Russell Unplugged: The Secrets To Unstoppable Productivity

What's going on, my friends? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I am excited for this episode. This is one that was really, really special to me, and I've fought going back and forth, like, do I share this with everybody? Is it not? Is it more private? Is it more personal? At a recent Inner Circle meeting, we were planning on doing some late night session and trying to plan, you know, map it out what I was gonna do, and I remember Annie Grace, most of you guys know Annie in our community, she runs This Naked Mind, she helps people overcome alcohol addiction. She's awesome. And she asked me actually, she's like, I would love to actually interview you on stage about how you get so much stuff done. She's like, I'm trying to figure out how in the world you accomplish so much. And she's like, can I do that? And I was like, I don't actually, I don't know how to explain like how I get so much stuff done. Like I don't even know how to explain it. She's like, exactly, that's why you need me to come up there and interview and pull these things out. And I was kind of like, I went back and forth. I'm like, I don't know if we should do this or not. And finally decided to do it. And so one of the nights at our inner circle meeting, we did a late night session and I went on stage and she had a really fun chance to ask me all these questions. And it was really cool what came out of it. It was really powerful. Those who were in the room got such good feedback. Everyone was like, this is huge. I think a lot of it was like, the entrepreneurs who were like me were like, oh my gosh, like, I'm not weird. And other people are, who worked entrepreneurs like, oh, now I know how to actually work with my crazy person that, you know, on my team who is insane all the time. Anyway, I think that, I hope you enjoy it. I'm excited to re-listen to it when the podcast goes live, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Hopefully it gives you some insights on how I get some of my stuff done, gives you some ideas on how you can get more stuff done, and again, if you are the crazy entrepreneur, hopefully it makes you feel more heard and seen, and if you are someone who serves an entrepreneur, you can see, um, that maybe they're not as weird as you may think, or maybe we're way more weird than everybody thinks. Who knows? Anyway, with that said, I hope you guys enjoy this episode. If you do, please reach out to me and Annie and whoever else and let us know that you liked it, and if you want us to keep dropping more really cool stuff like this. All right, thanks so much, and we'll talk to you soon. 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 is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale scale of business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I'm on the hot seat tonight.

This is my living room, so we're just going to pretend you're not here. Yes, yes, I've had my way. This is the living room. So over the last, I guess, 7 years, I've become good friends with Russell, and Russell, Eileen, and I talk a lot, and we have kind of this like front row seat to how much he is doing. And I keep thinking like, I don't understand. And I wanna just go up to him and be like, is it flesh? Is it bionic? Is it robotic? I can't understand. And then I had a theory that maybe James's protein powder wasn't really cake batter, maybe it was actually some other substances, and those were being intravenously fed. And I've had all of these questions, and I keep saying, Russell, if you are my friend, you have to tell me how you get How do you get so much done? And in this room, it's GCD, get crap done, it's not GSD. All right? And so I was like, if you're my friend, you have to tell me. And Russell just says, I don't know. I don't know. And I was like, there's got to be a better answer. So I am taking a massive risk tonight, and I'm pretty nervous, because I'm going to challenge myself to try and find out. So I'm going to be the investigative reporter, and I have a lot of questions, and I've been watching him, and I'm going to try to unpack for all of us, How many of you would like to know how he does this? Say yes. How cool would that be if we could all kind of walk out of here, if we could walk out of here with like 1/10 of the productivity that Russell brings into every day? How many of you, that would change your life? Say yes. I mean, it would be amazing. So before we got on stage, I was like, well, I mean, I know of a lot of stuff you've been doing, but I think it would be really cool to write it all down on the board. And Russell's like, oh, well, you don't know very much of what I'm doing.

I haven't shared most of it.

He's like, there's a lot of things that I'm doing that you don't know anything about. I was like, really? Okay. So we did.

And real quick, each one of these is a separate project that we are doing actively right now since last Atlas meeting, or last Inner Circle meeting.

So this is since last meeting. Okay. And if you had to assign a revenue number to the average project on this list, each one has a big blue bullet. What would you assign a revenue number?

A minimum of $1 million to start the project. So that's kind of the baseline. Will this add an extra million dollars to the bottom line or not?

Just the 2 comma club projects on this list. You guys ready for this? All right, give it a hand. Give the list a hand. You guys ready for this? I know it's the evening. What is even happening right now?

I think I have a problem.

These are not small things. You know what this one says? I'm writing a new book called Secrets of Success. You know what this one says? Oh, I just did a whole new onboarding flow for all of ClickFunnels, right? You know what this one says? I don't know, I'm just doing a whole e-com funnel partnership and JV thing to take all of the Treloin and stuff into e-com, right? I did a Linchpin curated event, I did a category curated event, I did the Atlas meeting. It's unbelievable to me. Unbelievable. And all the while, he also bought a movie theater. Did anybody know that Russell bought a movie theater?

By this time next year, this meeting will hopefully be in the movie theater. It's insane.

All while being canceled. Give it up for Russell. All while being canceled.

I'm going to walk you guys through all these ideas because they're all so cool. We spend 3 or 4 hours.

Anyway, maybe if it goes really wrong, here's what we're working on. If we can't get anything. All right, so my first question is really important. How do you relax?

That's a great question. You— essentially, I think about like my growing up. I was I went to school and I really struggled in school, so that was painful and stuff. And then I'd go to wrestling practice, which was not easy. It was like— any wrestlers in the room? Wrestling practice is not easy. It is the toughest thing you'll ever do. And that's how I relaxed. It was like my stress release. It was the thing that got me to survive. But it wasn't easy. It was the grind that was the relaxing thing. So for me, this isn't the part that stresses me out. It's the other stuff that's harder. You know what I mean?

It's the unstructured Saturday. Yeah. Nothing to do.

Way harder.

Be present and—

So hard, you're like, what do I do now? Like, we just got home from a cruise with our family, which was so much fun. We're sitting on the cruise ship, I'm just like, that's stressful. Like, I don't know what to do with my hands. You know, like, my brain, I'm like, pick an idea, just think about this for now. You're like, whoa, and it gets cool, you know, but like, yeah, so there's that, but also, this might be a better answer. So for me, it's like, I feel like a lot of what I do, and probably what you guys do as well, is like, we're entertaining people. So like, for example, Funnel Hacking Live, like 4 days of killing yourself, you're so tired, and when it's done, the only thing The last thing I wanna do is go to a movie and have someone else entertain me. A lot of times, we're dead tired, everyone's tired, I'm like, "Let's watch a movie." And they're like, "What? It's like midnight." I'm like, "I need people to entertain me now." So I am a big, when I do get to the end of something, I try to do something where someone else is entertaining me. I can sit there like, yeah.

[Speaker] Yeah, I love that. And one thing you said to me was that actually this is the thing that gives you energy. So energy's interesting 'cause energy becomes infinite. If the thing you're doing gives you energy, and actually burnout only happens when the thing you're doing is draining your energy. And so how did you switch, or did you ever have to switch, from feeling like you have to do stuff? One of the things I'm so struck by by you is that I don't think there's any have-tos up here. It's all get-tos. And so do you have a filter that you only do stuff that you are excited about and you want to do? And is that conscious or unconscious?

I think it's part of it, 'cause I do know the times where it's like, And then we have, we all have these, there's these projects you have to do that like, they're so much harder and so much more painful. And so I try to wrap those around a lot of stuff I do want to do. So a lot of times I'll do like, let's say there's 3 things I have to do today and there's one that's like, I would rather die than do this. I'll do the first one first so I get the energy momentum happening. So it's like, okay, fun stuff's happening. Then I'm like, okay, it's done. And I'll go try to get that other thing done. But I have like the care at the end knowing that as soon as I get this done, then I gotta go do that other thing, which is back to the exciting part. And so I'll structure projects or things in my head that I gotta do. Wrapped around that. 'Cause if I start with the worst thing, then I don't have enough energy to ever get the thing done, and then I'm sitting there for 4 hours just like— But if I'm like, get myself into momentum initially with like, what's the fun? Like, so if I look at the projects right now, like, the one that I'm probably most excited for of all these is, which is this insanely cool project we're working on. It should be rolling out hopefully this month. And I won't tell you much about it, but it's like this new software product that's like, it's so cool. And so, what'll happen a lot of times is the guy, my partner's working on it right now, like in the mornings, he'll send me some videos of what he did. I have a coder that works all night long, so he's coding all night, sends me the things. So I'll walk in in the morning, I'll see the videos, I'm like, "Oh, this is amazing!" And I'll spend time going back and forth, just dumping all the stuff on it, and then he's all excited, I'm all excited, and I'm like, "Okay, now I gotta go do one of these." And I'll go pick something that I may not like as much, and I'll try to get it done in, like, okay, my goal is to get this done from 9 till 11. By 11 o'clock, if I can get this done, then I can go back and I can re-message. We can talk about the thing and how it's gonna, you know, or the next project that's fun. And so, I try to make that, and make it finite, 'cause if I'm like, I gotta get this project done that I don't wanna do, If I don't have a timeline, it'll bleed forever because I'll just stall so long that it never gets done. So if I'm like, if I'm up from 9 until 11, I got 2 hours, I go and I can try to get it done as fast as I can and get out of pain so then I can get back to the fun ones.

So basically it's the exact opposite of Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog, right? Which is great because we were thinking—

That frog's depressing. I don't want to eat it.

Nobody wants to eat the frog, which is so interesting because we're thinking about— I was thinking like, Ross was like, well, what if What if I can't tell anybody how productive I am? What if— and I'm like, we're trying to understand you. We're not trying to understand a system or a process, or we're trying to understand you. And there's something so important in that because I think what Russell just told us is that he literally runs on a fuel source that is enthusiasm and is fun and is joy. And if you think about that, like there's actually measurements done where higher emotions vibrate higher, which means they have more energy. So like those emotions like joy and gratitude and enthusiasm, like they literally like have more energy. So you just, because you're running on that fuel source, you have more energy.

Yeah.

How many of you are running on a fuel source like excitement and emotion in your business? Woo! How many of you feel like that is a goal for you? Like you want to make that switch? You want to make that switch? That's amazing. Of those of you who are running on that fuel source, are you making a lot of money? Yes, there's a lot of thumbs up. And I think it's like literally directly correlated. And sometimes we think it has to be so hard. And I think one of the most fun things for me is thinking, oh, to be next to somebody who's so enthusiastic and so passionate. And so I feel like that's secret number one. It's like you've got to be running on the fuel that creates more fuel, right?

One thought on that too that's interesting is, Just vibration, like that concept. And I'm like, I'm not a woo-woo guy, so like, I remember people talking about vibration and people's vibes, and I thought that was the dumbest thing ever. But then I started like actually seeing it in action. And someone told me, I don't know if this is true or not, actually it is true, because I literally bought a set of tuning forks last week and we tried it. So they told me this is true, and I proved it. If you take two tuning forks that are different levels, and you whack this one here, you whack this one here, they're two different sounds. You can hear each sound separately by your ears. Then you put them together for like 30 seconds, and you put them here, and it's the exact same sound. So like, they'll take the higher frequency, lower frequency, and it goes together. And that's how vibrations work with tuning forks. So we actually made reels about it. You'll see it here in the next week or so. So I bought tuning forks to prove the model. But what's interesting is I noticed that with myself and other people. And so like, I remember actually Dave Woodward and I had this conversation 4 or 5 years ago where we come into the office, and typically you come in the office Monday morning, everyone's at a vibe where it's just like weekend's over, everyone's kind of here. And so if I came in, I was like, hey guys, how's it going? That was like the entire office for the rest of that day was that way. And so I started noticing if I came in like up here, like I'd bang my tuning fork and it was like this high level when I came in, then what happens is there's this weird tug of war and you can physically feel it. Especially I do this with my kids now. I can feel the tug of war with my kids. My kids wake in the morning, especially my teenagers, like, hmm, how's it going, buddy?

Hmm.

You know, and I'm like trying to come up here and it's this tug of war where they're trying to like get my vibe to match theirs. I'm trying to get there and it's like this, ah. But you see in the office, I come in and it's like if I come in this vibe right here, within 2 or 3 minutes everyone else comes up and then the entire production of everyone is better. And so I told Dave about that. So then when Dave was here, like every time he'd come in the office, he's like, ah, and it was like this level. And so we'd always do that. I remember days I'd be sitting in my car as I'd pull up, just like stressed out or depressed or whatever the thing is. I'm like, if I walk in like this, everyone's gonna drop down and nothing will be done today as a whole. So it's like, okay, change the vibration, get it up here. And then come in really high. And I actually forgot about that for a long time until probably a month or so ago because I was going through a lot of low-vibe things in my life that were pulling me down. And I started noticing like just the energy around me was horrible. And I forgot about it until I found an old magazine from 1913 that had an article about vibration. Anyway, because I'm weird. And it talked about that. And I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot. And so for the next week, I consciously made an effort to do that. And the office shifted. Our morning meetings with all of our, all the partners in ClickFunnels, and I noticed that I was coming in just like, I was, and so I started shifting that, so I'd come in like this, as high as possible, and what's crazy is like by the time we do a 5-minute call every day, by the 5-minute call everyone's like energized, and what's crazy is then they go and they do their breakout meetings with their teams, but now they're entering that breakout at this level, and it starts bleeding down to the entire company, entire infrastructure based on like, if I'm willing to come in with this high level of vibration, then everything else moves faster, And if I don't, everything slows down to a halt. It's really crazy.

Well, okay, it's not woo-woo. It's proven with EMRIs. There's an electromagnetic resonance to our emotional energy. And actually, your emotional energy is 70%. So we think it's like how much we sleep or how much we eat. It's not. It's what we feel. And so it's contagious. Like literally contagious. So you're taking and you're pouring on the infinite fuel source. If you think of a little kid, right? Little kids can go forever and ever and ever. Like there's no end to it because their work is play. Their work is joy. It's just the funnest thing for them. There's no end to it. And so you're taking that and then you're giving it to the people below you. And how many of you come here for some of that Russell energy? Right? Like we're in the room for some of that energy. We pay a lot of money for some of that energy. It's like being in his proximity. We're like, oh my gosh. How many of you feel that at Funnel Hacking Live like times 100? Yes? So it's like why we keep coming because we just, it's so, it's not woo-woo. It's like the truest thing. And I think it's a huge reason you get so much done. Yeah.

Anyway, interesting. There you go.

Who knew? Okay, we're done. We're done. All right, awesome. So when you are thinking about something new that you want to do and you get super psyched about it and you're so stoked, what is your specifically How do you communicate that to your team, and then when do you hand it off?

Cool. So initially, I don't communicate to my team. 'Cause if I come in too fast, I'm like, "Hey guys, here's the next project, blah blah blah," I get all excited. In their mind, they're like, "Oh my gosh, you're gonna give me another project?" And they're stressed out, and they're anxiety, so I don't initially pitch my entire team on an idea. This actually comes back, so when I was in college, and I was first starting this business, and it was just me, I would have an idea, but I knew that like to accomplish an idea and get it done, there were a lot of steps, right? Like for me, it was like I need to create a logo, and then from the logo gives me energy, and I gotta buy domain, or buy domain name to create a logo, and then like I gotta— I was doing a lot of programming projects, I have to hire a programmer to program it, and then I gotta hire a designer to make the design, I gotta write the video. There's all these different pieces, right? And all of them take different amounts of time. And so I started looking at like when I have an idea, like what are the things that take the most amount of time? And I start doing those. So if I have, like for example, which is, you guys, it's a ClickFunnels tool, you guys are gonna freak out about when it's done. It's insane. But we had the idea for that, and so I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell Todd, I didn't tell Brent, nobody knew about it at all, other than me and this one person who was working on it. And so, and I knew because the thing that takes the longest is the programming. Programming takes the longest. And so, I wasn't sharing with anybody, I was just like, hey, here's the programming, and we're gonna start. And so he started programming, started working on it, and that was like the second most, things that take the most amount of time is the animation. So I want to make an explainer video. And so the explainer video animation I know is going to take about 6 weeks. And so the next thing I did is I wrote a script, sent it to the animator guy, pitched him on it. I was like, "Okay, here's the script. Start storyboarding it and start getting it together." So he's working on that, putting the whole storyboard together, starting the animation process. Because those two things are the biggest pieces. And now what's happening is that these things are getting done in the silo without anyone knowing about it. And it gets to a certain spot now where now it's like something cool I can show. And then I go, I'm like, "Hey guys, I'm working on this thing called It's really cool. They're like, "What's that?" And I show them the video. And all of a sudden, their energy level's like— they're not like, "Oh crap, we gotta do this work." They're like, "Holy crap, that's amazing!" I'm like, "Here's the script I wrote." They're like, "Oh, I see the vision!" Here's the thing, and all of a sudden, now everyone's got energy, and everyone's on board, and then now it can catapult. And this came from back in the day, when I was doing these projects, is I didn't have a lot of money, but I had a lot of ideas. And so I would go to— does anyone here remember ScriptLance.com? A couple old school people. It used to be called ScriptLance, and then there was one called RentACoder, and then there was— Odesk, which became Upwork. Anyway, it was just a programming site. So I would have an idea sitting in class, and I would just post it. Like, I'd open ScriptLance, and I'm like, "Hey, I'm trying to build a software program. It is da da da da." I'd list a bunch of stuff out, and I'd submit the project. And within like 30 seconds, I'd have people from all around the world bidding on this project. And they're all bidding on it, and I'd just watch all the people coming through. And then what would happen is, I had no idea who was going to be good, or who was going to be bad, but the bids were usually like, "I'll do it for $50. I'll do it for $20." I'd hire like 3 different people to do the project, 'cause I didn't know who was gonna be the best, which was gonna be fastest, so 3 people did the project. But then I was doing like, I would probably do 3 or 4 of those a day, just getting people starting on stuff. And I'd get them starting on these projects, 'cause I have no idea if they're gonna have wings or not, and so I'm just kind of like starting just to see if they go anywhere, if they die, or what happens. And then from that, the best stuff like rises to the top. So that's kind of the first part of it. And the second piece of it is, Do you guys know what a Gantt chart is? Is this like a thing most people know about? I didn't know about this until like a year or two ago, but in my head I'm like, I know that, again, like, the programs take this long, video take this long, so I'm doing those pieces, and then the next part, next part. And so what most people do when they're trying to build something is most people think like a singular line, like they're doing one project. And so they're doing like, I got the first step, and the second step, and the third step, and by the time it's done, they have the project, and either it works or it doesn't work. But for me, it's like, I have that, but I'm doing 20 of them at a time. Because I have no idea which one's going to be good or going to be bad, which one's like, the program doesn't work, or the idea doesn't pan out, or I get 2 steps in and I'm like, this is actually stupid and we're going to kill it. So I'm doing like 10 at a time. I'm starting with the big things first, and then what will happen is, eventually, some of these projects will get close to the finish line, and then I'm like, oh, this turned into a good idea, and then we'll grab it and start running with it. That's why there's so many projects here you guys never heard of, my team hasn't heard of half of them, because they don't even know about them. I'm just doing these things. I have people trying projects. I'm working on different things to see which ones come to fruition where it's like, "Oh, this is going to be something amazing." And somewhere along the line, that's when it's like, "Okay, now this is something we're actually going to execute on and finish, and then I can bring it out." But I'm working on multiple things simultaneously. We had one business we were doing a couple years ago. I was a partner in it, and that was the biggest problem I had is that they did everything so singular that half the team was sitting around waiting for their time. So they're sitting around doing nothing. Nothing stresses me out more than knowing that I'm paying somebody to do something and they're not doing something. Or they're doing the wrong work. And like, so it's like, I'd rather have everyone busy on different projects to make sure everyone's always busy, and then when the right things come together, it's like, okay, now we can actually do this because we have all the pieces. Does that make sense a little bit?

Okay, so there's like 5 principles in there. Did you guys catch any of those? Oh my gosh. Okay, so number 1.

Explain my brain, please. I'm so confused.

We just have to translate for a minute. Holy crap. Sorry. I mean, I guess that was okay. It's usually a much worse word out of my mouth. Anyhow, so first of all, how many of you also feel like you have so much more capacity than your team and your team feels like the bottleneck? And it's so frustrating and it's like, oh, if I put all this on my team, I'm going to break my team. And how many of you have been told at one point or another, but you have to focus, you have to focus, you have to focus? Yes? And so you feel this constant tension and this constant frustration because you know you could be doing a lot more because all these other people, they need to do things one at a time. You don't work like that. You work in this abstract way. You have a ton of ideas and you don't want to just focus. So Russell just told us that the thing that gives him the energy to do the work he does is being able to stay in the things that he loves to do with a big part of his time. He separates that from his core team so that they're not scared of it, right? And they're not feeling overwhelmed by it. But then he, with all of these tools that we have, we all have Upwork, we all have Fiverr, we're all really good at starting stuff. He is starting and testing and learning with these projects before they ever come to the team. And then there's something else you're doing that is mind-blowingly cool. He is selling his team on the idea. Before he's asking them to do anything. What? That is so cool. Like you're making a video and selling your team on the idea. I mean, I knew you were the greatest salesman, but you're literally, so is there anything you don't sell? Like how does this work out with your kids who are at home? Are you like selling them on eating their vegetables?

100%, everything.

Everything, tell us more.

People call it bribery, but we're just creating an offer, right? If you eat your vegetables tonight, first thing I'm gonna do, yeah, we create an offer for them. That's basically all it is, right?

So cool.

Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh. Oh, wow. That was really good.

Interesting.

Yeah, it's so interesting. So then your team gets excited and then you actually step out at that point. Yeah. So is the handoff pretty— because one thing I noticed about you in my interactions with you, you feel very present, you feel very here. You don't feel like you're pulled in 10,000 different directions. You're doing what you're doing. Like, you're sitting in the back room, you're going to our rooms today. Like, with this list, I would be like, oh my gosh, he's going to be the one in the back of the room on the laptop the whole time. But that's, that's not true because once you get it to a certain point, the handoff feels really like it's a relay race. It feels clean.

Yeah.

And how do they loop you back in?

Yeah. So, so a big part of it is like, as you guys know, there's a lot of different parts of the business. So for me, my favorite part is like the idea, the creation. I'm a really good starter. And I remember one of my, Alex Mendoza, one of my first mentors back 20 years ago, he said, "There's two types of people in this world, there's starters and there's finishers." He's like, "Figure out what you are and surround yourself with the others." And so, I am definitely the starter. In ClickFunnels, we have a couple other starters, but for the most part, it's like I've got 400 finishers wrapped around me to finish stuff. And this part of the process took me a long time because I didn't have the right who for a long time. But for me, what happens now, so I get the projects, I get excited, There's a point where I introduce it to the team. I show them. They all get excited. And then I've got a really, really good project manager. Her name's Morag. She lives in the UK. And so when we get to the spot where it's like, "Okay, this has gone from like a Russell, I'm playing with Play-Doh, creating stuff, trying to see what's going to be amazing." Where it's like, "Okay, there's something here." Then what's nice is that I'm not showing up to the table with like, "Here's an idea. Go run with it." Usually I'm showing up with like, "Here's the domain name. Here's the logo. Here's the script. Here's like a bunch of tangible assets." So I'm not taking like unorganized matter and like, good luck. I'm like taking stuff, organizing it, and saying, okay, here's the foundational pieces that you need to be able to execute on this. And so I give more, here's all the stuff I've already created that's the beginning points of this. And then the next step I'm able to do is I like to, I try to see like, how am I gonna sell this? I'm thinking about that, and so what we'll do a lot of times is I'll spend time on my side actually pre-funnel hacking, 'Cause I don't want them, what I find is that if I give my team like, here's the funnel we're gonna build, here's the thing, they go and build it and it comes back and I'm like, gah, what were you thinking? Didn't you see what I see? And they're like, no, apparently not. So what I'll go do is I'll go through and I'll actually go funnel hack. So let's say it's the book that we're putting together, I'm doing a book funnel, even though I've done probably more book funnels than anyone on the planet, step number one is always go back through, I look at my old swipe files of book funnels, I try to find new book funnels, I funnel hack as many as I can, and I'm looking for all the elements and ideas And so, I'll gather all that data, all that information, and then what I'll do is I'll sit down, excuse me, and I'll make a video for Morag showing her the whole process. And so I use a reMarkable. Do you guys know a reMarkable? Is that a reMarkable? No, that's an iPad. So I use a reMarkable mostly because I can project on my computer screen really easily. But it's just like, you guys know what they are? It's a little pad. So I project on my screen, then yeah, there's one right there. And so I just, I don't ever take notes on it. I just use it for this one part of the process. You can share it to your screen, and I literally just draw the funnel. I'm like, hey Maura, there's gonna be a funnel like this, and I map out what the entire funnel's gonna look like, and I'm making a screen capture video of it, so she sees me map out the funnel, and then from there I say, okay, now here's examples. And so I have a Trello board with all these different funnels. I'm like, here's this one, this one, this one. I love how these guys did this part of the block. I like how this one did this. I like the structure of this. I like how they positioned the upsell. So I walk through the different funnels that I've pre-done, and pull out the ideas I want to make sure that we incorporate. And I'll go through what the offer's gonna be. So I kind of give her all that kind of stuff. And that's, so I give her all that, and then, and that's kind of what it's like now, out of my brain, into somebody who's competent's hands, to now go run with it. So the more I will take that, and then she'll go through, like basically, this is what you said, Russell, let me make sure that's correct. So she'll use, I can't remember, one of those programs that you can like wireframe out your funnel. Miro, I think, is what it was. Yeah, but Miro's ours. She uses, anyway, I don't know what it is. 'Cause I can doodle, but I can't, whenever I have to do it on the software, it takes me so long, I just don't do it. So I just doodle it, she goes through, makes a map, and then comes back, says, is this what it's supposed to look like? And I was like, yes, except for this was wrong, this was wrong, you know, so she'll tweak it around till she gets the framework correctly. And then when she has that done, then she'll go back through, and she'll take my video, and she'll clip out all the parts where I'm talking about specific things, and she'll say, here's all the stuff for copy, for the copywriters, here's all the stuff for design, for the designers, And so she'll chop it all up, and then she has a meeting with all of them saying, "Okay, here's Russell's new vision," and then she'll explain it, assign everything out, task it all out. They do it in some other project management system because as much as I think I'm a project manager, you can ask Jenny this, she does her stuff in Monday, and like, if I walk past her desk and Monday's open, she literally will like hide the screen. She's like, "Every time Russell sees it, I get so much overwhelmed." I'm like, "What's happening?" And I'm like, "Please," and I start getting upset. I'm like, "These people are doing this." So I don't want to see the project management process because it stresses me out and I try to interfere with it and then it derails everything. So it's kind of out of my hands at that point. And then the only last piece, and we talked about this actually during the Atlas meeting, is the copywriters used to take that and they would try to write the copy, but then it would come back and it never worked right. And so what they do now is Heath, who's our main copywriter, or Jared, who writes all the emails, they'll message me ahead of time and say, "Okay Russell, if like, Pitch me on the product, like tell me why I should do this. And so then I'll vox and I'll drive around for 15-20 minutes and I just pitch the product, every angle I can think of. And it's like I'm selling, I'm telling stories, like I'm trying to like, as many different ideas or variations or hooks or things I can do, and I'm just acting like I'm pitching it to you guys or pitching it somewhere. And now they've got a 10- or 15-minute video of me pitching all the products, upsells, the downsells, pulling in my stories that I would actually share, and that's where they start the copy from. And by shifting it that way, It's been like night and day in our copy, because now it shows up with like— they would sometimes take something and they'd write the sales letter, and I'm like, "Where did you get— like, why wouldn't you use my stories about this?" And they're like, "We don't know your stories, we don't know what any of these things are." So that's how I kind of lead with it. At that point, it's out of my hands, and then I kind of forget about it for a while. And then Morag goes and works with the designers, the copywriters, the funnel builders, everything, and they start working, and it's kind of out of my hands, and then it's just happening. So right now Morag's probably working on I'd say probably a dozen of these actively right now. And then every night I get a Voxer from her before she goes to bed that just gives me an update on each project. Like, "Hey, just so you know, Heath's working on this, so-and-so's on this, like, da-da-da, and like, this is the one thing we need you to review. Copy's done from Heath. If you can review this, and if it's good, then they'll start design on this tomorrow." So she's kind of a real quick recap. Because for me, in Myers-Briggs, 16 personalities, there's like the loop openers and loop closers. So I'm a loop opener, and all the people around me are loop closers, right? But my problem is like, when the loop's open, in my head, like, it's always there. It's like, it'll be 3 o'clock in the morning, and I'm like, "Oh, did they do this?" Like, I start stressing about those things. I can't sleep at night, and like, if I don't know what's happening, and I can't see it from the project management boards, and so it's nice that I get that update every night at the end of the day, and I see that, and it's like, "Oh, cool. Everything's moving forward. Everything's been taken care of. I just gotta look at this one thing, and then the loops are closed, and I'm able to delete it from my brain and not stress about it. Otherwise, it just keeps me up all night.

All right. Wow. So there's a lot there. So first of all, what you said you did is basically, how many of us have a new idea and then we're literally handing our teams a blank canvas and we're giving them paints and paintbrushes and we're saying, okay. I'm gonna tell you what my idea is and you're gonna paint it. And so frustrating. And Russell does not do that. He just told us that what he does is he hands his team a paint-by-number with all the colors and all the numbers and all the paint colors. You do so much work up front. Abraham Lincoln said it like this. He said, if you have 3 hours to cut down a tree, spend the first 2 and a half sharpening your axe. And so you do so much upfront work so that when things come back to you, it's just your vision and it's so clear. It's just amazing.

Yeah, it's not like shifting it this way versus how I used to do it before. It would come back and I'd get so frustrated and so upset. And now it's like when it comes back, there's always stuff I gotta tweak and stuff, but it comes back and it's like, oh yeah, you guys did awesome. Or I tweak this, this, this, but this looks amazing. And the longer you work with the team, the better they get at understanding you're feeling stuff, and so it just gets better and better over time, but yeah.

Is this helpful? Yes? So helpful? And how many of you are getting distinctions for your own business? Like, wow. How many of you are feeling a little bit like, oh, I wish I would've known that before, but that's okay, because now is now, right? I always feel like that in this room. I wish I would've known that before. Anybody wish they would've known this stuff before? Yeah, a little bit of that, but it's so good to know it now. Now the other thing that Russell just taught us is he taught us that Russell has created his entire business around who Russell is. How many of you feel like you have to accommodate your team? And there's frustration because it's like they like things a certain way, and did you go through that until you've reached this point where you've literally, this is Russell's way? Was there a point at which You'd get a project manager, you'd get somebody on board, and you're trying to work their way.

For sure. In fact, it's interesting. So for the Atlas meeting, we had Mark Ford speak to us on Monday. Do you guys know who Mark Ford is? His pen name is Michael Masterson, if you've read a Michael Masterson book. But Mark Ford, he— so he, he went into Agora. When Agora was doing about $8 million a year, he came in and kind of partnered with Bill Bonner, took it from $8 million a year to right now they do multiple billion dollars a year. And Mark was like the chief growth strategist that built the whole company up. And he said something on Monday that like, it gave me so much permission, 'cause I don't know about you guys, I feel like I'm annoying my team half the time. They're just like, I'm sorry guys. Like, we just stopped working so hard. I'm like, I don't know. He said a couple things. Number one, he said that the default of a business is zero. Like, left to its own devices, a business is not profitable. It'll go to zero. And he said, if you look at it, if you as the entrepreneur stop showing up, very quick you'll see that like, The cost will go up, the profit will go down, and all of a sudden it gets to zero. That's the natural state of a business. He says your job as the entrepreneur is to become the irritant. He's like, it's like a pearl, or like a clam, and there's sand in there. And the sand inside the pearl is the irritant, which creates the pearl. He says your job as the entrepreneur is to come to be the irritant. Otherwise, it's all going to go to zero. And so your team is going to drive them crazy. It's going to be like the most frustrating thing. But you as the irritant is the secret sauce. That's what, like, all of profitability all comes from you as the irritant. That's where you get the spread. That's where you get margin. And for me, it gave me this permission of just like, okay, I forget about that. I'm not here, like I'm not annoying, maybe I am annoying them, but the reality is like, that's my job. That's my role. Otherwise, I don't create profit. And I told Todd this. I Vox Todded. And he's like, yeah, there's like, there's all the operators and then there's the irritators. He's like, me and you are the irritators and our operators got to figure it out. I'm like, yes, like that's the, anyway, so that gave me permission just this week to even do it more so. Because yeah, a lot of times I feel bad. That's the reason why I do so much ahead of time, because I feel bad about it. I'm giving them more work and more stuff. But at the same time, they want to impress you, and they want to win for you. You know what I mean? If you have the right team, they want you to succeed as well. So it's really cool, because when we started, got to this point now, it's like I give them stuff, and they come back, and it's like everyone's having more energy. It's more fun for everybody. And so it's taken us a while to get there, but the last And the last couple of years has just been magical with our team.

That's so cool. So I'm sure it doesn't always go right. And so it comes back to you sometimes and you're like, wow, this was one degree off and now we ended up 500 miles to the south. So how do you manage that, manage the interaction with the team, and then maintain your energy and come back to the place of enthusiasm?

Yeah, so this is what I struggle with a lot. In fact, most of you guys know Jenny. Jenny's the one that helped me the most with this. People would send me something and I'd be like, "Ugh." And so what I would do is like, I hated giving people feedback because in my mind, if I give feedback, they're going to be upset. It was hard for me to comprehend that like, no, people actually do want feedback, they want the criticism. But a lot of times it's hard for me too because it's like, I don't know how to give feedback on this. I just know that they didn't quite do it right. So what I've been doing recently that actually has been kind of fun for me is, let's say it's a funnel, they send me the funnel back, I'm doing the final review and it's like, ah, like the message The page was wrong, and this was wrong, a couple things were wrong. What I'll do now is like, I just, I log into ClickFunnels, and I do a screen capture, and I fix it, but instead of me just fixing it being annoyed, I'm fixing it and I'm coaching them through it. I'm like, hey, a couple things, like you know it's above the fold, the headline's just not grabbing me, like I wouldn't stop on this, so let me think through a couple things, and I'll show them my process, and I'll show them like me going and looking at headline swipe files, and trying and ChatGPT to write headlines, and trying to figure, trying to find the right hook, and then I'll go to, and so like, I'm making the fixes, but not in a silo where I'm annoyed and angry, instead I'm fixing it, and I'm talking through why I'm fixing things, and then when I'm done, I tell them like, "Hey, I've made these tweaks, watch this video to find out why," and then they watch it and they're like, "Oh, that was so cool how you did that, I never knew," like, it gives them the insights. Before I would just be annoyed, fix it, and then like not even tell them, we'd launch it, and it's just like, ugh, like so frustrating, like how do they not see this? And now it's more like fun where I feel like, I feel like I'm the finisher, like I'm coming through and doing the last coat of polish on the end, and what was interesting is like, The first time I did this, I had to do a lot of polishing to get it well, but then it's a little less next time, and next time, and a couple times I get back and I'm like, "Yeah, that's awesome." Like, one of the projects up there, they sent me the sales letter for this Monday before the Alice meeting started, and I opened the page, I went through it, I was like, "Dang." And I wrote back, I was like, "That's perfect. I have nothing. It was awesome." So that doesn't happen every time, but the more we do it, the more they learn how to polish as well. The goal, I think it was James Frill when he was working with us, I think, but like the goal was like, when you bring something back to Russell, don't bring like a huge problem. The goal is to bring a 6-inch putt. You're coming in, it's just like, I should be able to like, oh yeah, just finish it off, but I have to be okay with like, I shouldn't be annoyed by like the fact that I gotta finish off. For me, it's actually more fun. It's like, hey, we're launching this tomorrow. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go do my final touches, and it just becomes a fun thing now instead of an annoyance, and then that's how I'm coaching them through that step in the process. And I let everybody watch it, Then it starts training the funnel builders and the designers and the copywriters all together, so they're all kind of seeing each other, and then they all become better together, as opposed to in a silo where they're all just kind of like not understanding the method to the madness, right? They're all able to say, "Oh, this is why Russell's changed the headline and the copy, because he's trying to get something before the first, you know, whatever the thing might be, or whatever, you know, around the call to action box. He's trying to structure it this way because of blah blah blah blah blah." And then now they're all on the same page, so the next time it comes through, the designer will design it right, the copywriter will write it correctly, And if not, they have checks and balances. Like, remember Russell said last time to do this way? Like, oh yeah. And they help each other as well.

So, so who's like freaking out right now and being like, I would pay a lot of money for those videos. So it's just a little product idea. But how cool would it be if like Russell's feeding back to his team? He's like, this headline was a little bit off. Oh my gosh, you guys should really do this here. You missed— like, that's, that's— you should definitely—

how much would you pay for that?

I'd make a trade. You could sell my boxers. All right. So, oh, that's so cool. So when— This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate to see. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have 4 times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing VertuoUp, the latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch, sense, and taste in every single cup. With a 3-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew over ice button, It's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself. Shop VertuoUp exclusively at Nespresso.com. One of the things that you've talked to me a lot about, because sometimes, you know, well, I can be sensitive. It's embarrassing, but it's true. And so sometimes, like, Russell just ghosts and like he goes like with a, like, vulnerable question out there and he's just like 10 years later, he's— and you're like, wait, Hey, hi. And then so you told me once, you're like, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to ghost, but I block my time. And so I do this thing here and this thing here, and I have this compartment here and that compartment there. And it helped me just understand and be in relationship where I don't have to be all sensitive and feel like, oh, Russell's ignoring me. But can you talk more about that, especially in this huge context?

Yeah.— how do I explain it correctly?

I just made myself sound really needy. I am not that needy.

What happens, I'll be it. So I'm a— and this is like the introverted part of Russell, like, it's the reason why I struggle face-to-face, one-on-one, is because people ask you questions, right? Sometimes it's like, ah, and that's like my number one— you know what my number one fear is? This is like so pathetic. My number one fear in life is picking up the phone when someone calls me. Or to call someone. Like, I can't think of anything worse than that. Like, it stresses me out so bad. Yeah, it's the worst, right, Yana? Like, I have friends, I'll text them, the phone will ring, I'm like, "Why are you calling me? I just texted you. Like, I do not want to talk about it." And they'll put you on the spot, they'll ask those questions, you're just like, "Ugh." And like, oh, it's the worst for me. And so I try to like not have like active communication in real time. Not always, but for the most part, partially because if you respond back to someone, like say someone emails you and you email them right back, they're like, "Oh, Russell's here real quick, let me ask him." And it opens up this thing, and I'm like, "Duh." And like 12 emails later, I'm just like— So what happens is I'll get an email and I'll see it, but I don't respond to it. Or I get a Voxer message and I'll listen to it, or I'll see it, and I don't respond right away, because if I do, then it starts this open dialogue. This stresses me out. So what I would rather do is I wait. Kind of like Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy gets— it's all through fax, right? You can't email him, you have to fax him. So first off, I'm going to think through the fax more, and then I when I send it to him, then he's got time to think through it, respond, and send it back correctly. He's able to respond instead of react. 'Cause sometimes someone will message me, and like, I'm sure I've blown up on a, I'm sure probably Bart the most. Like, he'll say something, and I'll just respond back, and I'm like, "Oh, I'm such a jerk." Like, you know, like, and I don't wanna do that, so usually I'll wait. It's happened more than once, admit it. I'm so sorry. It's Bart though, it's worth it for the relationship. I love the guy. But you know what I mean? So it's like, I try to compartmentalize stuff, and so that way I have times where I'm just doing Vox right now, or I'm just doing Slack, or I'm just working, or whatever those things are, and I try to separate them.

And can you expand it even into, 'cause you talked to me about how you do it with family. Like, how do you fit in wrestling, and family, and work, and the 10 different businesses, or 50, whatever the, you know? Yeah.

So everything's gotta fit in the time blocks, right? And so for me, it's like my kids start waking up at 7. I know that. And so like if I want to like do the workout or to write, I have to do it prior to that. So depending if I want to work out or write or both, it's like I have to make sure that time happens ahead of time, right? So like that hour is like sacred. Nothing else is happening. Then I go to a separate office that's close to my main office, but it's the spot I go into just by myself. And I go in there and I have about an hour, and this is just like my personal reading time. And not just any kind of reading. This is like typically like I'm reading scriptures or things that I'm probably not gonna get during the rest of the day. The rest of the day I'm gonna listen to podcasts and other stuff like that, but it's time that, and so usually from 8:15 till 9 or so, that's when I'm reading scriptures, I'm kind of in that state, I'm separated away from the office, no one can bug me, I'm just kind of by myself. And then usually about 9 o'clock we have our very first 5-minute meeting, so I'll jump on that real quick, which means I do the quick meeting with everyone on my team, 5 minutes, it ends, and now I'm officially like, now I'm Russell, I'm in work mode, and now it's like, now I can do stuff. I'm still work mode, but I'm separate from the office, and so still like, this is my time where I'm writing, I'm doing stuff, I'm trying to like, get the Russell work done as much as I can, because as soon as I go to the real office, it's hard to get any Russell work done, 'cause everyone's got a question, or a problem, or a fire, or something. So I try to spend as much time there as possible. Ideally, this doesn't happen most of the times, but ideally it's like, from 9 till noon, I wanna be in there. And then when noon's over, then I'm leaving the— In fact, one of my friends is like, Russell, you're the biggest hermit. Like, you never leave the office. You never like want to get on podcasts. You never want to do anything. And so I'm like a hermit trying to do that stuff. And then I'll leave and I walk 100 yards to the ClickFunnels office. And I'll walk in and that's when everyone's there. And now I'm like, okay, now I'm like, window time. I'm here to like work with everybody. So I come in. This is when Morag's got all the projects for me to go through. I review them all. I have meetings with people. I'm trying to do stuff. And I'm still trying to get rid of as much stuff as I can so I can get back to focus work time. But it's different, because that time's more also for the teams and stuff like that. Until like 5 o'clock, or during wrestling season, it's 3 o'clock, then I'm out. Or whatever that is. And then I try to— and again, I'm not the best at this, but I try to separate things where it's like, when I'm in the office, I'm in the office. When I'm at wrestling, I'm at wrestling. When I'm at home, I'm with I try not to let those things bleed over. I try to be present as much as I can. And I think it was Scharffen. I almost did a Scharffen accent, and then I didn't. So that's good. He had us all— he helped coach 2CCX like 4 or 5 years ago. He had everyone in the program doing those time studies, where it's like you track every 5 minutes what you're doing. And it was crazy because most people in 2CCX that were doing the time studies The thing at the end, they're like, "Oh, I did the whole time study, I found out I was only working an hour a day," or whatever. That's like the majority, like 95% of people, that's what it was. And that, like, I can't comprehend, 'cause if you look at my actual day, there's no moment I'm not doing, there's not like a, it's very few and far between. And so I think in an 8-hour day, I'm getting 7.5 hours worth of stuff done, versus most people get an hour done, or maybe 2 hours, right? So I think that's a big part of productivity. But then trying to be super present, so when I'm home, I'm a, you know, from 5:30 to 9, I'm dad, and from 9 to 11, I'm husband, and then I pass out. And so that's kind of—

And do you love it? Huh? Do you love it?

Which part, passing out? All of it.

Oh yeah, all this stuff.

The whole day. Yeah, because every single part's special to me, right? Like I've crafted, like I love waking up early morning and writing. I love working out in the gym. I love hanging out with the kids in the morning. I love driving Aiden to school. I love being in my little hermit office by myself, like reading books by myself with nobody else around. I love being in the office with the people. Like, I get energy around there, like sharing ideas and seeing if the team's lighting up or not, right? Like, yeah, all the parts are fun. But each one's a little bit different. So it's like, I got to be there and then try to be as present as possible.

How many of you are getting like a new vision for like what could be possible if you just put yourself first, literally ruthlessly, and said, I'm going to set this up exactly how I want it to be? Is anybody having that experience? Yes? How cool is that?

Here's one thing to think about too, is like I started looking at where I was wasting time. Like the only spot I was wasting time was Instagram and Facebook. And so what I did is I bought a second phone and I call it my social phone. It has Instagram and Facebook on it, but I leave that at the office and it's in a certain spot. And so my phone that's on me doesn't have those things. And that like shifted everything. And so if I want to like take a picture of myself to post, I take it and then I Vox it or I text it to the social phone. If I'm doing a thing, I'm I text it there, and then once a day I probably spend 15 minutes. I grab my social phone, I post the things I did, I swipe through a couple of stories, and then I'm done. And then separate it from me. And that, like, that alone was like one of the greatest things I did for myself. Extra like $300 a month for your another phone bill, but man, that saves you 5 hours a day of just being able to be present, only actually social for like 15 minutes.

Well, considering each one of these is at least a million, your dollar per minute time I mean, it's probably expensive. Yeah, $1,000 a minute at this. Like, it's really important. And for all of us, that's really true. Like, I think we should consider, especially like, I didn't hear him, you know, doing dishes or laundry on there, right? You hire that stuff out. Like, really consider what your dollar per minute, dollar per hour time is and value it in that way to do the most and then love it all along the way.

That's my biggest pet peeve is like, If I give someone a project, I didn't give enough upfront stuff, and they do the work and send it back, and I'm like, "Ugh, you spent a week on this, which sucks, number one, but number two, I paid you for that weekend, it was a complete waste." That drives me crazy. I hate wasting my time, I hate wasting other people's time. And so that's one of the hardest things, the more prep, you can give people less. I just want people to not have to waste time, 'cause it drives me nuts, you know what I mean?

[Speaker] So I have two more questions for you, and they're both a little bit vulnerable. Are you good with that? You're like, "What?" Let's do it.

Okay.

Well, the first one's not really vulnerable, but I'm going to make fun of you. Okay. Okay. So, who was here in November for Inner Circle meeting? Yes. And who just had to giggle a lot when somebody asked Russell what his org chart looked like? And he gets up there. Yes. Does anybody know? Oh my gosh. So, Russell gets up there. That's so embarrassing. He draws one circle. And he's like, "Me." And then he draws one circle that's like, "Jenny." And he's like, "And I'm out." Like, I got nothing else. There was no other circles on the whole chart.

I'm not sure what else happens after that.

And it was so good. And then you told me backstage that you actually had them cut that from the video. So it's not in the recording, y'all.

You had to be in the room. I was so embarrassed. I was trying to like, let me show you my org chart. And real quick, I was like, I have no idea what it actually is as I'm drawing the circles like, huh. And then I think we have a C, there's a COO, an FO, I'm like, ah, I don't even know. It was embarrassing.

So the thing about that, again, back to the principle that we're not trying to figure out what the Harvard book says about productivity. We're trying to figure out what this human being says about productivity. That I have never, and I've had huge corporate jobs, I've been chief marketing officer for governing 28 countries at a time, and I've never in my life met somebody who's as productive as Russell Brunson, never in my whole life. And so if we unpack that, there's a lesson in there for us, which is stay in your lane. Russell does what he is best at, and he doesn't, you don't even put room in your brain for the things that are not your zone of genius. Can you talk more about that?

Yeah, it was actually interesting. So, some of you guys might have met Kevin Richards. He's our COO right now. And when he came into our business, you know, he's like, "Russ, this is Russell Brunson, and this is like, you have this big—" And like, he came in and it was this weird thing, because I was like, he was— first he started running the marketing, and then eventually he shifted over, started running the whole operations of the company. And I remember he's like, he asked me, he's like, "I don't feel like you like me, or you don't—" You're not coaching me through what you want me to do or anything. And I was just like, I have no idea what you're supposed to do, that's why you're here.

How amazing is that?

He's like, really? I'm like, he's like, would you rather me if I did it this way or this way? I was like, I don't care. I just want to build funnels, that's what I'm here for is to build funnels. All the rest is just chaos that was created because I was building funnels. And it's like, I don't understand any of it. And I was like, you have full permission to do whatever the thing is that operations people do. As long as I can build funnels, like, I don't really care. Like, make sure we don't go bankrupt, make sure I can build funnels, I have the right people around me, and then all the rest, like, I don't know even how to help you. And, but it gave him permission, he's like, oh, okay, like, but if at the beginning he thought I was gonna come in like, here's my process and how we should do it, like, I know nothing about that. Like, I literally just wanted to build funnels. And just everything else, just like, now you guys are all here in Boise, and this is all weird to me, like, that anybody even cares about it, but like, I became so passionate, so I was able to focus on that. I remember, it's interesting, like a lot of times in church they talk about like, and I do believe this is true in so many aspects of life, you figure out what your weaknesses are and your strengths become weaknesses. Like that's a good thing. Except for in business. In business it's the opposite. Like I do not want to spend any time on my weaknesses. Like any second spent on a weakness is just a waste of everybody's time. Right? I only want to spend time in my strengths. Like I don't make money money when I'm working with my support team to figure out how to optimize support. I make no money. I make no money when I am trying to figure out like where the chart— like I make money when I'm on video. I make money when I'm writing emails. I make money when I'm creating offers. Like, so I should only be doing that. And any second I'm not doing that, the entire company is suffering because of it. And so my team knows, they're like, I gotta protect Russell so he can do the thing that actually makes money. Otherwise, what's— in fact, I remember when it's like the first week Jenny started working working for me. It was really fascinating. I was, I'd made my lunch real quick and I was making, I make those protein pancakes real quick and I put it in the sink and I started like washing the dishes or something like that. And she's like, let me do that. She's like, your brain's too valuable to spend time washing dishes. And I was like, first I was like, no, no, it's fine. Then I was like, huh. I'm like, the fact that I'm spending like 5 minutes washing dishes is the stupidest thing in the world. 50 grand. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, and it gave me permission to just like Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Like, I should only be doing the thing that actually makes me the money in the business. And so over the years I got better and better at that, where it's just like, what do I like to do? What am I the best in the world at? Like, I should only be doing that. Like, if I'm not figuring out an offer or creating a product or a funnel or something tied to that, or making content, that everything else is just kind of pointless. And so, yeah, but it takes a while. You have to train yourself, because at least for me, I feel guilty all the time. Like, I should be doing this, or I should be on these meetings, and And literally, like, I have now someone who goes to meetings for me. Mike Taggart, you met him the other day. Like, he goes to these meetings for me, and then he'll come back and be like, if there's something important, he'll tell me. If not, then he just runs with it. I'm like, if you can figure it out without me, go for it. But if you have a question, let me know, and I'll steer you in the right direction. But just the least possible I can be doing, the better. And that frees up so much time that I can be working on 25 projects at a time, because I don't have to worry about all these other things. I just have to worry about the parts that light me up, that are fun. That are fun, that are exciting, that I wake up in the morning, 'cause I'm like, oh, I'm gonna talk about, I'm gonna be talking about the Secret Success book I'm writing right now. I'm gonna be talking about the 3 print newsletters I wrote in the last 30 days. All the things are fun now, it's exciting, and I get to focus on those things that give me energy and that are fun, and then, yeah. 'Cause every time I get into other things, I just like, do you ever feel this way? You're running, you're having so much fun, and then something happens, you're like, and you're just like, like the momentum stops, and then to get back momentum is so hard. So it's like the more that people around you can protect you from that so you can stay in momentum, the better.

Who feels free? Like, who feels like, wow, yes, oh my gosh, like it's, wow. That is, we have so many shoulds for ourselves. But we're all in this room because we each have this unique thing that your neighbor can't do, and the person down the street can't do. And who feels like they should be doing the thing the neighbor does? Russell wins the Super Bowl, right?

We found out Sunday morning. I was at church, and everyone's like, who's gonna win the Super Bowl tonight? I was like, Super Bowl tonight? I was like, who's playing in it?

Well, one year he had us all on a boat to the Bahamas, and we were like, oh, it's the Super Bowl. None of us knew. But the point is, like, we feel, even as independent thinkers, even as round pegs in square holes, we feel there's so much conformity. And like, so it's so freeing to hear Russell just be Russell. Like, this is so— I knew this was going to be the most valuable hour of the entire week for me. It totally is. So there's a quote that I had written down before this. And, you know, so often we're looking to people who have all sorts of credentialing in things like operations or productivity. And Russell was pretty resistant to doing this. Is that fair to say?

He's like, I don't know if I know what I'm talking about.

Yeah. It took a lot of persuasion. Eileen is not feeling so good, but she was the main persuader because that's what she does best in the world. And she was really trying to persuade him to do this because she's like, there's something in there because you are doing what you're doing unconsciously. You're doing this unconsciously. But we've already learned that he's putting a fuel source in, which is energy and enthusiasm. He's choosing himself first ruthlessly. He's incredibly intentional. He's handing things off. He's taking tons of time to sharpen the axe. He's giving his team a paint-by-number. Like there's so much of what you're actually doing to do all of this, which is just unseen until it gets surfaced, which is like so incredible and exciting.

And one of the things I was thinking about, like if you were to come to my office and see it, a lot of you probably think it looks all organized. It's like chaos. Like this is what my brain looks like. And I think for a long time I struggled with that. Like everyone's like, what's the project management What type of system do you use? I was like, well, last week it was a pad of paper. And then the next week I found some software that's project management. I put it all in there. I ran that for 2 weeks. Then it stressed me out, so I deleted that. And then I found a whiteboard. I did that. And then that stressed me out. So then I did— like, I think I drive Morag and Jenny and Kirsten, all these people, crazy. Because it's like, every— it's changing all the time because none of the systems work for the way my brain works. But I don't get upset about it. And it's like, I just delete it, start over. Like, this makes more sense today. And then 2 weeks later, like, this makes more sense I'm going to change the entire process every 2 weeks because it just stops working. It'll work for like a week, I'm like, "This is the greatest tool ever, I love it, da da da," and then it breaks because I'm breaking it, and I'm like, "Ah, delete again, start over again." So it's not pretty. I think that's the problem, at least for me. For so long I tried to make it pretty. What's the perfect system that's going to make this thing so I can do it all? And the perfect system is a thing that I'm going to break every 2 weeks and start over again. And that resets my head so I can relearn. Figured out, and then get re-excited again, and then it breaks again. So it's not necessarily pretty, so don't think it's like, oh, here's the software I use. It's like, I don't know, it just changes.

But what you're showing us is like you are embracing yourself fully in a way where you're just like, you don't get upset. You just said, I don't get upset about it. I just do it my way. And I do the same thing. I have 10,000 different places I write, and it's And Brian's like, "You're a proliferator. You just make chaos. It's just behind you." I'm an agitator. Yes. And so you don't make how you are wrong. And then by doing that and by sharing it with us, you're giving us all permission to not make ourselves wrong too, which is such a gift. It's awesome. So the quote was, "When setting out on a journey, don't seek advice from people who have never left home." And I think it's so interesting because even though this isn't what you teach, this is one of your zones of just incredible, incredible genius. And so I wanna finish us off with this question, which is the vulnerable one, but you told me a few months ago that you had been, you'd been really like stuck, and you'd lost some of that enthusiasm, and you'd been in this place, and there was one thing, do you know what I'm talking about? I hope you do, because if you don't, I don't know, that you read something in a book, and it catapulted you back, and you remembered, and it was like this instantaneous sort of reignition of reminding you who you are?

Yeah. You guys listen to my podcast? In December, I did a podcast. I remember I was in the library sitting on the floor, just like, and I was like, I am really struggling. I did this whole podcast about it, and a lot of you guys actually messaged me. It was, it was interesting, and I was like burned out and tired and And honestly, the last year and a half, two years of my life has probably been the hardest. I lost my closest friend. Business, there's ups and downs. It's been a hard season for some things. I know that a lot of you, the world's crazy right now. There's a lot of kind of stuff. And I was just like, just felt beat up. And so I grabbed some old magazines, because that's what I do. It was Robert Collier's Mind Ink magazine that I found from 1913 or 19— anyway, whatever it was. And I'm reading through there, and it was interesting because, I don't know, it was like he wrote this for me 100 years ago and like left it behind so I could find it someday. And all of the articles in this magazine were talking about like courage and stepping into who you are, and like the people who have success aren't so much the smartest or whatever, it's the people who have courage enough to do the thing and to move through it. And I don't remember exactly what it was, but that was the thing where I was just like, I had like forgotten my calling or forgotten the fact that I was the one who was supposed to do it, and thinking like, oh, there's other people that are better, like other people are doing these, you know, and like it was just like a wake-up call for me of just like, no, like this is, like it's not like I'm doing this because it's fun, it's like you're called to do this, there's something bigger than you, and like you got to quit whining and step back up and become a man, and like step back into your calling. And it was just like a really cool, like call back to me of just like remembering who I was. Essentially, you look at like You know, every movie that happens, right? The hero loses his way, and it's like there's something that happens where he's called back. I think about The Lion King, Simba. And it's like when his dad comes back and talks to him, like reminds him of who he was. And for me, that's what it was. It was in January, and I guess God reminded me who I was. And what's fascinating about this is like, I was on fire. I messaged you guys. I was like, all these things were happening. It was really cool. And about a week after that is when, some of you guys probably saw it, an incident happened at a wrestling tournament that honestly is not a big deal, other than the fact that somebody caught it on video, and I have a big name, and it went viral. In the wrestling community, the business community, everyone in every industry around me wanted to take shots at me. It was probably the most brutal 3 weeks of my life. I'd say conservatively over 1,000 death threats, a whole bunch of stuff. It was bad. But it was like, if that had happened before I had that reawakening, I don't know if I would have survived through it. But I had that reawakening, I was on fire, and then that hit, and I was able to endure and come out on the other side. Side, like, excited still about life and about what we're doing and what we're creating.

And anyway, so yeah, I don't know. Oh, Russell, I think it's so important for us to just, you know, I think you're a little bit less bionic, but only a little. And I think it's so important for us to especially hear that that thing at the end, because you can hear everything else and you can be like, "Oh, well, that's just Russell." But even Russell loses his way. Even Russell goes through the deep woods and forgets who he is. And I think that's why rooms like this are just such a gift, and for you to have created this space for us is like, from the bottom of my heart, for the last 7 years, this has kept me alive in a really big way. And I know that's true for so many of us, because for you, it's dead guys reminding you who you are, and some of us friends, but also, That's our job for each other, right? Just to remind each other of who we are when we forget, because it can be really easy, because it can be a very lonely road. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you, and let's give it up for Russell Brunson.