The Publishing Playbook: How to Win Before You Launch | #Marketing - Ep. 07

Speaker 2 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 3 Wanna take a sec to think about it. Or like a month.
Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer. With OfferWatch.

Speaker 4 Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway.

Speaker 2 So, wanna drive? CarMax.

Speaker 1 Pickup not available everywhere. Restrictions and fee may

Speaker 4 K Jeweler's early Black Friday sale is happening now. Get up to 50% off Black Friday deals and up to 40% off everything else.
Don't miss this sale. Start your season with savings.
Only a K.

Speaker 4 Exclusions apply. ck.com slash exclusions for details.

Speaker 5 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 5 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 5 That's That's sellingonline.com slash podcast.

Speaker 5 This is the Russell Brunson show.

Speaker 5 What's up, everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the show.
Excited to be hanging out with you guys today.

Speaker 5 And today we're going to be talking about getting insane amounts of traffic to your funnel before your funnel is even live.

Speaker 5 This is one of the biggest problems I'm seeing inside of our community is people

Speaker 5 are spending time building a funnel or building an offer or putting things together, but they're not focusing on the most important thing, which is planting all the seeds you need ahead of time before you actually launch your your funnel so that's what we're gonna talk about we're gonna go deep into it and for any of you guys who are building but not getting the the the eyeballs the leads the the following ahead of time we're gonna fix that for you guys today and show you a very fun simple way to do that but before we do um i gotta start with some stories because uh anyway i'm enjoying the new podcast style and you guys have been telling me it's been fun uh i've shared a lot of stories uh again like i used to back in the day and people are loving it so i'm gonna tell you guys some stories that um will hopefully motivate you and get you excited um one story is the fact this uh shirt i'm wearing today i saw this on the joe rogan show he had it on during his podcast episodes.

Speaker 5 I'm hoping that by default me wearing this, our podcast will grow. So there you go.
There's number one. No, but for real, the story I want to tell you guys today,

Speaker 5 it was one, it was actually, I lift weights in the morning with the trainer, and I can't remember what conversation we got in, but we started talking about this, and this story popped in my head.

Speaker 5 I hadn't thought about this in like probably 20 years, and I thought it was really funny. So this comes down to like,

Speaker 5 I don't know, my number one, I took strength finders, my number one strength is

Speaker 5 competition. Like, I love competition.
I thrive in it. The The more that it is, the better it is, and all sorts of stuff.
And, you know, I think that's why this business has been so fun for me.

Speaker 5 You know, we first launched it, we were the underdogs, and we had this big competition. We had all these companies that take on funding.
I remember

Speaker 5 lead pages when we first decided to create ClickFunnels, they'd just take on $5 million in funding. Eventually, I had like 40.
And so I was like, we got to beat them.

Speaker 5 So we were racing to beat them because we had no funding. It was just us with our brains and our intuition.
and our energy running. So that was like the initial thing that we went through, right?

Speaker 5 And eventually we beat them. We surpassed them.
And I have have not heard the word lead pages in I don't know five six seven years then the next like okay who's next company it's like boom it was

Speaker 5 infusionsoft they just got like 150 million dollars in funding so like all right there's the next goal they're racing racing racing and it was it was interesting so that was kind of the goal and then

Speaker 5 and then for a long time we were the top and there was no one to compete against and for me like I need competition and so that's I think big reason why we decided to build the new click funnels which by the way you guys can see the logo if you're watching the video version there's a logo going up we just this week launched the brand new click ClickFunnels branding.

Speaker 5 Have you guys seen it yet? It is insane. It is the coolest thing ever.
I need to get a light like this now with the new branding.

Speaker 5 But it's coming soon. We actually did order lights.
A whole lot of new branding here in the light format for the videos.

Speaker 5 The new branding is going amazing. The app looks awesome.
The software looks awesome. It's so exciting.
With all these people now

Speaker 5 who are like re-logging back into ClickFunnels to see the new app, started using it.

Speaker 5 In fact, Joe McCall, one of my favorite people on the planet, he posted today, he said, I'm digging into the new ClickFunnels more seriously. And let me tell you something.

Speaker 5 it's flipping amazing we're bringing all of our funnels back over it's way better than GHL what was that Joe it's way better than GHL thanks for Russell Brunson love your dedication to making marketing world a better place seriously okay so um

Speaker 5 speaking what Joe just said there was competition and this competition came out hard and fast against us

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I'm not gonna lie we lost the first round lost the first period and but I'm a wrestler like we don't we don't just stop right and so for us it's been like mounting our defense mounting a new strategy mounting a new play getting software better like all the different things.

Speaker 5 And now it's like, this is the year of momentum. Like things are rolling forward.
It's been really, really fun. And so anyway, so in that context is where this story kind of came from.

Speaker 5 So I do remember the kid's name, but I'm not going to say his name.

Speaker 5 But this is a kid who

Speaker 5 elementary school, I went to school with him, knew who he was. thought I was a friend with him.
He got into high school. You know, high school, people become like annoying.

Speaker 5 So anyway, I was not the best football player, but I was on the football team. And I remember,

Speaker 5 anyway, I remember

Speaker 5 the, I was like, third string safety or something like that. I remember our coaches were like, all right, guys, you got to find the guy ahead of you and beat him out.

Speaker 5 And it's like, they gave us really good presentation. I got motivated.
It's like, okay, I'm going to find the guy ahead of me. I'm going to beat him out.

Speaker 5 So for the next two weeks, I kept like working and working and killing myself. And I ended up beating the guy that was like the second string safety.
And then the first string.

Speaker 5 And I ended up beating the first guy. And I was so excited.
I'm like, again, competition drives me. I'm like, this is the thing.
And so I told my parents, I'm going to be playing the game.

Speaker 5 I'm going to be starting. I'm so excited.
And so that day, the football game, we're there. We're on the field.
We're warming up. And one of the other coaches came over.

Speaker 5 He's like, Brunson, what are you doing here? I'm like,

Speaker 5 I'm very proud. Like, I beat the guys out.
Like, I made the stern team. And he looked at me.
He's like, and he looked over at one of the backup quarterbacks. He's like, hey, get over here.

Speaker 5 And he put him in my spot and bumped me out. And that's when I started hating team sports, by the way.
I'm very much, in fact, that's a conversation came up with

Speaker 5 my trainer.

Speaker 5 I'm a combat athlete. Notice, hence the Call of Flower.
You're like, I love wrestling, love UFC, love fighting, like combat. Like, not a big fan of team sports.

Speaker 5 Can't stand watching him and get bored by him. But this is probably a big reason because I killed myself.

Speaker 5 And then because of the politics of a team sport, I got bumped out, which was frustrating me, right? So

Speaker 5 anyway, after that, I decided I'm not a football player. If I can bump me because of that, I don't want to play this game.

Speaker 5 I finished out that season, but I focused all my effort on wrestling, the greatest sport in the world.

Speaker 5 And within a year, became a state champion in high school, took second place in the nation, went on, got a D1 scholarship, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 5 So that was kind of my shift. Now, this is where the story gets fun.
So that year of playing football, I remember after I got beat out, we went to this, we went to some,

Speaker 5 we were playing some away game, and we played this game, and we got destroyed. Like, our team, our team got killed, and I'm on the sidelines waiting to play.

Speaker 5 I think I played maybe one play the entire game, which is so stupid. So, I played one game, we get done, and we're like leaving.
I'm just like, this is so like, why am I doing this?

Speaker 5 And I remember I was thirsty, so I grabbed a thing of water and I started drinking it. And there's this kid again.

Speaker 5 I went to elementary school with him, thought we were friends, and he sees me drinking it and like shoves me. He's like, He's like, Brunson, why are you gonna drink water?

Speaker 5 You didn't even play this game or something. And I was like, you know, as a, you know, as a, as a, as a, what was it, ninth grader or whatever, like humiliated, embarrassed for all these people.

Speaker 5 I was just like, oh, it like broke me, you know? And I was like, I freaking hate that guy. Anyway, but that like got the, like, the, like, okay, I got to win.

Speaker 5 Anyway, then fast forward, this guy moves to schools. I don't see him again.
I'm like, kind of forget about him. Then a couple years later, it's.

Speaker 5 I swear the story's got a point, but it's fun. And a couple years later, I come back and

Speaker 5 it's, I think I was a junior that year in high school or something. And during the Christmas break, we did a crossover practice with another high school.

Speaker 5 So the other high school came to our room, and one day we went to their room.

Speaker 5 So two days with these guys, and when they show up to our wrestling room, I look over, and that kid, I still know his name, he was there. He's on the other team.

Speaker 5 He had transferred schools and was on their wrestling team. And I was like, oh, yes.
And all the memories of him knocking the water out of my hand, all kind of stuff was like, I was like, this is it.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 we started the practice. I'm like, him, I want to go with him.
And I'm like, like, hey, man, how's it going? He's like, oh, hey, Brunson, how you doing? I'm like, yeah, I'm doing good.

Speaker 5 And so, for the next three hours of wrestling practice, my only plan was to destroy him mentally and physically. And I did.

Speaker 5 By the time it was done, we were about two-thirds of the way done with practice. He got up.
He's like, I have to leave, or I'm going to try to fight you or something. And I was just laughing.

Speaker 5 I'm like, I'd like to see you try. I just beat you like a baby for the last anyway.
So he walked off and left. The next day, we had a chance to go to high school.
I'm like, you're my partner again.

Speaker 5 And he was like, so mad.

Speaker 5 And I just, anyway, it was, it was a great day in the in a great two days in the life of russell to come back and have that kind of payback so um anyway that's the mindset you have to have when you're going off to competition and competitors right is looking at that and like okay how do we win what does it look like um when somebody knocks you down it's like all right new strategy new game plan what does it look like i start putting the pieces together so i'm excited because the last couple years has been brutal as you guys see from my the first video i i uh from the first podcast ups i talk about but um what's been fun is it's finally gotten like me the competition backwards like okay how do i win instead of like how do i survive how do we we do whatever it's like no no how do how do we win what's that look like um how does it shift how does the strategy have to change and um i tell you what man it has lit me on fire and a lot of people tell me russell we feel this momentum coming from you and from clickfunnels like what's happening i was like oh you'll see if you're feeling it now just wait for just getting started so i'm excited for this year and it's been fun so all right so what i promise you guys we're gonna talk about during this episode um this is one of the biggest things i see okay people come to my world they read the books they start studying start learning they start building funnels they start building offers printing things together and um there's a process right as you're trying to when you first start learning this game, like you got to figure out, like, okay, first off, I got to convince you that you are an expert, right?

Speaker 5 If you're going to be an expert business, I got to convince you how to create products. And like, there's all these things that go into it, right?

Speaker 5 And it takes a lot for you to create the product, create the things.

Speaker 5 And so, what I see a lot of times is people get so stuck over here and like, okay, I'm building, like, I'll see him at an event, like, oh, I'm building a funnel, I'm building a funnel. I'm like, cool.

Speaker 5 Building a funnel is very important. It's my favorite thing in the world, right? I get it.
But at the same time, like, are you also like gathering the people? Okay.

Speaker 5 And this is where people mess up, mess mess up, right? And a lot of times they'll spend a month, six months, a year, whatever, building the funnel, building the product, whatever.

Speaker 5 And then when they're finally done, like, okay, I'm going to share with the world and there's no one to share it with. This is a mistake people make.
Okay.

Speaker 5 So the second you decide you want to be an entrepreneur, okay?

Speaker 5 The second you decide, you're like, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to sell stuff, like that's when this, like, this is step one that has to happen.

Speaker 5 Step two is like creating an offer, building a business. Like step one is you have to start gathering the many, okay? You hear me talk a lot about like one-to-many presentations.

Speaker 5 Like what is a one-to-many presentation, right? It's me gathering many people together and I deliver a presentation to them to sell them something, right?

Speaker 5 So it could be a webinar, it could be a challenge, some type of funnel that gets the people where I can sell them something, right? So what we need to do is we got to gather the many.

Speaker 5 Now, there's a lot of ways to gather the many, right? One way is through paid ads. So right now we are in the middle of a selling online event.
This selling online event,

Speaker 5 we got a little over 3,700 people registered for that event. So I gathered 3,700 people together.
Okay, but my cost to gather those people,

Speaker 5 it was like $300 or so to sell $100 ticket, right? So it cost me almost a million, it's like $925,000 for me to gather those people together, 3,700 people, to deliver a presentation.

Speaker 5 Now, from that, we will make, well, I don't,

Speaker 5 we'll 3x our return on our ad spend, right? Like we'll 3x the money we made by doing that, right? But it costs me a lot of money to gather those people through paid ads, right? And

Speaker 5 so a lot of people think, I think when they think, well, this is my funnel, then I'm going to go and like, and like, then I'll go find the audience, right?

Speaker 5 But then that's like the most expensive, especially if you've been doing this and you're bootstrapping this like the most expensive thing initially is to go pay for ads and get people in right so the question is like well how do I how do I gather the money ahead of time so that when I go and I and I'm ready to launch the thing that the audience is already gathered I don't got to go spend a million dollars to gather these people right how do I do it ahead of time right there's so many things you can and should be doing that you're probably not thinking about right now and that's what I want to talk about okay is what are the things you can do to start gathering the money right now so the second your product your funnel is done right then the menu are already there you're not like going out like okay i depleted my resources building this business.

Speaker 5 Now I gotta go spend money to get the customers, right? Like, no, the second you decide I want to be an entrepreneur, that's when you start planting these seeds.

Speaker 5 That's when you start gathering the people instantly, right?

Speaker 5 So, for a lot of you guys, if you've missed it, like if you've been doing this for a week or a month or a year or five years and you haven't done this yet, like this is now your number one focus.

Speaker 5 More important than building your funnel or creating your offer or anything, your number one focus is this, which is starting to gather the many.

Speaker 5 So, the second you're done, you've got a captive audience. Because

Speaker 5 if you're waiting for your funnel to be done before you capture an audience, you messed up, okay? that's the wrong order. You're out of order.
So we got to get back into the correct order.

Speaker 5 Does that make sense? Okay, so that's what I'm talking about. Now, I'm going to quote a couple things from my book, Traffic Secrets.

Speaker 5 This is not a blatant pitch for Traffic Seekers, but if it was a blatant pitch, I'd tell you to go get a free copy at TrafficSecrets.com.

Speaker 5 But inside this, this is my book to teach you guys how to get traffic and build a following and all sorts of stuff. It's the deep dive of my brain.

Speaker 5 There's a couple pieces in here that I do want to share with you guys that I think are key to understanding this, right? And so I'm just going to jump around.

Speaker 5 If you got the book, you can open with me. If not, just listen to my stories.

Speaker 5 Or if you want to get a book, or you can go to Amazon, get it for $25 or whatever it is or you can get for free plus shipping at trafficseecrets.com okay so uh secret number four inside a traffic secrets book uh the chapter is called work your way in and buy your way in right so i'm talking about there's two different ways to to grow an audience right um again buying your way in is buying out that's what i did with this weekend i gave zuckerberg nine hundred thousand dollars to to to buy my way in to get him to send a whole bunch of people to my to me so i can sell to them right or you can work your way in working your way in is how you get free traffic to come to you right a lot of people ask me what's better free traffic or paid traffic the reality is they're both both insanely awesome.

Speaker 5 I love them both, right? There's not one better. But when most people are getting started, usually you've got one, you've got two different resources, either time or you have money, right?

Speaker 5 These are the two resources that we have. And what I tell people traditionally is if you have more money than time, focus on paid ads.

Speaker 5 But if you have more time than money, you got to focus on working your way and doing the free stuff, okay? Again, in a perfect world, you'll be doing both.

Speaker 5 In fact, if you read the Traffic Seekers book, we walk you guys through the process of starting free and then reinvesting money from free into paid ads.

Speaker 5 And that's how you actually scale in a way that's not scary. In fact, on page 68, I have this little graph.
I don't know if you can see that at all.

Speaker 5 There it is.

Speaker 5 So there's like this traffic and time, and like it shows like control traffic you're buying, you can spike really fast and it flatlines, whereas earned traffic is slower, but then it scales past it eventually.

Speaker 5 So that's kind of like, anyway, that's that's how we look at long term.

Speaker 5 But right now, I just want to focus on working our way and getting the traffic ahead of time because it's the free traffic and stuff you can and should be doing while you're building your business.

Speaker 5 Okay. All right.
So in secret number four, work your way and buy your win, the first step here, the step says, dig your well before you're thirsty, okay? So this is what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 You want to start digging your well before you're thirsty. So what that means is when your funnel's done, your offer's done, you're going to be thirsty.
I need traffic. I need traffic.

Speaker 5 I need people to sell to you. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, crap, I didn't dig my well.
Okay, that's the secret eggs. We got to start digging our well before we're thirsty.

Speaker 5 Okay, we start building the following before we have something to sell to them. Step number one is building the following.
Step number one is traffic, right?

Speaker 5 Somebody asked me, I remember I was speaking in the UK and I still remember, her name is G, she was awesome.

Speaker 5 And speaking in the UK, I come off and we're talking in this little group of people and somebody asked me, I think it was her or someone's with her or something, but they asked me like, Russell, whenever you launch a funnel, it's always successful.

Speaker 5 How are you always successful? And it was the first time I'd ever given the, I didn't consciously think about this, but it was the first time I'd ever like, I responded, I was like, oh, wow.

Speaker 5 And I was like, I thought for a second, I'm like, oh, the reason why is because I don't build a funnel first and then go look for traffic.

Speaker 5 I find the traffic source first and then I build a funnel and an offer based on what that traffic actually wants. And the person was like, What? Why don't you tell everyone that?

Speaker 5 Like, that was the big secret. I was like, I hadn't thought about it.
Like, but it makes like that's what I do, but I hadn't thought about it, right?

Speaker 5 A lot of people, what you're doing is you're building a funnel and building an offer and then trying to find traffic to sell to. Okay.

Speaker 5 The secret is finding the traffic source first and then you create the offer that they actually want. Then it becomes easy.
It's just flipping the order of things, right? Step one, step two.

Speaker 5 A lot of you guys are doing step two right now as opposed to step number one. Okay.
So dig your well before you're thirsty.

Speaker 2 At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments, it's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Speaker 2 Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

Speaker 2 From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows. Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Speaker 2 Black Friday deals are going on all month long. Save up to 45% off site-wide, plus an additional 10% off every order right now at blinds.com.

Speaker 3 Rules and restrictions apply.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. Business owners meet Progressive Insurance.

Speaker 1 They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business. Quote, in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial.com.

Speaker 1 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers. Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations.

Speaker 5 And so the concept of that is like before you need the traffic,

Speaker 5 before you need the relationships, before you need someone to promote, that's when you start building a relationship, right?

Speaker 5 Like I remember when I first met Tony Robbins, like eventually I wanted Tony to promote something for me, right? But I'm like, hey, Tony, you promote for me, right?

Speaker 5 That's me asking for water without digging a well, right? Instead, I was like, I'm going to build a relationship with Tony Robbins. And so for a decade, I built a relationship with Tony, right?

Speaker 5 I was digging my well, digging my well, building a relationship. And 10 years later,

Speaker 5 when my second book came out, Expert Seekers, I was like, hey, Tony, can you promote this? And he's like, I would love to. And he did a Facebook Live with me.

Speaker 5 I got seen by like 5 million people, sold 10,000 plus copies of my book, right? And it all came off of me digging my well before I was thirsty, okay?

Speaker 5 And so that's the first thing thinking about is like, you're going to be thirsty. As soon as your funnel is done, you're going to be thirsty for traffic.

Speaker 5 Now is the time to start digging today, not tomorrow, not next week, not today, right? That's step number one.

Speaker 5 The second you decide to be an entrepreneur, starting digging your well, starting to get the people, starting to start building the following.

Speaker 5 That's something you should be thinking about every single day. You should be blocking out at least an hour to two hours a day just in like digging the well, right?

Speaker 5 So that when you have the offer done, it's ready. Does that make sense? So step one is digging your well before you're thirsty.

Speaker 5 And then in here, I talk about different ways to do that and there's a lot of stuff in here um but but um there's kind of two sides i'm gonna talk about one is publishing and then one is actually um building relationships with people who already have your traffic source okay so i'm gonna go kind of touch on both sides of those a little bit um i'll start with the the finding people who already have your dream audience okay Because that's what I talk about here in the book.

Speaker 5 And so on page 60 and 61, Traffic Seekers, I kind of walk through a process. But basically, the goal is like when you're getting, when you're driving traffic eventually, right?

Speaker 5 I can go and give give mark zuckerberg money and he'll drive traffic to me but if i can find someone who's on mark zuckerberg's platform who already has an audience right like i find a tony robbins or i find a who you insert whoever influencers inside your space and they have a following of 10 000 or 100 000 or a million people if i can build a relationship with that person they can send an email or they can post on their wall they can do something and they can promote me as an affiliate and that way i don't have to actually spend money on the ads right um and so for me like when we launch click funnels again if you read the traffic secrets book i go deep into this concept called the dream 100 who are the hundred people that already have congregated your dream customers?

Speaker 5 It's like, how do we infiltrate? How do we start talking to these people, right?

Speaker 5 And so the very first thing for me is like, if I know that I'm in the real estate market or I'm in the health market or whatever, the very first thing I'll do is I'm going to go and I tell people, I'm like, go to Instagram and delete.

Speaker 5 all of your contacts and then only follow every single influencer inside of your space, right?

Speaker 5 Go and maybe it's setting up a new Instagram account, whatever you want to do, but create something and then go follow every single influencer, right?

Speaker 5 Because I want to see like, who are all the people in my space who already congregated my dream customers? Like those are the people.

Speaker 5 If I can get a relationship with one of those people, it can open up a a huge door for me, right?

Speaker 5 And send me Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, podcast, like, whatever it is, but you start gathering these people, right? And you start trying to build your relationships today.

Speaker 5 You're digging your well before you're thirsty, okay?

Speaker 5 So what I would do is I'd go unsubscribe from people, from everybody, and they just follow the influencers who are in my space. And then it's like, I need to start building

Speaker 5 relationships with these people. How do we do that, right? We do it by...
being part of their ecosystem, right?

Speaker 5 When they're posting something, I'm liking, I'm hearting, I'm commenting, I'm like, I want them to see my face every single time.

Speaker 5 I want them consistently like, man, whoever this Russell guy is, like, he keeps commenting on my stuff, right? And so I'm there, I'm like engaged in their, in their content, right?

Speaker 5 To start building relationships with them, right? I'm messaging them, DM, DMing, I'm like, oh man, your podcast last week was amazing. Thanks so much for sharing.

Speaker 5 My favorite thing was blah, blah, blah, right? I'm just trying to like, I'm trying to plant these seeds. I'm trying to dig a well before I'm thirsty, right? I'm building a relationship first.

Speaker 5 And so that's how you start doing it, to start building future relationships. And these are so important because one relationship in the future can change your entire business forever.

Speaker 5 I got a million examples of this, but one I was thinking of like when I launched my very first book, Dot Com Secrets, I did the same process.

Speaker 5 I went to all the podcast directories, Instagram, I went through everywhere and I built, I found

Speaker 5 my 100 top podcasters, 100 top Instagram influencers, 100 top YouTubers,

Speaker 5 so I had a Dream 100 on every single platform.

Speaker 5 And then what I did is I sent a free copy of my book to the 100 top podcasts, 100 top YouTubes, 100 Instagram, you know, so I sent five or six hundred copies of my book out to everybody.

Speaker 5 And it's like, here's my new book. We'll love you to review it.

Speaker 5 See if you want to post it, whatever. So I sent all those out.

Speaker 5 and what's crazy about that is um i remember the very first person responded back was a guy named jld somebody has john lee doomas he runs entrepreneur on fire podcast he messaged me like dude this book's awesome i'm like thanks man and he's like i'd love to promote you promote it do you want to come on the podcast i'm like i would love to come on the podcast so he had me on the podcast and he sent like a whole bunch of emails to his email list and from that one person that one connection i think he sold like five or six hundred copies of my book by himself that was one person right and then jeff walker got a copy he's like this book's awesome like thanks man he's like can i promote it i'm like yes you can he sold like 2500 copies of the book.

Speaker 5 And then Todd Brown got it. He sent a bunch.
And then another podcast over here, and then the YouTuber and the influencer.

Speaker 5 And like, from those relationships that I built, we sold hundreds of thousands of copies of my book, right? But it started with me like building those relationships ahead of time.

Speaker 5 Like, I was listening to podcasts, I was sending out messages, I was getting to know people so that when my offer, them promoting something showed up,

Speaker 5 they knew who I was, and it was easier for them to say yes, right?

Speaker 5 So digging your well before you're thirsty, going out there, finding out who are the people who have your dream customers, who are the other influencers in your market, getting to know those people, connecting with them.

Speaker 5 There's a live event that those people are are gathering at. You need to be at that live event.
You need to be hanging out in the room. Okay.

Speaker 5 I think I told this story before, but like for me, a lot of you guys know, again, I'm Mormon. I don't drink alcohol.
I'm at this live event, and all the people are hanging out. I'm at the event.

Speaker 5 And then after hours, they're all going out to the bars. And I don't drink, and I don't want people to think I drink.
But they're like, yeah, Russell, come to the bars, come to the bars.

Speaker 5 I'm like, ah, but I'm like, those are the people I got to network with. They're all in the same room together.
So I think I told this story. I went down there and I ordered milk from

Speaker 5 the barkeeper or whatever. I was like, he's like, you want milk? I'm like, yeah, because I didn't want it to look like alcohol or anything.

Speaker 5 So I had a cup of milk because I'm walking around, which, by the way, was a great conversational people. You're like, you're drinking milk? I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm Mormon.

Speaker 5 I don't drink, I don't drink alcohol. And they're like, that's cool.
Tell me about it. And then, boom, connection,

Speaker 5 networking, right? But I got to be around those people. So if I'm in the real estate market, I'm going to every real estate event.
If I'm in the fitness market, I'm going to the fitness events.

Speaker 5 If I'm biohacking, biohacking events, like, and it could be virtual events, live events, in-person, like, I got to get around the other people in my space and get to know them building relationships, right?

Speaker 5 This game is a relationship game, okay?

Speaker 5 If Zuckerberg shut down Facebook, if Google, Instagram, everything disappeared tomorrow, I would be fine because of the relationships I build over time, right?

Speaker 5 These people have emails, they've got podcasts, they've got things, and so if everything fell apart, I'd still be okay, right?

Speaker 5 Most people's businesses I know, if one little thing fell apart, if Instagram disappeared, their business is gone, okay? For me, if I lost every paid media platform on the planet, I'd still be fine.

Speaker 5 It wouldn't change our business, right? Maybe a little bit, but not that much. In fact, if you've read Traffic Secrets,

Speaker 5 if you read

Speaker 5 introduction, there's a storm coming, coming, dot, dot, dot, right?

Speaker 5 And I wrote this book four years ago, it came out, and then right after that, all of the, all of the, um, uh, the Google slaps, Facebook slaps, everything started happening afterwards.

Speaker 5 I was like, I told you guys, this book is helping you to, um, to uh foolproof your marketing so that if the platform, not if when the platform shuts you down, you don't lose your business.

Speaker 5 So there's a storm coming, and those who took heed to this have succeeded. Those who haven't, like, again, go back and geek out.
Okay. Sorry, I digress.

Speaker 5 So number one, again, is digging your well before you're thirsty. Number two is working your way in, right? Building relationships, contacting people, getting to know people.

Speaker 5 Like, this is like such a key foundational part. Okay, if you are launching a product in an industry, the people in the industry know who you are.

Speaker 5 You need to be connecting with those people in any way you can do it. Now, I want to talk about one of the easiest ways to connect with those people.

Speaker 5 A lot of times, I'll be like, what do I say to them? It's like, hey, Russell, you know, and so one of the easiest ways to connect with them is to give them something

Speaker 5 that they need, right? So if you look at what the influencers in your market, in your space, what are they looking for, right?

Speaker 5 Influencers, people with followings, they're looking for a platform. And I talk about, I share a book, book, a story in here

Speaker 5 about,

Speaker 5 you guys remember Arsenio Hall? Like, whoo, whoo, whoo, right? Arsenio Hall. So he was the biggest talk show back in the 90s.

Speaker 5 I remember he's the one that basically I think that he was the reason why Bill Clinton got elected as president because he was like kind of struggling.

Speaker 5 And then he went on the show and played the saxophone. And like all these people loved him and then ended up going and voting for him.
And like,

Speaker 5 similar to like, anyway. Trump and Rogan, which is kind of interesting.
Anyway, that's a story from the other day. But

Speaker 5 so anyway, he's the biggest talk show in in the world, and it was a huge thing for four or five years. Eventually, it kind of dried up and died, right? And he lost the show.

Speaker 5 Anyway, fast forward now, 20 years later, he's on The Apprentice.

Speaker 5 I'm watching celebrity apprentice, and all of a sudden he comes out, one of the guests is Arsenio Hall, and I'm like, that's Arsenal Hall. I remember that guy, he was amazing.

Speaker 5 And they're doing all these different

Speaker 5 tasks and stuff like that. And what's crazy is they get to

Speaker 5 They get to the task.

Speaker 5 It's like a fundraising task, right? We have to call their friends and raise money for this thing, right? So all the people are out there. They're calling, they're raising money, everything.

Speaker 5 And Arsenio's got his role of XP. He's calling the first person, next person, next person.
And they show him all day, and nobody's returning his calls.

Speaker 5 Nobody's, and like when all of a sudden he raises, I think he raised zero dollars from the, from the, the whole fundraising campaign.

Speaker 5 And it was pretty embarrassing because every other celebrity got deals done, got things, and Arsenio got none of them.

Speaker 5 And I remember like the night, I think it was that night or something, he's sitting there and the camera captured this moment that was like, oh, one of the most powerful things in the world.

Speaker 5 I think I was the only one that caught it because I was freaking out. And anyway, I talk about it in Traffic Secrets, but he says this thing.

Speaker 5 He's looking at the camera and he's talking. He's like, man, he's like, when I had a talk show, everybody returned my call.

Speaker 5 I was like, oh, did you catch that? When he has his own platform, the president of the United States, the like anybody, everyone returns call because they wanted access to his platform.

Speaker 5 Like, what's the most valuable thing for an influencer? More influence. More, they need a platform.
Like, that's it. That's what they're looking for, right?

Speaker 5 So for you, it's like, you need to have a platform. Before you have a funnel, before you have an offer, you need to have a platform, right? For a lot of reasons.

Speaker 5 Number one, and we'll talk about here, it's going to help you start publishing, getting your voice out there. But number two, it is the thing that you have to offer to the other influencers, right?

Speaker 5 Hey, like when you're contacting me, I love your content. I love the last podcast episode.
Would you be willing to come on my podcast? Would you be willing to come to my YouTube channel?

Speaker 5 Would you be willing to come on my Instagram? Like, whatever your platform you decided is, like, that's the thing of value you have to offer these people. That's how you build connection, right?

Speaker 5 Then you bring them off of social, you connect with them, you bring them on something where you're giving them access to your platform.

Speaker 5 You have a chance to talk to them, then you build a relationship. You talk to them for 30 minutes or an hour during a podcast interview.

Speaker 5 Now they know you, you know them, and you've got connection, right? And then you create content to defend the marketplace.

Speaker 5 It's so simple and it's so powerful that most people are not doing it, right? They always say, I'm launching my funnel, then I'll launch a podcast in the future. Like, no, wrong order.

Speaker 5 Flip it around, right? I got to start building my influence today. I do that by leveraging other people's influence.
I do that by giving them access to my platform.

Speaker 5 Assuming you guys like, Russ, I don't have a platform yet. Well, you got to start then.
That's exactly why you start today. Not next week in the year or like after your funnel.

Speaker 5 It's like, you got to start digging your well before you're thirsty. Start today.

Speaker 5 Right? And then you might be saying, well, why would someone come on my platform? I don't have any followers here, any listeners. It's like, yes, good point.
That's why you got to start.

Speaker 5 Like, start publishing, right? Start your own podcast or your own YouTube. I don't care which channel you pick.
Pick a channel and start on it. And that's how you start getting people.

Speaker 5 You start gathering the many. Because the only thing you have to offer another influencer right now is access to your many.
So start gathering them.

Speaker 5 And even if it's small at first, that's okay, right? But then you start leveraging it and it grows bigger and grows bigger and grows bigger over time. Okay.
So thinking about that, okay?

Speaker 5 Because until you have your own platform, you're of no value to the people that you are trying to

Speaker 5 borrow influence from. Does that make sense? Okay.

Speaker 5 All right. Now, this comes down to the last thing I want to talk about, really, and this is the key to it all, is for you guys to start publishing.

Speaker 5 I talk about here in Traffic Seekers. I've been saying this now for five or six years.
It's funny. I see tons of people on Instagram now quoting me.
They don't give me credit for it, but there you go.

Speaker 5 But I said this is the Funnel Hacking Live. I think it's the second or third.
It was the second Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego. It's really eight years ago.

Speaker 5 I remember because Steve Larson was in the room, and Steve told me that when he was coming to Funnel Hacking Live, he's like, I'm going to do everything Russell says, but I'm not going to publish something.

Speaker 5 I don't want to throw my voice out there, but I'll do everything else he says. And I got on stage and I said, I talked about publishing.

Speaker 5 I said, if you guys will publish every single day for a year, within a year from now, you'll never have to worry about money again.

Speaker 5 And he was like, but I don't want to publish things.

Speaker 5 And then he's like, fine. And so he did it, right? And it changed his whole business, changed his whole life, right? You got to start publishing.

Speaker 5 And that's the key that I think most people are missing. Now,

Speaker 5 there's a lot of reasons why you got to start publishing. I'll talk about where and how here in a minute, but there's a

Speaker 5 this is one of those.

Speaker 5 One of my friends, Nathan Berry. Nathan owns ConvertKits.
Technically, we're competitors, but he's amazing. He lives in Boise.
Two Boiseites, two tech companies.

Speaker 5 Boise is the tech capital of the world. Take that, Silicon Valley.
We're here in Boise. Anyway, so ConvertKit and ClickFunnels are both here, both in Boise Idaho.

Speaker 5 And Nathan Berry is the CEO of ConvertKit, and he's awesome.

Speaker 5 And if you don't know Nathan, a couple of years ago, somebody gave him a challenge and basically told him to do a blog post a day, every single day for a year, and you'll never worry about money again.

Speaker 5 Very similar to my challenge, but it's for blogging, right? So he went out there and he started blogging every single day for a year.

Speaker 5 And he tells his whole journey and how by the time the year was done, it changed everything.

Speaker 5 Like, because he became a better writer, but also like people started finding his stuff, started growing, and then all the companies on the backside of that grew.

Speaker 5 Then he wrote this post. And this post, oh, it's so good.
Okay. This is like, if you could tattoo a post to your face so you could look at every single day, this would be the one.

Speaker 5 So the post is, the title says, Endure Long Enough to Get Noticed. Okay.
It says, How many great TV shows have you discovered in season three or later?

Speaker 5 I started watching Game of Thrones after they had released five seasons. Pat Flynn had released at least 100 episodes of this podcast before I even knew it existed.

Speaker 5 I discovered hardcore history years after Dan Carlin started producing it. This is such a common experience.
There's so much content being produced we can't possibly discover it all.

Speaker 5 So instead, we wait for the best content to float to the surface after time. If step one in building an

Speaker 5 audience is to create great content, step two is to endure long enough to get noticed.

Speaker 5 Seth Godin's very generous with this time and will appear on almost any relevant podcast, but you have to record at least 100 episodes first.

Speaker 5 His filter is creators who have shown they're willing to show up consistently for a long time. Okay, you guys getting this?

Speaker 5 So the reason why you start publishing is because you have to start getting your voice out there. And there's two reasons.
Number one, it's going to help you to actually find your voice.

Speaker 5 And number two, it gives your audience long enough time to actually find you. Okay.
That's why you got to start today. You're like, bro, I can't start today.
I don't want a following. I suck at this.

Speaker 5 I don't know what I'm going to say. Exactly.
That's why you have to start. Okay, one of the best.

Speaker 5 stories of this for me is actually me okay let me tell you a story about my life um so um i'd built up a business we had a big call center we had a big company and then one one day, literally overnight, whole thing collapsed.

Speaker 5 I had to fire 100 employees one day. We shrunk from a 20,000 square foot building to a 2,000 square foot building.
And everything, my whole life is falling apart.

Speaker 5 I'm like, this isn't going to work, right? One of the many cycles of my business career. So hopefully all of you guys have had a chance to go through some cycles in your life.

Speaker 5 But going through the cycles, right? And

Speaker 5 so I'm in this little tiny office, like we're bleeding money. I'm trying to keep the doors open, trying not to have to fire anyone else because like we had to fulfill on stuff we'd sold in the past.

Speaker 5 It was just chaos, right? And I had a four-minute commute from my house to the new office. It was four-minute drive every day.

Speaker 5 And about this time, as I'm podcasting, everyone was talking about podcasting. It's going to be the future.
And I was like, there's no way this podcasting thing is going to be the future.

Speaker 5 It's a stupid word. No one's going to think it's cool.

Speaker 5 But I was like, you know what? I'm going to do a podcast anyway, just to prove you all wrong. And so I decided to launch a podcast.
It was called The Marketing in Your Car Podcast.

Speaker 5 That's what I do is I'd grab my phone every day. I had a four-minute commute.
I clicked record on my phone. I would drive like this.
And I would drive to my four-minute office.

Speaker 5 I would talk about what I was doing today. Hey, today we're going to the office.
We have an idea for this thing. We're going to try to blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right. I'd be driving them back.

Speaker 5 Hey, last night I studied this guy and he told me about this. I'm going to try it.
And so I just documented what I was doing every single day, right? Four-minute drive.

Speaker 5 I was publishing four or five, six podcast episodes a week. And what's crazy about it, back in the day, like podcasting was different.
And so we had to upload it through the WordPress side.

Speaker 5 It was this whole thing. And we didn't know how to track stats or listens or if anyone's even listening.
We had no idea, right? We were just putting it out there.

Speaker 5 And for me, it was more therapeutic for me to just think out loud of what I was talking about.

Speaker 5 One of the smarter things that Gary Vaynerchuk said, he's like, it's not about creating content, it's about documenting your journey. That's exactly what it was.
I was just documenting the journey.

Speaker 5 In in fact if you go back to the old marketing secrets podcast or sorry marketing your car podcast I talk about like we had this idea for this thing we bought a domain called click funnels me and Todd are building like it gets all this stuff prior to that and then like us discovering it buying the domain and launching it like like the whole history of click funnels is in there it's really fun to go back and listen but it's just me discovering these things as we're going and I'm sharing them in real time I'm not acting like I'm an expert I'm just like these are the things that are happening right so I'm putting these out there eventually back to launch click funnels eventually I launched my inner circle I find out craziest thing that 100% of people in my inner circle were podcast listeners.

Speaker 5 My best people were people who were listening to my long-form content. I had no idea.
It was funny. I had no idea, right?

Speaker 5 There's like all the world that saw me on social everywhere, but the people who bought my high-end coaching programs were 100% all podcast listeners. There's this direct correlation.

Speaker 5 It was crazy, right? So we had the podcast listeners, and then we launched ClickFunnels.

Speaker 5 And then again, this is four or five years into me launched this podcast. And finally, we figured out how to reconnect it all so we can see how many downloads are coming.

Speaker 5 At the time, we had some pretty good downloads coming in. But we started looking back at like the graphs and the trends and look like basically for the first year, almost nobody was listening.
Okay.

Speaker 5 Now, number one, if I had known how few people were listening when I first started, I probably would have stopped. So I'm grateful that I didn't know.

Speaker 5 Number two, funny thing is Steve Larson started working for me. And, you know, I love Steve.
He was like, I'm going to binge listen to everything you've ever done.

Speaker 5 So we went through and listened to every single podcast episode. And I remember, I think he spent a whole weekend binge listening or something.

Speaker 5 He comes back on Monday and he's like, man, he's like, I listen to everything. He's like, you know what's crazy? He's like, the first like 40, 45 episodes, like they were not good.

Speaker 5 He's like, they were pretty bad. He's like, you were awkward.
It was like painful. He's like, but I'm 40, 45-ish.
He's like, he's like, you got in your rhythm.

Speaker 5 And you like, he's like, it was just different. Like, you found your voice.
It was so fun. And then now it's like amazing.
And I thought that was so interesting, right?

Speaker 5 Number one, like, what are we doing? Why are we publishing? Number one, it's because it's going to help you to find your voice.

Speaker 5 If you're hiding in a corner, building your funnel and building your offer and not talking, you're not going to ever find your voice. Right? That's number one.
Number two is it gets you long enough.

Speaker 5 You're out there long enough. What does Nathan Berry say? For your audience to find you.
Boom. And they think, well, right now no one's following me, so it's going to suck.
Exactly.

Speaker 5 That's the best time. You want to suck when no one's following you.

Speaker 5 That's the whole point of it, right? You'll get better and get better. And over time, it'll start ramping up.

Speaker 5 And so that's the key, guys, is starting right now. You got to start publishing.
And there's a lot of ways you can do it.

Speaker 5 For a long time, it was blogging. Nathan Berry started his process blogging.
I'm not a blogger.

Speaker 5 it's funny i love writing books hate writing blog posts so blogging's not pretty good but maybe for you like blogging okay if so cool like just focus on it okay for nathan it was a thousand words a day for a year that's what he was doing blogging a thousand words a day for a year and within a year transformed his business okay maybe you like audio okay cool if you're an audio person podcast it's easy like literally i recorded the first

Speaker 5 600 500 600 episodes on my phone and people are always gonna ask me like what's the what's the microphone you're using i was like it's the one that's like hooked to the bottom of that phone i just click the button i talk like Like, that was it.

Speaker 5 I have, you know, and then

Speaker 5 so there's that. Some of you guys may like video more.
So do video. So they like Instagram.

Speaker 5 I'm like, figure out the platform you love the most organically anyway, their spend time on anyway, and do that, right? Do the thing you understand the most.

Speaker 5 Like, it's funny because, like, I, we dominate podcasts, we're great on Instagram, we're getting places. We're still struggling with YouTube.
We're still figuring it out, right?

Speaker 5 YouTube's a different platform for me. So I'm not YouTube first.
I'm podcast first because I get podcasts. My podcast listeners are my faithful.
They love it. They're all subscribed.

Speaker 5 In fact, if you're watching on YouTube, come to the podcast and listen as well, right?

Speaker 5 They're subscribed, they're listening while they're working out they're hanging out right youtube is a different beast we're still figuring things out but i'm podcast first youtube's kind of secondary because um that's the platform i understand right so figure out what you understand that's where you start publishing it and start publishing consistently okay and again the goal is not for you to be amazing the goal is not for you get tons of views the goal for you to start and start learning how to find your voice and doing it consistently right Three days a week, five days a week, seven days a week, whatever it's the more consistently, the better, because that's how you're going to find your voice, right?

Speaker 5 And then after times, if you are consistent with it and you do not stop, over time, your audience will find you.

Speaker 5 Now you've got a platform.

Speaker 5 And now you can go to people and be like, hey, you want to be on my podcast? Do you want to be on my YouTube channel? And even if your following is not big at first, that's okay.

Speaker 5 You don't go and like ask Tony Robbins, day number one, to be on your podcast, right? You don't ask Russell Brunson to be your podcast, day number one.

Speaker 5 You start looking around who are people that are about the same level as me or maybe a little bit bigger. And that's where you start.

Speaker 5 When I got started in this game, I remember the same thing. I remember, in fact,

Speaker 5 before I knew what a dream 100 was, I just knew, I saw all the influencers back in the day. I saw Joe Vitale was one of them.
I saw Tony Robbins.

Speaker 5 I had all these, Mark Joyner, I had all these people's names. And and I remember I would send them emails and send things in the mail and like none of them responded back.

Speaker 5 I'm like, oh, like this isn't fair. They only care about the little guys like me.
Like why won't they help me? I remember having that like attitude.

Speaker 5 And then I remember going to an event and I met this guy. Actually, it wasn't event, it was online.
I met him first initially. His name is Mike Philson.
Some of you guys know Mike.

Speaker 5 Met Mike at this event and Mike was like, I would say he was probably six months ahead of me in the game. He already had a product.
He had launched it. He had a bunch of sales.

Speaker 5 And I had my product called Zip Randolph, which I had. I was trying to sell it.
And I met Mike, and Mike was good. He was like, he was one step ahead of me, right?

Speaker 5 And again, this is before we were podcasting this is before any of the publishing stuff but the concept was the same so he's a little bit above me I got to know him he's easy to hold him because he's not Tony Robbins with like 800 gatekeepers not Russell Brunson with 800 gatekeepers you got to get through right it was just like him and he was it was the six months ahead of me he had figured things out already that was so figured out so it was easy to get through his filters and get a hold of him we start talking build a relationship and he's like dude that product's cool and then mike promoted Zip Brander okay literally promoted it and I remember because we sold a whole bunch of them and 217 people joined my email list from the promotion Mike Philson did it's not funny i remember that that number to the number 270 people came to my site saw the pop-up put in the email address and join my newsletter and all of a sudden i had 217 people on my list which i never had before okay and then i went and then and then mike and i were talking i was like i was like thanks mike that was awesome i'm like mike who are the people you met so far mike's like oh you got to meet these other guys this guy's named gary ambrose and so like mike had five or six other people he knew at our same level he introduced me all these people and all of a sudden i had five people and i was like hey gary can i i've got a list can i promote your product a list of 217 people he's like sure so i promote his product i made two or or three sales and he promotes mine he makes two or three sales and all of a sudden like his list grows my list grows mice list grows and then he introduced me to this person this person we start doing these things and all of a sudden like like our little friend group of people we all start getting uh like like our influence starts growing together a little bigger okay what happens now now my list is three four five thousand people right now i start looking like who are people have lists of three four five thousand people i start connecting like oh there's this person right so i i step one step up get to know those people i provide value promote their product right whatever it is i promote theirs then they promote mine and i'm like who are your friends they introduce me and all of a sudden like boom and my business starts growing and growing, right?

Speaker 5 And that was the process. I did that for year one, year two, year three, right? And eventually, I was like three years in the business, Joe Vitale messaged me.

Speaker 5 He's like, hey, Russell, saw yourself online. It's really, really cool.
Can I help you promote this product? I'm like,

Speaker 5 I messaged you three years ago. You did not respond to me, right? Because

Speaker 5 I was down here, right? But because I looked at who are the people around my side size, maybe a little bit bigger, I connect with them. Then we all grow together.

Speaker 5 Then connect to them, get rosing together. Like that was the game, right? So eventually Joe Vitale came to me.
Okay, fast forward five more years later, I get a phone call from Tony Robbins.

Speaker 5 I didn't call him. They called me.
Okay, that's why I got to meet Tony initially. It was not me aggressively outbound reaching.
He reached out to me. Okay.
Boom.

Speaker 5 And then next, and so like, that's how this game is played. Does that make sense, you guys? So this is how it works.

Speaker 5 You need to start digging your well before you're thirsty, which means you start publishing today. Okay.
You start publishing, start publishing, right?

Speaker 5 Number two, you got to start figuring out who are the other influencer in your space and start building relationships immediately. Doesn't mean going for the huge people at top, right?

Speaker 5 Who are about your level? Like, if you got a thousand followers on Instagram, who's got three to five?

Speaker 5 go find those influencers those are the first people comment because they those people if you comment their comments they're gonna see your name like oh this person comments every single time right dm them get on the phone with them hang out how can we promote each other what if i did an instagram live uh promoting your uh squeeze page you promote mine we both build our list together boom right promotions partnerships little things like that right your list grows their list grows who your friends they get to connect you to five of their friends you connect them to five of your friends all of a sudden your whole network starts growing together and it grows together and boom boom boom right that's how you build this game that's how you win okay this is what everyone's missing.

Speaker 5 Everyone's sitting there focusing just on building offer, building a funnel, and forgetting the fundamentals of you got to start gathering the menu. And this is how the game is played.

Speaker 5 And if you do that, that's how you win long-term. Again, I've been in this business now 20, man, 22, 23, 24.
I don't even remember at this point, right?

Speaker 5 In the time, I wish I could show you guys the pedigree chart of the gurus who have come and gone and come and gone and come and gone and come and gone over the last two and a half decades. Okay?

Speaker 5 Tons of them. Who has lasted the test of time?

Speaker 5 I can count them on one hand.

Speaker 5 Literally. And I wouldn't need all the fingers, even.
Okay. Russell, how have you had longevity? Have you stayed throughout the thing? Because I don't stop focusing on the most important thing.
Okay.

Speaker 5 Gathering the many, gathering the many. Okay.
Because you're going to gather the many, you're going to lose them. You're going to gather the menu.
You're going to lose them.

Speaker 5 You're going to gather the menu. You're going to lose.
That's the game.

Speaker 5 What happens? People gather their people, right? And then they start selling them stuff and they forget to gather and then the whole thing collapses.

Speaker 5 Gathering the many, gathering the many, gathering the many. Russell, why'd you spend a million dollars last nine hundred and what fifty thousand dollars to gather people for an event?

Speaker 5 Because that's how you win the game. It's gathering the many, right? If you want to make offers to people, great, but you got to have people to make offers too, right?

Speaker 5 Okay, Russell, why are you still doing the podcast episode? Why are you still doing this every single day? You're at like a thousand episodes. Why do you keep doing this, right?

Speaker 5 In fact, I remember I was in an inner circle meeting, and um, me and Garrett White were sitting next to each other, and there was a guy in our room, and we were trying to convince him to start publishing, start talking, right?

Speaker 5 And um, it was so fascinating because Garrett looked at me and he's like, Russell, you're because the guy, I can't remember this story, the guy had done some publishing, we kind of stopped or whatever, and he's like, I'm good.

Speaker 5 And he looks at me and He's like, Russell,

Speaker 5 why do you keep publishing your podcast every single day? I said, I'm trying to find my voice. He's like, you've been doing this for a decade.
I'm like, yeah.

Speaker 5 Why did I relaunch the Russell Bunsen show? Okay. I think we're four or five episodes in now.
I did because I felt like I lost my voice.

Speaker 5 I was trying to do things based on scripting, based on keywords, based on stuff like that. And it was good, but wasn't great.
So like, all right, I got to find my voice again.

Speaker 5 Let me get back to Russell talking to a camera and hanging out and like sharing the stories I want to share, right? Like, let me tell you guys a story about me beating up a kid who messed with me

Speaker 5 in football, right? He came to to the wrestling room and I mopped him back. I want to tell you that story.
What's the point of it? The point of it, I want to tell you that story.

Speaker 5 It makes me feel good about it, right? It feels good about myself. Like, I want to tell you guys stories.

Speaker 5 And so for me, it's like I'm still in the spot where I'm still trying to find my voice, right? It doesn't end, right? Your voice is getting better and better and better. In fact, it's crazy.

Speaker 5 My brother sent me this video of me. Oh, I could splice in.

Speaker 5 Should I do it? Okay, I'm going to splice in. I'm going to have him splice in like a 10-second clip on the video and everything.

Speaker 5 It's me in a tie behind a desk, and I'm awkwardly, so awkwardly talking.

Speaker 5 A shaved head, a tie. And I look at that kid and that kid, again, I thought I was the stuff back then.
I thought I was amazing. And I think about that now.
I'm like, man, it's so embarrassing.

Speaker 5 I watch it now. It's like, oh, but I want to put my arm around like Russell's keep going.
Eventually, you're going to figure out you can grow your hair out. You're going to find out that,

Speaker 5 you know, you can talk with energy, keep your eyes open. Like, you know, things that, cause like, anyway, so, okay, insert awkward clip of Russell right now.

Speaker 5 Sometimes you don't really know what to do next. Where's the next step?

Speaker 5 And so we've actually created a lot of different programs to help everybody who's interested to get started and to really make you successful as quick as possible.

Speaker 5 Now, one thing we've done, excuse me, is we created a course called our protege course. And we're back.
I hope that wasn't too painful for you as it was for me, but that's it, you guys.

Speaker 5 And back then, I thought I was good. Does that make sense? I thought I was good back then.
I look at me today, like, right now in my head, I think I'm pretty good.

Speaker 5 But in 10 years, someone look back at this and like, Russell, you were so bad, right? Same thing for you.

Speaker 5 But you got to start and be consistent over and over and over again to figure that out and find it. You know know what's fascinating to me?

Speaker 5 When I met Tony Robbins originally, he was the same age I am right now. What?

Speaker 5 I remember thinking, like, man, he's been doing this forever. Like, he's this big, he's saying, right? I'm like, no, he was my age when I met Tony.
Like, this is crazy to me.

Speaker 5 And then I look at now, okay, when I'm Tony's age, where could I be? Where should I be?

Speaker 5 Can I catch him? Can I lap him? Am I going to lose to him? I don't know. Either way, it's going to be fun.
It's going to be fun to compete. So

Speaker 5 anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I hope he gave you some ideas.
The biggest thing is I just, I'm so tired. I feel so bad.

Speaker 5 People who spend so much time and energy and effort building a product or a movement or a funnel or whatever you want to call it, and then putting it out there and

Speaker 5 no one to see it.

Speaker 5 And then usually what's been happening is they've been bootstrapping this thing for so long. And it's like, ah, they can't like, there's no one to sell to.
They can't afford ads.

Speaker 5 They can't do anything. Now they've got this thing, but they've got to go start gathering people.
And now they don't have time for it. They're out of money.
They've got to find another job.

Speaker 5 And it's like, ah, if you'd have been doing these things simultaneously, you'd be fine at this point. But you missed the most important part, which is gathering the many initially.
That is the key.

Speaker 5 So this is the focal point for you guys. Okay, wherever you are right now in your business, it's like taking your time and and breaking off.
I'd say an hour a day.

Speaker 5 Okay, and the hour a day is for you to go out there and to network like crazy, for you to publish like crazy, and then get back to building your thing. Okay, just block out first hour of your day.

Speaker 5 Okay, I'm gonna spend 20 minutes networking. I'm gonna go on Instagram, Facebook, you know, whatever.

Speaker 5 I'm just DMing people, following people, getting to know people, trying to build a relationship, jump on calls with people.

Speaker 5 Then I'm coming out, record a 20-minute video, 20-minute podcast episode, upload it, and then boom, now I can go back to building my company.

Speaker 5 But if you're missing this piece, when you need the money, when you need, like, you know, when you're thirsty, if you have not been digging your well, you're gonna miss it. Okay, and that is a key.

Speaker 5 So hope that helps you guys a lot. On top of that, if you haven't heard Traffic Secrets yet, I just recommend reading it because this is the keys to everything I know about getting traffic.

Speaker 5 It's a very strategic book, which means it's evergreen, it's timeless, it means it's not gonna change. It means it works today, tomorrow, forever.

Speaker 5 I didn't, I specifically did not put in tactical things that change with every, with every, you know,

Speaker 5 every wind of change inside the social media world. These are are strategic things that will work forever.
It's going to help you understand list building.

Speaker 5 It's going to help you understand focus on the right things. It's going to, yeah, it's the key, you guys.
And so again, I love all my books.

Speaker 5 They're all great, but Traffic Secret is just a powerful one for you guys to understand so you can start building the traffic. Because until you gather the many, you don't have a business.
Okay.

Speaker 5 And that's the key. So start gathering the many.
Your people are waiting for you. They're waiting for you to step into your calling.

Speaker 5 They're waiting for you to show up and start publishing, start talking so they can find you. They're looking for what you have.
They're in pain.

Speaker 5 They're trying to get out of pain and they're waiting for you to be willing to step into your calling and share your message. Okay.
And you got to do it awkwardly. You got to do it uncomfortably.

Speaker 5 You got to do it in the spot where you're not ready yet. But until you are willing to do that, those people cannot be, like, you can't change their lives.

Speaker 5 So as soon as you're willing to step into your calling, they are there waiting for you so they can find you so you can change your life. So do it.
I promise you'll be worth it.

Speaker 5 It's gonna be scary at first, nervous, pain, all that kind of stuff. I get it.
But the good news is when you first start publishing, when you are the worst, no one's gonna be watching you.

Speaker 5 And by the time you figure it out, that's when your audience will show up. So start today.
Have some fun. Appreciate y'all.
I'll see you guys all in the next episode.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away away from changing the world.