gonna be while you become successful, you will become so addicted to the process that a lot of times you will give up the main reason why you got into this. You know, people get in because they want time freedom, more time with their wife, their kids, their family, whatever it is. They become so addicted with it that they give up their wife and their kids and their family and keep doing it. And I've been in that spot in my life before. And in my business before, and I'm trying to make up for those things now and make changes and try not to have that. So I just wanna stress for you guys that, you know, this whole business, this game is fun. It's too much fun sometimes, but it's not the point. And I think that sometimes we think it's the point. I had a friend recently who who was having some marital issues and was struggling, and it was an issue between the business and their spouse. And I just said, look, like, this business is a game. It's stupid. It has no real purpose whatsoever outside of something to entertain us. Like, your family is the only thing that really matters. There's a famous prophet in our church, and he said No success can compensate for failure in the home, David O. McKay. And I'm a big believer in that. In fact, one of my close friends and mentors, David Fry, every time he speaks on stage he says that. He says, before I get started, I want to talk about something important. He says that no success can compensate for failure in the home. And it's true. Business success, this stuff's all stupid, it's a game, it doesn't matter. When we die, it's gone. The only thing that really matters is our relationships, our family, what we did with our spouses, how we treated our kids, and who they— we've helped them to become. And so don't forget that part. Don't get so obsessed with the journey and the money and the joy on the outside that we forget about the reason why we actually got in this business, the reason why we actually do what we're doing. So hope that helps you guys a little bit. If you haven't taken a vacation for a while, schedule one in, block out the time. I was listening to Garrett J. White this morning, the master coach and mentor, friend, and a really cool guy, and The message he keeps sharing over and over again is talking about like, if you want to have it all, you got to schedule things. You got to schedule time for your wife and for your kids. You need to have date night once a week and all these kind of things. And it was just really kind of a refreshing message for me this morning as I was thinking, yes, I'm moving towards that direction of having more fun. In fact, my wife and I had an amazing date last week. And you know, normally we'd have a date, we'd wait 2 or 3 weeks before our next date. And this morning after listening to Garrett, I walked into the house, this is after I got out of the pool with the kids, and I said, "Collette, we got a date tomorrow." She's like, "What is it?" I said, "I'm not gonna tell you, just bring your swimming suit, it's gonna be amazing." And that's the game plan. So once a week, a bunch of other cool stuff. Anyway, appreciate you guys. I'm at the office. Gonna put in a full day and then go home and take a break, be with the kids, be with my wife, 'cause that is why we do what we do. I hope you guys have a great day today, and we'll talk soon.