How To Fortify Against Your Weaknesses AND An Exciting Announcement!

What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Seekers podcast. So the big question is, how are entrepreneurs like us, who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, were spending money from our own pockets? How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right, everybody. So I've not done a podcast for a while, and the main reason is that I'm honestly on my deathbed. I can barely breathe right now, and I apologize if I'm coughing, but I must get some messages out. I had a really cool Christmas episode I wanted to do, and I just. I was literally dying, so I couldn't. But I still think I'm gonna do it. Maybe I'll do it as a New Year's episode instead. But anyway, that's kind of. That's. Yeah. Basically what happened is New Year's Eve, we were getting some of. My brother and Brett and his family came over for dinner. And right before they showed up, I started feeling really kind of, like, sick. My legs hurt and stuff. So I took some medicine, and that's where it began. And I've had. Since then. It's been six days now, fever of between 103 and 104 degrees constantly since then, which means I've been forced to be in bed and haven't eaten anything. So I've lost £15 in the last. Since then. So the one positive of everything else is I didn't have to do cardio to lose weight. So that was pretty sweet. But I haven't eaten anything yet in a week. I'm still not hungry, so I'm just gonna keep riding until my body tells me it's hungry again. But anyway, so I'm feeling a little better today. My cough is harder today, so that's the only thing that's kind of, like hurting. But I just too excited right now about what I'm about to go to. So I want to share with you guys because. And it's funny, I have this weird fear about sharing this with you guys. And I don't know, I think I might know why. So some of the backstory of this is I actually. My dad bought me the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Actually, rewind. Before that. Before I got the Rich Dad, Poor dad book, my dad always told me that you should try to pay off your house first. It was like, I remember he paid his house off. He's all excited. He's like, yeah, you always want to pay your house off. Like, that's just one thing you want to do. In fact, I did an episode on this probably three or four months ago about paying your house off first. And the reasoning was like, because it gives you the security of your house being paid off, gives you the ability to go out there and risk as an entrepreneur, which, you know, we have to make crazy risks. Sometimes it's hard, though, to risk things. You're like, hey, I could. My family could lose their house. You know, like, that's the weird fear there. And so. And so anyway, when my dad got me the Rich dad, poor dad book, I read that and was talking about assets and investments, and I was like, you'd be a moron to pay your house off. Why would you ever do that? Doesn't make any sense. I remember asking my dad that. I was like, why would you? Like, that doesn't make any sense, dad. Like, all the money's just sitting there. And he said, you know what? It may be sitting there, may not be the smartest investment in the world, might even be a dumb investment. But I tell you what, you sleep better at night knowing that it's paid off, knowing that no matter what you risk as an entrepreneur, you're not going to lose that. Your house and your family always have the house to be in. And so after that point, I always wanted to pay off my house. And I remember the first house my wife and I bought, we lived in it for 10 or 11 years. I mean, it wasn't crazy house. It was a nice house, and I was going to pay it off, but just never was able to. And towards the end, I knew I wanted to buy another house. I just didn't put a lot of money into that. Then we bought this new house three years ago. It's kind of crazy house. And I was like, dang, it's. My goal initially is I want to pay it off within a year of buying it. And I was not able to, but it was kind of crazy. It wasn't. I don't think it was a real goal. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, I told people that. Kind of cool. And then the second year went by, and I'd taken a big whack down on the house. We also built a pool house that summer and a couple other things, but we hadn't paid it off. And so last Christmas time or last New Year's I set some New Year's resolutions and I had two New Year's resolutions. One was to get a passive income stream outside of clickfunnels to cover my monthly living expenses, which is less than 20 grand a month. So if I get something that covers 20 grand a month, then I can live for free even if the business disappeared. And the second thing is, the second thing would be to pay off my house. And so that was my goal a year ago. And then right after that's when we had this. If you go back in time, you listen to the podcast, like storming and flooding, our house flooded and like craziness. And then we rehabbed the whole house. It took eight months and then we built a huge crazy soccer field, all sorts of things. And I still paying a lot of money towards the house, trying to get paid off. But I mean it's a big, it's 11,000 square foot house on five acres. I guess it's a big house, right? Anyway, last week I messaged my accountant, or cfo, whatever you want to call him, he's awesome. I messaged him, I was like, hey Clint, like, can I pay my house off this year? Is that possible? And he said, I'll get back to you. So he got back in a little while. He's like, yep, if you want to, you'll be fine. I'm like, are you serious? So I just on my deathbed went in the office and I picked up this piece of paper here with this check inside. And it is literally the paperwork to go pay off my house. And I'm driving to the bank right now to meet my wife over there and I'm paying my house off right now and it's gonna be gone. And now I'll never, like, I don't even know. I'm kind of freaking out and I'm excited and it's gonna be the coolest thing ever. So I don't think I've been this excited about anything ever. The cool thing, I'm picking up my parents tonight at 11:30 tonight and picking them up from the airport. I'm so excited to tell my dad saying, dad, guess what? They paid off my house. So there you go. That's kind of the fun, exciting thing to share with you guys. Alright, so I do have a message today that pertinent to everybody. So the last thing I've been trying to do from my deathbed this last week or two before the end of the year was basically is to figure out where are the weaknesses in my business and how Do I fortify against those weaknesses? And it's not weak. Like, for me, it wasn't like, it's not weaknesses like in people. I mean, maybe a couple places, like we need different people or the right people or things like that. But there's just holes, there's gaps in the business, things that you're not pay attention to because of whatever your personality type is, you don't see, you don't notice. Right. And so I'm trying to identify those and then, and then figure out what those things are. Like where, where are places that you could be destroyed, right? Like legally, Are you legally compliant on everything? Are you, you know, are you doing this? Right? Like, things like that, that, like, like where are the gaps you have in your business? You could, you could literally get destroyed if you're not careful. There's the. In the good old Book of Mormon. I'm gonna show you guys another story from there, but it's important. There was, in fact, if you've read book, I talk about a guy named Captain Moroni. And this was, I believe it's actually him telling the story. I might be wrong, but basically he was, he was protecting. He was protecting the. The. This, his. His city, right? And, and in most places say they had, like, this is where the armies are at, but between, like where all their strong guards were at, they had these weaknesses. And, and so Captain Moroni was like, hey, we need to fortify our weak spots. And he said, because even our, especially our enemies, they know where our weak spots are at. Like, they know how to destroy. We need to strengthen them. And so he went and he started fortifying and putting armies and people and like stuff in place to protect their weak places. And they did that. And then when the armies came to try to storm them and try to try to get him shut down, they weren't able to because. Because, because they fortified their weaknesses and strengthened them. And so for me, that's been our, really our goal for the last couple weeks. Just like, okay, where. Where are we weak? Like, where could we be in trouble? Like, where. What things have we done stupidly that we just didn't pay attention to? Things that we as entrepreneurs running so fast, a million miles a minute, we don't think about the little thing here, the thing there. What are the pieces we're missing? Where, where are the holes we need to fortify? And then we're actively fortifying those things, those pieces, and like getting the people in place or the structure, the systems or the legal docs, or like whatever those Things are try to fortify ourselves. And that's kind of what I want to share with you guys today. I think that is important for all of us to look at. I know my credit union bank is somewhere right around here, but I don't know where exactly it's at. So I'm gonna pay this thing. Oh, there it is. Sweet. Anyway, so that's what I'm sharing with you guys and start thinking through those things because a lot of times us entrepreneurs, we get so obsessed with the marketing, the sell of our thing, which is obviously the most important part, that we forget about, like, the protection of that thing. So that's my recommendation, is to spend some time this holiday season thinking about to protect your things so you don't ever lose it to things that are stupid. The only reason why your business should, should not be successful is if the market doesn't want your product or service like that. That makes sense. All the other reasons are stupid and they come from us not protecting ourselves. So that said, protect yourselves. Fortify yourselves against those. Those holes, those gaps, and hope that helps. Thanks everybody, and we'll talk to you guys all again soon. Would you like to see behind the scenes of what we're actually doing each day to grow our company? If so, then go subscribe to our free behind the scenes reality TV show at www.funnelhacker.tv.