Russell Brunson is GIVING AWAY MP3 Players With His Podcast On It, Is Making A Profit, And Is At The Top Of The iTunes Charts - The Podcast Report With Paul Colligan

While the distracted argue about guerrilla discount, cheap free ways to market your podcast. Russell's giving away MP3 players with his show on it, making a profit and staying at the top of the charts. This is the podcast report episode115 show notes, links, conversation and more@the podcastreport.com115 I'm your host, Paul Colligan. Thrilled to be here. Today we start season four, episode one. The theme for season four is true stories about the business of podcasting. We've made some changes and I want to chat a bit about what we're doing. What has changed first of all, and this one's big. This episode is brought to you by Fireside. We'll be chatting about that in a minute. You'll notice no more music in the background, easier production, a single flow for this show. One of the things we need to do in podcasting is understand when do we make the show easy, when do we make the show big, when do we overproduce, when do we under produce these types of things? This is something I want to explore this season. But what's even more important is the avatar for the show has been closely refined. The avatar for this show, you, the listener, is someone ready to spend the time and money needed to do great things with your show. Now, this is also the avatar for my client base. Obviously, if you are not my client, you can still listen to this show. But the fact of the matter is I'm going to make this show for the very people who pay my bills. And this is a theme, this is a process, this is a recommendation I suggest all of you take on. Many of us make the show we want to make and not necessarily the show that we need to make or should make for our audience or for our business model or for our plan. I can't teach you to make for your client if I don't make it for my client. So this show gets refined. This season, the focus again is those ready to spend the time and money needed to do great things with your show. I'm past the point of trying to impress, a little bit embarrassed, but I'm going to admit that's what I was doing in the past and it changes today. The other big key thing here is we're doing ads in season four. Why are we doing ads? Paul? In the past seasons you've chatted about how much you hate ads. Well, the game has changed a lot. Next episode, episode 116 or season four, episode two, I'm going to go in depth as to why I'M doing it. I'm also moderating a panel at this year's Social Media Marketing World on the world of ads. I've got Rob Walsh from Libsyn who is one of the ad vendors out there. He's going to speak to specifics. I've got John Lee Dumas who is using another ad vendor. As you know, it's a million dollar podcast. And then I've got Gary Leland from the Gary Leland show and a number of other places that is just doing real ads for real money and it's not marketing to marketers or that kind of stuff. It's a good panel. Those of you who can make it a social media marketing world, please join me. It's going to be a fantastic time. For those of you who can't, we'll get part of the recording up here on the show. I do have Rob Walsh coming on a future show and I've invited some others in the ad space as well. We'll hear back soon from them. Paul, the advertising thing, really? Wow. What are you going to do? Have you sold out here? Nope. Two companies and two companies only. Companies that I've used or currently use, or companies that intrigue me. The podcasting space is getting big enough that there are options out there that I might not necessarily embrace. Some cases I will like add insertion on this show, some cases I won't, but I'm willing to bring them on as sponsors if it makes sense to my audience. If you would like to see your show or service on the show, you could reach out to me now@thepodcastreportlook.com or follow up with me on Facebook if that makes more sense to you. I'll tell you this not taking traditional CPM and you'll see why in the next issue. But with that said and done, let's get to the ad read, huh? I've been in podcasting over a decade. This is my first ad read. Bear with me on this one, okay? Today's episode is brought to you by Fireside. Fireside is a podcast hosting and analytics platform created by podcasters for podcasters. Fireside was started by Dan Benjamin, the founder of 5x5, taking everything he's learned since 2009 for making podcasts for a living and turned it into a platform for podcasters everywhere at any level of expertise. Fireside has it all. Unlimited uploads, unlimited downloads, massive amounts of real time data and analytics about your unique downloads. Super fast CDN for the best download speeds, multiple podcast support free one click podcast importing from platforms like Libsyn, FeedPress, SimpleClass and SoundCloud. Custom domain mapping. Beautiful responsive website with your own artwork, Host guest pages, ton of advanced features like sponsorship integration, chapter markers, a book market for links, auto posting of future episodes, timecode linking, and a lot more. You can try Fireside free for seven days, during which time you can import your existing podcasts for free while taking advantage of every feature Fireside has to offer. The unlimited plan start at $19 a month. No commitment. Long term agreements to worry about. Visit Fireside FM forward slash podcast report today to take the tour and use the code Paul sent me for 20% off the standard plan for three months. Fireside by podcasters for podcasters. That was the ad. Now, a couple of things. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Dan and what Dan has done. I am a huge fan of his back to work show, a couple of the other shows as well. I appreciate what he's done. His ability to stay independent, his ability to stay focused, his ability to keep a level of professionalism that is just fantastic. Fantastic. And when I heard that he was doing Fireside, I was honestly conflicted. The world of podcasting has seen so many people who have jumped in and jumped out who offer solutions. When we have old standards like Libsyn, who've been doing this over for a decade, what do you do? Where do you go with this? Do you progress ahead? Do you go with the old boys? What do you do? Well, I'm going to be playing with Fireside over the next couple of weeks. I promise to report that to you. And the cool thing is episode four, I've got Dan and we're going to chat about Fireside and I'm going to ask the hard questions and I'm going to ask the questions based on what it is that I saw during my examination of everything. Now, with that said and done, I will never recommend a tool, I'll never recommend a product, I will never recommend anything that forces you into a system that you can't leave. My very first question before we ever talked about CPM rates or that kind of thing, basically, is there an exit route for those who are in Fireside? And there is. And not only do I applaud Dan for doing that, but that is quite simply a requirement for the industry. This is an open standard, this is an open format, and if your tool doesn't let you leave, doesn't let you be part of the open, then it's just a mess. So give Fireside a try. I'd recommend doing it between now and episode four, when I bring on Dan, I will be doing the same. And we'll go from there. So, enough with the ad. Let's get to the content. Russell Brunson is a fascinating character in the Internet marketing space, and I'm proud to call him a friend. I was able to get Russell to podcast way back in the day with a concept that I thought was fantastic. It was marketing in your car. He would in his car on the way to work pretty much almost every day of the week or try. Like all podcasters, he didn't necessarily get one out every single time, but he'd share with his audience what was going on. He would share what was happening at work. He would share his life. He would take the promise of podcasting not in the expensive microphones and not in the million dollar production budgets, but in the ability to quickly get the word out to his audience. He did marketing in your car. We got Jeff Smith to write the theme song, which wasn't kept as you'll hear him speak to a little bit in here, but it was a fun show in the early days. Then recently I heard that Russell was taking his podcast a bit more serious. I followed up with him. He said, oh yeah, check out what we're doing. And I did. Lo and behold, Russell was going up the charts, going past in management, marketing, what many of my clients are currently doing. We looked at what he was doing and here's the interesting thing. Russell had a program where he was giving away. Yes, giving away. Now, Technically it's a $9.95 shipping and handling fee, but the fact of the matter is that doesn't even cover the price of the device plus the shipping and handling. An MP3 player with his show on it. Now, if the MP3 player has the show on it, do they need to subscribe? Well, here's the thing. It's working. It's working tremendously well. He's staying at the top of the charts and he's seeing profit from it. Now, he was at the top of the charts when I heard about this. He was at the top of the charts when I did the interview. And checking today, he's still at the top of management and marketing and it's just fantastic. He's doing well. It's a model worth examining. It's a model worth pondering. And maybe if it's not the MP3 player for you, it might be for something else. Now, Russell gives a number of links in the interview. Those can all be found@thepodcastreport.com 115. That's the podcastreport.com 115. With that said and done, let's get to Russell. And I've got Russell Brunson on the Skype phone. Russell, how are you doing, buddy?

I'm doing awesome, man. How are you been?

I'm doing well now. You work harder, faster, deeper than anybody else. I know you're killing it with clickfunnels. You're killing with all the things you're doing. You actually started a podcast a little while ago. Why did you start a podcast other than, you know, I prodded you into it?

You know what's funny is, like, you did probably, like, 10 years ago whenever, like, podcasting became a word, and I was like, I didn't understand it. That's when we started hanging out. And you're like, you got to do a podcast. And if you remember, I actually had one of your friends write the theme song for the first podcast, like, 10 years ago. But I never actually did the podcast because I had no time, right? And then, man, it was probably about three years ago now, and it was on the back end of one of my big businesses collapsing and imploding. Um, and I was kind of restarting over from scratch, and I thought, you know, I want to. I just want to do this podcasting thing. I have no idea if it's going to work or how it's going to work. Um, but I just want to start doing it. And what's interesting is I tried to figure out a format in a way that I would be consistent and actually do it. And it really started out as, like, a therapeutic thing for me, like, for me to start talking about what was happening and what we were going through and. And, like, the wins we were having and the losses we were having and all. I just kind of just daily talking about what was happening in my life, and that's kind of where it started. And it's become, for me, it's like, part of my day now. I really enjoy it. It's like I'm checking in with my people and sharing the cool stuff. We're working behind the scenes and just. It's become part of what we do now. But definitely started as just you prodding me, me taking five or six years, then finally just jumping and doing it and then kind of becoming addicted to it now.

How many episodes are you into it?

We are almost to our 300th episode. I think it's 296 I recorded this morning. So it's pretty crazy, actually. When you think about it.

So here you are, Mr. Internet wonder kid, Mr. Internet millionaire, Mr. Internet fancy pants, hang out with Tony Robbins kind of guy. And you don't even spend money on a microphone. I mean, you're podcasting from your telephone on the way into work. Why didn't you buy a better microphone?

You know, Cracks you up. I get people, man, probably four or five times a week who message me from all sorts of places. Like, I love your podcast. So how do I like what's the microphone using? The audio sounds so good and so clear. And I always laugh because. Yeah, in fact, when we first started, I bought like a little one of those little mics you plug in your iPhone and you hook it to your shirt and you can talk in it. But the problem with that is like 99% of the time I forgot the. The thing. I forgot the microphone. And then I was like, I'm gonna podcast. I have this really cool idea. And I'm like, oh, wait, I don't have the microphone. Okay, I'll do it tomorrow. And then I forgot the micro. And then, like, it just killed all the spontaneity behind it and became this huge, like, hurdle for me actually doing. I thought, you know what? I'm. I need to create this in a way that fits in my lifestyle, that I can do a podcast anywhere at any time without having to think about equipment. As long as my phone is in my hand, I can share my thoughts in the moment. Because, like, I don't know about you. Like, when you have an idea, right, and you script it out and then you gonna share it with people two or three weeks later, like, you. You lose the passion of the moment. And for me, it's like when I share something, it's like usually it's the beginning before something's about to happen, right after something bad has happened. And I'm like, I'm emotionally charged right now. This is the time I wanna share it with my audience. And I don't wanna have to go find a microphone or anything. I just wanna be able to talk. And so I think what we may lose in quality by using just the internal phone on my iPhone, I think we gain in, like, being in the moment and being present and being like, being engaged to that level. And so, like, for me, that's kind of why I do it. And it doesn't give me an out. It forces me to, like, when I'm ready or like when something happens to share it right then. And I think because that, I think that's why People, you know, connect with the podcast is because that's how it's happening. It's happening live. It's not scripted or thought through at all. I click record and then I go.

But it's just a passion project, right? I mean, you're not making any money from recording from a phone.

You know, it's funny. So initially I think it was. And the coolest thing is I didn't know I should have called you. One of those, like, ego things. Like, I always think I know a lot, so, you know, I don't reach out to my friends who are really smart on stuff like this. So I just launched the podcast and I didn't know how to set it up. Like, I had no tracking, I had no stats. And it's funny because, like, we literally two weeks ago, finally got tracking setups. Now I know how many people are listening, but prior to that, like, I had no idea. And I'm actually so grateful I did because it. If I had known that nobody was listening for the first year and a half, I probably would have stopped. But I had no idea. I was like, well, maybe there's people that like this. So I kept doing it and doing it. But what's interesting and the reason why it's becoming more and more of a focus for me is a couple years ago I launched, I call it my inner circle. And it's my high end clients and people that. It's $25,000 a year. And it's interesting as we grew from a couple people to 10 to 30 and now we have 100 people and capped it at that. There's one really, really, really interesting common thread between my inner circle members is almost all of them were podcast listeners. And I was like, how weird is that? The people who have become my best customers are all people who had me in their ear and have listened over and over and over. And they know me at a different, more intimate level and they're the ones who trust me at this level of my business. And so while I definitely began as just like a fun thing, I mean, I can directly attribute millions of dollars a year to the podcast. Even though there was no, like my podcast, there's. I don't think I had a call to action till like episode like 200 and something. And the call to action was like, go get the free MP3 player with more episodes. You know, like, it was never something that was designed to like, choreograph, to sell and to set things up. It was just like me sharing, like the struggles that I have as an entrepreneur and connecting with people at that level. And what's crazy about that is when you do and you're completely vulnerable. And, like, I mean, I've had episodes where I share stuff that, like, I don't think my wife knows about me, like, but I just share it because it's, like, important, I think, for entrepreneurs to see, like, not just the ups that everyone likes to brag about, but I want people to see the downs and the frustrations and the times I've wanted to quit. Like, I share those things because it's real, and I think because of that, it builds a different level of connection. And like I said, my best clients, that's the common thread across all of them, is that, like, Russell, I'm addicted to your podcast. That's why I'm in the inner circle. I'm like, really? Like, it's such a weird thing. It wasn't because of a good sales video or a good sales letter, my webinar that hooked him, or, you know, the sales process. It was that I was communicating with them at a very personal level that they related with, and they built trust and relationship with me, and that's why they've ascended up and become our best client. So it has definitely started out as just a kind of a thing, but it's morphed into something that I, in fact, you know, part of this. And we're talking about this a little bit, but, like, this big relaunch that we're doing of the podcast and getting. I'm trying to get. I want. I look at this common thread of all my best clients listen to me daily in their ears. Like, so I want to take all my. The rest of my clients and get them doing that, because if they'll do, then hopefully they will become my best clients as well. They will naturally ascend up the same way as other people did. And so, yeah, it's definitely become crazy profitable for us now. But it wasn't probably the first year, year and a half, two. I mean, I don't even know when, because we didn't track it. But. But looking back on it now, it's probably one of the best things we've ever done for our business.

Now, Russell, I'm doing some math here, okay? And the average podcast sells ads, and the average ad rate is 40 cpm. And that 40 cpm, that means 40 bucks per thousand downloads. Okay, so you saying it's easier to get somebody into a $25,000 mastermind? That it is to get 620 500,000 people to download your show.

Holy cow. Yes. And I always think about this. I'm like, if somebody's willing to pay me that much to be in front of my audience, I should be able to make a lot more than that just by being awesome. People always ask me, can I buy ads in your thing? I'm like, no, because if you could better monetize them than me, then I gotta become a better marketer. I gotta figure out how to do that. So, yeah, I think it's a million times easier.

So it's easier to get somebody to pay $25,000 than it is to get 625,000 downloads by far. And on a microphone, that's just your phone. I mean, you couldn't even, you know, I mean, here, these people paying you all this money, aren't they worthy of a good microphone?

This is a double edged sword. There it is. But again, I think that the problem is though, and again, I think most of us are so concerned about, like, about that face that we share with the world that because we want to look, you know, whatever the significance that drives us to look good, that's what keeps people from connecting with you. You know what I mean? I think it's almost like when we put away those things and just like, look, let me connect at a personal level, that's when real connection happens. And in today's world, like, that's what people are like, that's what we want. That's what all of us are striving for, right in our relationships. And like, the reason why we buy through what we do and we connect with people we do is because there's that connection. And I think that, yeah, you lose that sometimes with being too polished. And I think, I think it's more like sharing the truth. And the truth is what draws people to you.

So you did this for a while and you moved over to some new stats and you got some realizations, you had your moment where, man, my best customers consume my podcast. And by the way, that's not a weird thread. I get that from everyone. And then you decided to give away MP3 players driving people to listen to your show. Now, this is not a topic that you normally read in the how to get more listeners, you know, books that you can get over at Amazon. Why are you giving, you know, and let's be honest, It's. It's a $9.95 shipping and handling. And for those of you who can get an MP3 player delivered to your house for $9, 95 cents, please let us both know. But the fact matters. You're giving away an MP3 player to get more listeners to your show.

What the heck is that about? Yeah, so there's a backstory to this. So what happened is we started seeing the podcast, you know, the results from this. I was like, well, dang, this is cool. How do we grow it? And they're like, well, just keep doing the show, and people organically come to you. And now I'm not patient. I'm like, okay, that's nice. But, like, I want, you know, I don't know how many listeners I have at this point. Maybe, maybe 100, maybe a thousand, maybe five. I don't know. But, like, I want more of them. So let's get more. And so for me, I'm looking at. All right, well, let's go to Facebook. Let's buy ads. And so we start buying ads off, you know, everyone that's got a good podcast, like, we're buying ads directly to their audiences, right? Cause I'm like, hey, they listen to Entrepreneur on Fire. They should listen to mine. Hey, listening to, you know, Paul's podcast. They should listen to mine. So we're looking at all those things. And so I have my. The guy on my team that does all our ads. I start having him spend money on Facebook ads to drive people to subscribe to our podcast. And so he's spending a whole bunch of money. I mean, a thousand bucks a day or so is kind of like the budget, right? So things are happening, and so it's running for a week or two. And I come in. I'm like, hey, cool, like, how many subscribers? Like, how much are we paying per subscriber? How's it all working? And he's like, I don't know. I'm like, what do you mean, you don't know? He's like, I can't track, like, if they actually subscribe to itunes or what's happening or like. He's like, there's no way I can track this. I can. I can dump money into it. We can cross our fingers and hope, but there's no. There's no way to. Like, maybe there is, but we didn't know how way to actually tell that. And so I'm like, okay. So we're just throwing money in and hoping that something happens, but we have no idea. My head goes against everything. I believe in advertising. I want to be able to track everything. I do. And so I told him. I'm like, just stop. And then I was just probably A week or two. I was frustrated because I'm like, how do we stimulate the growth of this podcast? Like, I can't do it. And then one day I was driving and actually did a whole podcast on this before we did. I was like, I have an idea. I think I figured out how I can actually pay to build my podcast. And pay in a way that's predictable, doesn't actually cost me any money. And so I did a podcast probably 10 episodes, 15 episodes ago or something like that, and I shared the strategy of what I was gonna try to do, and we went and did it, and it's been awesome. So basically what the strategy was is like, I need a hook that would be interesting for people, right? So I was like, why can. The podcast is free right now, so I can't, like, sell the podcast. So how do I make this people actually pay for it? I'm like, well, what if we took a bunch of episodes and put them on a preloaded MP3 player? That's kind of a cool idea. And so we connected some people in China and we had them build a really cool MP3 player, put it in a cool box, and, like, we preloaded the first 257 episodes. And so now I had a hook. Now I could go and I could advertise to people that had big podcast followings. Say, hey, if you like marketing podcasts, go get the free MP3 player, marketingyourcar.com and I could actually pay because now I can start seeing what's happening. If I spend a dollar on Facebook ads, what's going to happen? So what happened is we started driving people to this free MP3 player, and again, they pay shipping and handling, so there's a little bit of cost, but they put their credit card in. And then on the page, if you guys go through this process, you'll see it. We took the transcripts of those first 257 episodes as well. We put them in a PDF because a lot of, I mean, my audience, tons of them, like to read as well. So I said, hey, for an extra $17, I'll give you the PDF. It's 1,000 pages. I think is ended up being of all the transcripts. I'm marking your car the first 257 episodes so you can read. Read it on your Kindle or on your phone or whatever it is. That way you can read long as well. And what if I can find the numbers real quick from that? See, my team sent me an update yesterday, I believe. Let me see if I can Find it real quick. Share numbers. So you guys can kind of.

So while you're looking at this. So people go to the page and you say, free MP3 player shipping and handling $9.95. And by the way, we're going to. If you go to the podcast, you play forward slash 115. We'll have a link to this whole process. And I'll find a link to Russell's episode where he came up with this as well.

Oh, cool.

You. You pay the 995 for the MP3 player, and then on the next page it says, would you like to pay 17 for the transcripts?

Yeah, it's actually. So it's on the same page. It's something we call in our clickfunnels world, we call it an order form bump. So they put in their credit card, and right before the submit button, there's a little paragraph that just says, hey, would you also like the transcripts for an extra $17? So right now, 29.7% of people who order the free MP3 player upgrade and get the. Get the transcripts. So one out of three, almost one out of three, are paying extra $17 to get the transcripts. So all of a sudden, all of a sudden now I can spend money in Facebook ads and I can. I can recoup that money. And I just. And I just added a subscriber or. Honestly, what happens right now is for every MP3 that we're giving away, I don't know exact numbers, but we're getting multiple people to subscribe the podcast. So that's kind of the first step. Now we have an upsell for our membership site. From that 17.9% of people are joining my membership site, which for us is $67 a month. So that's pretty crazy. And then after that, we have a $300 offer, which is a bunch of our trainings, and we're getting about 4.6% of people to take that. And so the metrics I look at in my business, I'm from the funnel world, so we have a couple metrics that drive everything we do. The first thing is like, what's our cost to acquire a customer? So how much does it cost me to get somebody to get this free MP3 player? And right now we're averaging $15 is what it costs me in Facebook ads to get somebody to buy the MP3 player. But then the second metric is called our average cart value. So for everyone who buys the MP3 player, on average, how much money do we make? When they go through that sales funnel immediately. And so before any of the continuity hits in, our average cart value right now in this funnel is $32.12. So that means I'm spending $15 to give away MP3 player, and immediately I make $32.12. So I'm actually making more than 15 bucks for every MP3 player I give away. So what that does, I'm doubling my money, and I'm getting at least one and probably multiple and probably four or five subscribers to my podcast for every single one that I give away. And so now I can spend 1000, 2000, $3000 a day in ads profitably to build my podcast. And if you've probably been watching the charts like, we've been hovering in the business category number one, two, or three pretty much every single day since this has launched, because we're able to physically be driving people in where I don't know anybody else, really, who has a podcast, they can pay and profitably get members into it. And that's kind of the magic behind the model.

Oh, man. So, yeah, this is my secret.

All podcasting as we know it, right?

Well, it's. You know, it's funny. In the history of the podcast report, the most popular episode is one I did with Ed Rush, where he was chatting about how he essentially was buying customers for his fishing podcast. And I have a feeling this episode is going to be huge as well. But this idea, there's these themes in podcasting. You got to get a fantastic mic. You need to spend at least three years of your life researching microphones. And here's Russell doing it in his car. And then you got to wait for people to show up because everything's free. And yes, the podcast is still free, but Russell's spending 15 bucks to get a new listener. But the cool thing is, because he's not a dumb guy, he's making 30 bucks to get it in the new listeners. So he's getting new listeners and essentially doubling his money.

And that's before they start consuming from listening to podcasts and buying our products. Everything else that's just immediately before anything else even happens, which is crazy.

Is paying for customers the only way?

No. So the cool thing about this is, like, it stimulates everything else, right? So right now, because we're paying for these customers, there's a surge of people coming in. Like, now we're ranked really high in the iTunes store. And so because, like, I'm watching my subscriber now that I finally hooked up the analytics and stuff, we're watching our. Like, our downloads are like, it's like this huge spike. And, you know, I say half is from the paid stuff, but because it's. Because the paid stuff's happening, it's stimulating all the organic stuff we're listed there. We're showing up. More and more people are jumping and never heard of us who don't even know about the MP3 player. But they're. But that's happening, and it's growing from that side as well. And so I always look at, like, we have this concept here in our office. We call it paid viral videos. And so, like, everyone wants to make a viral video, right? That goes huge. And so, you know, as good as I think I am, like, none of my videos go viral, but, like, we can create something that's good enough and I can put money behind it to stimulate the growth. And then because we're putting money behind it, more people see it, and then it becomes viral. And that's how we've had all of our big successes, is from, you know, paid viral stuff. We're stimulating it with cash. And I figured. I feel like it's same thing here. Like, because we're doing this part of it, it's putting us out there, and then everything else, all the organic stuff becomes ten times better because we're there. We're in front of people's faces.

Now there are two audiences for this show. There are those generally listening, generally interested in podcasting, who listen to everything, who enjoy the show and enjoy what we do here. And I love the hobbyist. I love the enthusiast. Welcome. The second audience for this show are the ones that become my clients. Are the ones that become your clients are the ones that spend real money to play this game, because they realize when you spend the money, there's actually revenue to be made for it on the other side. Now, obviously, somebody doesn't start with a thousand dollars and see what happens tomorrow. You build into it. You grow into it. I think the audience that is more mine. The audience, my client, your client. I think they've been spoken to. But if I am a beginning podcaster, if I am an early podcaster, if I am a, you know, should I take Russell's advice and just do this for, like, five years and then wake up, or should I be a little bit more strategic? You know, what. What does the, for lack of a better term, normal guy gal podcaster have to learn from Russell's story?

Yeah. So this is the biggest thing I would say, and I talk about this with my Clients all the time, like, half of. Half of business or podcasting or whatever it is, is like, you finding your voice, right? And most people, like, they want to show the highlight reel of where they're at, but they don't want to do the work to get there. And I always tell people, like, I'm so grateful that I didn't know how to look at my stat, or I had no stats up to my podcast the first year and a half, because I didn't stress about that and I was just doing it. And if you listen to my podcast. So you can go back to episode number. In fact, the first 250 episodes are on the MP3 player. The first episode, like, I was not very good. Second one, I was not very good. Third, four. In fact, Stephen here sits behind me. He was telling me the other day, he's like, yeah, the first 40 or so episodes of yours, like, they were, like, good, but, like, you hadn't, like, hit your stride yet. It's about 40 or 45 something. You had hitting your stride and you found your voice. And then, like, all of a sudden, this snowballs. And I don't care what platform you're on, if you're podcasting, you're Facebook Live ing, you're periscoping, you're Snapchatting, whatever it is. Like, I think the consistency of it, even if you're never planning on making money with it, it's the key to you finding your voice. And if you look at videos, for me, anything from three, four, five, six years ago, I wasn't polished. I'm still not polished. But you're like, but I had to do it a lot over and over and over again. And you start finding your voice. And what's interesting is, as you're doing things, you'll find out, like you said with your podcast, like, some episodes people go crazy for, and other ones they don't. And you're like, wow, why was that one interesting? Why did people care about that? And you look at that and you're like, wow, I talked about this. That must be what they want. And so you share more of that. And it's just such a cool, organic thing where you're by the consistency of you doing it. And I think at least, you know, multiple times a week, but daily, if you can, consistency of publishing something, whether it be podcasts, blogging, video something, but you're consistently doing it. The first hundred episodes, whatever, is not about your audience. The first hundred episodes about you finding your voice. And after you found your voice, at that point, your audience will found you and it'll grow and you'll learn what they actually want, and you'll become better and better and better. You look at now like, I am very clear on what message is today, like, the reason why my company is growing the way it is because, like, I know what my message is. I'm completely congruent with it, and, like, everything we're doing is coming from that standpoint. But it took me, you know, honestly, 12 years to figure out what my message was, but it's because I was publishing stuff daily over and over and over again. And as soon as you. You figure that out and you see what people respond to and what people resonate to you, start defining. This thing gets better and better and better until eventually, like, you have your voice, you have your message, and that is where you can start really impacting people. But you can't get to that point by, you know, buying a nice microphone and polishing up. It comes from consistent repetition of you doing it. And at that point when you've done 100 episodes, again, maybe that point, if you're a hobbyist, your goal never is to make money. That's fine. Maybe it's to make a difference another way that's totally cool. But the way you're going to do that is by mastering your voice and then mastering your message. And the only way to get that is from consistent, constant repetition. And that's the key.

All right, if you want more from Russell, you can head out to itunes. Top of the business charts, top of the management marketing charts. I still laugh every time I say management marketing charts. Was there ever two groups that you're not listening to? The same podcast, itunes. If you are listening, you know, you might want to think about that one. You can get more about Russell Darrow, but you can also, if you head out to the podcastreport.com115 we will. I asked Russell before we went live to give us an extended offer into this free MP3 player. And you guys can pick that up and, you know, a listen to the show and definitely listen to episode one through 40 and, you know, get some inspiration on getting better like Russell said, but at the same time, follow through on the. On the funnels, you know, take screenshots of everything, take a look at what's happening. It's pretty fantastic. And Russell's a smart guy and a good friend, and I'm thrilled to have him here on the show. So, Russell, any final words before I do my final bit?

After we cut off this recording, two quick things. Number one, I want to, I want to say, I want to kind of reference what you said, like buy the mp3 pair slowly. Not because I care about your money, but because I care about you learning the process. In my group we talk about this concept called funnel hacking. And so I want you to funnel hack this and look at what we're doing and why we're doing it because we understand that you can replicate it and you can model it. That's number one. Number two, if you like, Paul, I can actually in clickfunnels, I can make what we call a share funnel of my podcast funnel. I can give it to you and you can give it to your audience. So if anyone has a Click Funnels account, they can click a button and my entire podcast funnel will go on their account and then they can use that and edit it to make their own. If that would be benefit, I can give it to you and you can put that in the show notes as well.

Oh man. Yeah, let's do that. That'd be very, very cool. And then we'll get a link to clickfunnels as well for those who don't know anything about it. Very cool. Russell. This is a great way to kick off season four. I wanted to open the eyes of everyone to what's possible. There are other shows where you can do the microphone shootouts or the, the hosting debates and we're actually going to have some, some hosting people here in the in the future. But, but thank you for being season 4 episode run Russell Guy. Always a blast to chat with you, my friend.

Thanks for having me, Paul. I appreciate it.

And that was Russell Brunson. There is a little something in that interview for every single one of us, especially if you've gotten this far in the interview. The links Russell spoke to are@the podcastreport.com 115 I've asked Russell to keep the MP3 player go offer going as long as he can. Yes, it's an affiliate link so I want to disclose that the podcastreport.com iTunes Stitcher Google will let you subscribe to the show. Get the show automatically so that you don't have to hear about it on email or social media or however you came to the show. If you haven't subscribed yet, Please do the podcastreport.com/twitter, Facebook will take you to all the social media options. And of course if you head to the podcastreport.com115 you can leave a note right on this episode, a comment for others to hear. As I mentioned, we're taking sponsors now. It's not the traditional rates, but if you want to start the dialogue, I will chat with you at the podcast report outlook.com or you can follow up with me on the business side of Facebook if that is how you roll. Thank you Russell for this episode. Thank you for listening. Thank you Fireside for sponsoring. And well, next week we'll chat about sponsorship and why I'm doing it. Between now and then record something awesome. Would.