Unlocking Desire: The Missing Ingredient in Marketing and Sales | #Success - Ep. 04

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So, unless something else changes, we're gonna keep on going down this path, which will be a lot of fun, me just kind of picking topics I wanna geek out on in different areas. So, today's topic I wanna talk about is desire, but what's interesting is I wanna talk about this from different, like probably two different standpoints. One, from you as a marketer who's trying to create desire in the hearts of the people you are selling, 'cause the more desire they have for the thing you're selling, the more likely they are to buy. But number two, how do you create desire in your own heart, right? In your own body, in your own thing. Like, you know you should be desiring this thing, but you're not. Like, how do you create desire? And then on top of that, like, how do you influence people? Like, it's kind of a multipurpose thing. So I don't know if this one's categorized under Secrets of Success or Marketing Secrets or Selling, but it's kind of a blend of all those. But it's been something that's been on my mind a lot recently from a lot of standpoints. You know, obviously, I think for me it stems off of, I mean honestly, number one is my kids. Like I love my kids. They are the coolest people in the world. But they are also for me the hardest people to influence like and to help and to guide and to teach and to, it's so weird to me, you know, like all people who pay me insane amounts of money for me to give my advice and my kids are like, "Dad knows nothing." I'm like, "I swear I know something." Like, you know, I'm sure you guys experience that if you have kids as well. It's really hard to be, what do they say? It's hard to be a prophet in your own hometown, right? And so, That's been interesting. So I keep thinking about it. I'm like, how do I create desire in my kids for stuff that's good, right? Stuff that they should have desire for, like God and like eating healthy and being like all these things I just like, I have huge desire for, they don't. How do I influence them? How do I? It's hard, right? But then at the same time, it's like, okay, how do I, like the people I'm influencing, like my funnel hackers, my prime movers, the people I'm trying to help in their journey, like how do I influence them? You know, if they already have desire, how do I increase that desire so that they're more likely to actually follow through and actually do the things? And then on the third side, for myself, it's like, I know there's things I should be doing that maybe I'm not doing, and it's 'cause I don't desire 'em, but I know I should be. Like, I should be eating healthy. Why don't I desire this? Like, how do I create desire and how do I amplify the desire? And so that's what I've been thinking a lot about recently. And so anyway, that's kinda what I wanna start this with, to just, for you guys to just kinda think about that for yourselves. Like desire, 'cause desire's such an important thing. I remember the first time I really had this, I think this realization I was— so I'm a Mormon LDS. And so, in our church, we have no paid clergy, right? So, there's no preacher who's up on stage. And so, what happens is everyone in the audience gets a chance to talk. So, once every 3 or 4 years, they'll call me on the phone like, "Hey, Russell, you want to speak today at church?" I'm like, "Heck yeah." For me, it's like my favorite thing. Like I love— anyway, if I had one full-time calling, it would be to speak at church every single Sunday. I should be a pastor. I love it. Anyway, In fact, I think I'm going to launch a podcast about that. In fact, I bought a reasontobelieve.com. So, I think I'm going to do a podcast in the future that's more faith-based because I love it. I love talking about and thinking about, reading about. So, anyway, I was at this, I got asked to speak in church. This is probably 15 years ago. And I got on stage and I'm doing my presentation. I'm looking out in the audience. And what's crazy is there's like 5 people you could tell had desire to learn. They were looking at me excited and like happy faces. And then 95% of the audience is like, half asleep, you know, and this is me like Russell Brunson teaching, which is, you know, I'm like, all my energy, all my everything, and like still most of them had no desire to hear from me, so they were just kind of like dozed out, versus there were people who had desire, like they were tuned in, like I was able to run with them. And then I contrast that to my events, like Funnel Hacking Live, right? People who come to Funnel Hacking Live, they already have a desire to learn stuff, so they show up, like anything I say, they're like, this is amazing, and they freak out, and it's so interesting, like it's so much easier to influence somebody who already has desire for the thing that you are offering them, right? Versus someone who doesn't have desire for that. I think about like, I have friends come to me like asking me health advice. Like, you know, how do you do this? How do you do this? I'm like, oh, let me tell you, here's my morning routine, here's my supplements, here's my this. And like, they freak out, right? And then my kids, they're struggling with stuff. I'm like, hey, you should like, let me help you. Let me like, you know, and they just won't listen to anything. And so it's this weird thing where it's like, gosh, like at least for me, I'm frustrated. Like, how do I implant desire into your brain so that I can help you? 'Cause I can change your life if you would just allow me. But you have no desire to change your life, therefore I can't. And it's this weird thing. And so I thought a lot about, in fact, I talked to Colette about it last night. I was just like, do you think it's possible to give people desire? And I'm gonna do a whole scriptural study and I'm gonna go deep in it. So I don't know right now off the top of my head. So I don't know the answer to this, but I'm gonna go research it. But my belief right now is I don't think it's possible for me to plant a desire in somebody's heart. I think that God is the person who plants desires. And I think that we can nurture them, we can water them, we can help them grow, but I don't think we can necessarily plant a desire in someone's heart. Now, I have some workarounds, so don't worry. I got some workarounds I'm gonna share with you guys here in a minute. So, I do think it's possible to do some stuff around that, but I think that the actual seed has to be planted by God. And think about this because I think about when I was a kid growing up, I remember, like, in hindsight, Russell today looking back on Russell as a 15-year-old kid, I remember thinking books were stupid. I remember my mom taking me to the bookstore and be like, "This is the stupidest thing. Why would someone go? This is the most boring place on the planet. Why would I want to ever come here?" Like, I remember just being so annoyed with books. And then fast forward now, 30 whatever years later, 30 years later, you know, I bought 18,000 books in the last, you know, 2 years. Every penny that I've earned, I'm dumping into building my own event center/library/museum so I can look at books and smell books and talk about books. So, it's definitely you know, it's definitely kind of a flip-flop. But I think about this like, what caused that desire for me to do that, right? And I don't think it was ever initially, it wasn't a desire for actually reading. I never came up like, oh, I'm going to become a reader. That's the thing, you know, I'm going to go read. Like, that wasn't the desire. But there was a desire planted in my heart, right? And it was when I was a kid, like I had this weird desire and you guys have heard a story, so I'm not going to go deep into it. But watching an infomercial, seeing someone talk about, you know, Don Lapre talk about making money trying classified ads. I had this desire planted, but the desire was something, was a bigger thing. It was, I want to make money. Like, I want to figure out how to make money, right? So that was the desire and that was the seed that was planted. And the question obviously is like, why would God plant that seed? Like, who does he actually care if Russell makes money? So I think I solved that like 25 years later. So I'll explain that here in a minute. But I get this seed of desire placed in my heart for me to figure out how to make money, right? And so I'm trying to figure out how to make money. And as a teenager, I'm trying all sorts of stuff, right? So I'm trying a thousand different ways to make money. None of them actually work. But then I get into college, right? Meet my wife, we're gonna get married. I have nobody to support her. I wanna keep wrestling. And so all of a sudden, like that seed that I didn't plant before is like, well, I gotta figure out how to make money. And so now that seed's there and then desire, and the desire starts growing. How do I make money? I gotta figure this out. And so I started studying, started learning, started reading, you know? And so that seed started to grow and started to develop and started getting bigger. So that desire went from this little tiny, like, oh, it'd be fun to make some money. It's like, I've got to figure out how to make money for my family, right? And as that seed started growing, then like ancillary seeds started growing as well, not on purpose, but it's because they were the things I needed to actually make the money, right? So, the desire was making money, but then like I was trying different things. I was flipping things on eBay. I was, you know, I was trying to sell stuff on Craigslist. Like I was doing all these different things. And then in that process of trying to figure out different things, I started like finding like ebooks about like, here's how to make money. And I started finding more things and I started reading and started studying. And then I remember I built my first little business that I kind of set up there. I launched it making, I don't know, I was making a couple hundred bucks here and there. And then what's interesting is I went to an event. It was my very first big seminar, Armand Moran's big seminar. And I had this little business at the time. I show up at the event, I'm sitting there learning. And I remember there was a guy, Michael Fortin, who was up there speaking and he was a conversion guy. Like he was a copywriter conversion guy and he was on stage talking. And I remember he started sharing some stats and some numbers about different split tests. I don't remember the details, but I do remember one of them was like, you know, I was testing my headline, like a blue headline versus the red headline. I can't remember which one won, but one of them won by like whatever, 30 or 40%. I was like, huh, that's interesting. So that night I went back to my hotel room and I logged into Front Page on my computer and I went and I edited the headline. I changed the color of the headline, but I did like a little split test so I could see which one converted. And sure enough, By changing the color of the headline on my page, it increased my conversions by whatever it was, 30%, let's say, which meant I started making 30% more money. Does that make sense? Like, conversion of 30%, so same amount of traffic, 30% more money came in my bank account. And I remember sitting there like a week later, I was like, that's insane. I learned something and then I applied it and I made 30%, like I gave myself a raise, you know? And I was like, what? This knowledge is amazing. Like, I learned something, I applied it, I made money. What else could I learn? So I remember getting a book, I was reading a book and most books fluff and go through stories. All of a sudden there's like one little nugget. I took that nugget, I was like, huh? So I took that nugget, I applied it, I made more money. I was like, this is insane. I learned something, I applied it, I made more money. Then I remember going, I'm like, I'm gonna go to another seminar. So I went to another seminar. I remember sitting there, I was sitting there for day number 1, I was getting nothing, getting nothing. All of a sudden like speaker on day 3 dropped this little nugget. I was like, oh, I took that nugget, applied it, boom, made more money. I was like, this is insane. I just gotta weed through all this content, all this stuff. If I find one little thing, it equals more money, right? And so I became obsessed with this, like passionate. I started buying books and courses and everything. Every course came, I bought it. I devoured it. Devoured, not looking for like, I need this thing to change my life. I was like devouring it for one little nugget. If I get one little nugget from a 4-day course, boom, changes everything for me, right? I remember going to seminars. I remember one seminar going to, and I was there for like 2 or 3 days. I'm like, I'm getting nothing, getting nothing. Then that night, everyone's going out to the bars, and I'm introverted, Russell. I'm Mormon, I don't drink, but everyone's going to this bar, and they're like, "Come on out, hang out, it's gonna be fun." I'm like, "Ah." You know, and finally I was like, "Okay," but I'm like, "I don't want people to think I'm down there drinking, so how do I make this not," you know, like worst case I want someone to like tell my wife, "Hey, I saw Russell at the bar yesterday," you know, so I'm like, "Colette, I'm going to the bar, but don't worry, I'm not drinking, I just, everyone's going down there, I gotta hang out with them." So I go down to the bar, and the funniest story, I go down to the bar, and the bartender, or whatever, the person comes up and asks for something to drink, and I was like, first in my head I'm like, "Oh, I'll get a Sprite." I'm like, "Ah, Sprite looks like," everyone else is drinking. I'm like, uh, it's fine. He's like, what does it look like whatever else is drinking? I was like, can I order a milk? And the guy's like, you want a milk? I'm like, yeah. And he's like, yes. And so he comes and gives me milk. So I'm holding this milk because the milk, at least in my mind, doesn't look like alcohol. So I don't— I want everyone to know that I'm not drinking, I'm drinking milk. And everyone's like, what are you drinking? I'm like, oh, it's milk. They're like, what? I'm like, I'm Mormon, I don't drink, so I'm drinking a milk. They're like, that's weird, but oh, whatever. So I'm hanging out with these guys at the bar, and the more drunk they get, the more they start talking, the more that they start sharing. And in a very short period of time These guys are dropping this gold. I'm like, what? I'm scooping up the gold, going back home, implementing. I'm like, I'm making so much money. So because of that, this desire for learning started growing. Okay? The desire for money caused me to have a desire for learning. And then I started learning everywhere. It was books, courses, seminars, whatever it could be, right? And so I became a voracious studier, learner, not looking for like, this book's going to change. I think a lot of times people like read a book and they give a negative review. Oh, this book has got regurgitated stuff. I was like, who cares? I'm not like, all I'm looking for One nugget. That's like Funnel Hacking Live, people come, it's like a 5, you know, it's a 4-day event plus a 1-day date with Dan, like, is it gonna be worth it to come? Like, I value learning so much. In 5 days, if you can't get one nugget that doubles your business, there's a problem with you, okay? It's 'cause you're not paying attention with the right ears. You're hoping someone's gonna save you as opposed to someone's gonna give you an idea that takes you down a path, right? Like, that's the difference. So I became obsessed with it, right? And now I look at my life, like, it's books, it's courses, it's seminars, it's learning, it's podcasts, it's like, just voracious, what's the word? I'm voracious. Ferociously looking for the thing, right? And that's like, that's who I am now, right? And so that's how it created the desire. Okay, so those are some of the experiences in my head I was going through as I'm trying to figure this out, like how do I create desire for my kids or for other people, right? Because for me, it wasn't a direct thing, right? It was like I desire for this bigger core value thing that I wanted, and then from there, there were things that I had to do to be able to achieve that value, and I started increasing the value around those. And then because I did that, it increased— it, it got me the value I wanted at the end of the day. Does that make sense? Okay.

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Go to your happy price. Priceline. And then I hinted about this earlier, so I'm just kind of bring back and talk about it. So it was interesting. This was FHL 2017, I think. We're in Orlando. And it was the very first time we introduced Operation Underground Railroad. So, Tim Ballard came and we filmed a documentary. He came on stage, we shared the whole thing, we were all crying, it was crazy. And we ended up raising $1 million for Operation Underground Railroad. And I remember if you do the math, Tim told us on average it costs about $2,500 to save a child and then there's $7,500 to rehab them. So, you'll get $10,000, saves a kid. So, if you— let me see, let me pull my calculator. So what's the math on that? So let's say, boom, 100. So like, in theory, it's the equivalent of saving and rehabbing 100 children from sex slavery, right? And so we do this whole thing and it's crazy. I'm thinking about everything that led me up to that moment in my life, right? I'm thinking about, you know, when I was in college and when I was like 14-year-old kid and I wanted to like study, like I was watching infomercials, learn how to make money. And then in a college kid, when I got these things placed in my mind where I started caring about marketing and sales and advertising, I'm like, why would God care about Russell, you know, 20-year-old Russell, 21-year-old Russell, whatever it was, like geeking out on this? Why was like that desire placed in my heart? When I was failing through school, barely having success, didn't like reading, and all of a sudden it's like, hey Russell, you're gonna actually care about marketing. When you learn about marketing, you're gonna become obsessed with it. You learn about sales, you're gonna become obsessed with it. Why was that seed planted in my heart? And I don't know, right? But I do know that 18 years later, 20 years later, whatever it was, God was using that desire he planted in my heart, right? He let me develop it through things I was passionate about and excited about, but then later he allowed me to use that in a way that I think he called me to do, right? To help 100 kids from sex slavery through this organization that we were supporting, right? I think about it all the time. Like, a lot of times, like, why did God give me this thing? Like, wrestling is an example. Like, why was that desire planted in my heart? Why was I so obsessed with wrestling? Why was it a decade of my life that's all I did, right? I wrestled, I lifted weights, I cut weight, I competed, I went to tournaments, I went to camps. Like, why was a decade of my life, like, consumed with that, right? Now, if you look at my life now, like, I'm not a wrestler, I'm not coaching wrestling. Why did I spend 10 years of my life doing that? It's like, well, God planted that seed in my heart because there were things I had to learn through wrestling, right? Like, the reason why I am as crazy as I am today, the reason I can outwork everybody on this planet, the reason why I'm successful is because of my wrestling, right? In wrestling, I learned how to like, how do you go 4 days without water or food while competing and practicing and running and lifting weights so you can compete at a weight 20 pounds lower than you actually weigh on Thursday and do that every single week for 8 years of your life, right? Like, I did things in wrestling that if most humans tried to experience it, they would crumble under the pressure of it, right? And I look at that like, and I was doing consistently day in and day out, day in and day out. I remember sitting like my high school, our wrestling room was below the basketball court. So I remember like in wrestling practice, we'd be done with a 2.5-hour, 3-hour practice. We'd wrap ourselves in plastics and we'd be running, working out, getting the heaviest sweat possible. And then we'd jump under the mats and we'd roll ourselves up in the mats to like to constrict all the heat so we'd sweat more. And I'm doing this while I'm listening upstairs to the basketball players running around, playing basketball, getting their drinks of water, eating lunch and breakfast and dinner, 3 meals a day they gotta eat. While I'm down there, I haven't eaten in 3 days, I haven't drinking in 2 days, and right now I'm sweating 8 to 10 pounds an hour out of my body like so that I can make weight this week so I can compete for 6 minutes, right? Like that's what I had to go through. And it's like, why did I go through that? Right? It was like, well, because in the future, Russell, you're gonna be called to lead a movement and to change people's lives and to build a company and a business. And there's gonna be times that it is gonna be brutal and it's gonna be hard. And you're gonna have people who you thought were your friends turn their backs against you. Right? But guess what? None of that's as hard as what I did in wrestling. Right? I learned how to endure that and succeed through that pressure because this pressure is simple compared to that. Right? And so God gave me the desire to learn wrestling so that someday I could be worthy and able to handle this calling, right? And so I think about that a lot. And so for me, it's like those are seeds that were planted that don't make any sense in the short term, but when you look at your life as a grand scheme of things, it's like, oh, these things all make sense, right? Okay, so there's desire. So again, it doesn't always make sense. Why does God plant these things? How do we get there? And then secondarily, how can I help give other people desire? And that's the hardest thing. So step number 1, or sorry, I have some steps here, but But I think the thing I wanna argue or discuss in this podcast and get your thoughts on, get you guys thinking about as well, is just like, how do we do that? How do we create desire in ourselves for things we know we want? How do we create desire in the hearts of the people we love and serve? Could be our kids, could be our audience, could be our whatever. How do we create those desires? How do we amplify those desires to help people in our world to be more successful? So that's the question. So I don't know the answer, but I have some steps that based on my experience of 44 years, almost 45, my birthday's coming up, years of my life, what I've kind of figured out And so it's my best guess today. I'm gonna keep developing this idea over time, but hopefully this will be useful for you guys as you're trying to figure out as well, okay? All right, so this is my thoughts. And step number 1, I got 3 steps here, okay? So step number 1, because I don't think that we can manually plant desires in someone's heart, I think the first step is figuring out what does somebody already have a desire for? What desire's already been planted in their heart, okay? That's the first step. Okay? Because think about me, like I already had a desire in my heart to learn how to make money. That desire was already there. So for me to, you know, to get obsessed with marketing and funnels and things like that, like, well, like it's hard for me to like, you should be obsessed with funnels. Like, why? Like, because they're awesome. I can't plant that desire in your heart. But if you got a desire for business or wealth or getting out of pain or whatever, like if you have some other value, if I can identify what that is, then I can work my way into that and I can increase desire for the thing I want by knowing what your core value is, okay? The core thing you are desiring. So, the first question is, what do you already have desire for? This is either for you if you're trying to influence yourself or for the person you are trying to influence, your kids, your audience, whatever, right? Okay, so what do you already have a desire for? Now, I was thinking about this, I'm like, like what are desires, right? Desires are the things that we value the most, right? And it's fun right now inside of our company, I think I told you guys, but we split our company in two. There's the ClickFunnels company and the Prime Mover, which is the info coaching side of the business. So, still the same business, we kind of separated them into two units that work together, but they're separate business entities. And on top of that, we have different CEOs for each company just because they're different focuses and stuff like that. And so with the Prime Mover company, we've been working on now is like, what are our company values? Which has been really fun kind of putting those together and figuring those out and identifying what those things are, right? And how they're different from other things we've done. And so that's the big question. And so I started thinking about like, well, what are the things that I value personally, right? Or my kids value. And so I did this, It was Mastermind in Paradise. We did a mastermind. This is 3 or 4 years ago now. We were down in Mexico and I did this really fun experience with everybody. It was one of the coolest things. I think someday I'll do it again. Maybe when the new event center is done, I'll do a special event around this. But it was really cool. But I did this cool exercise and I learned this initially from my friend Tal Tuspany. He's the head of the Ayn Rand Foundation. He's awesome. And he was telling me this exercise he did with people, so I did it for our audience. So the first thing we did is we created, we tried to figure out what do people actually value? Like what are the things they value the most? Things they have the most desire for, right? So what I did in this event is I gave everybody a packet of sticky notes. I said, I want you as fast as you can, top of your mind, like what are the things that bring you the most happiness in your life? The things that are the best, right? Things you value the most. I said, write them down on these sticky notes and as fast as you can, start laying them out on these like little poster boards, right? So everyone went down and they started writing it out. I did the same thing. And so I was up on stage, I had the big old whiteboard, so I started writing down, like things that I value, like I value reading, learning, understanding, religion, God, I value growth, I value health, I value— So I started listing as many things I can, like hundreds of them, right? As fast as we can. So we're listing them all out, putting all these sticky notes all over, and I had the whole whiteboard of all these sticky notes, right? And everybody else did the same thing. Now, by the way, like a month later, we were at spring break with my kids, I did the same experience with them, which was really cool. So I gave them all sticky notes, like everything brings you happiness, everything that you're excited about, like write it down. So they're all writing down, so we spent, you know, 15, 20 minutes writing down as many different values as we could, right? Now, TAL calls this a value galaxy. So, we have this big galaxy of all the things that we value, right? And so, that's step number 1, which is really fun. So you can do it for yourself, okay? This is gonna help you learn a lot about yourself. You can also do it with, again, people you're influencing. So that's step number 1. Now step number 2 is then you look at these value galaxies. You might have 50 or 100 different things that you value that are exciting, right? You start looking at them, you'll notice that these things will kinda group into what TAL calls value themes. Okay, so what happens is like, okay, all these 20 here are all, if you look at those, they're all tied to like my health and fitness, right? So I'm gonna put all those things together and like this is the theme was health and fitness, right? And underneath there, there's 20 things that make me happy, right? Okay, then over here, I'm gonna take, these are about religion, about faith, right? These are about faith. And so I take these and these 15 things, I'm gonna put 'em together and these are all faith. So that becomes a value theme is faith. And then I find another one. So for everybody, I said do that and you should be able to find 5 or 6 value themes will start popping out for you, right? So put 'em together, we find these different value themes. Also it's like, cool, I have these different value themes. And so, we have those different themes. And now, based on that, now it's like, "Hey, now I know here's the 5 or 6 things that I value the most." Okay? And so, that's what we did to figure out what the values were. And then this is the coolest part. In Mexico, we did is then I said, you know, like the— I think Ayn Rand said that like the pursuit of our values is the thing that actually brings us happiness, right? It's not the achievement, it's not the goal. It's like the pursuit of our values is what brings us happiness. I said, based on that, it's like when I die, when all of a sudden I die, I'm on my deathbed, like the question is like, did I— not that I hit this goal, I made $1 million, it's like in the sincere pursuit of my values, was I successful? And so, I had everyone write an obituary as if the core 5 or 6 value themes that they had designed had actually come true. And this is your obituary. And then I wrote mine. And it was crazy because I knew I was doing this for like 2 months. I was preparing for the event. And I was too scared to write mine. And the morning of, I was like, "I have to write that." So, I sat down and I wrote out my obituary. And then I stood on stage and I read it. I was like bawling my eyes out. But it was basically me taking my value themes and like saying, "You know, Russell Brunson, like he valued faith. And because of that," you know, and I went through and I did my obituary. And then I had everybody else, we spent an hour, had everybody take their value themes and from there, write what they would want read, or not obituary, sorry, eulogy at your eulogy. And so, It was really, really powerful. Now, I'm not gonna do it today with you guys 'cause again, maybe when we launch our event center here, I'll do that with everybody who wants to come. It'd be a really fun exercise. But from there, it helped me figure out like, what do you actually desire? These are the 5 or 6 values you have that you desire the most, right? And so that's, I believe that's step number 1 'cause those values are already in us. They're planted, they're hard-coded, they're in there. I think that over time you can value more things and different things. There's things later in my life I value more that I didn't 20 years ago. So I think those things, they can keep blossoming and growing, I don't think it's stagnant. But for right now, this snapshot of your life, you have these different value themes, okay? So you figure out what those 5 or 6 things are, okay, for you or for the person you're influencing, okay? Alright, that's step number 1. What do you already have a desire for? Okay, what are things you're already valuing? Then we transition now to step number 2, okay? Now we gotta figure out how do we connect the thing that you, or how do you connect this desire to the thing that will create the result? Typically, the thing that you are selling or the thing you're trying to give your person that you love who's not listening to you, there's a thing that will give them the thing they desire the most, right? So, for example, my kids, I'm like, you need to be eating healthy. And they're like, I don't want to eat healthy, it tastes like garbage. I'm like, no, it doesn't. It's like we're fighting because we're fighting over the thing, right? And I think that's where I get a headbutt with my kids. Sometimes myself, like I should be studying the scripture. Like, I don't want to, it's boring. I don't want to. Like I'm fighting over the thing. Versus stepping back and say, okay, how do I connect the thing that you actually want to this thing, right? So I think about like, I don't wanna throw my kids under the bus, they get so mad if I tell stories about them, but one of my kids, I'll leave it vague so that, so they don't get mad at me, but one of 'em last night went into our gym, which we have the most insane gym ever on our yard, and our kids hardly ever use it, it's, anyway, yeah, but they went in there today and they were working out and they did all sorts of stuff, and then that, that kid came back in and was like, and I was like, you worked out, this is awesome. Like, yeah, I wanna get abs. Boom, I figured out what do they desire? They desire, for whatever reason, abs, right? That's what they want. And I said, okay, now I have a, like, now I know exactly what's been implanted, okay? Now me trying to get them to eat healthy, now it's not like you need to eat healthy, like stop eating this garbage, like da da da. Like now it's like, 'cause they don't value that, right? What do they value? They value abs. Okay, I know they value abs. Eating healthy is gonna be a piece of that. Now I've got a map. Now I say, okay, they already desire this. Now, so again, step number 2 is figure out how to connect that desire to the thing that will create the result. Usually the thing is what we're trying to sell somebody on, right? Here's the thing, okay? We're trying to give them desire in the thing, but they don't have desire in the thing. They have desire in their value, and so I have to connect the desire for that thing to the result. Okay, this is just like me back in the day, right? I didn't wanna read or learn or anything, and I go to the seminar, Michael Fortin's like, hey, change your headline from red to blue. I apply, it makes money. I was like, Boom, now I have desire for the thing, learning. I love it, I'm obsessed with it. Prior, no, just wanna make money, okay? The internal desire was making money. As soon as I learned that by doing the thing, it'll make me more money, I became obsessed with it, okay? I think health was the same thing for me. I didn't care about health. My whole life I was a wrestler, awesome shape, 7% body fat, abs, awesome, it was great. Then my wrestling career ends, The same weekend my wife gets pregnant with twins. She starts eating for 3. I start eating to keep up with her. And now I'm not exercising, working out. And within, you know, whatever, 7 and a half, 8 months, she gains 50 or 60 pounds. I gain 50 or 60 pounds. We're having so much fun together, eating so great. And then she one day has 2 babies, loses all the weight. And I'm like sitting here chubby all by myself. I'm like, oh, this is not good. It takes 8 years. 8 years. I didn't care about health. I was just overwhelmed. I guess I'm just a big guy now. Who cares? Right? Did not desire it, right? Until the pain became too hard. Like, I— and, um, it's funny though because I became— the pain came too hard and everything, but then I started— I decided I'm gonna lose weight. But it was hard because I— it was hard to motivate myself and it was just— I didn't have desire to do it. Um, but after I started doing it, I started shifting the way I was eating. It was crazy because what happened is I started, um, I started eating differently. I'd skip breakfast. During lunch, I'd only eat proteins, no carbs. And at dinner, I'd have carbs. By shifting just the way I was eating, what happened is my brain didn't get tired. I didn't get brain fog. And so I'm at the office all day and I used to go 'til, you know, from 9:00 'til noon, then I eat and then the rest of the day I was kind of fuzzy, nothing get done, right? So I made less money. And by shifting my eating, all of a sudden guess what happened? My brain functioned the entire day. It was crazy. And then I got more production out of the day, I got more stuff done every single day, I started making more money. I was like, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, you're saying that if I get healthy, I'm gonna make more money and have more energy and more things? Okay, boom, I'm sold on that desire. I'm in on that because I wanna make more money, therefore health makes me more money and I can tie the thing I'm trying to do to the desire I actually have, as soon as my brain connects those things, like this equals more money, then it's like boom, now I have a desire for that as well because it feeds the desire I actually want. Okay, so it's connecting those dots between them, okay? Same thing for me right now, like I've had times in my life where I'm really good at scripture study, good and bad, good and bad, right? And then anyway, man, this is like literally in the last couple months, again, 'cause I'll start and whatever, but I started thinking about like, my desire, like one of my core desires right now is I'm trying to figure out all truth, right? And this is like from all the books, like personal development, health, like I wanna like, what is like, what is the truth, right? And so for me it's like now I wanna, I'm, I, that's me I'm valuing, right? Which is why I'm trying to learn and educate and all this kind of stuff. And so for me it's like, well, I wanna start studying scriptures and I wanna not just mine, like I wanna study the Mormon scriptures, I wanna study your Book of Mormon, Bible, New Testament, Old Testament, but I also wanna study other scriptures. I wanna like, what do the Muslims believe? What do the Jews believe? What do I like? I become obsessed with it. I want to understand how they all fit together. And like, it's become the most fascinating thing for me, right? Because it helps me like in my head connect these things, understand like, like just the truth of everything. So because of this obsession over here, it's drawn me into like now, like I'm loving the scriptures and, and other people's faiths. And like, uh, it's been so much fun, right? Where before I was fighting it very hard. Where this morning I was up early reading scriptures, having a great time because I've tied the thing and now I've desired the thing to give me what I'm actually looking for over here. Does that make sense? Speaking of which, this is kind of a side tangent. And there's a side tangent, but, you know, I'm not gonna go political because everyone's got different beliefs here and there. But one thing that's really cool is I've become obsessed with like conspiracy theories a little bit. And like, obviously, JFK one. And last night, as I'm recording this, Trump signed the thing to release the JFK documents. Like, I'm so excited to get behind like what's the actual truth in this thing. Anyway, there's a tangent. Alright, I've got one more step here inside the 3-step system, but I have to jump on my OFA live call. I'm live with a couple hundred people at, with One Funnel Away crew. If you're not at One Funnel Away, you should go to onefunnelaway.com, go sign up. I'm gonna jump on with them, I got an hour of Q&A with them, then I'll come back and I'll tell you guys step number 3 here, which will be awesome. So step number 3 then, after we know, step number 1, what is it? What do you already have desire for? Step number 2 is figure out how to connect that, that desire to the thing that will create the result, right? Which is usually the thing you're trying to sell them or persuade them or influence them on. Then from there, we'll move on to step number 3. When I come back, I'll let you guys know what step number 3 is.

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All right, everybody, I'm back. I know for you it's probably just a commercial break, but I just did an hour-long Q&A with the OFA people and had so much fun. And actually, it was funny because maybe, maybe it's just because my mind was thinking about desire specifically right now since we're talking about it, but It was interesting in the conversation, somebody was asking about niching down. They said, "My product's helpful for everybody." And I said, "Yeah, but the reality is like, you know, it's hard to market to everybody. So instead, you got to find different niche markets to kind of focus on, at least for your front-end offers." I said, "For example, in my world, you know, I have one market that we serve with funnels, our network marketers." I'm like, "So, I have a front-end funnel that serves network marketers, but I mean, we also help life coaches. I have front-end that helps life coaches and then we have front-end that helps, you know, local businesses. And so I kind of talked about that and in my head I was like, oh my gosh, like we're doing our marketing every single day, right? Like a life coach has no desire for a funnel, but they do have a desire to grow their life coaching business. Therefore, I tell them I help them grow life coaching business, but then how do I do it? I do it through the thing, which is the funnel, right? Network marketers don't care about funnels. They care about growing their network marketing business because that's the thing they've already been convinced is going to get them to their desire, which is probably more money, more freedom, whatever. And so then I gotta convince them that my thing, funnels, is the thing to help them with their thing, which is network marketing, which helps them with the end desire they want, which is actually to grow a business or have freedom or whatever it might be. Whew, you see how this works, you guys? You understanding this? Okay, so recapping. Step number 1, what do you already have desire for? Step number 2, figure out how to connect that desire to the thing that will create the result. And now that moves us to step number 3. Step number 3 is then how do we increase the desire for that thing? Desire amplification, that is the question. How do we do that? And I don't know, again, there's probably a huge list of all the ways. I'm gonna share with you guys a couple ways that have helped me in my life, okay? So the first thing I do to help me increase the desire for something is I think about it all of the time, okay? I think back about myself, like when I got into wrestling and I fell in love with wrestling and I wanted to become a wrestler and I wanted to be a state champ and then a national champ and an All-American, like it became obsessed. Like I remember sitting there and everything else became a burden for me. Like thinking about anything else was annoying. I remember sitting in class all day long and teachers are talking about who knows what, and all I wanted to focus on was wrestling. Like, how do I win? What's the move? How do I get my position? How do I? So all I thought about all day long at school every day was wrestling. Even though teachers were talking, I was like distracted. Like, ah, I gotta pay attention so I pass the class. And the second I was able to snap back into what I wanted to, the thing I desired the most, which is wrestling, I did it, right? And so the more I thought about, the more I desired, the more it grew. And like, And so like desire grows when you're focusing and you're thinking and you're focusing on it. Does that make sense? So the more you think about something, the more that desire grows. So if it's like, if you have a little seed of a desire, a little seed of something, if you want it to grow, you can't not think about it. You have to start thinking about it. And then as you think about it, you think about it more and more and more, and the more you think about something, the more it's gonna grow, okay? If you look at all these old books like he'd buy, and Think and Grow Rich, and all these things about thought and thought control, all sorts of stuff, like, Like thoughts come and go, but we can control our thoughts. We can think about something, we can choose to think about a thing. And if we choose to think about a thing, it'll grow. So if you know you got a little seed of desire and you want that desire to grow, start thinking about it, okay? For me, it's like when I decided I wanted to get back into reading scriptures again, right? There was the little desire that that thing was in there. So for me, it's like, okay, I gotta start thinking about this. Like, how do I do that? Well, I'm not gonna think about it by default. Like, so, you know, my brain's not gonna also snap like, oh, you should think about the book of John, you know? Like, that's not gonna pop in my head. So I started thinking, okay, Who are people around me that do have that desire, right? And they're excited, they're passionate. Like, I wanna take this little spark that I have, I gotta find a fire somewhere else. And if I take my spark next to the fire, what happens to my spark? It becomes a fire, right? So for me, it's like, alright, who are the people talking about these topics right now? And so I start finding books and information and podcasts and YouTube videos of people who actually are talking about this thing. People who are already on fire for the thing that I wanna be on fire for, but I'm not yet. I've got a spark, they've got a flame, right? So I find people who have a flame and I start surrounding myself around those people. So I'm listening to them on podcasts, I'm watching them on videos, I'm reading their content, I'm reading their books. That's how you take the spark and turn it into a fire, okay? So number 1 is I'm thinking about it all the time. Number 2 is I'm going and I'm finding people who already have a fire and I'm surrounding myself around those people, okay? There's a reason why people come to Funnel Hacking Live. People tell me this all the time, like, I feel like I'm at my house, I'm all lonely by myself, and I come to Funnel Hacking Live and I catch on fire. That's what they tell me, right? I catch on fire. Okay, it's interesting, think about that. So what's happening? They've got a spark of desire, they're at home, they're listening, they're seeing some stuff, they see me, they see like this guy who's like, I'm so passionate about this, I'm on fire, I'm excited, and so they're like, I need to come and get some of that. I don't know what that is, I wanna drink the Kool-Aid, I want some of that. What they're doing is they see this raging inferno of Russell, right, and they wanna come and they wanna get their spark close to that, 'cause they think if they do, it'll catch on fire, and it's true, right? Think about that, like I'm always looking for people to connect with who are already on fire 'cause I know if I'm around those people, it'll grow. You always, you hear people say all the time like you are the average of your 5 closest friends, right? In all sorts of things, in your income, right? Whoever your 5 closest friends are, however much money they're making, that's how much you're gonna make, okay? Same thing with your health, your weight, your energy, like whoever you're surrounding yourself, you'll be similar to, right? And there's a couple reasons. Number 1 is either 'cause you're gonna draw everyone, pull 'em down to your level, or number 2, you're gonna rise them up to your level, right? You're gonna be the fire that turns their spark into a fire. Oops, sorry. And so for me, it's like I'm always searching out people who are on fire. In fact, Andy Elliot, speaking of Funnel Hacking Live, a lot of people are like, why do you like Andy? Andy, like, he messed up in his past, he did some bad things. I'm like, 'cause when I saw Andy online, he was on fire and I wanted that. And I messaged him, I'm like, dude, I don't know what you got, but there's a flame and my spark's dwindling and I need to light myself on fire. So I called him up, flew out to his office, I spent literally less than 24 hours with him and His flame was so big that my little spark that was like kind of trembling and struggling, like caught back on fire. I came back home, I was like, "All right, everybody, we're like, blah." And like, I took that flame back to my team and then my team caught on fire. And like, that's how this stuff works, right? So you take this desire, again, number 1, think about it all the time. Number 2, you gotta go and you gotta find people who have the inferno and you get proximity. Proximity is power, Tony Robbins says all the time, right? Okay, number 3 thing here. A lot of times we focus on our future self, the thing we want, right? Our future desire, which is awesome. But the thing we forget about a lot of times is that we have this past self that's potentially holding us back, okay? I've been talking a lot recently about subconscious mind and from so many different standpoints, but our subconscious mind is like all of the things, the stories we've been telling ourselves for the last decade, two decades, however long it is, our entire life, they have these belief patterns, right? And so sometimes we're looking at the future, we're thinking about what we want to, what we want to achieve and who we want to become. But the problem a lot of times is that we have these false beliefs and this baggage we've been carrying around subconsciously. And if we don't look at that and address it and figure out how to break it, then those chains will hold us back. Okay? Now, the best time I've ever taught this so far, if you've read Expert Secrets book, I talk about when I'm trying to persuade somebody, I got to figure out what their chains of false belief are. Okay? These are the subconscious beliefs that they have that are holding them back. And then I have to come with a new empowering story that's going to trump their story. That's what the whole Perfect Webinar is about, is I gotta come in with the fire and the flame, and I gotta figure out what their false belief is, and I tell a story that breaks their false belief and rebuilds it with a new false belief. That's how I get somebody to move and to persuade. The same thing is true for you. If you're trying to change yourself, looking in the future is great, but you also look backwards and like, what are the false beliefs I have? What is actually holding me back? And I have to address that, those conversations. A really good book by Ben Hardy is Become Your Future Self Now. He talks about it, looking backwards, like, Okay, I gotta reframe, I gotta change the meaning of these things in the past that are holding me back today, right? What are the things in the past? Like for me, one of the things that was holding me back over the last 2 or 3 years, I'm not gonna lie, I'll be super vulnerable, so here we go, here's vulnerable Russell. I think you guys like vulnerable Russell, I always get comments afterwards, but you know, one of the hard things for me is for the last decade, we launched ClickFunnels, right? The first 7 or 8 years, like 3,000 people won 2 Comma Club Awards, we've changed the industry, we've changed so many people's lives. You know what's been hard for me? Okay, what was really hard is I started looking. These people who want to do Comic Club Board for me, right? Then they go find our competitor, they white label our competitor, and there's pictures of them holding a 2-Comic Club Board. Russell changed my life, but now I'm using this platform, which is theirs, and now they're competing against me. These people that I changed, like people are on stage crying, like you changed my life, Russell, it was so great. Now I'm gonna compete against you. Like just, I don't know, I have, I'm super faithful to people, you probably know this. Like I don't quote, I don't tell somebody an idea that I got from someone else and not give them credit for it. Like, I think it's the lowest, most scum of the world thing you can do is to take credit for somebody else's ideas you got from somebody else. I always pay credit to where it's due. I would never in a million years, like with Dan Kennedy or with people that I respect, I never would go and like, and like learn from, have them change my life and then go try to rip them off. Like, but it happens. It's been happening a lot and it's been painful, man. It was really, really painful. And so there was a while, there was a season probably for a year or two where I was just like, I don't want to help people. 'Cause they're gonna come in, learn my stuff, and then compete against me. Like, why would I wanna serve that audience? Like, it made me so angry and so mad, and it was because the meaning I attached to it. Because that meaning was attached, right? It was hard to move forward. It was hard to visualize, I'm gonna change the world, I'm gonna help a million entrepreneurs, I'm gonna blah, blah, blah, because I'm like, screw those entrepreneurs. Like, I'm changing their lives, and then as soon as like I change their lives, they lose all loyalty to me, and then they go and like behind my back, go and compete and like promote a competitor. Brutal for me, right? And so I had to come back and stop and say, looking back, say, okay, what's the meaning I'm attaching? The meaning I'm attaching is like, if I help these people in the future, they're gonna hurt me. It's not a good meaning, right? Makes you not wanna help people. Okay, but I just stopped and look at my past self and be like, ah, past self, that's the false. I don't know how I got attached. I didn't consciously like attach that, but it just started happening. I'd see people with their ads, them holding a Two Comma Club Award in their ad and then talking about a competitor. And I'm just like, I hate those people. I want them all to die. Right? It's not a good thing to say, but that's the meaning that was attached, right? So it's hard to go get more people and serve more people when that's the meaning that's holding you back. Okay? Now what's your meaning, right? What's the things that are holding you back? And you have to stop sometimes, look backwards, 'cause even though you got good goals and directions, things you say verbally, consciously you want, if your subconscious mind's holding you back, you gotta become aware of it and look at it. And then you gotta look at the meaning you're attaching to these things and then figure out a new story, figure out a new meaning. So for me, it was figure out new meanings. Right? Okay, how do I change this? In fact, it's been interesting. If you look at some of my ads right now, selling online event, I used to talk about like, I'm a world record holder, greatest, you know, sold more from stage than anybody else in the history of all time, like da da da. And now if you look at my ads, what I keep saying is like, my goal of this event is to have you come in 'cause I'm looking for somebody to beat me. I need someone to beat me 'cause I need competition. Like right now it's been too easy. No one else is competing. So I'm gonna train you to become the best possible person I want you to compete against me so I can beat you. As soon as you beat me, I got motivation to come back and beat you. Okay, now it's a different frame, right? I'm same thing right now. I'm like, cool, come in, go ahead and compete against me. Okay, now I got some motivation. Like my number one strength, if you take Strength Finders, my number one strength is competitive. So I'm gonna destroy you. So now I look at those people instead of like, I can't believe this person would backstab me that way. Instead it's like, oh cool, all right, you think you're gonna win? We could have partnered, could have been friends, but now I'm gonna beat you. I'm gonna win, right? There's competition coming out. There's Russell. That's the Russell that's gonna win, right? But I had to look at my past self and detach the meaning that was holding me back. Reattach a new meaning, and then run with that. Okay? So, number 3 there is looking at your past self and explaining, looking at what's holding you back and then rewriting those meanings. Okay? And then number 4, you gotta amplify the thing that will get us the value we have most, right? So again, this comes back to what we talked about earlier, right? Like the value I have is I want to, for me right now, one of my number 1 values is impact. I wanna change the world, right? So, like there's the big impact, right? And then what's the thing that's gonna do that for me? The thing that's gonna do that for me is writing books. Writing books is painful for me, right? But I know that's the thing that's gonna give me the impact I want. So I have to take that thing, right, the writing the books for me, and I have to amplify it by thinking about it. Okay, it comes back to the first thing, but it's like thinking about, thinking about, thinking, like amplify, amplify, amplify. The more you amplify, the more it's like, I love writing books, I love reading books, I love books, and then that thing becomes exciting, and then that drives the value in the future. So there is my sermon on desire, you guys. It's not everything out there, I'm sure, but it's all the things in my head that I keep thinking about, and hopefully something in there was valuable for you. Again, the 3 steps I wrote down. Step number 1 is what do you do or what do you already have desire for? Figuring that out, right? When you talk to you through the value galaxy, value themes story. So what do you already have desire for? Number 2, figure out how to connect the desire to the thing that'll actually create the desired result. And number 3 is then take that desire and increase the desire for that thing, amplify it as much as you can. So hopefully that was valuable for you guys. Hopefully you got some value. I'd love to hear in the comments, either in the podcast or YouTube, wherever you're watching this, give me some comments on the things that you would do or things you're trying to do or any of your thoughts. If you think I'm crazy, if I wrestle those are bad ideas, let me know your ideas. I'd love to hear them. But that's kind of what I'm working off of right now to help influence myself, influence other people, and it's been successful for most things. Still trying to figure out my kids. They are the hardest ones. I love them the most, so it's gonna be worth it when I figure it out. So thanks so much. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening to the podcast, and talk to y'all soon. Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/podcast. That's sellingonline.com/podcast.