The Hidden Lesson Inside A Message to Garcia: Why Winners Don’t Wait for Instructions | #Success - Ep. 80

Now, obviously, if you want to sell stuff online, you're going to need a good funnel.

But if you want a great funnel, then you're going to need to use ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels is the number one funnel builder in the world, helping more first-time entrepreneurs to leave their nine-to-five and to launch their dream than any other company on earth.

ClickFunnels was built for the dreamer and the doer, and you can get a free 14-day trial by going to clickfunnels.com/slash podcast right now.

That's clickfunnels.com/slash podcast.

ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world.

This is the Russell Brunson show.

You've probably heard Tony Robbins say this before.

Like, if you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats, right?

Most people don't decide.

Most people dabble.

I'm going to try a little bit.

I'll see what.

I'm going to see if this works.

I'm going to try a little bit.

But then, if it's not going to work, then they quickly slip back.

Oh, never mind.

Like, it's good.

I can't do that, right?

Whereas deciding is cutting off all the other options.

Like, when you cut off all their options, there's nothing else you can do besides go forward, right?

It's burning the ship so you can take the island.

What's up, everybody?

This is Russell.

Welcome back to my vault.

So excited to have you guys here and today I've got a book that is a legend.

It's been printed over a million times and a lot of you guys have never even heard of it.

I hadn't heard of it until a couple years ago.

It's called The Message to Garcia and this is one of the first editions from 1899 and this one is really cool because it's also signed by Mr.

Elbert Hubbard.

Not to be confused with L.

Ron Hubbard, everyone thinks this is a Scientology guy.

It is not Elbert Hubbard.

It was one of the original people in the new thought movement.

In fact, he was the guy who owned the printing presses for most of the people people that were writing books back then.

He had a community called the Roycrafters, and they would print books and magazines for all of the authors back in the day.

And so Albert Hubbard was kind of the guy who ran that community.

He printed tons of books and magazines, but this by far is the most famous thing that he published.

And it's only a couple pages long, and it's called The Message to Garcia.

This one's really cool because it has a leather cover.

And again, it's only a dozen pages or so,

the entire book.

I paid $300 for this copy of Message to Garcia, the signed copy.

The Cool Syndouds book is, again, again, there's a really short analogy at the very beginning that's kind of the core of the entire thing.

The story inside this book is that there was a guy who's a U.S.

Army officer named Rohan, and the president of the United States at the time said, I need you to get a message to this lieutenant who's in the mountains and the hills of Cuba during a war, right?

And he gives him this message.

He's like, you need to go deliver it to this guy.

And then Rohan leaves and he goes and he figures out how to get to Cuba, how to get to the mountains, how to navigate through everything, how to get through the war zones, the rivers, the mountains, and everything, and figures out how to come and deliver the message directly to Garcia.

And

the premise of this book is the fact that he didn't go and ask a ton of questions, like, what's the address?

How do I get there?

What's the best route?

Like, is it like, who's going to pay for me to get it?

He doesn't ask any of those questions.

He's given a task, which is give this message to Garcia.

He goes out there, and despite the complexity and the hardness of the task, he figured out a way to get it done.

And so the message from this is like, is really for people to understand that like when you're given a task, it's like,

you how do you break through whatever barrier like most people they go on a journey they get a task they get something they're trying to do right and as soon as they hit an obstacle they stop they hit it as soon as they they get past it gets a little bit harder they stop or they can't figure out the answer so they stop right and the and the whole point of this book is like this guy Rohan he didn't do anything he figured out a way to get it done to get the message to Garcia and so then afterwards Albert Hubbard writes this this article about what he saw about this story and it gets published and then people start seeing it and they start wanting to share it.

So these big corporations and big companies, they saw this story and they wanted their staff and their employees to understand like,

this is how the mindset we have to have to be successful.

We have to figure out like how you give them, like if you're given a task, like give a message to Garcia, you just figure it out at all costs.

Like you don't have to, like whatever it takes, just go and get that task figured out.

And so we have these big corporations and companies all around the world who started asking him like, can we republish this?

And so again, it got printed over a million times in different languages all around the world to give people the understanding that, like, when you have a task, you have to figure out a way to get it done.

We start thinking about people that are successful in any areas of life, right?

I think about this when I was in sports and athletics as a kid.

I was a wrestler growing up.

And a lot of times, like, you set a goal or you set something.

I wanted to be a state champ.

And then she wanted to be an all-American.

I had these different goals.

And it's one of those things where, like, there's not a playbook.

Like, here's all the 12 steps to go and do the thing, right?

It's like for you to get that task, to be able to accomplish the goal.

Like, you have to be willing to do anything, like break through walls if it needs to, if it needs to happen, right?

Business was the same thing where I was like, I want, you know, my very first goal is I want to make a million dollars in a year.

Like that became the goal.

Again, there wasn't at the time like a blueprint, like follow these 12 steps to do it.

It was like, all right, I got to figure this out through thick and thin.

And, and, you know, when I was doing it the first time in college, like, I didn't have, there weren't, there weren't coaches and mentors and coaching programs and software.

Like, I like was trying to figure like, okay, I remember I wanted to sell something on the internet.

I'm like, well, how do I get something on the internet?

And I didn't know that.

And there wasn't chat DBT to ask.

There was, you know, and so like I was figuring things out.

Eventually, I figured out okay you have to have a server to put something on the internet and I bought a dome because I think first I bought a domain I'm like have a domain like where's my website there's no website like okay we have a domain now you got to figure out like I had to figure out the the domain points to a server so I had to get a server and then from there it's like well how to get a website on the thing it's like well there's different software like front page and dreamweavers I download front page and then from and like there's so many steps and there was no path there was no plan there was no nothing other than like I've just got to smash through wall to get it like my equivalent of like getting a message to Garcia was like I have to sell something on the internet and they were so it was so difficult to do that and then again this is 20 years ago this is before even after we figured out how to get a website online then it was like how do i sell something how do i get traffic there's no facebook there's no myspace right i see people nowadays and it blows my mind because we've made the process so simple like if you have a click funnels account you click a couple buttons and your site's live you can take orders you go to instagram and you make a reel and you get traffic coming like it's so simple nowadays yet most people just stop i think it's coming back to like this concept of the message to Garcia.

Like, if somebody gives you a task, like you've got to go to the mountains of Cuba in the middle of a civil war, and you got to take this message across enemy lines to the deepest part of the jungle and deliver it.

And Rohan didn't ask a single question.

He said, Yes, sir, I will go.

And he figured out a way to get it done.

I think if more people embrace that mindset instead of like, well, I don't know how to do this.

I'm stuck.

I'm confused.

And they just hit a wall, hit a wall, and they just stop, right?

One of my friends, Satemagali, he said something at one of our events one time.

He's like, if you want to be successful in life, you have to stop stopping.

He's like, people just stop.

He's like, you have to stop stopping.

Like, if you want to be successful, you have to keep moving forward.

I think that's what people miss, especially nowadays.

Like, any hurdle, any hurdle you have, you can get figured out with chat GBT and with AI.

It's so simple nowadays, yet more people are lazier and more people stop.

And so I think if we come back and start adopting this message or this concept of how do you carry a message to Garcia, you just do it.

You figure out a way and you apply that to anything in life.

It could be your relationships, it could be your business, could be your sport, like whatever it is you're trying to accomplish in life.

When you adopt that mindset, that's how you win.

The best mental framework that I think through when I do this is, you've probably heard Tony Robbins say this before, like the quote of like, if you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.

If you want to take the island and you're the head of the army and you want to take the island, the most powerful way to take the island is burn the boats.

Because if there's no way to go back, it's amazing what happens when it's a must to do something versus a should.

That's what makes human beings succeed.

That concept, I think it came from World War II when they were storming Normandy, Normandy, right?

And they're supposed to be going on these beaches or whatever.

And it's like they leave the boats behind, you're gonna start going and freak out and go back.

And it's like, if you want to be successful and take down, you have to burn the boat, so there's no turning back.

Myron Golden spoke at a funnel hacking live event one time.

He came on stage for 20 or 30 minutes and he talked about this concept of deciding.

And I wish Myron is here to explain it.

He does it better than me.

But one thing I remember is so powerful from his presentation was

the word decide means to cut, like literally to cut in half.

When you decide, it means de is from the Latin root of or from.

Side means to cut.

You commit suicide, that means you cut off sue, your life, right?

An incision, you cut inside yourself, right?

Or you get cut inside.

Well, when you decide, you cut yourself off from any other possibility.

So to decide literally means to sever.

It means to cut.

And so most people don't decide.

Most people dabble.

I'm going to try a little bit.

I'm going to see if this works.

I'm going to try a little bit.

But then if it's not going to work, then they quickly slip back.

Oh, never mind.

It's good.

I can't do that, right?

Whereas deciding is cutting off all other options.

Like, when you cut off all their options, there's nothing else you can do besides go forward, right?

It's burning the ship so you can take the island.

If somebody wants to do something like this, like, like actually get the message to Garcia, whatever your version of that is, it's coming back and say, hey, if I'm going to do that, like, I have to decide.

I have to cut off all other options.

And most people don't really dabbled.

Most people are always dabbling.

Like, I remember when my wife and I got married in our marriage, right?

And we saw so many people around us we loved who were getting divorces.

And it's, and there's obviously there's so many situations.

And I'm not saying this is perfect or that you know anything other than that one of the things we said when we after we got married we have to make sure that we we have no options like this marriage is going to work there's no other options and so literally during our first month or so in marriage we made a rule we said we can never say the d-word like we can't joke about it we can't talk about like that is that is like because as soon as you as soon as you do as soon as you start joking as soon as it's an option on the table then it's really easy to go back right as soon as you're like oh i can't figure out get my message to garcia i'm just gonna go like i'll just go back it'll be easier as soon as that's an option you're not gonna take the islands because you're not burning the boats right and so we were like we will burn the boats.

And what that's been powerful now, we've married for, man, almost 25 years.

There's so many times like marriage is not easy.

It is difficult.

It is hard.

Like it is, you know, there's ups and downs all the time, but there was never, there was never an outlet.

There was never an option.

It was like, we are going to solve this.

We're going to figure this out.

We're going to have the conversation because

there's not an out.

Like, this is how it's going to work, right?

When we got in business, in different parts of my business, different phases of the business, same things.

Like, we've had business failures a lot.

And when the business failure happens, it's not like, oh,

we're out.

It's like, no, like, we will figure this out.

One of my friends was up here.

Uh, some of you guys know McCall Jones and Catherine Jones-Lish.

They told me the other day, they said that behind my back, they call me the cockroach.

And I was like, what?

They said, yeah, you did, in a nuclear war, or nuclear bomb hits, everything dies except the cockroaches.

Cockroaches figure out how to live through.

Like, they're the only things that survive everything.

And they're like, Russell, we've seen your ups and downs over the last decade.

Like, you just keep coming back.

Like, you're like a cockroach that cannot be killed.

And I think it comes back to this.

Like, I have a goal.

I have a mission.

It's bigger than me, and I'm not stopping.

I've cut off all all their options, and I'm pursuing it with all my heart and my mind.

I think most people don't do that.

Most people just dabble, and they give themselves an out, and they give themselves so many different outs.

It's like, stop giving yourselves out.

If you really want to accomplish something, you've got to burn the boats.

If you want to take the island, if you want to take the message to Garcia, you got to figure it out because no one's going to give you the answer to everything you need, right?

It's your job to go out there and like, you've got a mission.

figure out how to get through the mountains and get that message to Garcia.

When I first started my book collecting journey, some of you guys may have seen the documentary Bibliomania.

And if you did, I actually purchased this entire collection.

A guy was collecting Napoleon Hill books and documents for over 20 years.

And I actually went and purchased this entire collection from him.

And when I was there, he was showing me, it was not just the Napoleon Hill stuff, it was all these other books that he had from different authors and stuff.

And I'm not going to lie, like, I didn't, I'd never heard of Elbert Hubbard.

I didn't know who that guy was.

In fact, I thought it was a Scientology guy at the time, like, but I first heard the name.

And I was like, oh, and he's like, this is the Elbert Hubbard.

Like, you know about the message of Garcia, right?

And I didn't want to act dumb because I thought everybody had heard of it before.

And I was like, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, message of Garcia.

And I remember, like, I took a picture of the book, and that night I was like, Googling, like, what is the message of Garcia?

I'd never heard of it before.

And I read the story.

And again, it's, it's such a short, fast read.

I actually, I found it online and I read it really quick.

And I got it.

I was like, oh, I was like, that's why this is so cool.

And I started reading the story about the marketing and like the fact that it, you know, over a million times it had been printed in like, I think like 20 or 30 different languages.

because when people like employers and bosses and and coaches and athletes like when people saw that this message it was so timely this is back 1899 so this is before the turn of the century it reminds me a lot of uh like giaco's message of like extreme ownership how how corporations and armies and everyone took that message it's like everyone takes extreme ownership it was the same thing back then in 1899 with with this message the message of garcias just like look when you have a task you got to figure out how to get it there um and it was such a such a powerful thing so i I read about that there.

And then I've actually got about a dozen different versions of this book now.

I've got first editions, later editions, ones that are in bigger books and smaller books and pamphlet versions.

And there's so many cool ones out there that I found.

This is my favorite one, though, because I love the leather case and just the way that's packaged.

And the fact that it's signed by Elbert is pretty cool, too.

All right, if you want to read The Message to Garcia, I wasn't going to give you my notes, but...

The book is so simple, you can read it in like 15 minutes, the entire thing.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link down to our copy of the message to Garcia in the comments down below.

Click on that, go over there, and you can get a free copy, and that way you can read it and you can get inspired.

I would recommend reading this and then tell it to your kids, tell it to your staff, tell it to people that you have stewardship over, have them read as well.

And you can get this mindset for all of them.

If you can help them to get the mindset from this book, The Message to Garcia, it'll help them to produce more and help your company grow, your family get more done, and it'll be pretty powerful.

So, that's in the comments down below.

Other than that, thank you guys for hanging out today.

And we'll see you guys on the next video.