How To Succeed When You Have No Resources
Russell Brunson (Marketing Secrets podcast) argues entrepreneurs succeed by being resourceful rather than waiting for external resources. He illustrates this with a Pirates Cove anecdote: instead of paying ~$70–80k to rent the private venue himself, Brunson sold spots/tickets to cover costs and later used the event to deepen partnerships. He also recounts an early project where, after buying Mark Joyner’s Farewell Package with his last money, he solicited peers to pool small contributions (requested 50 people × $100) to raise ~$5k for development; about 55 people paid ($5,500). Core takeaway: identify what you would do if you had resources, then mobilize others to co-fund and co-create—entrepreneurs are resourceful.
Questions this video answers
Approximately $10,000 per day with a week-long minimum (roughly $70,000–$80,000 total).
A page offering 10 people to pay $10,000 each (10 × $10,000 = $100,000).
He estimated $5,000 to build the idea and asked for 50 people to give $100 each (50 × $100 = $5,000).
About 55 people paid, yielding roughly $5,500.
Chapters
Hey, everyone, this is Russell, and welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast, happening today from Pirates Cove. 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, everyone, so if you watch the video of this, you can kind of see I am at the most ridiculous place on earth. You're listening to this. Go to marketingsecrets.com to actually watch the video. But right now, I'm at a place called Pirates Cove. We're at its mastermind group. That is insane. If you see behind me, these are my kids swinging on the ropes and having fun in the water and a bunch of other amazing things. And this is pretty much the craziest place I've ever been. It's my favorite place on earth. Some of the backstory behind Pyroscope. Again, those of you watching, you've seen some of the scenery of this, but basically the kind of backstory is when I was one of my twins, which. This is Bowen, one of my twins right here. What's up? So when he was. When they were about six months old, we were speaking at an event here in Las Vegas, which is where Pirates Cove is at. And one of my friends has come to this place and kind of told stories about how amazing it was. He tried to explain it, and, like, no matter how cool he made it sound like, you're like, oh, that sounds cool. He's like, no, you guys, we have to see it. So he's like, okay, I'm gonna take you over and try to find us. We started driving around all over Las Vegas, all over Boulder, trying to find this place called Pirates Cove. And we couldn't find it anywhere. So we kind of gave up and went out to eat at in Boulder City. And we're sitting there. All of a sudden, the owner of Pirates Cove walked out. And my buddy's like, that's the owner. And so we walked up to him and he's like, hey, you don't know us. But I was, you know, I've been to Pirates Cove, and it would be super cool to if you could let us see it. The guy was so cool. He's like, come on up. And he, like, gave us swimming suits, and we swam the entire day. And like I said, Bowen here was only six months old, so he was in diapers. And anyway, we had the most amazing time ever. And if you see this place, it's basically, it's on the side of this mountain. It's a private residence. There's five houses on it. There's water slides. In fact, I'll take you guys up who are watching the video. So you can see kind of the top, there's a kid water slide and this really cool kid pool. And then up at the top, there is this huge water slide that's like, for adults. It's crazy. You go down this huge slide and then it enters into the middle of the park. There's this huge boat and a pirate master. You can actually jump off it. In fact, Funnel Hacker tv, you'll see some videos of me jumping off it. It's pretty. It's. It's pretty crazy. So anyway, yeah, so I'll keep showing as I'm walking around, but I want to teach you guys a really cool lesson. So after we came, I was like, I want to. I want to rent this. Like, I want to. I want to come take my family here and show everybody. So the next year we called the guy up and like, well, we want to. We want to rent Pirates Cove. How much does that cost? And he was like, oh, it's like $10,000 a day with like a week long minimum. Minimum. So like 70 or $80,000 I of money at the time. And but I was like, God, but I really want to rent Pirates Cove. And I was like, there's got to be a way that I can rent this and like, show my family and my kids and like, and like, experience this again. And so then, you know, the wheels in my head start spinning how. And again this comes down to like, Robert Kiyosaki 101, right? Poor people say, ah, I can't afford that. Rich people think, how can I afford that? How can I afford, like, what do I got to do to be able to afford that? So I'm like thinking like, well, what do I got to do to make $70,000 to rent this place? Plus, obviously, catering and everything else. I'm like, well, for me to do that, it's gonna be. It's gonna cost a lot of money. I'm gonna need almost 100 grand to do it. And so I was like, okay, what if I found a bunch of cool people and invited them to come to this thing and I sold tickets to it? And so that was the idea. So what we did is basically went and I put out a little page that said 10 people pay $10,000 and that's $100,000. It covers the cost of the entire Mastermind Group. And then we can rent it and we'll have a really good time. And I was like, we. For half the week we'll have Mastermind. Then when the Mastermind's over, we'll still have it for two or three days at the end and we'll invite my family members at a time, a bunch of employees, things like that. And that was kind of, that was kind of the game plan. So we did it and it worked and it was amazing. So that was the first time I had a chance to experience Pirates Cove for a whole week. And since then we've done it. I think this is the fourth time we've done it. We did it three years in a row and then took off like five or six, four or five years because it's a lot of work as well. And then this year we decided to do it again. So I'm here right now with 10 other or 10 entrepreneurs and we're just having the most amazing Mastermind meetings during the day when it's like 116 degrees out here, and at night we're playing, we're having fun, our kids are here. It's like, it's insanely cool. And so that's what happened right now, Pirates Cove. So again, if you want to see some of the visuals in this place, go to marketingsecrets.com and watch the video. But the lesson I want to tell you guys is this. Hopefully you kind of got a little piece of the lesson. But it comes back to what Robert Kiyosaki said, right? Like, poor people say, oh, I can't afford that, whereas rich people are thinking, how can I afford that? How can I afford that? Right? And so I couldn't afford this place, I couldn't afford to rent it, but I wanted to experience, want other people to experience. So I had to start thinking outside the box. Like, how can I do that? Like what? Like what do I need to do to be able to afford that? And how do I get other people to help chip in so we can actually experience this and make this such an amazing thing. In fact, a lot of my early joint venture partnerships came from people I invited to Pyrus Cove. And I tell you what, you take someone to Pirates Cove, they think you're pretty cool afterwards, which has helped as I've tried to build relationships and grow companies and Things like that. But for you, what I want to think about is a lot of times as an entrepreneur, and I'm not telling you should go rent Pirates Cove and do something crazy like that, but a lot of times the reason entrepreneurs aren't successful in business is because they have this weird resource problem. Oh, Russell. I don't have the resources. I don't have the time. I don't have the money. I don't have the talents. It's all like, I don't have the resources. And you have to understand that entrepreneurship is not about having resources. That's a fallacy. It's incorrect, Right? Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs not because they have resources, because they're resourceful. Sounds very similar, but it's different. They're resourceful. So I was resourceful. I had to think outside the box, like, how can I create this thing? A bunch of you guys have heard my. My rant many times about venture capitalists, right? Like, I don't feel real entrepreneurs should take VC because, like, they're coming in saying basically, oh, I don't have the resources. Let me go ask somebody to give me money. So now I'll have resources to go and build something. And by definition, if you're doing that, you're like, you're not an entrepreneur. Like, entrepreneurs are resourceful. They look at things and say, how can I afford that? They look at something and say, okay, I don't have the resources. I have to be resourceful. I figure out other ways to do it. I mean, my very first thing I ever created, I had Mark Joyner, who's my first mentor and man, one of the coolest people I've ever met. Here's my Ellie. She's here hanging out too. Want to say hi? Hi. You having fun? Yeah, I'm almost done, babe. Okay. So anyway, so he. When he kind of retired from the Internet marketing coaching business, he put out a thing called the Farewell Package, and he sold it, and I bought it. And at the time, I had no resources. I paid a thousand bucks for this course, and that was like, all the money we had. And my credit card was maxed out afterwards, and I had no resources. And I was like, okay, everything I bought from Mark Joyner. Like, I needed to hire programmers and developers to be able to execute and actually create that thing, but I didn't have the resources. I'm like, crap, what am I gonna do? I don't have the resources to create it. I was like, I'm an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are resourceful. And so I'm like, okay, I gotta be resourceful. What should I do? And I was like, okay, well, I have ideas. I know if I did have money, what I would do. So I was like, okay, this is what I would create if I did have money. And then I wrote it out and then I went. And at the time, he had this little Facebook, or it wasn't Facebook group, his little forum with everyone who had purchased his product. I said, look, guys, I bought this thing with the last of my money. I'm completely broke, but I know what I would do if I had the money. I would create this thing. I pitched everyone on this thing and they're like. I was like, the deal is I'm broke, though. I have no resources, but I'm very resourceful. I know a lot of you guys are in the same situation. So my question for you is, how many guys like to partner up together? And we pool our resources and become resourceful and work together. And I post that and I said, you know, I got a quote. It's gonna cost about $5,000 to build this idea I had. I got zero dollars. So I need 50 of you guys to give me a hundred dollars and we can create something from our resources and become resourceful. And I had like 120, 130 people who's like, I'll do it. I'm in. I'm in. All you'll say, I'll donate 100 bucks to this thing to be part of it. I was like, cool. So I collected all my. I ended up. I had 120 people say they would. And then, as often happens, you know, only I think 55 or something actually gave the hundred bucks. So it was $55, $5,500 that I suddenly had in my PayPal account. And. And everyone bought together in this package. And I went and I took the money and I went and hired the development team and they started creating it. And that's how I launched my first spiral website. A lot of you guys don't know that story. I don't tell it very often, but it was about not the resource. I had zero resources. All I had was a credit card with a thousand bill on it, because that's what I paid to buy his course. And zero dollars. At the time, I had a job. I didn't have a job. I was wrestling. So I was making exactly $0 a month, $0 a year, and my wife was making 950 an hour. So that was our resources. And now I had a thousand dollars on my credit card. I was stressing out because I'm like, I don't know how to pay a thousand dollars. And so luckily I was resourceful and I found people, got the funding from other people who wanted part of this project. We launched it, started building a list, use that to launch the next first product. And on and on and on. And here we are, 15 years later, I'm at Pirates Cove with 10 of the most amazing entrepreneurs around the world. And I'm here with my family and my friends. A bunch of my employees, my partners are coming and I didn't pay a penny to be here because I was resourceful. So for you, I want you guys to understand that's why we're entrepreneurs. We are resourceful. You are resourceful. All you gotta do is stop trying to ask people for money to fund your idea and just start creating, being resourceful. What can I do? How can I get other people involved and get other people believe in my vision? Like when you start learning how to sell, people will come to and they will and you can create cool things. So there is my message for tonight. Those of you guys who have been watching the visuals behind me, hopefully you had a cool little glimpse of Periscope. We got a couple Funnel Hacker TV episodes coming out that'll be showing you guys some of the craziness. But hopefully you guys enjoy this and hopefully you start thinking about that in your business and your life. It's not just business, it's all aspects of life, right? How do you be resourceful? You rarely will have the resources even to get started. And if you're resourceful, you can do it. So that's what I got. I'm out of here, guys. I'm going to go get my swimsuit on. I'm going to jump in the water. So bye everybody. 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.
