The Secret to Building a Business That Thrives in the AI Era | #Success - Ep. 84
In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I share what I’ve learned after six days of Inner Circle meetings with some of the smartest business owners in the world. You’ll hear how AI is transforming business models, where the biggest opportunities are emerging, and why the real gold rush of the next few years will come from helping others make money… Not just making it yourself.
Key Highlights:
◼️Why AI will make most traditional jobs obsolete sooner than you think
◼️How entrepreneurs can make more money with smaller teams using AI
◼️The danger of a “jobless economy” and what it means for customers
◼️Why the biggest winners will be those who sell opportunity
◼️How to turn your existing product, service, or framework into a scalable opportunity
This conversation is a wake-up call for every entrepreneur who’s paying attention. The old ways of doing business are vanishing fast, but new paths are opening for those willing to build them. If you can help someone else earn income, find meaning, or unlock a skill that changes their life, you’ll never run out of customers. The future isn’t about competing with machines…It’s about teaching humans how to win in a world shaped by them!
◼️If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event → https://sellingonline.com/podcast
◼️Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → https://clickfunnels.com/podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Transcript
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Speaker 2 Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling.
Speaker 2 If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast.
Speaker 2 That's sellingonline.com/slash podcast.
Speaker 1 This is the Russell Brunson Show.
Speaker 1
Hey, what's up, everybody? Good morning. This is Russell.
Hope you guys are all doing great today. I'm in the car heading to an appointment.
It's early in the morning. I already got up early.
Speaker 1
This morning lifted and got ready. I'm driving to a doctor's appointment.
And then when I get back, I've got all sorts of fun stuff happening today. But
Speaker 1 yeah, I just got done with I just got six days of inner circle meetings, which is awesome. Inner Circle is
Speaker 1 my mastermind group, and we have usually about 100 businesses in it. And we meet together multiple times throughout the year.
Speaker 1 One time we meet together as a whole group of all 100 businesses come together, and it's like our big
Speaker 1 yearly convention with all the inner circle members, and it's like a little mini funnel hacking live. It is really cool.
Speaker 1 But then we also break people into groups, and they get to do really cool masterminding individually. So
Speaker 1 it's one of the coolest things we do. And then in the middle of the year, we do something called Decade in a Day, where everyone has a chance to fly out here and do one-on-one consults with me.
Speaker 1
We line them all up. We go back to back.
Each person gets a 15-minute, what I call a decade-in-a-day
Speaker 1
experience. And that's really fun.
And then this time of year, we do one where everyone gets together and we spend
Speaker 1
two days where I'm facilitating these small mastermind groups. And it's fun.
It's fun for me because I sit there and like learn from all these amazing members.
Speaker 1
To be inside the inner circle, there's a standard. You have to make at least a million dollars in your business to be there.
So everyone showed showed up, has like figured out the basics, right?
Speaker 1 They know how to create an offer, they know how to drive some traffic, they're gonna do some stuff.
Speaker 1 So, we get to get past all the, you know, some of the beginner conversations and dive right into like, all right, how to go from a million to 10, 10 to 100. Like, how do we scale?
Speaker 1 When do we get more traffic? How do we cut costs? How do we build a team? Like, all the all the fun stuff I don't get to talk about in most places, right?
Speaker 1 Most places, especially, you know, organic Instagram, YouTube, social, podcasts. It's like we're talking,
Speaker 1 you know, not so much beginner stuff, but it's more of those kind of foundational things.
Speaker 1 And it's in these rooms when we get to talk about the
Speaker 1
those kind of things. And I would love to talk about those things more places, but those things don't go viral on TikTok.
They don't, people don't share those videos on YouTube for whatever reason.
Speaker 1 And so those things happen usually behind closed doors and in like in the inner circle room. So it was cool.
Speaker 1 So for six days, I was able to sit there and just listen to each person in our group present what they're doing and how they're doing it. And just
Speaker 1 it was fascinating just watching it. And I've been doing this now for,
Speaker 1 man, I was, I joined Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazers Mastermind,
Speaker 1 I don't even know how long ago, a decade ago? Man, that's crazy. No, two decades, two decades ago.
Speaker 1
Almost 20 years. That's insane.
20 years ago. All right, 20 years ago, I joined Dan Kennedy's.
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 So I've been sitting in rooms like that for the last 20 years. And then, you know, inner circle, I've been running now for over a decade.
Speaker 1 And so it gives me the really unique ability where I get to see behind the scenes of hundreds and hundreds of businesses, you know, like just, you know, owning ClickFunnels has given me an unfair advantage because I have, you know, same thing.
Speaker 1 I can see what funnels are working, what's converting, what people, you know, people are making the most of the platform, what they're doing, how they're doing it, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 But then this is a really unique spot where everyone gets up and actually shows us what they're doing.
Speaker 1 A lot of times it's not just the funnel, it's, you know, it's the sales process, it's the people, it's the teams, it's the scaling, it's how they drive traffic.
Speaker 1 And so I just get such a unique glimpse every single year at just all these different people's businesses. So it's fun.
Speaker 1 And I wish I could sit here and just tell you everything we talked about for the last six days, but that would be the longest podcast ever.
Speaker 1 But there are some trends that are really interesting and some things that got me thinking a lot more.
Speaker 1
Obviously, AI is a big topic right now. And it's crazy how people are using AI.
We've got people who are using AI, obviously, to create offers and products.
Speaker 1 You know, most people now have got some version of themselves cloned on AI where it's part of their upsell or their offer. You know, people can come ask their AI questions.
Speaker 1 And so there's a lot of that happening.
Speaker 1
A lot of people doing it to write copy faster, VSLs, webinars, people using it for just about everything. There's, you know, AI weaved its way into almost every conversation.
But the one that was most
Speaker 1 interesting to me and kind of what I want to talk about today
Speaker 1 was just how AI is replacing all the jobs, right?
Speaker 1 We saw this week Amazon laid off 30,000 people. I think it's their biggest layoff they've ever had.
Speaker 1 Salesforce, which is like the biggest, you know, one of the biggest tech businesses of all time. They, like a year ago, Mark Benioff announced, like, we're never hiring engineers again.
Speaker 1 Then, then they slayed off like, I don't know, three or four thousand engineers because AI can do what engineers can do.
Speaker 1 You know, like we have guys on my team now who aren't coders, who are coding software through these AI tools. Like, it's, it's, um,
Speaker 1 it's really fascinating. So,
Speaker 1 um,
Speaker 1 but it also for me, so this is, I'm going to talk about the, the fear and the opportunities. Hopefully you guys don't get too scared by the fear, but you see the opportunity, right?
Speaker 1 Like my big fear is most jobs are going to become irrelevant, right? Like if you are not an entrepreneur in the next two years, you're in trouble. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 Like if you're going to score now to learn accounting or programming or almost anything, you're in trouble. The only thing that you really should be learning how to do is how to run AI prompts.
Speaker 1 That's the only thing of value, right?
Speaker 1 In the next two years, like that's it. And if you're not good at that, then you're in trouble.
Speaker 1 Now, the problem is, you know entrepreneurs most of you all who are listening to me um because of ai you'll be able to make more money with less people like if you had a team of 400 people there'd be a time where you can do the same amount of volume with 20 people or maybe three people right and so for the entrepreneurs um ai becomes this tool where you can cut costs increase revenue but the bigger fear is that's happening across like in the past it was like that happens to a couple segments or sectors and it's fine but what happens when it happens to every segment when everybody no longer is relevant Like we don't need any of the jobs.
Speaker 1 Like, yes, I do think there'll be new jobs created, but I think if, man, I think if people are not becoming entrepreneurs or aligning themselves with a unique skill set on how they can use AI so that they're very, very valuable to an entrepreneur,
Speaker 1 man,
Speaker 1
they're going to be in a lot of trouble. I'm scared for that.
And I'm mostly scared because...
Speaker 1 you know, what's the solution? Like, is it the government giving people handouts?
Speaker 1 Because if there's no jobs,
Speaker 1 like it becomes really scary really fast right and if there's no jobs then even if you are the entrepreneur who you know has no costs and no team and you're able to do everything through AI how do you get customers if nobody has money right so then the government how do they come in they come in you know during COVID when everyone lost their jobs they came and dropped money in and stimulated money so like that was the thing they did so is that what happens like
Speaker 1 yeah anyway I was reading something talking about how like plumbers will be getting paid million dollars a year because no one wants to do those kind of jobs but those kind of jobs will be the only, you know, the only jobs left over AI is not doing.
Speaker 1 But then Elon's talking about robots. Now, there'll be two, two, was it two robots for every human on the planet soon?
Speaker 1 And it's like the robots can build your house, they can fix your yard, they can do all like there's no need for all the things because robots can do it at much less cost. And
Speaker 1 yeah, so it's like when all things happen and there's no jobs, then what does society look like? Like, it's kind of scary.
Speaker 1 Anyway, so there's the fear side.
Speaker 1 I'm scared because I think like if a society, if nobody's working and everyone's home and they're getting handouts from the government or or not no money, either of those things I think is really, really bad.
Speaker 1 You know, Idle Hands are the devil's workshop, and it's where I think it causes wars and internal wars and civil wars and all sorts of chaos.
Speaker 1 Like that there's the scary side of this whole thing for me.
Speaker 1 That's not even counting, like if AI just takes us over and like, you know, just decides to squash us as humanity because they don't need us anymore.
Speaker 1 But that's not my that's not my, I don't think about those things because I'm a very, you know, I'm very Christian, Mormon. I believe in
Speaker 1
God and Christ. I believe in what, you know, has been revealed, what's going to happen.
So like, I do believe that the story has a happy ending.
Speaker 1 So I'm not too nervous about annihilation like a lot of people are.
Speaker 1 But,
Speaker 1
you know, when you do read scripture, like things that happen before Christ comes again are not beautiful. They're not exciting.
I mean, it's, it's great and terrible, right?
Speaker 1 Great for those who are repaired and terrible for those who are not. So I do think there's going to be a lot of chaos happening as it leads up to that, right?
Speaker 1 So
Speaker 1
there's the scary side. So then the positive side, let's talk about that.
So then in that gap, we're entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1 We're always looking for when things shift, there's an opportunity, something opens up, right?
Speaker 1 And I think the opportunity I will be capitalizing on heavily, you'll see January launching a campaign that will be heavily focused on this, like exposing the gap, exploiting the fear, agitating the problem.
Speaker 1 And then for me, and hopefully for you,
Speaker 1 the real magic is in learning how to sell opportunity.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 1 In the past, we've made money by exploiting opportunities.
Speaker 1 In the future, most of the money will be made through selling opportunities, creating opportunities opportunities for people to have a job, to be entrepreneurial, even if they're not entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1 Because the people who will survive in the upcoming climate change will be entrepreneurs. And so you creating opportunities and you selling opportunities is going to be the gold rush.
Speaker 1 It is going to be the thing that stabilizes you, right?
Speaker 1 Dan Kennedy had a course back in the day called Opportunity Concepts, which is all about this. We rebranded it, called it Selling Opportunity.
Speaker 1 In fact, if you go to sellingoportunity.com, there's a book, a multimedia book, and Dan teaching this stuff.
Speaker 1 But I do think it's the future. It's like,
Speaker 1 how do I explain this? Like.
Speaker 1 Like the opportunity, like it's you creating, and you can't say this phrase. This is like literally FTC hates this phrase.
Speaker 1 So I'm saying this as hyperbole, but never say this when you're selling it this way. But creating businesses in a box for people where it's like, here's an opportunity where you can make some money.
Speaker 1
And it's not going to be like, here's how to make a million dollars or $10 million or anything. It's going to be like, all right, you're laid off.
There's no jobs.
Speaker 1
Here's how you can make an extra thousand bucks a month. Like they're these smaller opportunities.
In fact, Evan Pagan wrote a book called Opportunity. And I unfortunately, I own it.
Speaker 1 I have not read it yet. But
Speaker 1 Joshua Latimer, who's one of my inner circle members, he was telling me in that, that he talked about opportunities.
Speaker 1 So back in the day, they're like, there were, you know, these huge opportunities came up. You could create a business and make, you know, $100 million or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 He's like, in the future, there'll be more opportunities, but there'll be smaller, tons of small, small, small opportunities. Right.
Speaker 1 And so I do think that the future for entrepreneurs who want to make a lot of money is less about you creating a thing and more about you creating opportunity for other people to exploit the thing.
Speaker 1 How do I explain this?
Speaker 1 In the past, maybe it was, oh man, I'm hitting traffic trying to get to my doctor's appointment. I'm going to be late.
Speaker 1 well that's not good
Speaker 1 well
Speaker 1 is what it is
Speaker 1 anyway so
Speaker 1 yeah that I think the opportunity is so I'm telling you how to explain this the best right so
Speaker 1 like for a long time what I sold in click funnels was like here is a tool you can use to sell your thing right I think the future of me selling ClickFunnels is me creating little opportunities for people.
Speaker 1 Like for example,
Speaker 1 we worked with Anthony Morrison. We built a free store builder, right? So we built an opportunity where someone could have their own e-commerce store and they could plug into
Speaker 1 some of our third-party vendors where they could build a store and they could literally overnight put in a thousand products or 500 products or however many they want, right?
Speaker 1
And so we created an opportunity. So it was not me like, here's this tool you can use to grow whatever business you want.
It's
Speaker 1 Here's a business I created for you that's pre-built, it has these things, and this is an opportunity for you. So I'm creating an opportunity, and I'm selling that.
Speaker 1 Like the opportunity market is the thing that's going to be the biggest because a lot of people aren't going to buy your coaching program because they have no money, right?
Speaker 1 But they will invest in an opportunity that can make them money. It's like, how do you turn whatever it is you're selling into an opportunity? And that's kind of the premise of
Speaker 1 Dan Kennedy's selling opportunity course, which is like,
Speaker 1 One of the examples he talks about there is, I think it was Chris Tomchek, who's a chiropractor. He's a chiropractor, right? And like, that was his business.
Speaker 1 But he started, he turned it into an opportunity. It was like, you can buy into our franchise where we're going to give you the systems and the tools and everything.
Speaker 1
Now, you can launch your chiropractic business or grow your chiropractor or whatever that thing might be. But it's like it's he's turning it into an opportunity.
Um,
Speaker 1 uh,
Speaker 1 you know, if you even the local markets, like if you figure out how to do something, like let's say you're
Speaker 1 um
Speaker 1 um
Speaker 1 oh, uh,
Speaker 1 there's a lot of in-circle members doing this. There's ones, they created a really cool workout routine, right? Kind of like a Zumba or something like that, but it's different, right?
Speaker 1
So they created it. They started to launch it.
They started making money themselves with it. But then they transitioned their business to selling opportunities.
Speaker 1 So they took that and they created a bolt-on business where anybody with the gym can bolt-on their systems, their frameworks, their thing. And it becomes this opportunity that they create.
Speaker 1 So they figured it out first, figured out the opportunity, made money with it, and then they, but now their money's been made in like selling that opportunity to these other people, right?
Speaker 1 And that's really like
Speaker 1 where the money will be made in the future, I think, is the creation and selling of opportunities.
Speaker 1 So anyway, I just wanted to plant that into your head because I do think AI stuff is exciting. I think it's scary.
Speaker 1 But if I'm trying to forecast the next two years, I'm like,
Speaker 1 I think a huge majority of
Speaker 1 the
Speaker 1 working population is going to be
Speaker 1 It's going to be out of business like they're not going to have jobs they're going to be jobless and I think that if you can create opportunities for people where they can take your ideas your system your whatever and turn it into a business through themselves and again this is probably not going to be the the multi-million dollar businesses but a business they can run from home they can do their thing they can plug in your business in a box they don't call it that because that's not what it is but they plug in your business in a box
Speaker 1
That's the real reality. Josh Latimer is doing something he calls it decentralized coaching.
It's really interesting where he's basically built a coaching platform, but he's decentralized it.
Speaker 1 So it's no longer him teaching it. So he's taking his frameworks, his teaching, his core, everything, and then he like licenses it to people to go and teach his systems on their platform.
Speaker 1 So he's decentralizing the coaching so anybody else can do it.
Speaker 1 So for example, it'd be like me taking all my marketing secret stuff and I sell license to you to you can now you can go teach all this stuff. And now you're in business where you can go coach on it.
Speaker 1 You can teach it. You can collect the money, you keep the money, but I just create an opportunity for you with my frameworks, my ideas, my stuff, right?
Speaker 1 Um, and so that's kind of what this whole decentralized,
Speaker 1 yeah, but this this concept like selling opportunity.
Speaker 1 So, anyway, um, I just wanted to, again, this podcast episode, I didn't have, I didn't think through or outlined or made a whole thing, it was more so just like I wanted, I wanted to place that seed in your mind because you're gonna start watching as as you know, lack of jobs across the country is rising exponentially.
Speaker 1 And And AI is replacing those jobs. And the next gold rush, I believe, for you and for me and for all of us is like being in the business of creating opportunities for people
Speaker 1 and helping them to be successful in whatever it is that you're currently doing. So anyway,
Speaker 1 I'd like to encourage, especially guys who are not selling opportunities right now, like how do you turn what you do into an opportunity? Is there a way to do that?
Speaker 1 Is there a way where you can train people? You can certify people, you can all sorts of stuff. You know, I look at some of the most successful businesses who have come through my programs,
Speaker 1 you know, are programs that are certification. Like certification is one of the best businesses because you're certifying somebody to be able to do your thing, right?
Speaker 1 It's like, so we certify people in ClickFunnels. Like, how to be a certified funnel builder? Like, that's a huge opportunity for people, right? It's like I'm selling opportunity.
Speaker 1 With the understand.me, we have a certification program.
Speaker 1 We're certifying people to become experts in all of the personality profiles and understand I mean and then you can go you can sell that to your clients right like it's creating opportunity so just look at like how can you take the thing you currently do and how can you turn it into an opportunity and like therein lies I think the lion's share of the money to be made over the next 48 months
Speaker 1 so there you go there's Russell Russell Domas trying to tell you what I think is going to be happening. And you'll see it more and more in all the cool stuff I'm doing.
Speaker 1
I'll be creating the most insanely cool opportunities for you guys and hopefully take advantage of those things. So, all right, with that said, I appreciate you all.
Thanks for hanging out.
Speaker 1 Thanks for being part of this. I hope that you got some value from it.
Speaker 1 And
Speaker 1 I hope that you don't miss out on this trend and this wave.
Speaker 1 Think more about it, study it, research it, look how other people are using it, and then
Speaker 1 capitalize on it. All right, guys, appreciate you all, and I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
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