8 Figure Entrepreneur Explains The Secrets Of Growing A Business

What's up, everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the show. Excited to be hanging out with you guys today. And today we're talking about getting insane amounts of traffic to your funnel before your funnel is even live. This is one of the biggest problems I'm seeing inside of our community is people. They are spending time building a funnel or building offer, putting things together, but they're not focusing on the most important thing, which is planting all the seeds you need ahead of time before you actually launch your funnel. So that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to go deep into it. For any of you guys who are building but not getting the eyeballs, the leads the following ahead of time, we're to going, we're gonna fix that for you guys today and show you a very fun, simple way to do that. But before we do, I gotta start some stories because anyway, I'm enjoying the new podcast style and you guys have been telling me it's been fun. I've shared a lot of stories again, like I used to back in the day, and people are loving it. So I'm gonna tell you some stories that will hopefully motivate you and get you excited. One story is the fact this shirt I'm wearing today, I saw this on the Joe Rogan show. He had it on during his podcast episode. So I'm hoping that by default, me wearing this, our podcast will grow. So there you go. There's number one. No, but for real, the story I want to tell you guys today was actually I lift weights in the morning with the trainer and I can't remember what conversation we got in, but we started talking about this and this story popped my head. I hadn't thought about this in, like, probably 20 years. And I thought it was really funny. So this comes down to, like, I don't know, my number one, I took strength finders. My number one strength is competitive, is competition. Like, I love competition. I thrive in it. The more that is, the better it is and all sorts of stuff. And, you know, I think that's why this business has been so fun for me. You know, we first launched it, we were the underdogs and we had all this big competition. We had all these companies to take on funding. I remember Leadpages when we first decided to create click funnels that just take on $5 million in funding. Eventually I had like 40, and so I was like, we got to beat them. So we were racing to beat them because we'd had no funding. It was just us with our brains and our, like, intuition and our energy running. So that was like the initial thing that we went through, right? And eventually we beat them. We surpassed them. And I have not heard the word lead pages in a, I don't know, five, six, seven years. The next was like, okay, who's the next company? It's like, boom. It was Infusionsoft. They just got like $150 million in funding. So I got, there's the next goal. So they're racing, racing, racing. And it was interesting. So that was kind of the goal. And then for a long time we were at the top and there was no one to compete against. And for me, like, I need competition. And so that's, I think, big reason why we decided to build new click funnels. Which, by the way, you guys can see the logo if you're watching the video version. There's the logo going up. We just this week launched the brand new ClickFunnels brand. Have you seen it yet? It is insane. It is the coolest thing ever. I need to get a light like this now with the new branding, but it's coming soon. We actually did order lights, I hope new branding here in light format for the videos. But the new branding is going amazing. The app looks awesome. The software looks awesome. It's so exciting with all these people now who are like, re logging back into ClickFunnels to see the new app to start using it. In fact, Joe McCall, one of my favorite people on planet, he posted today, said, I'm digging into the new clickfunnels more seriously. And let me tell you something, it's flipping amazing. We're bringing all of our funnels back over. It's way better than ghl. What was that, Joe? It's way better than ghl. Thanks, Russell Brunson. Love your dedication to making marketing world a better place. Seriously. Okay, so speaking of what Joe said, there was competition and his competition came out hard and fast against us. And I'm not going to lie, we lost the first round, lost the first period. And. But I'm a wrestler. Like, we don't. We don't just stop, right? And so for us, it's been like mounting our defense, mounting, mounting a new strategy, mounting a new play, getting software better, like all the different things. And now it's like this is the year of momentum. Like things are rolling forward. It's been really, really fun. And so anyway, so in that context is where this story kind of came from. So I do remember the kid's name. I'm not gonna say his name, but this is a kid who. Elementary school. I went to school with him, knew he was. Thought I was a friend with him. He got into high school. You know, high school people become like, annoying. So anyway, I was not the best football player, but I was on the football team. And I remember. Anyway, I remember I was like, third string safety or something like that. I remember our coaches were like, all right, guys, you gotta find the guy ahead of you and beat him out. And it's like they gave this really good presentation. I got motivated, okay, I'm gonna find the guy ahead of me. I'm Beat him out. So the next two weeks, I kept like, working, working and killing myself. And I ended up beating the guy that was. That was like the second string safety and then the first string. And I ended up being the first guy. And I was so excited. I'm like, again, competition drives me. I'm like, this is the thing. And so I told my parents, like, I'm gonna be playing the game, I'm be starting. I'm so excited. I. And so that. That day, the football game, we're there, we're on the field, we're warming up, and one of the other coaches came over. He's like, brunson, what are you doing here? I'm like, I beat. I'm very proud. Like, I beat the guys out. Like, I made. I made the starting team. And he looked at me, he's like. He looked over at one of the backup quarterbacks. He's like, hey, get over here. And he, like, put him in my spot and bump me out. And that's when I started hating team sports, by the way. I'm very much. In fact, that's the conversation came up with, with my trainer is like, I'm like, I'm a combat athlete. Notice, you know, hence the cauliflower. You're like, I love wrestling, love ufc, love fighting, like, combat. Like, not a big fan of team sports. Can't stand watching him and get bored by him. But this is probably a big reason because, like, I killed myself. And then because of the politics of a team sport, I got bumped out, which was frustrating me, right? So anyway, after that, I decided, like, I'm not a football player. If I can bump me because of that, like, I don't want to play this game. I finished out that season, but I focused all my effort on wrestling, the greatest sport in the world, and within a year, became a state champion in high school, took second place in the nation. Went on, got a D1 scholarship and so on and so forth, right? So that was kind of my shift. Now this is where the story gets fun. So that year, playing football, I remember after I got beat out, we went to this. We went to some. We're playing some away game, and we played this game and we got destroyed. Like, our team. Our team got killed. And I'm on the sidelines waiting to play. I think I played maybe one play the entire game, which is so stupid. So I play one game, we get done, and we're like, leaving. I'm just like, this is so. Like, why am I doing this? I remember I was thirsty, so I grabbed a thing of water and I started drinking it. And there's this kid again. Went to. Went to elementary school with him, thought we were friends. And he sees me drinking it and, like, shoves me. He's like. He's like, brunson, why are you gonna drink water? You didn't even play this game or something. And I was like, you know, as a. You know, as a. As a. As a what? A ninth grader or whatever. Like, humiliated, embarrassed for all these people. I was just like, oh, it, like, broke me, you know? And I was like, I freaking hate that guy anyway. But that, like, got the, like, the, like, okay, I gotta win. Anyway, then fast forward. This guy moves schools. I don't see him again. I'm like, kind of forget about him. Then a couple years later, I swear, the story's got a point, but it's fun. And a couple years later, I come back and it's. I think I was a junior that year in high school or something. And during the Christmas break, we did a crossover practice with another high school. So the other high school came to our room. And one day we went to their room. So two days with these guys. And when they show up to our wrestling room, I look over and that kid, I still don't know his name, he was there. He's on the other team. He transferred schools. He was on the wrestling team. And I was like, oh, yes. And all the memories of him knocking the water out of my hand, all kind of stuff was like. I was like, this is it. And so we started the practice. I'm like, him? I want to go with him. And I'm like, hey, man, how's it going? He's like, oh, hey, Brunson, how you doing? I'm like, yeah, I'm doing good. And so for the next three hours of wrestling practice, my only plan was to destroy him mentally and physically. And I did. By the Time it was done, we were about two thirds of a day of practice. He got up, he's like, I have to leave or I'm going to. I'm going to try to fight you or something. And I just. Laughing. I'm like, I'd like to see you try. I just beat you like a baby for the last. Anyway, so he walked off and left. The next day, we had a chance to go to high school. I'm like, you're my partner again. And he was, like, so mad. And I just. Anyway, it was. It was a great day in the. In a great two days in the life of Russell to come back and have that kind of payback. So, anyway, that's the mindset you have to have when you're going off to competition. Competitors, right, is looking at that and like, okay, how do we win? What does it look like when somebody knocks you down? It's like, all right, new strategy, new game plan. What does it look like? They start putting the pieces together. So I'm excited because the last couple years has been brutal, as you guys knew from the first video, from the first podcast episodes I talked about. But what's been fun is it's finally gotten, like, me, the competition backwards. Like, okay, how do I win? Instead of like, how do I survive? How do we do whatever? It's like, no, no, how do we win? What's that look like? How does the strategy have to change? And I tell you what, man, it has lit me on fire. And a lot of people tell me, russell, we feel this momentum coming from you and from clickfunnels. What's happening? I was like, oh, you'll see if you're feeling it now. Just wait. We're just getting started. So I'm excited for this year, and it's been fun. So. All right, so what I promised you guys, we're going to talk about during this episode, this is one of the biggest things I see, okay? People come to my world. They read the books, they start studying, start learning, they start building funnels, they start building offers, putting things together. And there's a process, right? As you're trying to first start to learn this game, like, you got to figure out, like, okay, first off, I convince you that you are an expert, right? If you're going to be an expert business, I got to convince you how to create products. And there's all these things that go into it, right? And it takes a lot for you to create the product, create the things. And so what I see a lot of times is People get so stuck over here and like, okay, I'm building. Like, I'll see them at an event. Like, oh, I'm building a funnel. I'm building a funnel. Like, cool. Building a funnel is very important. It's my favorite thing in the world. Right, I get it. But at the same time, like, are you also, like, gathering the people? Okay, and this is where people mess up, right? And a lot of times they'll spend a month, six months, a year, whatever, building the funnel, building the product, whatever. And then when they're finally done, they're like, okay, I'm going to share with the world. And there's no one to share it with. This is a mistake people make. So the second you decide you want to be an entrepreneur, okay, the second you decide you're like, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to sell stuff. Like, that's when this, like, this is step one that has to happen. Step two is like creating an offer, building a business. Like, step one is you have to start gathering the many. Okay, you hear me talk a lot about, like one to many presentations. Like, what is a one to many presentation, right? It's me gathering many people together and I deliver a presentation to them to sell them something, right? So it could be a webinar, it could be a challenge, some type of funnel that gets the people where I can sell them something, right? So what we need to do is we got to gather the many. There's a lot of ways to gather the many, right? One way is through paid ads. So right now we are in the middle of a selling online event. This selling online event. We, we got a little over 3,700 people registered for that event. So I gathered 3,700 people together, okay? But my cost to gather those people where it was like $300 or so to sell $100 ticket, right? So it cost me almost a million. It's like $925,000 for me to gather those people together. 3,700 people to deliver a presentation. Now from that, we will make. Well, I don't. We'll. We'll 3x our return on our ad spend, right? Like, we'll 3x the money we made by. By doing that, right? But. But it cost me a lot of money to gather those people through paid ads, right? And, and so a lot of people think, I think when they think when this is my funnels and I'm going to go and like, and like, then I'll go find the audience, right? But then that's like the Most expensive, especially when doing this. And you're bootstrapping this. Like, the most expensive thing initially is to go pay for ads and get people in, right? So the question is like, well, how do I. How do I gather the money ahead of time so that when I go and I. And I ready to launch the thing, the audience already gathered. I don't got to go spend a million dollars to gather these people. How do I do it ahead of time? Right? There's so many things you can and should be doing that you're probably not thinking about right now. And that's what I want to talk about. Okay. Is one of the things you can do to start gathering the money right now. So the second your product, your funnel is done, right? Then the menu are already there. You're not like, going out like, okay, I depleted my resources building this business. Now I got to go spend money to get the customers, right? Like, no, the second you decide I want to be an entrepreneur, that's when you start planting these seeds. That's when you start gathering the people instantly, right? So for a lot of you guys, if you've missed it, like, if you've been doing this for a week or a month or a year or five years and you haven't done this yet, like, this is now your number one focus. More important than building your funnel or creating your offer or anything, your number one focus is this, which is starting to gather the many. So the second you're done, you've got a captive audience. Because if you're waiting for your funnel to be done before you capture an audience, you messed up. Okay? That's the wrong order. You're out of order. So we got to get back into the correct order. Does that make sense? Okay, so that's what I'm talking about. Now, I'm going to quote a couple things from my book, Traffic Secrets. This is not a blatant pitch for Traffic Secrets, but if it was a blatant pitch, I'd tell you to go get a free copy of Traffic secrets dot com. But inside this, this is my book to teach you guys how to get traffic and build a following and all sorts of stuff. Like, it's. It's the deep dive of my brain. There's a couple pieces in here that I do want to share with you guys that I think are key to understanding this. Right? And so I'm just going to jump around. If you got the book, you could open with me. If not, just listen to my stories. Or if you want to get a book or you can go to Amazon, get for 25 bucks or whatever it is, or you can get for free plus shipping@traffic secrets.com. okay, so secret number four, inside traffic secrets book. The chapter is called work your way in and buy your way in. Right? So I'm talking about there's two different ways to grow an audience, right? Again, buying your way in is buying out. That's what I did with this weekend. I gave Zuckerberg $900,000 to. To buy my way in to get him to send a whole bunch of people to me so I can sell to them. Right. Or you can work your way in. Working your way in is how you get free traffic to come to you. Right. A lot of people ask me what's better, free traffic or paid traffic. The reality is they're both insanely awesome. I love them both. Right? There's not one better. But when most people are getting started, usually you've got one. You got two different resources. You either have time or you have money. Right? These are the two resources that we have. And what I tell people traditionally is if you have more money than time, we focus on paid ads. But if you have more time than money, you got to focus on working your way and doing the free stuff. Again, in a perfect world, you'd be doing both. In fact, if you read the traffic seekers book, we walk you through the process of starting free and then reinvesting money from free into paid ads. And that's how you actually scale in a way that's not scary. In fact, on page 68, I have this little graph. I don't know if you can see that at all. There it is. So there's like this traffic in time, and it shows control traffic you're buying, you can spike really fast. Um, and it flat lines, whereas earn traffic is slower, but then it scales past it eventually. So that's kind of like. Anyway, that's. That's how we look at long term. But right now, I just want to focus on working our way and getting the traffic ahead of time, because it's the free traffic and stuff you can and should be doing while you're building your business. Okay? All right, so in. In secret number four, work your way and buy your win. The first step here, the step says, dig your well before you're thirsty. Okay? So this is what I'm talking about. You want to start digging your well before you're thirsty. So what that means is when your funnel's done, your offer's done, you're going to be Thirsty. I need traffic. I need traffic. I need people to sell to you. And all of a sultan's like, oh, crap, I didn't dig my well, okay? That's the secret eggs. We got to start digging our well before we're thirsty, okay? We start building the following before we have something to sell to them. Step number one is building the following. Step number one is traffic, right? Somebody asked me, I remember I was speaking in the UK and I still remember her name is G. She was awesome. Speaking in the uk. I come off and we're talking in this little group of people, and somebody asked me, I think it was her or someone's with her, something. But they asked me, like, Russell, whenever you launch a funnel, it's always successful. How are you always successful? And it was the first time I'd ever given the. I didn't, I didn't consciously think about this was the first time I'd ever, like, I responded. I was like, oh, wow. And I was like, I thought for a second, I'm like, oh. The reason why is because I don't build a funnel first, then go look for traffic. I find the traffic source first and I build a funnel and an offer based on what that that traffic actually wants. And the person was like, what? Why don't you tell everyone that? That was the big secret. I was like, I hadn't thought about like, but it makes like, that's what I do. But I hadn't thought about it, right? A lot of people, what you're doing is you're building a funnel and building an offer and then trying to find traffic to sell to, okay? The secret is finding the traffic source first and then you create the offer that they actually want. Then it becomes easy. It's just flipping the order of things, right? Step one, step two. A lot of you guys are doing step two right now as opposed to step number one. Okay? So dig your well before you're thirsty. And so the concept of that is like, before you need the traffic, it's time. Before you need the relationships, before you need someone to promote, that's when you start building a relationship, right? Like, I remember when I first met Tony Robbins, like, eventually I wanted Tony to promote something for me, right? But I'm like, hey, Tony, for me, right? That's me asking for water without digging a well, right? Instead I was like, I'm going to build a relationship with Tony Robbins. So for a decade, I built a relationship with Tony, right? I was digging my well, digging my well building relationship. And 10 years later, when My second book came out, Expert Seekers. I was like, hey, Tony, you promote this? He's like, I would love to need a Facebook live with me by like 5 million people. Sold 10,000. 10,000 plus copies of my book, right? And it all came off of me digging my well before I was thirsty. Okay? And so that's the first thing thinking about is like, you're going to be thirsty as soon as your funnel is done. You're going to be thirsty for traffic. Now is the time to start digging today. Not tomorrow, not next week, not like today. Right? That's step number one. The second you decide to be an entrepreneur, starting digging your well, starting to get the people, starting to start building the following. That's something you should be thinking about every single day. You should be blocking out at least an hour to two hours a day just in, like, digging the well, right? So that when you have the offer done, it's ready. That makes sense. So step one is digging your well before you're thirsty. And then in here, I talk about different ways to do that, and there's a lot of stuff in here, but there's kind of two sides I'm gonna talk about. One is publishing, and then one is actually building relationships with people who already have your traffic source. Okay. So I'm gonna go kind of touch on both sides of those a little bit. I'll start with the finding people who already have your dream audience. That's what I talk about here in the book. And so on page 60 and 61, traffic secrets. I kind of walk through a process. Um, but the. Basically the goal is like, when you're getting. When you're. When you're driving traffic, eventually, right? I can go and give Mark Zuckerberg money and he'll drive traffic to me. But if I can find someone who's on Mark Zuckerberg's platform who already has an audience, right? Like I find a Tony Robbins or I find a who insert whoever influencer is inside your space, and they have a following of 10,000 or 100,000 or a million people. If I can build a relationship with that person, they can send an email or they can post on their wall. They can do something and they can promote me as an affiliate, and that way I don't have to actually spend money on the ads, right? And so for me, like, when we launch click funnels. Again, if you read the traffic secrets book, I go deep into this concept called the Dream 100. Who are the a hundred people that already have congregated your dream customers? It's like, how do we infiltrate? How do we start talking to these people, right? And so the very first thing for me is, like, if I know that I'm in the real estate market or I'm in the health market or whatever, the very first thing I do is I'm going to go and I tell people, go to Instagram and delete all of your contacts and then only follow every single influencer inside of your space, right? Go. And maybe it's setting up a new Instagram account. Whatever you want to do, but create something and then go follow every single influencer, right? Because I want to see, like, who are all the people in my space who have already congregated my dream customers? Like, those are the people. If I can get a relationship with one of those people, it can open up a huge door for me, right? And same Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, podcast, like, whatever it is. But you start gathering these people, right? You start trying to build relationships. Today, you're digging your well before you're thirsty, okay? So what I would do is I'd go unsubscribe from people from everybody, and then just follow the influencers who are in my space. And then it's like, I need to start building relationships, relationships with these people. How do we do that? Right? We do it by being part of their ecosystem, right? When they're posting something I'm liking, I'm hearty, I'm coming. I'm like, I want them to see my face every single time. I want them consistently like, man, whoever this Russell guy is, like, he keeps commenting on my stuff, right? And so I'm there. I'm like, engaged in their. In their content, right? To start building relationships with them, I'm messaging them. DM DMing. I'm like, oh, man, your podcast episode last week was amazing. Thanks so much for sharing. My favorite thing was, blah, blah, blah, right? I'm just trying to, like, I'm trying to plant these seeds. I'm trying to dig this, dig a well before I'm thirsty, right? And building a relationship first. And so that's how you start doing it, to start building future relationships. And these are so important because one relationship in the future can change your entire business forever. I got a million examples of this, but one I was thinking of, like, when I launched my very first book, Dotcom Secrets, I did the same process. I went to all the podcast directories, Instagram, I went through everywhere. And I built. I found my. My 100 top podcasters, 100 top Instagram influencers, 100 top YouTubers. So I had a dream, 100 on every single platform. And what I did is I sent a free copy of my book to the hundred top podcast, 100 top youtubes, Instagram. So I sent five or six hundred copies of my book out to everybody, and it's like, here's my new book. Love for you to review it, see if you know, see if you want to post it, whatever. So I sent all those out. And what's crazy about that is I remember the very first person responded back was a guy named JLD Smiezo. John Lee Dumas. He runs Entrepreneur on Fire podcast. He messaged me. He's like, dude, this book's awesome. I'm like, thanks, man. And he's like, I'd love to promote you promote it if you want to come on the podcast. I'm like, I would love to come on the podcast. So he had me on the podcast, and he sent like, a whole bunch of emails to his email list. And from that one person, that one connection, I think he sold like five or six hundred copies of my book by himself. That was one person, right? And then Jeff Walker got a copy. He's like, this book's awesome, Mike. Thanks, man. He's like, can I promote it? I'm like, yes, you can. He sold like 2,500 copies of the book. And then Todd Brown got it. He sent a bunch. And then another podcast over here. And then the YouTuber and influencer, like, from those relationships I built, we sold hundreds of thousands of copies of my book. Right? But it started me, like, building those relationships ahead of time. Like, I was listening to podcasts, I was sending out messages. I was getting to know people so that when my offer them promoting something showed up, they knew who I was, and it was easy for them to say yes. Right? So digging your well before you're thirsty, going out there, finding out who are the people who have your dream customers, who are the other influencers in your market, Getting to know those people, connecting with them. There's a live event that those people are gathering it. You need to be at that live event. You need to be hanging out in the room. Okay, I think I told this story before, but, like, for me, I'll let you guys know. Again, I'm Mormon. I don't drink alcohol. I'm at this live event, and all the people are hanging out. I'm at the event, and then after hours, they're all going out to the bars, and I don't drink, and I don't want People to think I drink, but they're like, yeah, Russell, come to the bars. Come to the bars. I'm like, ah. But I'm like, those are the people I got to network with. They're all in the same room together. So I think I told the story. I went down there, I ordered milk from the bar, from the barkeeper or whatever. I was like, he's like, you want milk? I'm like, yeah. Because I didn't want it to look like alcohol or anything. So I cup of milk as I'm walking around. Which, by the way, was a great conversational. People like, are you drinking milk? Oh, yeah, I'm warm and I don't drink. I don't drink alcohol. Like, that's cool. Tell me about it. And then, boom. Connection, you know, networking, right? But you got to be around those people. So if I'm in the real estate market, I'm going to every real estate event. If I'm in the fitness market, I'm going to fitness events. My biohacking. Biohacking events. Like, it could be virtual events, live events in person. Like, I gotta get around the other people in my space and get to know building relationships, right? This game is a relationship game, okay? If Zuckerberg shut down Facebook, if Google, Instagram, everything disappeared tomorrow, I would be fine. Because the relationships I built over time. These people have email lists, they've got podcasts, they got things. And so if everything fell apart, I'd still be okay, right? Most people's businesses I know, if one little thing fell apart, if Instagram disappeared, their business is gone, okay? For me, if I lost every paid media platform on the planet, I'd still be fine. It wouldn't change our business, right? Maybe a little bit, but not that much. In fact, if you've read Traffic Secrets, if you read. Where's that the introduction? Literally, or the preface. The preface. Preface. Whatever you say, it says. Oh, no, sorry, it's not the preface. Preface. How do you say that? I should definitely know that. Sorry. Section number one. I started section number one. Or the introduction. There it is. Introduction. There's a storm coming, right? I wrote this book four years ago. It came out. And then right after that, all of the. All of the Google slaps, Facebook slaps, everything started happening afterwards. I was like, I told you guys, this book is helping you to foolproof your marketing so that if the platform, when the platform shuts you down, you don't lose your business. And so there's a storm coming. And those who took heed to this have succeeded. Those who haven't, like, again, go back and geek out. Okay, sorry. I digress. So number one, again, is digging your well before you're thirsty. Number two is working your way in, right? Building relationships, contacting people, getting to know people. Like, this is, like, such a key foundational part, okay? If you were launching a product in an industry, the people in the industry know who you are, okay? You need to be connecting with those people in any way you can do it. Okay, Now I want to talk about one of the easiest ways to connect with those people, okay? A lot of times I'm like, what do I say to them? It's like, hey, Russell, you know? And so one of the easiest ways to connect with them is to give them something of value, right? Is to give them something that. Is to give them something that they need, right? So if you look at what the influencers in your market, in your space, what are they looking for? For. Right, influencers, People with followings. They're looking for a platform. And I talk about. I share a book story in here about you guys. Remember Arsenio Hall? Like, who, Who, Who? Right? Arsenio Hall. So he was the biggest talk show back in the 90s, I remember. He's the one that basically, I think that he was the reason why Bill Clinton got elected as. As president because he was, like, kind of struggling. And then he went on the show and played the saxophone and like, all these people loved him and going and voting for him. Similar to, like, anyway, Trump and Rogan, which is kind of interesting. Anyway, that's the story for the day. But so he's the biggest talk show in the world. And it was a huge thing for four or five years. Eventually it kind of. It kind of dried up and died, right? And he lost the show. Anyway, Fast forward now, 20 years later, he's on the Apprentice. I'm watching Celebrity Apprentice, and all of a sudden he comes out. One of the guests is Arsenal Hall. And I'm like, that's Arsenal Hall. I remember that guy. He was amaz. And they're doing all these different tasks and stuff like that. And what's crazy is they get to the task. It's like a fundraising task, right? Where they call their friends, raise money for this thing, right? So all the people are out there, they're calling, they're raising money, everything. And Arsenio's got his rolled X people. He's calling the first person, next person, next person, and they show him all day, and nobody's returning calls. Nobody's. And like when all of a sudden that he raised. I think he raised $0 from the whole fundraising campaign. And it was pretty embarrassing because every other celebrity got deals done, got things, and Arsenio got none of them. And I remember, like, I think it was that night or something. He's sitting there and the camera captured this moment. That was like one of the most powerful things in the world. I think I was the only one that caught it. Cause I was freaking out. And anyway, I talk about in traffic secrets, but he says this thing. He's looking at the camera and he's talking. He's like, man, he's like, when I had a talk show, everybody returned my call. And I was like, oh, did you catch that? When he had his own platform, the President, United States. The, like, anybody. Everyone returns call because they want access to his platform. Like, what's the most valuable thing for an influencer? More influence. More. They need a platform. Like, that's it. That's what they're looking for, right? So for you, it's like, you need to have a platform before you have a funnel, before you have an offer, you need to have a platform, right? For a lot of reasons. Number one, and we'll talk about here, it's going to help you start publishing, getting your voice out there. But number two, it is the thing that you have to offer to the other influencers, right? Hey, like, when you're contacting me, I love your content. Love last podcast episode. Would you be willing to come on my podcast? Would you be willing to come to my YouTube channel? Would you be willing to come on my Instagram? Like, whatever. Whatever your platform you decided is, like, that's the thing of value you have to offer these people. That's how you build connection, right? Then you bring them off of social, you connect with them, you bring them on something where you're giving them access to your platform. You have a chance to talk to them, that you build a relationship. You talk to them for 30 minutes or hour during a podcast interview. Now they know you, you know them, and you've got connection. And then you create content for the marketplace. It's so simple and it's so powerful, yet most people are not doing it. They always tell me, I'm launching my funnel, then I'll launch a podcast in the future. Like, no, wrong order. Flip it around, right? I gotta start building my influence today. I do that by leveraging other people's influence. I do that by giving them access to my platform. Some of you guys are like, where else I Don't have a platform yet. Well, you gotta start then. That's exactly why you start today. Not next week or the year, or, like, after your funnel's like, yes, start digging your well before you're thirsty. Start today, right? And you might be saying, well, why would somebody come on a platform? I don't have any followers yet, Any listeners. It's like, yeah, it's a good point. That's why you got to start, like, start publishing, right? Start your own podcast. You're on YouTube. I don't care which channel you pick. Pick a channel and start on it. And that's how you start getting people. You start gathering the money. Because the only thing you have to offer another influencer right now is access to your many. So start gathering them. And even if it's small at first, that's okay, right? Then you start leveraging it. It grows bigger and grows bigger and grows bigger over time. Okay? So thinking about that, okay? Because until you have your own platform, you're of no value to the people that you are trying to borrow influence from. Does that make sense? Okay. All right. Now, this comes down to the last thing I want to talk about, really, and this is the key to it all, is for you guys to start publishing. I talk about here in Traffic Secrets. I've been saying this now for five or six years. It's funny, I see tons of people on Instagram now quoting me. They don't give me credit for it, but there you go. But I said, this is the funnel hacking live. I think it's the second or third. And it was the second Funnel hacking lives in San Diego. So really eight years ago. I remember because Steve Larsen was in the room, and Steve told me that when he was coming to funnel hacking Live, he said, I'm gonna do everything Russell says, but I'm not gonna publish something. I don't wanna put my voice out there, but I'll do everything else he says. And I got on stage and I said. I talked about publishing. I said, if you guys will publish every single day for a year, within a year from now, you never have to worry about money again. And he was like, but I don't want to publish things. Then he like, fine. And so he did it right, and changed his whole business, changed his whole life, right? You gotta start publishing. And that's the key thing most people are missing. Now. There's a lot of reasons why you guys start publishing. I'll talk about where and how here in a minute. But there's a. This is one of those, one of my friends, Nathan Barry. Nathan owns ConvertKit, so technically we're competitors. But he's amazing. He lives in Boise. Two Boise guys, two tech companies. Boise is the tech capital of the world. Take that, Silicon Valley. We're here in Boise. Anyway, so ConvertKit and ClickFunnels are both here, both in Boise, Idaho. And Nathan Barry is the CEO of ConvertKit, and he's awesome. And he. And if you don't know Nathan, like, a couple years ago, somebody gave him a challenge and basically told him to do a blog post a day, every single day for a year, and you'll never worry about money again. Very similar to my challenge, but it's for blogging, right? So he went out there and started blogging every single day for a year. And he tells his whole journey and how by the time the year was done, it changed everything because he became a better writer. But also people started finding his stuff, started growing, and then all the companies on the backside of that group. Then he wrote this post and this post. Oh, it's so good. Okay. This is like if you could tattoo a post to your face so you could look at every single day, this would be the one. So the post is. The title says, endure long enough to get noticed. Okay. It says, how many great TV shows have you discovered in season three or later? I started watching Game of Thrones after they had released five seasons. Pat Flynn had released at least 100 episodes of this podcast before I even know it existed. I discovered hardcore history years after Dan Carlin started producing it. This is such a common experience. There's so much content being produced, we can't possibly discover it all. So instead, we wait for the best content to float to the surface after time. If step one in building an. Step one in building an audience is to create great content. Step two is to endure long enough to get noticed. Seth Godin's very generous at this time and will appear in almost any relevant podcast, but you have to record at least 100 episodes first. His filter is creators who have shown they're willing to show up consistently for a long time. Okay, you guys getting this? So the reason why I start publishing is because you have to start getting your voice out there. And there's two reasons. Number one, it's gonna help you to actually find your voice. Number two, it gives your audience long enough time to actually find you. Okay? That's why you gotta start today. You're like, bro, I can't start today. I don't have a following. I suck at this. I Don't know what I'm gonna say. Exactly. That's why you have to start. One of the best stories of this for me is actually me. Okay, let me tell you a story about my life. So I built up a business. We had a big call center, we had a big company. And then one day, literally overnight, whole thing collapsed. I had to fire 100 employees one day. We shrunk from a 20,000 square foot building to a 2,000 square foot building and everything. My whole life is falling apart. I'm like, this isn't going to work, right? One of the many cycles of my, my business career. So hopefully all of you guys had a chance to go through some cycles in your life, but going through different cycles, right? And, and so I'm in this little tiny office, like, we're bleeding money. I'm trying to keep the doors open, try not to fire anyone else. Because like, we had to fulfill on stuff we'd sold in the past. It was just chaos, right? And I had a four minute commute from my house to the new office was four minute drive every day. And that about this time, podcasting, and we're talking about podcasting, it's gonna be the future. And I was like, there's no way this podcasting thing is gonna be the future. It's a stupid word. No one's gonna think it's cool. But I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do a podcast anyway just to prove you all wrong. And so I decided to launch a podcast. It was called the marketing in your car podcast. And so what I do is I would grab my phone every day at a four minute commute. I click record on my phone. I would drive like this. I would drive to my four minute office. I would talk about what I was doing today. Hey, today we're going to the office. We have an idea for this thing. We're gonna try to blah, blah, blah, right? I'll be driving them back. Hey, last night I studied this guy and he told me about this. I'm going to try. And so I just documented what I was doing every single day, right? Four minute drive. I was publishing four or five, six podcast episodes a week. And what's crazy about back in the day, like, podcasting was different and so we had to upload it through a WordPress site. It was this whole thing and we didn't know how to track stats or listens or anyone's even listening. We had no idea, right? We were just putting out there. And for me, it was more therapeutic for me, just like think out loud of what I was talking about, right? One of the smarter things that Gary Vaynerchuk said, he's like, it's not about creating content, it's about documenting your journey. That's exactly what it was. I was just documenting the journey. In fact, if you go back to the old marketing secrets podcast. Sorry, marketing your car podcast. I talk about like we had this idea for this thing. We bought a domain called ClickFunnels. Me and Todd are built like, it gets all this stuff prior to that and then like us discovering it, buying the domain and launching it, like the whole history of clickfunnels is in there. It's really fun to go back and listen, but it's just me discovering these things as we're going and I'm sharing them in real time. I'm not acting like I'm an expert. I'm just like, these are things that are happening, right? So I'm putting these out there eventually on the backside. I've launched click funnels. Eventually I launched my inner circle. I find out, craziest thing, that 100% of people in my inner circle were podcast listeners. My best people were people who were listening to my long form content. I had no idea it was fun. I had no idea. Right? There's like all the world of saw me on social everywhere. But the people who bought my high end coaching programs were 100% all podcast listeners. There's this direct correlation. It was crazy, right? So the podcast listeners and then we launched clickfunnels then and Wave and then again, this is four or five years into me launches podcast. And finally we figured out how to reconnect it all so we can see how many downloads are coming. And the time we, we had some pretty good downloads coming in, but we started looking back at like the graphs and trends and looked like basically for the first year, almost nobody was listening. Okay. Now, number one, if I had known how few people were listening when I first started, I probably would have stopped. So I'm grateful that I didn't know. Okay. Number two, funny thing is Steve Larsen started working for me and I love Steve. He was like, I'm gonna binge listen to everything you've ever done. So he went through, listened to every single podcast episode. And I remember, I think he spent a whole weekend binge listening or something. He comes back on Monday and he's like, man, he's like, listen to everything. He's like, you know what's crazy? He's like the first like 40, 45 episodes. Like, they were not good. He's like, in fact, they were pretty bad. He's like, you were awkward. It was, like, painful. He's like, but I'm 40, 45ish. He's like. He's like, you got in your rhythm, and he's like, it was just different. Like, you found your voice and it was so fun. And then now it's, like, amazing. And I thought that was so interesting, right? Number one. Like, what are we doing? Why are we publishing? Number one? Because it's going to help you to find your voice. If you're hiding in a corner, building your funnel and building your offer, not talking, you're not going to ever find your voice. Right? Number one. Number two is it gets you long, and you're out there long enough. What does Nathan Barry say? For your audience to find you? Boom. You may think, well, Russell, right now, no one's following me, so it's going to suck. Exactly. That's the best time you want to suck when no one's following you. Okay? That's the whole point of it, right? You'll get better and get better, and over time, it'll start ramping up, Right? And so that's the key as a starting right now. You got to start publishing. And there's a lot of ways you can do it. Okay? For a long time, it was blogging. Nathan Barry started his process. Blogging. I'm not a blogger. It's funny. I love writing books. Hate writing blog posts, so blogging's not for me. But maybe if you like blogging. Okay. It's so cool. Like, just focus on it. Okay. For Nathan, it was a thousand words a day for a year. That's what he was doing, blogging. A thousand words a day for a year, and then a year. Transform his business. Maybe you like audio. Okay, cool. If you're an audio person, podcast, it's easy. Like, literally, I recorded the first 600, 500, 600 episodes on my phone, and people are always asking me, like, what's the microphone you're using? I was like, it's the one that's, like, hooked to the bottom of the iPhone. I just click the button and I talk. Like, that was it, you know? And then so there's that. Some of you guys may like video more. So do video. So they like Instagram. Like, figure out the platform you love the most organically, anyway. They're spend time on anyway, and do that, right? Do the thing you understand the most. Like, it's funny. Cause, like, I. We dominate Podcasts, we're great on Instagram. We're getting places where we're still struggling with YouTube. We're still figuring it out, right? YouTube's a different platform for me. So I'm not YouTube first. I'm podcast first because I get podcasts. My podcast listeners are my faithful. They love it. They're all subscribed. In fact, if you're watching on YouTube, come to the podcast and listen on as well, right? They're subscribed, listening. While they're working out, they're hanging out. YouTube's a different beast. We're still figuring things out, but I'm podcast first. YouTube is kind of the secondary because that's the platform. I understand. So figure out what you understand. That's where you start publishing it. And start publishing consistently. And again, the goal is not for you to be amazing. The goal is not for you to get tons of views. The goal for you to start. And start learning how to find your voice and doing it consistently, right? Three days a week, five days a week, seven days a week, whatever. It's. The more consistently, the better because that's how you're going to find your voice, right? And then after times, if you are consistent with it and you do not stop, over time, your audience will find you. Okay? Now you've got a platform, okay? Now you can go to people and be like, hey, can I run my podcast? Or be on my YouTube channel? And even if your following is on bigger first, that's okay. You don't go and, like, ask Tony Robbins day number one to be on your podcast, right? You ask Russell Brunson, your podcast day number one. You start looking around, who are people that are about the same level as me or maybe a little bit bigger? And that's where you start. Okay? When I got started in this game, I remember the same thing. I remember, in fact, before I knew what a dream 100 was, I just knew. I saw all the influencers back in the day. I saw Joe Vitale was one of them, and I saw Tony Robbins. I had all these. Mark Joyner had all these people's names. And I remember I would send them emails and send things in the mail, like, none of them responded back. I'm like, oh, like, this isn't fair. They only care about the little guys like me. Like, why won't they help me? I remember having that attitude. And then I remember going to an event and I met this guy, actually, wasn't it. It was online. I met him first initially. His name's Mike Filson. Somebody doesn't know. Mike met Mike at this event and Mike was like, I would say he was probably six months ahead of me in the game. He already had a product he had launched. He had a bunch of sales. And I had my product called Zip Branderage. I had. I was trying to sell it and I met Mike. And Mike was good. He was like, he was one step ahead of me, right? And again, this is before we were podcasting. This is before any of the publishing stuff. But the concept was the same, so he was a little bit above me. I got to know him. He's easy to hold him because he's not Tony Robbins with like 800 gatekeepers, not Russell Brunson with 800 gatekeepers. You got to get through, right? It was just like him. And he was. It was the six months ahead of me. He figured things out already. I was trying to figure out. So it was easy to get through his filters and get ahold of him. We start talking, build a relationship, and he's like, dude, that product's cool. And then Mike promoted Zip Brander, okay? Literally promoted it. I remember because we sold a whole bunch of them. And 217 people joined my email list from the promotion that Mike Filson did. That's how funny I remember that. Number two, the number 270 people came to my site, saw the pop up, put in the email address and doormay newsletter, and all of a sudden I had 217 people on my list, which I never had before. Okay? And then I went. And then. And then Mike and I were talking. I was like, thanks, Mike. That was awesome. I'm like, mike, who are the people? Have you met so far? Mike's like, oh, you got to meet these other guys. This guy's named Gary Ambrose. And so, like, Mike had five or six other people he knew at our same level. He introduced me all these people. And also now I had five people. And I was like, hey, Gary, I've got a list. Can I promote your product? A list of 217 people. He's like, sure. So I promote his product. I made two or three sales, and he promotes mine. He makes two or three sales, and all of a sudden, like, his list grows. My list grows. Mike's list grows. And then he introduces me to this person, this person. We start doing these things. All of a sudden, like our little friend group of people, we all start getting, like, our influencers growing together a little bigger. Okay, what happens now? Now My list is 3, 4, 5,000 people right now. I start Looking like, who are people that have lists of 3, 4, 5,000 people. I start connecting like, oh, there's this person, right? So I step one, step up, get to know those people. I provide value, promote their product, right? Whatever it is, I promote theirs, then they promote mine. And I'm like, who are your friends? They introduced me, and all of a sudden, like, boom. And my business growing and growing. And that was the process. I did that for year one, year two, year three, and eventually I was like, three years in the business. Joe Vitale messaged me. He's like, hey, Russell, sign your stuff online. It's really, really cool. Can I help you promote this product? I'm like, I messaged you three years ago. You did not respond to me, right? Because I was down here, but because I looked at who the people around my same size, maybe a little bit bigger, I connect with them, then we all grow together, and then connect to them, rose in together. Like, that was the game. So eventually, Joe Vitali came to me. Okay, fast forward five more years later, I get a phone call from Tony Robbins. I didn't call him. They called me, okay? That's why I got to meet. Tony initially was not me aggressively outbound reaching. He reached out to me, okay, Boom. And then next. And so, like, that's how this game is played. Does that make sense, you guys? So this is how it works. You need to start digging your well before you're thirsty, which means you start publishing today. Okay? You start publishing. Start publishing, right? Number two, you got to start figuring out who are the other influencers in your space and start building relationships immediately. Doesn't mean going for the huge people at top, right? Who is about your level. Like, if you got a thousand followers on Instagram, who's got three to five? Go find those influencers. Those are the first people comment. Because those people, if you comment on the comments, they're going to see your name like, oh, this person comments every single time, right? DM them, get on the phone with them, hang out. How can we promote each other? What if I did an Instagram live promoting your squeeze page, you promote mine, we both build our list together. Boom, right? Promotions, partnerships, little things like that, right? Your list grows, their list grows. Who are your friends? They connect you to five of their other friends. You connect them to five of your friends. All of a sudden, your whole network starts growing together and grows together. Boom, boom, boom, right? That's how you build this game. That's how you win. This is what everyone's missing. Everyone's Sitting there, focusing just on building an offer, building a funnel, and forgetting the fundamentals of. You got to start gathering the many. And this is how the game is played, okay? And if you do that, that's how you win long term. Again, I've been in this business now, 20, man, 22, 23, 24 years. I don't even remember at this point right in the time. I wish I could show you guys the pedigree chart of the gurus who have come and gone and come and gone and come and gone and come and gone over the last two and a half, okay? Tons of them. Who has lasted the test of time. I can count them on one hand, literally. And I wouldn't need all the fingers even. Okay, Russell, how have you had longevity? How have you stayed throughout? Because I don't stop focusing on the most important thing, okay? Gathering the many. Gathering the many, okay? Because you can gather the many. You're going to lose some. You're going to gather the many, you're going to lose them. You're going to gather the many, you're going to lose. Like, that's the game, right? What happens? People gather their people, right? And then they start selling them stuff and they forget to gather, and then the whole thing collapses. Gathering the many. Gathering the many. Gathering the many. Russell, why'd you spend a million dollars last month, 900 whatever, $50,000 to gather people for an event? Because that's how you win the game. It's gathering the many, right? If you want to make offers to people, great, but you gotta have people that make offers, too, right? Okay, Russell, why are you still in the podcast episode? Why are you still doing this every single day? You're at like a thousand episodes. Why do you keep doing this? Right? In fact, I remember I was in inner circle meeting, and me and Garrett White were sitting next to each other, and there was a guy in our room, and we were trying to convince him to start publishing or talking, right? And it was so fascinating. Garrett looked at me like, russell, you're. Because the guy. I can't remember this exact story. The guy had done some publishing. We kind of stopped, whatever. And he's like, I'm good. And he looks at me and he's like, russell, like, why do you keep publishing your podcast every single day? I said, cause I'm trying to find my voice. He's like, you've been doing this for a decade. I'm like, yeah, right. Why did I relaunch the Russell Brunson show? Okay. I think we're Four or five episodes in now. I did because I feel like I lost my voice. I was trying to do things based on scripting, based on keywords, based on stuff like that. And like, it was good but wasn't great. So, like, all right, I gotta find my voice. Let me get back to Russell talking to a camera and hanging out and, like, sharing the stories I want to share, right? Like, let me tell you guys a story about me beating up a kid who messed with me in football, right? He came to the wrestling room and I mopped him. I want to tell you that story. What's the point of it? The point is I want to tell you that story. Makes me feel good about it, right? It feels good about myself. Like, I want to tell you guys stories. And so for me, it's like I'm still in the spot where I'm still trying to find my voice, right? It doesn't end right. Your voice keeps getting better and better and better. In fact, it's crazy. My brother sent me this video of me. Oh, I could splice in. Should I do it? Okay, I'm gonna splice in. I'm gonna have him splice in like a 10 second clip on the video and everything. It's me in a tie behind a desk and I'm awkwardly. So awkwardly talking. Shaved head, a tie. And I look at that kid and that again, I thought I was the stuff back then. I thought I was amazing. And I think about it now, I'm like, man, so embarrassed. I watched it. Now it's like, oh, but I want to put an arm around, like, Russell's. Keep going. Eventually you're going to figure out you can grow your hair out. You're going to find out that, you know, you can talk with energy, keep your eyes open, like you know things because, like, anyway, so. Okay, insert awkward clip of Russell right now. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed the dvd and I hope you really spent some time thinking about your ideas and your product and how you could put all these pieces in and, and turn it into your business. Now, one thing I want to also mention, because a lot of people watch this dvd, they get so excited and they're fired up and we're back. I hope that wasn't too painful for you as it was for me. But that's it, you guys. Back then, I thought I was good. Does that make sense? I thought I was good back then. Now look at me today. Like right now in my head, I think I'm pretty good. But in 10 years, someone look back at this like, Russell, you were so bad, right? Same thing for you. But you got to start and be consistent over and over and over again to figure that out and find it. You know what's fascinating to me? When I met Tony Robbins originally, he was the same age I am right now. What I remember thinking, like, man, he's been doing this forever. Like, he's this big, huge thing, right? Like, no, he was my age when I met Tony. Like, this is crazy to me. And I look at now, okay, when I'm Tony's age, where could I be? Where should I be? Can I catch him? Can I lap him? Am I going to lose to him? I don't know. Either way, it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun to compete. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this episode. I hope they give you some ideas. The biggest thing is I just, I'm so tired. I feel so bad. People who spend so much time and energy and effort building a product or movement or funnel or whatever that you want to call it, and then they're putting out, there's no one to. No one to see it. It's like. And then usually what's been happening is they've been bootstrapping this thing for so long and it's like, ah, they can't, like there's no one to sell to. They can't afford ads, they can't do anything. Now they've got this thing, but they've got to go start gathering people. And now they don't have time for it. They're out of money, they got to find another job. And it's like, if you'd been doing these things simultaneously, you'd be fine at this point. But you missed the most important part, which is gathering the many initially, that is the key. So this is the focal point for you guys, wherever you are right now in your business. It's like taking your time and breaking off. I'd say an hour a day. And the hour a day is for you to go out there and to network like crazy, for you to publish like crazy and then get back to building your thing. Okay, Just block out first hour of your day. Okay, I'm gonna spend 20 minutes networking. I'm going on Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is. I'm just DMing people, following people, getting to know people, trying to build relationships, jump on calls with people. Then I'm coming out, record a 20 minute video, 20 minute podcast episode, upload it, and then boom. Now I can go back to building my company. But if you're missing this piece, when you need the money, when you need, like, you know, when you're thirsty, if you have not been digging your well, you're going to miss it, okay? And that is the key. So hope that helps you guys a lot. On top of that, if you haven't heard Traffic Secrets yet, I just recommend reading it because this is the keys to everything I know about getting Traffic. It's a very strategic book, which means it's evergreen, it's timeless. It means it's not going to change. It means it works today, tomorrow, forever. I specifically did not put in tactical things that change with every, you know, every wind of change inside the social media world. These are strategic things that'll work forever. It's going to help you understand list building. It's going to help you understand focus on the right things. It's going to. Yeah, it's the key, you guys. And so, again, I love all my books. They're all great. But Traffic Secrets is a powerful one for you guys to understand so you can start building the traffic. Because until you gather the many, you don't have a business, okay? And that's the key. So start gathering to many your people waiting for you. They're waiting for you. Step into your calling. They're waiting for you to show up and start publishing, start talking so they can find you. They're looking for what you have. They're in pain. They're trying to get out of pain, and they're waiting for you to be willing to step into your calling and share your message, okay? And you got to do it awkwardly, you got to do it uncomfortably. You got to do it in the spot where you're not ready yet. But until you are willing to do that, those people cannot be like you can't change their lives. So as soon as you're willing to step into your calling, they are there waiting for you so they can find you, so you can change your life. So do it. I promise you, it'll be worth it. It's going to be scary at first, nervous, pain, all that kind of stuff. I get it. But the good news is when you first start publishing, when you are the worst, no one's going to be watching you. And by the time you figure it out, that's when your audience will show up. So start today, have some fun, appreciate you all, and we'll see you guys all next Episode.