The Hidden Lesson Inside A Message to Garcia: Why Winners Don’t Wait for Instructions | #Success - Ep. 80

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Now obviously if you want to sell stuff online, you're going to need a good funnel, but if you want a great funnel, then you're going to need to use ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is the number one funnel builder in the world, helping more first-time entrepreneurs to leave their 9 to 5 and to launch their dream than any other company on earth. ClickFunnels was built for the dreamer and the doer, and you can get a free 14-day trial by going to clickfunnels.com/podcast right now. That's clickfunnels.com/podcast. ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world. This is The Russell Brunson Show. You've probably heard Tony Robbins say this before, like, if you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats, right? Most people don't decide. Most people dabble. I'm going to try a little. I'm going to see if this works. I'm going to try a little bit. But then if it's not going to work, then they quickly slip back. Oh, never mind. Like, it's good. I can't do that, right? Whereas deciding is cutting off all other options. Like, when you cut off all other options, there's nothing else you can do besides go forward, right? It's burning the ships so you can take the island. What's up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome back to my vault. So excited to have you guys here. And today I've got a book that is a legend. It's been printed over a million times and a lot of you guys have never even heard of it. I hadn't heard of it till a couple years ago. It's called The Message to Garcia. And this is one of the first editions from 1899. And this one is really cool because it's also signed by Mr. Elbert Hubbard. Not to be confused with L. Ron Hubbard. Everyone thinks this is a Scientology guy. It is not. Elbert Hubbard was one of the original people in the New Thought movement. In fact, he was the guy who owned the printing presses for most of the people that were writing books back then. He had a community called the Roycrafters, and they would print books and magazines for all of the authors back in the day. And so Elbert Hubbard was kind of the guy who ran that community. He printed tons of books and magazines, but this by far is the most famous thing that he published, and it's only a couple pages long, and it's called The Message to Garcia. This one's really cool because it has a leather cover, and again, it's only a dozen pages or so, the entire, the entire book. I paid $300 for this copy of Message to Garcia, the signed copy. The cool thing about this book is, again, there's a really short analogy at the very beginning that's kind of the core of the entire thing. The story inside this book is that there was a guy who was a U.S. Army officer named Rohan, and the president of the United States at the time said, I need you to get a message to this lieutenant who's in the mountains and the hills of Cuba during a war, right? And he gives him this message, like, you need to go deliver it to this guy. And then Roan leaves and he goes and he figures out how to get to Cuba, how to get to the mountains, how to navigate through everything, how to get through the war zones, the rivers, the mountains, and everything, and figures out how to come and deliver the message directly to Garcia. And the premise of this book is the fact that he didn't go and ask a ton of questions like, what's the address? How do I get there? What's the best route? Like, who's gonna pay for me to get? He doesn't ask any of those questions. He's given a task, which is give this message to Garcia, He goes out there and despite the complexity and the hardness of the task, he figured out a way to get it done. And so the message from this is like, is really for people to understand that like when you're given a task, it's like, how do you break through whatever barrier? Like most people, they go on a journey, they get a task, they get something they're trying to do, right? And as soon as they hit an obstacle, they stop. They hit it, as soon as they get past it, it gets a little bit harder, they stop. Or they can't figure out the answer, so they stop, right? And the whole point of this book is like, This guy Rohan, he didn't do anything. He figured out a way to get it done, to get the message to Garcia. And so then afterwards, Elbert Hubbard writes this article about what he saw about this story and it gets published and then people start seeing it and they start wanting to share it. So these big corporations and big companies, they saw this story and they wanted their staff and their employees to understand like this is how the mindset we have to have to be successful. We have to figure out like how do you give them like, If you're given a task, like give a message to Garcia, you just figure it out at all costs. Like you don't have to, like whatever it takes, just go and get that task figured out. And so we had these big corporations and companies all around the world who started asking him like, can we republish this? And so it got printed over a million times in different languages all around the world to give people the understanding that like when you have a task, you have to figure out a way to get it done. We start thinking about people that are successful in any areas of life, right? I think about this when I was in sports and athletics as a kid, I was a wrestler growing up and a lot of times, Like you set a goal or you set something. I wanted to be a state champ and then I wanted to be an All-American. I had these different goals. And it's one of those things where like there's not a playbook. Like here's all the 12 steps to go and do the thing, right? It's like for you to get that task to be able to accomplish the goal, like you have to be willing to do anything. Like break through walls if it needs to happen, right? And business was the same thing where I was like, I want, you know, my very first goal is I wanna make $1 million in a year. Like that became the goal. Again, there wasn't at the time like a blueprint, like follow these 12 steps to do it. It was like, All right, I gotta figure this out through thick and thin. And you know, when I was doing it the first time in college, like I didn't have, there weren't coaches and mentors and coaching programs and software. Like I like was trying to figure like, okay, I remember I wanted to sell something on the internet. I'm like, well, how do I get something on the internet? And I didn't know that. And there wasn't ChatGPT to ask. There was, you know, and so like I was figuring things out. Eventually I figured out, okay, you have to have a server to put something on the internet. And I bought a domain, 'cause I think first I bought a domain. I'm like, have a domain, like where's my website? There's no website. Like, okay, we have a domain. Now you gotta figure out, like, I had to figure out the domain points to a server. So I had to get a server. And then from there it's like, well, how do I get a website on the thing? It's like, well, there's different software like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. So I download FrontPage and then from, and like there's so many steps and there was no path, there was no plan, there was no nothing other than like, I've just gotta smash through wall to get it. Like my equivalent of like getting a message to Garcia was like, I have to sell something on the internet. And there were so, it was so difficult to do that. And then again, this is 20 years ago. This is before, even after we figured out how to get a website online, then it was like, how do I sell something? How do I get traffic? There's no Facebook, there's no MySpace, right? I see people nowadays and it blows my mind because we've made the process so simple. Like if you have a ClickFunnels account, you click a couple buttons and your site's live. You can take orders. You go to Instagram and you make a reel and you get traffic coming. Like it's so simple nowadays, yet most people just stop. I think it's coming back to like this concept of the message to Garcia. If somebody gives you a task, like you've gotta go to the mountains of Cuba in the middle of a civil war and you gotta take this message across enemy lines to the deepest part of the jungle and deliver it. And Rohan didn't ask a single question. He said, yes sir, I will go. And he figured out a way to get it done. I think if more people embrace that mindset instead of like, well, I don't know how to do this, I'm stuck, I'm confused. And they just hit a wall, hit a wall and they just stop, right? One of my friends, Satem Aghali, he said something at one of our events one time. He's like, if you wanna be successful in life, you have to stop stopping. He's like, people just stop. He's like, you have to stop stopping. Like, if you wanna be successful, you have to keep moving forward. I think that's what people miss, especially nowadays. Like, any hurdle you have, you can get figured out with ChatGPT and with AI and with, like, it's so simple nowadays, yet more people are lazier and more people stop. And so I think if we come back and start adopting this message or this concept of how do you carry a message like RC, you just do it. You figure out a way and you apply that to anything in life. It could be your relationships, Could be your business, could be your sport, like whatever it is you're trying to accomplish in life. When you adopt that mindset, that's how you win. The best mental framework that I think through when I do this is, you've probably heard Tony Robbins say this before, like the quote of like, if you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.

If you want to take the island and you're the head of the army and you want to take the island, the most powerful way to take the island is burn the boats. Because if there's no way to go back, it's amazing what happens when it's a must. To do something versus a should. That's what makes human beings succeed.

That concept, I think it came from World War II when they were storming Normandy, right? And they're supposed to be going on these beaches or whatever, and, and it's like they leave the boats behind, you're gonna start going, then freak out and go back. And it's like, if you want to be successful and take that, and you have to burn the boat so there's no turning back. Myron Golden spoke at a Funnel Hacking Live event one time. He came on stage for 20 or 30 minutes. He talked about this concept of deciding, and I wish Myron is here to explain it. He does it better than me. But one thing I remember so powerful from his presentation was the, the word decide means to cut, like literally to cut in half.

When you decide, it means de is from the Latin root of or from, side means to cut. You commit suicide, that means you cut off su, your life, right? An incision, you cut inside yourself, right? You get cut inside. Well, when you decide, you cut yourself off from any other possibility. So to decide literally means to sever, it means to cut.

And so most people don't decide. Most people dabble. I'm gonna try a little bit. I'm gonna see if this works. I'm gonna try a little bit. But then if it's not gonna work, then they quickly slip back. Oh, nevermind. Like, it's good. I can't do that, right? Whereas deciding is cutting off all other options. Like when you cut off all other options, there's nothing else you can do besides go forward, right? It's burning the ship so you can take the island. If somebody wants to do something like this, like actually get the message to Garcia, whatever your version of that is, is coming back and say, okay, if I'm gonna do that, like I have to decide, I have to cut off all other options. And most people aren't willing to do that. Most people are always dabbling. Like I remember when my wife and I got married in our marriage, right? And we saw so many people around us we loved who were getting divorces. And there's obviously, there's so many situations and I'm not saying this is perfect or that, you know, anything other than that one of the things we said after we got married, we have to make sure that we have no options. Like this marriage is gonna work, there's no other options. And so literally during our first month or so in marriage, we made a rule, we said we can never say the D word. Like we can't joke about it, we can't talk about, like that is like, because as soon as you do, as soon as you start joking, as soon as it's an option on the table, then it's really easy to go back, right? As soon as you're like, oh, I can't figure out how to get my message to Garcia, I'm just gonna go, like, I'll just go back, it'll be easier. As soon as that's an option, you're not gonna take the islands 'cause you're not burning the boats, right? And so we were like, we will burn the boats. And what's been powerful now, we've married for, man, almost 25 years. There's so many times, like marriage is not easy, it is difficult, it is hard, like it is, You know, there's ups and downs all the time, but there was never an outlet. There was never an option. It was like, we are gonna solve this. We're gonna figure this out. We're gonna have the conversation 'cause there's not an out. Like, this is how it's gonna work, right? When we got in business, in different parts of my business, different phases of the business, same things. Like, we've had business failures a lot. And when the business failure happens, it's not like, oh, we're, anyway, we're out. It's like, no, like, we will figure this out. One of my friends was up here. Some of you guys know McCall Jones and Catherine Jones Lish. They told me the other day, they said that behind my back they call me the cockroach. And I was like, what? They said, yeah, in a nuclear war or nuclear bomb hits, everything dies except the cockroaches. Cockroaches figure out how to live through, like they're the only things that survive everything. And they're like, Russell, we've seen your ups and downs over the last decade. Like you just keep coming back. Like you're like a cockroach that cannot be killed. And I think it comes back to this. Like I have a goal, I have a mission. It's bigger than me and I'm not stopping. I've cut off all their options and I'm pursuing it with all my heart and my mind. I think most people don't do that. Most people just dabble and they give themselves an out and they give themselves so many different outs. It's like, stop giving yourselves outs. If you really want to accomplish something, you've got to burn the boats. If you want to take the island, if you want to take the message to Garcia, you got to figure it out because no one's going to give you the answer to everything you need, right? It's your job to go out there and like, you've got a mission, like figure out how to get through the mountains and get that message to Garcia. When I first started my book collecting journey, some of you guys may have seen the documentary Bibliomania. And if you did, I actually purchased this entire collection. A guy was collecting Napoleon Hill books and documents for over 20 years and actually went and purchased his entire collection from him. And when I was there, he was showing me, it was not just Napoleon Hill stuff, it was all these other books that he had from different authors and stuff. And I'm not gonna lie, like I didn't, I'd never heard of Elbert Hubbard. I didn't know who that guy was. In fact, I thought it was a Scientology guy at the time. Like when I first heard the name and I was like, oh, and he's like, this is like Elbert Hubbard. Like, you know about the message to Garcia, right? And I didn't wanna act dumb 'cause I thought everybody had heard of it before. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Message to Garcia. And I remember like I took a picture of the book and that night I was like Googling like what is the Message to Garcia? I'd never heard of it before. And I read the story and again, it's such a short, fast read. I actually, I found it online and I read it really quick and I got it. I was like, oh, I was like, that's why this is so cool. And I started reading the story about the marketing and like the fact that it, you know, over a million times it had been printed in like, I think like 20 or 30 different languages. Because when people like employers and bosses and coaches and athletes, like when people saw that this message, it was so timely. This is back 1899. So this is before the turn of the century. It reminds me a lot of like Jocko's message of like extreme ownership, how corporations and armies and everyone took that message. It's like everyone takes extreme ownership. It was the same thing back then in 1899 with this message, the message of Garcia. It's just like, look, when you have a task, you gotta figure out how to get it there. And it was such a powerful thing. So I read about that there, and then I've actually got about a dozen different versions of this book now. I've got first editions, later editions, ones that are in bigger books and smaller books and pamphlet versions, and there's so many cool ones out that I found. This is my favorite one though, because I love the leather case and just the way that it's packaged and the fact that it's signed by Elbert is pretty cool too. All right, if you want to read The Message of Garcia, I wasn't giving you my notes, but the book is so simple you can read it in like 15 minutes, the entire thing. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a link down to our copy of The Message of Garcia in the comments down below. Click on that, go over there, and you can get a free copy, and that way you can read it and you can get inspired. I would recommend reading this and then tell it to your kids, tell it to your staff, tell it to people that you have stewardship over. Have them read as well, and you can get this mindset for all of them of, if you can help them to get the mindset from this book, The Message of Garcia, it'll help them to produce more and help your company grow, your family get more done, and it'll be pretty powerful. So that's in the comments down below. Other than that, thank you guys for hanging out today, and we'll see you guys on the next video.

Aah!