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On this episode we answer a question from one of our listeners. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Tonight, I'm going to have a special episode, actually. Someone on Instagram, who I've become friends with recently, been talking back and forth, asked me a really good question about feeling uninspired, and low confidence publishing and wondered what I do to keep myself confident and motivated. And I think the answer may surprise you. So, I wanted to do this as an episode instead of just responding back to him directly, and hopefully it'll help a lot of you guys out as well. All right everyone, so like I said, one of my new friends Alex, he had posted on Instagram or he actually sent me a DM, a question, and I thought it was really good question. I think it's something that I know I personally deal with way more often than I'd like to admit, and I'm sure a lot of you guys do as well. And so I thought I would, instead of just responding to him personally, respond through a podcast and hopefully it'll give you guys some value as well. So this is what he wrote. He said, "Hey man, question for you. If you ever find yourself feeling uninspired, low in confidence to publish every day or put yourself out there, what are some of your go-to activities to create lasting peak state again, where you feel full of fire, belief and vision. I'm in a spot that haven't been in a long time. I'm committed to breaking out of it, and I have faith that I will. I have a feeling that finding the right catalyst to help spark the fire again is the key." Anyway, so I thought it was really good question. And again, I think my answer may be different than him, or even probably most people think. And so to put it in context, I'm going to give you a quick glimpse at my life recently. It's summertime here at the time that I'm recording this, and I've got five amazing kids, three teenagers and two younger kids. And my teenagers have a party every night, something planned with friends and everything. And there's no school. And they're like, "Well there's no school tomorrow." I'm like, "Yeah, but I still have to get up tomorrow at six. I still have things to do. I still have all this stuff." My poor wife and I, usually during school time we put them to bed at nine and we've got two hours by ourselves before we pass out. Where now they're getting home from friend's houses around 11, and then we're trying to put them to bed. And then it's midnight, and then one, and then one thirty and then we're so tired. And right now is a really busy season, we are like 60 days away from Funnel Hacking Live. P.S. if you don't have your tickets yet go to funnelhackinglive.com. And I find myself now every morning, literally waking up and I am feeling, I think exactly what Alex is feeling. I wake up and I'm tired, I'm uninspired, I have low confidence. I don't want to publish. I don't want to talk. I don't want to get a bed. I don't want to work out. It's tough. Today, I set my alarm for six and I snoozed it for an hour and a half. I kept pushing it over and over and over again. And I actually, this morning as I was going to the office. I was like, "Why am I struggling so much?" And I start thinking back, and I think in my mind, I think in most of our minds, we assume that we're always like, there are seasons and times when we're on fire and full belief and vision, all these kind of things. But when I started like really looking back, I started thinking about different parts of my life, especially some of my favorite parts of my life. And if I really remembered, I try to... I think most of the times our memories remember the good things and we fade out the bad, right? It's like, when you have a baby. Five minutes after my wife gave birth, if I was like, "Let's have another baby," she would probably strangle me. But then, a day goes by, then a week and then a month. And within three or four months, you forget the pain. All you remember is this cute little baby and you're like, "Oh, we should have kids again. It was so much fun." And then all of a sudden you're pregnant. You're like, "What was I thinking? Why didn't somebody tell me about this?" I think it's the same thing in life. Like if I honestly think back, I think back about wrestling. That was my first passion, my first love. I remember winning the state title. I remember these big things that are amazing, but if I'm really honest, I try to remember the practices. I remember cutting weight. I remember not eating for four or five days in a row, every single week for my entire high school career. And cutting weight, and not having energy, and being tired in class and like cutting weight. Those who've cut weight know what I'm talking about, but I was doing that. And I don't think that there was a time when I was really... It didn't feel good, I didn't enjoy it. It was hard. It was miserable. But then the thing at the end happened, and it was amazing. And because I had this desire, and this belief and this hope in the thing at the end, that's why I kept doing it. Cause I was like, "Ah, someday I want to win a state title. Someday I want to be an All-American, someday." And I had these things, so I put myself through these things. And then afterwards I hit the goals. You don't hit the goals and you remember the positives, and you remember these things and you kind of fade out the negative. But the reality is that a lot of times going through the stuff, like the day by, day by day, you don't come into it super inspired, and tons of energy, and high confidence and all those things that we think we are, or we're looking for, we're thinking it's going to happen. At least not that I remember, as I'm trying to be completely honest with myself, I'm remembering the practices and leading up to them, and most days I didn't want to go to practice. Like I did because when I got into it, I enjoyed it. But going to practice, I would dread. And then fast forward, most of you guys I think know, I had a chance to serve a mission for my church for two years. And so for two years I was on this mission, and I'm knocking doors, and I'm teaching about Jesus, and doing these things and had a great experience. Looking back now, it's one of the greatest highlights of my life. If I remember, every morning waking up, and we'd wake up super early, and study scriptures and do these things, and we were tired. And those who haven't been on a mission, or have never seen like the Mormon missionaries before, like you don't get to go on dates, you don't get to call home, you don't get to... You're with a companion and you don't go to movies, you don't have a TV, so it's tough. I remember every morning waking up, and knowing I had to go knock on doors, knowing I had to go do these things and dreading it. Like, ah it was hard consistently. And then we're going out and knocking door, and usually within doing it for a little while, it'd become fun. And we'd talk to people, like I enjoyed it. And as I'm enjoying it, I'm like, "Why was I so complaining? Like why was I so tired this morning? Why was I so miserable? I actually enjoy this stuff," but I still did. And if I look back on my mission now, it was two years I was out there. Like I would wage, I would bet that most mornings I woke up dreading having to do the work I actually had to do. And now I started thinking about this, about my entrepreneurial career. And again, I think back about all the highs and the big wins and all these kinds of things. But if I'm completely honest with myself, throughout the day by day, and the week by week, it was not sunshine and roses. I didn't wake up inspired, and excited and have tons of confidence and wanting to publish. Like it came... Usually me waking up and dreading it, and then going and doing it. And then as I started doing it, it was like, "Oh, I actually do enjoy this. This is kind of fun." It was weird to me because two days ago I was working on this webinar, and all day at the office I was having fun, I was doing it and I got home. And then first I was excited, "Tomorrow's going to be fun to work on it." But then again, my evening happened and it was crazy, and kids get to bed at midnight and I'm asleep at 1:00, and my alarm is going off at six in the morning and I'm just dreading going the office. Like, "I don't want to open the slides. I'm too tired. I don't want to work on it." And like, I'm miserable. Right? Uninspired, low confidence, like all these things. But I woke up, I did the thing, got out there, got to the office and started working on it. And then as I got back into it again, it became fun and I enjoyed it. And then eventually I'm going to do this webinar and I'm going to be stressed out. I'll probably pull all-nighters ahead of time, and then do the webinar and it's going to make a bunch of money. Then I'll be able to celebrate and all I'm going to remember is the celebration. Right? The baby came out, we made a bunch of money. Someone got baptized. Whatever the result was that I was working towards. And I'll Remember that, and it's all I remember is like how great it was. I mean, we did this event, the Funnel Hackathon event. It was interesting because, I was teaching a webinar model. I was like, we launched ClickFunnels... I always tell them they should do a webinar a week, every single week for a year. And I was like, "I tell people that, but that's not what I did." I was like, "I was doing at least a webinar a day, some days two or three webinars a day." And if you've ever done a webinar, like a two hour webinar, it's like working a nine hour or eight hour workday. Right? So you're doing three back-to-back-to-back, six hours of straight webinars. Like in my head, I remember this amazing thing in me, closing sales and like how amazing it was. But if I'm honest with myself, It was horrible. I couldn't talk, I was tired. I had no energy. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to do the second let alone the third webinar that day, knowing that tomorrow I'd wake up and do it again. And it's just interesting because I think our brain blocks out so much those things. So I'm not saying that we can't be inspired, have high confidence in those kinds of things. But my bet is in most situations, most mornings you're going to wake up and you're going to be uninspired, you're going to have low confidence. You're not going to want to publish. You're going to want to go out there. You're not going to want to do a webinar, you're not going to want to publish your podcast, you're not going to want to knock doors. You're not going to want to go read a book, you're not going to want to write a book. You're not going to want to... Whatever the thing is. Because that's the reality of life, at least as far as I've experienced it. I try to think back like, when were the mornings I woke up super excited? And there have been some, I can tell you there have been, but they are few and far between. The thing that gets me moving in the morning is not the feeling of inspiration or confidence or anything in the morning. It is the vision of the thing at the end. It was me knowing I wanted to win a state title. Not just knowing I want to be a state champ, but knowing like in my heart and my soul and my gut, that's all I wanted. That's all I wanted in life was that, I wanted to get my hand raised. And it's because of that I was willing to go through anything. My coach has said, "You got to lose 30 pounds this week." Which happened every single week. I was like, "Okay." They're like, "Hey, you've got to go run four miles right now. You got to do this." Like I just said yes to everything, because that was the goal. That was the... Like, whatever it took to get there, I was okay with it. So the vision, the goal is the thing, but it doesn't mean you're going to feel the things I think we want to feel. I want to feel like, wake up in the morning, I want to go run. I want to go do these things. I want to go... But I don't think I ever feel those things. And maybe I'm the one that's messed up, I don't know. But if I'm honest with myself, I don't remember really feeling those things. I don't remember any morning when my alarm went off and I woke up feeling like I wanted to go run, feeling like I want to go lift weights again. Maybe every once in a while, but it was rare. The thing that was a constant was like this North Star, it was the vision. And again in high school, it was winning a state title and it was being an All-American, that's all I could dream about. Like I'd sit there without any food or water in my stomach for weeks... For not weeks, but days at a time, miserable, cutting 25, 30 pounds a week, every single week, week in and week out, over and over and over again. Being thirsty beyond any kind of anything you can imagine. For those who have never cut weight before, you think that that being hungry is hard. Like people who skip a meal and they're like, "I'm so hungry." Like hunger pains are easy. Thirst pains are bad. Like you skip water for a day, your hunger pains disappear and you can not eat for a week. Fine. But that those thirst pains like keep you up at night. But again, like what was the thing? It was the vision and it was doing it when you're not inspired, doing it when you don't feel like it, because you're normally not going to feel like it. Like right now, we're 60 days away from Funnel Hacking Live, I have so much work to do. We are rebuilding three different coaching programs and I'm tired. I've got six core presentations, nine total presentations that I haven't started on. I'm rewriting a core webinar that I have to do. We've got film dates. We've got events. We've got... If you guys saw my schedule for the next 60 days, you'd probably laugh or cry or a little bit of both. And I tell you what, I don't want to do most of it. But guess what I do want to do? I want Funnel Hacking Live to happen. I want... When it's over, the night Funnel Hacking Live ends, when I go to bed at night, there's this feeling that I don't know. It's not as good as getting my hand raised and wrestling. I'm not going to lie, but it's this feeling. And I felt it before, I feel like when the whole thing's done, and you see people and you see their change, and you see them leave and you get to go home and be in your room for a minute and just be like, "We did it," that feeling, that vision and seeing like the ripple effect that will come from that room, from the 3,500 people who will be in the room, that ripple effect that will come out from there around the world. That vision of that. Like for me, it's a tangible visually. It's like, I can see... For me, it's like I see the audience, I see this huge rock going boom, and hitting it. And the ripple effect goes to 3,500 people in the room. Then from there, it goes out to millions and millions of people around the world. That vision of that is what gets me moving and going. And for some reason, I wish... I keep thinking or wishing that vision would make it so I woke up every morning inspired, excited, with energy, but it doesn't. Because the reality is, if that's all it was, was the vision. I think we'd be able to... If the vision affected us, so we felt so good that was easy, then it would be easier. But for me at least it doesn't. So anyway, if any of you guys got a secret, let me know. But for me, it's just waking up thinking about, this is the thing. This is what I'm working towards, I want it, I'm going for it. And then start the process. And like I said, after I start the process, usually it feels good, but it's that initial momentum that's not fun, right? Like the initial waking up and going to the gym is not fun, but then when you start lifting. It's like, "Oh, I actually enjoy this." Getting up, getting dressed, getting to the office, not fun. Start working your slides, you're like, "Oh I actually enjoy this." This podcast episode for example, my brother who does my podcast is going out of town. He's been asking me for a week and a half for three episodes. And right now it is 11:27 at night, and I've been dreading this podcast all day long. I've been thinking about it and like talking myself out of it, like dreading it. Literally, I don't want to do this podcast. I don't want to do it. I'm tired, I just want to go to bed, I got so much stuff. Like I finally got my kids to bed. Now, last thing in the world I want to do is publish my podcast, the last thing I want to do. But now I'm 14 minutes and 25 seconds into it, and I'm actually really enjoying this. I could go for the two hours. Like I'm feeling the energy now, right? But initially you don't have it. And so I think that's the biggest thing is just, understanding that it's the initial momentum. That's the hardest part. In the morning you wake up and you're out of momentum, like getting back into momentum. That's a hard thing. And so most people, most humans on this planet never get back into momentum. They're just like, ugh. They just stop, right? So the thing that's going to get you from this stagnated stop spot is like, either the memory of the vision or the dream of the vision. When I was wrestling, it was the dream of being a state champ. Right now it's the memory of last years Funnel Hacking Live and the experience that I felt afterwards. Like, that's the thing that gets me out of bed into momentum, and with the momentum I start feeling more inspired, I start feeling more confident. I start listening, they start happening, but they don't happen right out of the gate. Most mornings, you're going to wake up not wanting to do with the thing you got to do. You're not going to feel good. You're not going to feel inspired, have confidence, any of those kinds of things. So it's like, you got to have this vision that pulls you into momentum, and then momentum picks up and that's when you start feeling good and start having fun. And right now, I want to go film 12 more podcast episodes, which is good because my brother told me I need to give him three by tomorrow. So, this is the first one, I've got two more tonight and I'm really excited about one of them, so I'll probably do that one next because now I'm in momentum. I'm feeling good. And anyway, so I hope that helps. I think the biggest thing that I want to share is just that if you're struggling every morning, for any of you guys, like that's okay. So do I, every morning, Very, very, very rare do I wake up and like, "Yes, let's go. Like, this is the thing." It's unfortunately not there and I don't think it's there for most people. And if it is there for you, that's amazing. Like run. That means you're waking up already in momentum, start running. Don't stop. But for most of us it's, man, making that vision. It's like what we talked about for wrestling, so clear, so vivid, so real, that you would go through anything to get it. First time I saw someone win a state title and I was like, "That's what I want more than air," literally, like more than food, more than water, more than friends, more than anything. And it became that real, that tangible that vivid where I could feel it, taste it, touch it, like smell, I could envision it. Like that's when I was willing to do anything and I did do anything, like literally. Insane things we did to get that goal. And same thing rings true in business. Right? Like when we started building ClickFunnels and I started seeing... At first it was hard for me, because I didn't know it was going to become what it was. Like I'd tried to build ClickFunnels three times before and every time we'd fail. So Todd's like, "I'm going to build ClickFunnels." I'm like, "Cool," so we started building it. But as soon as I saw it and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is really good. Okay. Like, all right." And I saw the vision what it could be, then it was like crazy. But again if I remember back, we used to do these hackathons. Todd would fly out before we launched ClickFunnels and spend three weeks in Boise. And we would go all day, all night and like sleep for three or four hours, get back up and keep going. And I don't think it was fun. Like looking back now, the nostalgia of it's amazing. Like, oh these were like the greatest times of our life. Like times I'll never forget, but in the moment they were horrible. I did not enjoy them. I was tired. I was miserable. I missed my family, missed my kids, missed my things. We didn't know if this was actually going to work. Like, there's all these things, but we did it because I'd seen the vision. Todd had seen the vision. We knew that there was something there. And so we pushed, and we pushed, and we pushed, and we grind through it. And now looking back, those are some of the best times. So, you got to do it in spite of the uninspired, in spite of not feeling worthy, or ready or whatever. Get yourself momentum, like hook to the vision, hook to the thing you have and it start running. So anyway, I hope that helps. It gives probably not the answer you're looking for. I wish I had a better secret magic button, but it's just understanding and realizing every morning, like, "All right, I don't want to move, but I got to. Let's go." So, I hope that helps. Thanks so much everyone for listening, and have a great night and we'll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

Here is the conclusion of the special conversation I had on stage at a Traffic Secrets event with a friend and a student, Nic Fitzgerald. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m so excited, I’m here on stage right now at the Two Comma Club X event with Mr. Nic Fitzgerald onstage. A year ago I gave a podcast to him about how to make it rain and this is section number two. Now those of you who don’t know, in the last 12 months since I did that podcast he’s been making it rain and he’s been changing his life, his family’s lives, but more importantly, other people’s lives as well. And it’s been really cool, so that’s what we’re going to cover today during this episode of the podcast. So welcome back you guys. I’m here on stage with Nic Fitzgerald, so excited. So I made a list of seven things that if I was to sit in a room with him in front of a whole bunch of people I’d be like, “Hey Nic, you’re doing awesome, but here’s some things to look at that I think will help you a lot with what you’re doing.” So number one, when Nic first kind of started into this movement that he’s trying to create, I don’t know when it was, if you created this before or after. When did you create the Star Wars video? Nic: This was, we talked in July, it was September/October. So a few months later. Russell: How many of you guys have seen his Star Wars video? Okay, I’m so glad. For those who are listening, about 10% of the room raised their hand, the other 90% who are friends and followers and fans of Nic have never seen the Star Wars video. His Star Wars video is his origin story and it is one of the best videos I have ever, by far the best video I’ve seen him do, it is insanely good. It comes, do you want to talk about what happened in the video? It’s insanely good. Nic: So I told the story of, I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, so if you didn’t know that, now you do. When I was young my grandma who lived in the same neighborhood as me, she took me to go see Return of the Jedi in the movie theater and I was such a Star Wars nerd, even at a young age, that when I was playing at the neighbors house, and you know, it’s the 80s, so mom and dad are like, “Nic, come home for dinner.” That kind of thing, I would ignore them. I would not come home until they called me “Luke”. No lie. I would make them call me Luke, or I would ignore them. I would not hear them. Russell: Had I known this in high school I would have teased him relentlessly. Nic: So my grandma took me and I remember going and it was so fun because we took the bus, it was just a fun thing. And we went and I just remember walking in and handing my ticket to the ticket person. And then popcorn and just the smells of everything. And again, this is the 80s so walking in the movie theater; I almost lost a shoe in the sticky soda, {sound effects} going on. I just remember how my feet stuck to the floor and all that stuff. And then just being so excited to see my heroes on the big screen and Dark Vader, I just remember watching it. This is such a silly thing to get emotional about, but you know I remember the emperor and Darth Vader dying and all that stuff. It was just like, ah. It was a perfect day. Sorry sound dude. But it was just a perfect day with my grandma who has always been dear to me. So the purpose of that video, I’d put it off for a long time. I knew I needed to tell my own story if I’m going to be helping somebody else tell theirs. And I put it off for a long time, because working through things, I was afraid that if it sucked, if the story was terrible, if the visuals were crappy, that was a reflection on me and my skills. I had worked on a bazillion Hallmark Christmas movies, you know how they put out like 17 trillion Christmas movies every year, if one of those sucks, no offense, they’re not riveting television. Russell: They all suck. Nic: That wasn’t a reflection on me, I was just doing the lighting or the camera work. I didn’t write the story, it wasn’t my story. But this was me, so I put it off for a long time because I knew if I didn’t execute how I envisioned it, that it would reflect poorly on me, and it would be like I was a fraud. So the purpose of the video, there were three purposes. One to tell a story and get people to connect with me on a personal level. As I told that story here, how many of you remembered your feet sticking to the floor of a movie theater? How many of you, when I talk about the smell of popcorn and that sound, you felt and heard and smelled that. So it was one thing, I wanted people to connect with me and just see that I was just like you. Then I wanted to show that I could make a pretty picture. So I had that and I used my family members as the actors. And then I went and talked about how…and then I wanted to use it to build credibility. I’ve worked on 13 feature films and two television series and shot news for the NBC affiliate and worked in tons of commercials. So I’ve learned from master story tellers and now I want to help other people find and tell their story. And then I showed clips of stories that I tell throughout the years. So that was, I just remember specifically when I finally went and made it live, I made a list of about 20 people, my Dream 100 I guess you could say. I just wanted to send them and be like, “Hey, I made this video. I would love for you to watch it.” And Russell’s on that list. So I sent that out and made it live and then it was just kind of funny, it didn’t go viral, I got like 5000 views in a day, and it was like “whoa!” kind of thing. But it was just one of those things that I knew I needed to tell my story and if I wanted to have any credibility as a story teller, not as a videographer, but as a story teller, being able to help people connect, and connect hearts and build relationships with their audience, I had to knock it out of the park. So that was my attempt at doing that. Russell: And the video’s amazing, for the 10% of the room who saw it, it is amazing. Now my point here for Nic, but also for everyone here, I wrote down, is tell your story too much. Only 10% of the room has ever seen that video or ever heard it. How many of you guys have heard my potato gun story more than a dozen times? Almost the entire room, for those that are listening. Tell your story to the point where you are so sick and tired of telling the story and hearing it, that you just want to kill yourself, and then tell it again. And then tell it again. And then tell it again, because it is amazing. The video is amazing, the story is amazing. How many of you guys feel more connected to him after hearing that story right now? It’s amazing. Tell t he story too much. All of us are going to be like, “I don’t want to hear the story. I don’t want to tell the story again.” You should be telling that story over and over and over again. That video should be showing it. At least once a week you should be following everyone, retargeting ads of that video. That video should be, everyone should see it. You’ve got 5,000 views which is amazing, you should get 5,000 views a day, consistently telling that story, telling that story. Because you’re right, it’s beautiful, it’s amazing and people see that and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need that for my business. I need to be able to tell my story the way he told that story, because the connection is flawless.” And I think my biggest thing for you right now, is tell your story more. Tell that thing. You’re telling good stories, but that story, that’s like your linchpin, that’s the thing that if you can tell that, it’s going to keep people connected to you for forever. Anyone who’s seen that video, you have a different level of connection. It’s amazing, it’s shot beautifully. You see his kids looking at the movies, with lights flashing, it’s beautiful. So telling your story more, that’d be the biggest thing. It’s just like, all the time telling that story over and over and over again. That’s number one. Alright, number two, this one’s not so much for you as much for most of everybody else in here, but number two is that energy matters a lot. I’m not talking about, I’m tired during the day. I’m talking about when you are live, or you are talking in front of people, your energy matters a lot. I was hanging out with Dana Derricks, how many of you guys know Dana, our resident goat farmer? By the way, he’s asked every time I mention his name is please not send him anymore goats. He’s gotten like 2 or 3 goats in the last month from all of our friends and family members here in the community. Please stop sending him goats. He loves them but he doesn’t want any more. Anyway, what’s interesting, I was talking to Dana, and he’s like, “Do you know the biggest thing I’ve learned from you?” and I’m like, “No. what?” and I thought it was going to be like dream 100 and things like that. No, the biggest thing that Dana learned from me, he told me, was that energy matters a lot. He’s like, “When I hang out with you, you’re kind of like blah, but when you get on stage you’re like, baaahh!” and I started telling him, the reason why is when I first started this career, in fact, I have my brother right now pulling all the video clips of me from like 12 or 13 years ago, when I had a shaved head and I was awkward like, “Hi, my name is Russell Brunson.” And we’re trying to make this montage of me over 15 years of doing this and how awkward and weird I was, and how it took 8-10 years until I was normal and started growing my hair out. But I’m trying to show that whole montage, but if you look at it like, I was going through that process and the biggest thing I learned is that if I talked to people like this, when you’re on video you sound like this. The very first, I think I’d have an idea and then I’d just do stupid things. So I saw an infomercial, so I’m like I should do an infomercial. So I hired this company to make an infomercial and next thing I know two weeks later I’m in Florida and there’s this host on this show and he’s like the cheesiest cheese ball ever. I’m so embarrassed. He asked me a question and I’m like, “Well, um, you know, duh, duh…” and he’s like, “Whoa, cut, cut, cut.” He’s like, “Dude, holy crap. You have no energy.” I’m like, “No, I feel really good. I have a lot of energy right now.” He’s like, “No, no you don’t understand. When you’re on tv, you have to talk like this to sound normal. If you just talk normal, you sound like you’re asleep.” I’m like, “I don’t know.” So we did this whole infomercial and he’s like all over the top and I’m just like, trying to go a little bit higher and it was awkward. I went back and watched it later, and he sounded completely normal and I looked like I was dead on the road. It was weird. Brandon Fischer, I don’t know if he’s still in the audience, but we did…Brandon’s back here. So four years ago when Clickfunnels first came out we made these videos that when you first signed up we gave away a free t-shirt. How many of you guys remember seeing those videos? I made those videos and then they lasted for like four years, and then we just reshot them last week because it’s like, “Oh wow, the demo video when we’re showing CLickfunnels does not look like Clickfunnels anymore. It’s completely changed in four years.” So Todd’s like, “You have to make a new video.” I’m like, “I don’t want to make a video.’ So finally we made the new videos, recorded them and got them up there and we posted them online, and before we posted them on, I went and watched the old ones, and I watched the old ones and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is just four years ago, I am so depressing. How did anybody watch this video?” It was bad, right Brandon. It was like painfully bad. I was like, “oh my gosh.” That was just four years ago. Imagine six years ago, or ten years. It was really, really bad. And when I notice the more energy you have, the more energy everyone else has. It seems weird at first, but always stretch more than you feel comfortable, and it seems normal, and then you’ll feel better with it and better with it. But what’s interesting about humans is we are attracted to energy. I used to hate people talking energy talk, because I thought it was like the nerdy woo-woo crap. But it’s so weird and real actually. I notice this in all aspects of my life. When I come home at night, usually I am beat up and tired and worn out. I get up early in the morning, and then I work super hard, I get home and I get out of the car and I come to the door and before I open the door, I’m always like, Okay if I come in like, ugh, my whole family is going to be depressed with me.” They’ll all lower to my energy level. So I sit there and I get into state and I’m like, okay, whew. I open the door and I’m like, “What’s up guys!! I’m home!” and all the sudden my kids are like, “Oh dad’s home!” and they start running in, it’s this huge thing, it’s crazy, and then the tone is set, everyone’s energy is high and the rest of the night’s amazing. When I come in the office, I walk in and realize I’m the leader of this office and if I come in like, “Hey guys, what’s up? Hey Nic, what’s up?” Then everyone’s going to be like {sound effect}. So I’m like, okay when I come in I have to come in here, otherwise everyone is going to be down on a normal level. I have to bring people up. So we walk in the office now and I’m like, “What’s up everybody, how’s it going?” and I’m excited and they’re like, “Oh.” And everyone’s energy rises and the whole company grows together. So l love when Dave walks through the door, have you guys ever noticed this? When Dave walks through the door, I’m at a 10, Dave’s like at a 32 and it’s just like, he wakes up and comes over to my  house at 4:30 in the morning to lift weights. I sleep in an hour later, and I come in at 5:45 or something, and I walk in and I’m just like, “I want to die.” And I walk in and he’s like, “Hey how’s it going?.” I’m like, “Really good man. You’ve been here for an hour.” And all the sudden I’m like, oh my gosh I feel better. Instantly raised up. It’s kind of like tuning forks. Have you noticed this? If you get two tuning forks at different things and you wack one, and you wack the other one, and you bring them close together, what will happen is the waves will increase and they end up going at the exact same level. So energy matters. The higher your energy, the higher everyone else around you will be, on video, on audio, on face…everything, energy matters a lot. So that’s number two, when you’re making videos, thinking about that. Alright number three, okay this, you were like 90% there and I watched the whole thing and I was so excited and then you missed the last piece and I was like, “Oh it was so good.” So a year after that Facebook message came, you did a Facebook live one year later to the day, and he told that story on Facebook live. And I was like, “Oh my gosh this is amazing.” And he told that story, and he was talking about it, and I was emotional, going through the whole thing again. This is so cool, this is so cool. And he told the story about the podcast, and this podcast was an hour long, and the thing and his life changed and all this stuff… And I know that me and a whole bunch of you guys, a whole bunch of entrepreneurs listened to this story and they’re at bated breath, “This is amazing, this is amazing.” And he gets to the very end, “Alright guys, see you tomorrow.” Boom, clicks off. And I was like, “Aaahhh!” How can you leave me in that state?  I need something, I need something. So the note here is I said, make offers for everything. Think about this, at the end when you ended, and everyone’s thinking, I want to hear that episode, where is that? How would it be? Now imagine you take the opportunity at the very end that says, “How many of you guys would like to hear that episode where Russell actually made me a personal podcast? And how many of you guys would actually like if I gave you my commentary about what  I learned and why it was actually important to me? All you gotta do right now is post down below and write ‘I’m in.’ and I’ll add you to my messenger list and I’ll send you that podcast along with the recording where I actually told you what this meant to me.” Boom, now all those people listening are now on his list. Or they can even go opt in somewhere. But all you did was tell the story and everything and we were all sitting with bated breath and I was just like, at the end make the offer. You guys want the stuff I talked about, you want the thing? You want the thing? And then you send them somewhere and now you captured them and consider them longer term and you can do more things with them. It was like, hook, story, dude where’s my offer? Give me something. But it was awesome. How many of you guys felt that way when you listened to that thing and you’re just like, “I don’t even know where to find that episode. Russell’s got eight thousand episodes everywhere, I don’t even know where to look for it.” You could have been like, here’s the link. Just the link….if you guys can’t figure out how to make an offer, go listen to a whole bunch of stuff, find something amazing and be like, “oh my gosh you guys, I was listening to this Tim Ferris podcast, he did like 800 episodes, every one is like 18 hours long, they’re really hard to listen to, but I found this one from 3 ½-4 years ago where he taught this concept and it was insane. It was amazing; I learned this and this. How many of you want to know what that is? Okay, I have the link, if you message me down below I’ll send you the link to exactly where to find that episode.” Everyone will give it to you.  You’ll be like, “But it’s free on the internet Russell.” It doesn’t matter. You know where it’s at and they don’t. They will give you their contact information in exchange for you giving them a direct link to the link. Back before I had anything to give away for opt ins, guess what I used to do. I used to go to YouTube and I would find cool videos from famous people. One of my favorite ones we did was I went and typed in YouTube, “Robert Kiyosaki” because he was one of my big mentors at the time. And there was all these amazing Robert Kiyosaki videos on YouTube for free. Tons of them. Hour long training from Robert Kiyosaki. Four hour long event from Robert Kiyosaki. All this stuff for free listed in YouTube. So I made a little Clickfunnels membership site, I got all the free videos and put them inside a members area and just like, “Tab one, Robert Kiyosaki talking about investing, Robert Kiyosaki talking about stocks, Robert Kiyosaki talking….”  And I just put all the videos in there and made a squeeze page like, “Hey, who wants a whole bunch of free, my favorite Robert Kiyosaki videos?” and I made a little landing page, people opt in, I give them access to the membership site, and then I went and targeted Robert Kiyosaki’s audience and built a huge list off his people. Dream 100. Imagine with Dream 100 instead of doing just one campaign to all the people, if each person in your dream 100 you made a customized membership site with the free content right now, be like, “Hey, you’ve listened to a lot of Grant Cardone, he’s got four podcasts, 5000 episodes, there’s only four that are actually really, really good. Do you guys want to know what they are? Opt in here, I’ll give you the four best episodes of all. I currated all these for you to give you the four best.” And target Grant’s audience with that, now you got all his buyers coming into your world. Is that alright, is that good. Alright number four ties along with this. Number four, start building a list ASAP. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do a call to action to get a list anywhere, have I? After today’s session you’re …..just build a list. If you got nothing from this event at all, every time you do a hook and story, put them somewhere to build a list, because that’s the longevity. Because that’s where if Zuckerberg snaps his finger and you lose all your fans and followings and friends, and all the sudden you’re trying to build over somewhere else, it won’t matter because you’ll have those people somewhere external and now you can message them and bring them back into whatever world you need them to be at. But that’s how you build stability in business. It’s also how you sell this time, you want to sell it the next time and the next time, the list is the key. Funnel Hacking Live, the first Funnel Hacking Live it was a lot of work and we sold out 600 people in the room, and we kept growing the list and growing the list, the next year we did 1200. Then we did 1500, last year was 3000, this year we’re going to be at 5000. We’re building up the list and building up pressure and excitement and then when you release it, it gives you the ability to blow things up really, really fast.  Okay, that was number four. Okay number five, I wrote down integration marketing, adding to other’s offers to build a buyer list. So this is a little sneaky tactic we used to back in the day when I didn’t have my own list, but I had a couple of skills and talents which you do happen to have, which is nice. If you have no skills this won’t work, but if you have skills you’re lucky. So Frank Kern used to do this as well. Frank is sneaky. He used to do this all the time and I saw him doing it and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, he’s brilliant.” So Frank did a one hour presentation somewhere and he called it Mind Control, it wasn’t Mass Control, but it was something like about how to control the minds of your prospects through manipulation and something sneaky. And the title alone was amazing. It was a one hour presentation he gave somewhere. And he put it on these DVDs and what he did, he went to like Dan Kennedy and he’s like, “Hey Dan, you have all of your buyer and you send them this newsletter every single month,” at the time they had 13000 active members, these were their best buyers. He’s like, “This DVD I sell for like a thousand bucks. Do you want to give it to all your people for free?” And Dan’s like, “sure.” And all the sudden the next month, Franks got his best CD with his best stuff in the mailbox of the 13000 best customers, every single person that Dan Kennedy’s been collecting for the last 15 years. So think about this. With your skill set, look at the other people in the market, all the dream 100 who are doing things and how do you create something you can plug into their offers, and every single time one of those people sell a product, your face is popping up as well. It’s called integration marketing, my first mentor Mark Joyner wrote a book called Integration Marketing, it’s a really fast read. You can read it in an hour, but it will get your mind set thinking about it. How can I integrate with what other people are always doing? Because I can go and make a sell, and make another sell, but I was like, when we launched Clickfunnels I was like, “How can I figure out other people’s sales processes that are already happening and somehow inject myself into all these other sales processes?” That way every single time Steven Larsen sells something or someone else sells something, or all these people are selling something, it always somehow gets flown back to me. I want every product, every course, everything happening in the internet marketing world to somehow have people saying my name. That’s my goal. How many of you guy have been to other people’s events and I’m not there and they say my name? It makes me so happy. I get the instagrams from some of you guys, “Hey so and so just said your name.” I’m like, that’s so good. How have I done that? I spent a lot of my life integrating into everybody’s offers. Initially when I first got started, every single person who had a product, I was an interview in everyone’s product. I was like, looking at people launching a product, specific product launches coming, I’d contact them. Product launch is coming up, “Hey man, is there any way I could do a cool thing for your people? I could create this and give it to you and you could plug it into your product?” and everyone’s like, ‘Sure, that’d be awesome.” And all the sudden, boom, they get 5000 new buyers came in and every single one of them got my thing. They’re hearing my name, hearing my voice and it’s just constant integration. I think about how I met Joe Vitale, I talked about that earlier with the greatest showman. He was in an interview in a course I bought from Mark Joyner, I listened to it, fell in love with Joe Vitale, bought his stuff, given him tons of money over the years, a whole bunch of good stuff because he was integrated in that. So looking at other ways to integrate, the skill set that you already have into other people’s marketing channels because then you’re leveraging anytime any of these partners make a sell, you’re getting customers coming through that flow as well. Cool? Nic: Yeah. Russell: That was number five. Number six, I call this one rainmaker projects, because we talked about rainmaker during the first podcast interview. So rainmaker projects are, and again when I first started my career I did tons of these, where it’s like, I was really good at one piece. For you, you’re really good at video and story telling. And I look out here and be like, okay who is someone else here that is awesome? So and so is really good at making a product on Facebook ads. “You’re really good at Facebook ads, so I’ll do the video for this course, you do the Facebook, you do the actual ads for us.” And then, you’re awesome at doing the traffic and you bring in four or five people, like this little avenger team, and you create a cobranded product together and you launch it and everyone makes a bunch of money, split all the money, 50/50/50/50, that makes more than 100,but you know what I’m talking about, everyone splits the money, everyone splits the customer list and all the sudden you’ve all pulled your efforts, your energy, your talents together and everyone leaves with some cash, and you also leave with the customer list, and that’s when you start growing really, really rapidly. When I started I didn’t have a customer list, I had a very small one. But I had a couple of skill sets so that’s why I did tons of these things. That’s like, if you guys know any of my old friends like Mike Filsaime, Gary Ambrose, I could list off all the old partners we had back in the day, and that’s what we did all the time, these little rainmaker projects. We didn’t call them that back in the day, but that’s what it was. It was just like, we all knew what our skill sets were, and it’s like, let’s come together, let’s make a project. This isn’t going to be how we change the world, it’s not going to be something we’re going to scale and grow, but it’s like, it’s going to be a project, we put it together, we launch it, make some money, get some customers, get our name out in the market, and then we step away from it and then we all go back to our own businesses. It’s not like, that’s why it’s funny because a lot of times people are scared of these. Like, “Well, how do we set up the business structure? Who’s going to be the owner? Who’s the boss?” No, none of that. This is an in and out project where all the rainmakers come together and you create something amazing for a short period of time, you split the money and you go back home with the money and the customers. But it gave you a bump in status, a big bump in customer lists, a big bump in cash and then all those things kind of rise and if you do enough of those your status keeps growing and growing and growing, and it’s a really fast easy way to continue to grow. How many of you guys want to do a rainmaker project with Nic right now? Alright, very, very cool. Alright, and then I got one last, this is number seven. This kind of ties back to dream 100. The last thing I talked about was, and again this is kind of for everyone in the group, is the levels of the dream 100. I remember when I first started this process, I first got the concept and I didn’t know it was the dream 100 back then, but I was looking at all the different people that would have been on my dream 100 list. It was Mark Joyner, Joe Vitale, all these people that for me were top tier. Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, and I was like, oh, and I started trying to figure out how to get in those spots. And the more I tried, it was so hard to get through the gatekeeper, it was impossible to get through all these gatekeepers, these people. I was like, “Man don’t people care about me. I’m just a young guy trying to figure this stuff out and they won’t even respond to my calls or my emails. I can’t even get through, I thought these people really cared.” Now to be on the flip side of that, I didn’t realize what life is actually like for that, for people like that. For me, I understand that now at a whole other level. We’ve got a million and a half people on our subscriber list. We have 68000 customers, we’ve got coaching programs, got family, got friends. We have to put up barriers to protect yourself or it’s impossible. I felt, I can’t even tell you how bad I feel having Brent this morning, “Can you tell everyone to not do pictures with me.” It’s not that I don’t want to, but do you want me to tell you what actually happens typically? This is why we have to put barriers around ourselves. Here’s my phone, I’ll be in a room, like Funnel Hacking Live and there will be 3000 people in the room, and I’m walking through and someone’s like, “Real quick, real quick, can I get a picture?” I’m like, “I gotta go.” And they’re like, “It’ll take one second.” And I’m like, ahh, “Okay, fine, quick.” And they’re like, “Hold on.” And they get their phone out and they’re like, “Uh, uh, okay, uh, alright got it. Crap it’s flipped around. Okay, actually can you hold this, my arms not long enough can you hold it? Actually, hey you come here real quick, can you hold this so we can get a picture? Okay ready, one two three cheese.” And they grab the camera and they’re off. And for them it took one second. And that person leaves, and guess what’s behind them? A line of like 500 people. And then for the next like 8 hours, the first Funnel Hacking Live, was anyone here at the first Funnel Hacking Live? I spent 3 ½ hours up front doing pictures with everybody and I almost died afterwards. I’m like, I can’t…but I didn’t know how to say no, it was super, super hard. So I realize now, to protect your sanity, people up there have all sorts of gatekeepers and it’s hard. So the way you get through is not being more annoying, and trying to get through people. The way you get to them is by understanding the levels of that. So I tried a whole bunch of times, and I couldn’t get in so I was like, “Crap, screw those guys. They don’t like me anyway, they must be jerks, I’m sure they’re just avoiding me and I’m on a blacklist….” All the thoughts that go through your head. And at that time, I started looking around me. I started looking around and I was like, “hey, there’s some really cool people here.” And that’s when I met, I remember Mike Filsaime, Mike Filsaime at the time had just created a product he launched and he had like a list of, I don’t know, maybe 3 or 4 thousand people. And I remember I created my first product, Zipbrander, and I was all scared and I’m like ,”Hey Mike, I created this thing Zipbrander.” And he messaged back, “Dude that’s the coolest thing in the world.” A couple of things, Mike didn’t have a gatekeeper, it was just him. He got my email, he saw it, and he was like, “This is actually cool.” I’m like, “Cool, do you want to promote it?” and he’s like, “Yes, I would love to promote it.” I’m like, oh my gosh. I had never made a sale online at this point, by the way, other than a couple of little things that fell apart. I never actually made a sale of my own product. Zipbrander was my very first, my own product that I ever created. So Mike was that cool, he sent an email to his list, his 5000 person list, they came over, I had this little pop up that came to the site and bounced around, back in the day. I had 270 people opt in to my list from Mike’s email to it, and I think we made like 8 or 10 sales, which wasn’t a lot, but 67 that’s $670, they gave me half, I made $350 on an email and gained 300 people on my list. I’m like, oh my gosh this is amazing. And I asked Mike, “Who are the other people you hang out with? I don’t know very many people.” And he’s like, “Oh dude, you gotta meet this guy, he’s awesome.” And he brought me to someone else, and I’m like, “Oh this is cool. “ and Mike’s like, “Dude, I promoted Zipbrander, it was awesome, you should promote it.” And then he’s like, “Oh cool.” And he promoted Zipbrander. I’m like, oh my gosh, I got another 30-40 people on my list and there were a couple more sales. And then I asked him, “Who do you know?” and there was someone else, and we stared doing this thing and all the sudden there were 8 or 10 of us who were all at this level and we all started masterminding, networking, figuring things out, cross promote each other and what happened, what’s interesting is that all of our little brands that were small at the time started growing, and they started growing, and they started growing. All the sudden we were at the next tier. And when we got to the next tier all the sudden all these new people started being aware of us and started answering our calls and doing things, and Mike’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I met this guy who used to be untouchable.” And he brought him in and brought them in and all the sudden we’re at the next level. And we started growing again and growing again. And the next thing we know, four years later I get a phone call from Tony Robbins assistant, they’re like, “Hey I’m sitting in a room and I got Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, all these guys are sitting in a room with Tony Robbins and he thinks that you guys are the biggest internet nerds in the world, he’s obsessed with it and he wants to know if he can meet you in Salt Lake in like an hour.” What? Tony Robbins? I’ve emailed him 8000 times, he’s never responded even once, I thought he hated me. Not that he hated me, it’s that he had so many gatekeepers, he had no idea who I was. But eventually you start getting value and you collectively as a level of the dream 100 becomes more and more powerful. Eventually people notice you because you become the bigger people. And each tier gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So my biggest advice for you and for everybody is understanding that. Yes, it’s good to have these huge dreams and big people, but start looking around. There are so many partnerships to be had just inside this room. How many deals have you done with people in this room so far? Nic: Quite a few. Russell: More than one, right. Nic: Yeah, more than one. Russell: Start looking around you guys. Don’t always look up, up, up and try to get this thing. Look around and realize collectively, man, start doing the crossings because that’s how everyone starts growing together and there will be a time where I’ll be coming to you guys begging, “Can you please look at my stuff you guys, I have this thing called Clickfunnels. You may have heard of it. Can you please help me promote it?” And that’s what’s going to happen, okay. So the level of the dream 100 is the last thing, just don’t discount that. Because so many people are like swinging for the fence and just hoping for this homerun like I was, and it’s funny because I remember eventually people would respond to me, that I was trying for before, and they’d contact me. And I was like, oh my gosh. I realized, I thought this person hated me, I thought I was on a black list. I was assuming they were getting these emails and like, “oh, I hate this. Russell’s a scammer.” In my head right. They never saw any of them. Until they saw me, and they reached out to me and the whole dynamic shifted. So realizing that, kind of looking around and start building your dream 100 list, even within this room, within the communities that you’re in, because there’s power in that. And as you grow collectively, as a group, everyone will grow together, and that’s the magic. So that was number seven. So to recap the seven really quick. Number one, tell your story way too much, to the point where you’re so annoyed and so sick and tired of hearing it that everybody comes to you, and then keep telling it even some more. Number two, in everything you’re doing, energy matters a lot. To the point, even above what you think you’re comfortable with and do that all the time. Number three, make offers for everything. Hook, story, don’t leave them hanging, give them an offer because they’ll go and they will feel more completed afterwards. Number four, start building a list, it ties back to the first thing. Make an offer, get them to build your list, start growing your list because your list is your actual business. Number five, integration marketing. Look for other people’s marketing channels and how you can weave what you do into those channels, so you can get free traffic from all the people who are doing stuff. Number five, create rainmaker projects, find really cool things and bring four or five people together and make something amazing. Share the cash, share the customer list, elevate your status, elevate your brand, and it’s really fun to do because you get to know a whole bunch of people. And Number seven, understanding the levels of the dream 100. Find the people at your level and start growing with them together collectively as you do that, and in a year, two years, three years, five years Tony Robbins will be calling you, asking you to make his video and it will be amazing. Does that sound good? Awesome.

Managing Your Team With Todd Pavlou How to Make Sure That You Have Sustainable Growth  I've got Todd here from Facta and he's going to tell us how you can make sure that growth is sustainable and that the dynamics of your team stay as good as day one. So Todd, how do you make sure that introducing new blood doesn't destroy the old wood? Todd: Team dynamics are so flexible and ever-changing. Even teams that have been together for years and years, the dynamics will shift because people evolve and things happen to individuals both at work and away from work that have an impact. So team dynamics is something that is a constant no matter what. But when you bring new people into your team, it automatically changes the dynamics because you've got another cog in the wheel. With the budget changes and the government trying to stimulate employment, there are incentives there for people to be able to be employed. But there are also some unintended consequences to that where business owners need to be aware that as they bring new people in that they're introduced to the team in the right way so that the dynamics of the team don't become unsettled. Hopefully, those new people actually add to the team from a cultural perspective.  Does Business Size Matter? Let's say one of our community members has got a cracking team of 10, or a cracking team of 20, or a cracking team of 100. It doesn’t really matter what the number is, but they are in a state of comfort. Everyone seems to be working enough, their churn rates are pretty low in regards to their staff turnover, and everything seems to be cruising along. Now, let's say you introduce 20% more staff on those numbers. Does the size of your business really matter a whole bunch as to how much it's going to change and shape up the way that the business growth has occurred? Todd: From my perspective, whether you're a big business or a small business, you're still a group of people. The bigger your business gets, the more groups you've got within it, but the fundamentals remain the same. I think the key from my perspective is understanding that everybody's different. Everybody comes with their own experiences, their own culture, their own family history, their own work history. Everybody's a combination of their previous experience. It’s really important to understand that no matter how big your business is, no matter how small your business is, you need to know that the individual person within the team is still the most important facet. So always keeping in mind that the individual is a person who brings their own strengths, weaknesses, areas for improvement, and abilities is key. When you bring a new person into the team, they're automatically going to adjust the feel of the team. There's going to be some people that are going to embrace those individuals and some that will be more standoffish. It's about bringing a new person in, and actually really focusing and spending the time to induct them and make them part of the team.  What happens in so many businesses is that an individual comes in on day one, and they haven't got their passwords, because the company doesn’t have a reliable I.T partner. They don't have their systems and processes in place. This means that automatically on day one, they're off on the wrong foot. So it's fundamental to long term success is making sure that you bring the right people in and induct them. Profiling Your Team It comes down to documentation and your processes. As you said, getting off on the right foot shows that you've got these things in place and there is a structure to your business. One of the things you want to make sure that you are doing is profiling. It only takes a few questions, and we've incorporated that into our onboarding process. Before someone joins the team, we know what type of person they are in a fun way. Using a profiling tool, such as Myers Briggs or DISC to understand if they will get along well with other team members is a little fun test. So would you say it's a sensible idea to start profiling straight at the start?  Todd: I’m a strong believer in having that profile at the very start. I think what's happened at times is that the concept of behavioural profiling has gotten a bad rap for reasons such as it's not effective to put people in boxes and it makes people feel inadequate, but my view on it is it’s all about how you communicate it. From our perspective, our business is all about building user guides for workplace relationships. So what we mean by that is that for you and I just to be able to communicate effectively, it makes sense for us to know a little bit about each other, and about how we tick so that we can adjust and adapt our communication styles to be able to get the best out of our interactions. Too many of us rightly are comfortable with who we are, and we communicate in the way that we feel comfortable with. That's natural, right, our brains don't have to work too hard. But unfortunately, if we're very different people, we need different things to have effective communication. So often communication will break down because of the why. I've got an example right now with a customer that I'm doing some work with. They have two individuals in the workplace that are constantly in conflict with each other. It's got to a point now where it's unworkable, and we basically need a mediator to be able to keep these guys in the workplace. My view of the investigation is that most of this comes down to a lack of communication. It comes down to them seeing exactly the same situation, but in different ways because of the type of people they are and the way that they see the world. Now, if on day one they were given a little bit of insight into how the other person thought and acted, perhaps they'd have some more empathy and be able to actually engage more effectively.  They're all just tools to help us understand people further and it's about having the ability to relate to someone else. In a work environment, you have to spend eight hours a day with that person, sometimes longer than you're spending with your partner. It’s really important to be able to get along with people. You can also apply these tools to a business that's well established and still gain massive advantages. How it Can Work Todd: I'll tell you about an organisation that we did just that. They're an organisation with about 70 or 80 people spread across Australia. There are four locations with staff ranging from a blue-collar workshop guy all the way through to your accounts payable CFO. It was fair to say that there were some cultural disconnects, and they were communication breakdowns. I went in and did a full diagnostic. The things that came out of that was that there wasn't a clear process, and the training was insufficient for people to be able to do their job. But the thing that tied it all together was a lack of communication and breakdowns in communication. If people did a deep dive into their business, they'd see that process, training and communication is the root cause of the kind of issues that they might be facing.  So the first thing that we did to help communication was to get a better understanding of each other. We put everybody through the profiling tool we use, which is DISC. We use it because it's really, really simple.  It’s based on four behavioural types: Dominance Influence Steadiness Conscientious  They are all based on two different matrix lines. One is about how direct or indirect a person is for their communication, and the other one is about how open or guarded they are with their communication. So I like to use the ideas of whether they're either an open or a closed book, or they'll communicate with you like a hammer or communicate with you like a wet newspaper.  Once you can actually start to listen to how a person talks and how they behave. So we went through that whole process using this tool with this business of approximately 70 people. What we found is that when you put all the profiles onto what they call a wheel, you can see where everybody sits on that wheel. You can start to identify just by looking at this wheel where the elements of conflict can come in. So somebody who's very task focused, very fast paced, sometimes can rub people the wrong way, because they're very brash. Once we started to plot all these individuals, and started to join the dots on where the conflict points were coming from, we're actually able to share a data point rather than an opinion about where it might be the root causes of those conflicts can occur.  Knowledge is power, and once people understand themselves a little bit more, and then also understand how their behavioural style can interact with another, you can start to build that empathy, build that understanding and start to improve communication. That changed that organisation's mindset. It is really important to understand that it's not about putting somebody in a box. So for example, I’m a very high DI, so somebody who's very task-focused, fast-paced, and people-focused to a certain degree. But that doesn't mean I can't focus on the details, it just means it's harder and it's less natural for me to do so. When you are profiling from the start it allows you as a leader to understand where that individual strengths are, where they're going to get their energy from, and try to avoid putting them into roles or asking them to do tasks that they're just not made for. But if you ask them to do that for an extended period of time, they're going to lose energy, they're going to get tired, and you normally find that they're putting their hand up for more breaks and more holidays and more time away from work.  Finding Common Ground It is the square peg in a round hole type situation. Do you find that before your profiling that there is a natural grouping within the profile? People who have just resonated and naturally pulled themselves together, you might see it during the lunch break where those people are hanging out together without being grouped into a box.  Todd: If you looked at it that way, it's the 80/20 rule, right? Birds of a feather kind of flock together. If you're going to spend your social time or your lunchroom time together, you don't want tension, you don't want friction. That normally will be subsided if you're with people that have like-minded interests and personality types, but there's always the exception, right? This is the thing about not putting people in boxes, if you've got commonality, and if you find common ground, you can engage with anybody. So really being mindful of who you are as an individual, your strengths, your areas for improvement, but then really focus on okay, how do I need to adapt with those around me to get the best communication. How Good Can the Results Be? I think what a lot of people are thinking is how does this affect the bottom line, and more importantly, the efficiency of the business. I can only imagine people are taking less days off if morale is high in the workplace. People are feeling more comfortable in the work that they're doing and feel that they can communicate with more people in their team without having to feel out if there is friction or indifference between them. What have you seen as a generalisation after a team has been optimised? Todd: There's plenty of data and statistics out there, but I think intuitively we all know and we've all been in a workplace where it just feels right. There's low friction, there's high trust, and you'll bend over backwards to get to that organisation. Let me illustrate it with a point where you don't have that and you have low trust and friction. Most of it's based on a lack of understanding. I was working with a customer where we had a manager, let's call him Bill. We had one of his team members, let's call him Phil. Bill and Phil worked in a cubicle setup and were next to each other. For two years, the manager would come in, and he put his head on his desk and literally physically put his head on his desk. For two minutes he would hope and pray that Bill would resign that day. Imagine that environment, you'll come in for two years, hoping that the guy next to you pulls the pin so you no longer have to engage with him. When you pull it all apart, it was a lack of understanding of where the other person was coming from. One was a very high conscientious type who was very good at using the database and was very focused on processes. On the other side of the wheel, Phil was not the system guy, he was anti-system. But he was hugely focused on the customer, building relationships, and building those bonds and delivering for his customer.  You put them together, and they are probably the perfect individual for the business. But what they both valued and what they're behavioural types gravitated to was completely different. The conflict caused massive disruption in so many ways, including with customers leaving. So you can measure this scenario in how many customers left because of this conflict. The amount of sick leave that was taken from both individuals was well exceeded and into the red. So based on average salaries, this was costing thousands and thousands of dollars. It was having a massive impact on those around them and their teammates. Can you imagine coming into work knowing that this tension and friction is there in front of you every day? Not too many people can just put that to the side. That was having an impact on their productivity. There are some hard costs there that you can measure, but there are also so many soft costs. These include what was happening to people's psyche, what was happening to their mental wellness, and just their overall health.  Put Complete Trust In Your Team What you said around having a business, people love it your team is pulling together. With the COVID stuff that's happened, I can comfortably say we had a bit of a decline. I spoke to the staff about it and said we're going to have to chop some hours here and there. They said what do you think if you just dropped out pay but we just work through this and we come out the other side even stronger. It made me feel so amazing that I had a team that was there, it was so supportive it nearly made me cry.  We're working together like a team of unicorns and anyone can have that team, you just need to be able to understand how people work within the team. We have a hard discussion Friday, where once a month we go through and talk about what was something that someone did that you hated, or something that someone did that you really liked. It's good to be able to work out who they are and how to work together to be able to make sure that you are addressing the elephant in the room in the best way possible. Todd: Question for you. Why do you think you've been able to lead your team to the point where they're prepared to sacrifice like they have? We all believe in the vision is what I'd like to say. Why are we in business? Why do we do what we do? Why do businesses gravitate to us instead of another I.T company? What makes us different to anyone else? We sit down and we talk about that. Another thing we do discuss quite a lot is, what do you hate to do in your role?  Your Best Employees Don’t Need to Be Your Managers We make sure that if you've got a fantastic engineer, that doesn't mean that now you put them in a position of being a manager. Instead, you can pay them more than the manager, and they can still be a fantastic engineer, if that's what they like doing. It doesn't mean that they need to go up the hierarchy of the managing ladder, you can still reward them in other ways.  Another thing to consider is how do people work with rewards? We have very financially focused people, while other people are very happy to see different words of appreciation and accolades that they're getting. So it's about understanding what that carrot is for them and working with them. My first contractor was 10 and a half years ago, and I was lucky that we work together so well. After that, I've gone through my bout of understanding how to find the right people. That's changed around our interviewing process. It's unique enough that News.com.au found out about it and interviewed me on my interviewing process.  It comes down to understanding the person before you put them into a role that you don't want to have them in, and then understanding what drives them. What's their success? Is it spending time with the kids on the weekend? Or is it spending time on a surfboard? Or is it building stuff? One of the big things is just having someone give you a truthful answer. Don't hire a guy who says, I just love working, you're going to get into trouble.  What To Do As a Leader Todd: There's no cookie-cutter approach, everybody's an individual. You're looking to understand what motivates them, and then what environment you can provide so they can be their best. I'm a big believer that I can't motivate you, you can't motivate me, but what we can do in a leadership role is be able to provide the best environment for that individual to be able to find their own motivation and be able to reach their own goals. Unfortunately, it isn't common in a lot of organisations to have critical conversations, so many leaders shy away from that. I believe if they're better armed with an understanding of how is this person likely to react, how's the best way to be able to communicate with them, how's the best way for me to be able to get my message across with this individual, you go into those conversations with a whole lot more confidence, and nine times out of 10, you'll be able to get a better outcome.  We had one of our customers using our system to be able to plan a difficult conversation with a forthright and aggressive employee. By having the insights into what to say and what not to say and how to say it, they were able to get a positive outcome. In the past, they had conflict and negativity and hadn't been able to achieve that goal.  Use Their Motivations That's what you want to have, you want to have a family of people that you can have outside of your family that you can communicate with and work with. Some of the things that drive and motivate people are using their own ideas. One of our employees, he said, I would just love to be able to use some software that we're using to build integrations. He's part of the open-source community and said he really likes giving back, so I said go for it. I told him to feel free to spend 15, 20% of your time being paid to make this stuff which he was very happy about. It's just about finding what that carrot is for the person and how they communicate what's important to them. How Todd Can Help You  If you don't have these systems in place, you should definitely be jumping across to Facta and see if you can get ahold of Todd so you can have your business refocused. What would you say are some of the things they could expect to get out of having a quick conversation with you? Todd: To me, it's all about the three key parts. For somebody to have a conversation with us around helping them you need to, first of all, acknowledge that everybody's different. Then once you acknowledge something, you can spend some time understanding it. Thirdly, which is normally the hardest part, is then learning how to act differently. That's the framework that we work on with our customers. It is a process, it is a journey, it is a commitment, it's hard to change your natural style, it's hard to change, but the benefits personally and for business is so worthwhile. Investing to understand the personalities and the behavioural types of individuals at work. The benefits are, as I said, personal and work-wise, but it's a task worth taking on, that's for sure. Anyone out there, jump across, check it out, and you can't go wrong. What do you have to lose? It's just all the benefits. One last question before we head off. If anyone out there wants to be reading a book on something that could help out their process, what would be your favourite book around this? Todd: Now I won't give you the DISC manual, because that's pretty dry. The one that I'd suggest that I keep coming back to is a book called The Culture Code. It's a book as the name suggests all about culture. It profiles organisations from high profile sporting ones down to some that you never would have heard from, and some of the commonalities that those organisations have. It shows you how they build a really robust, strong, independent culture that stands the test of time, and a lot of focus on how leaders create that culture. Anything else you'd like to leave us with before you head off?Todd: The final message is just about acknowledging that we're different. Understand those differences. Then the hardest part is to act differently. You will see the benefits.

The exciting conclusion of the presentation I gave at Stephen Larsen’s OfferMind event. On this episode you will hear the exciting conclusion to Russell’s presentation from OfferMind about level 10 Opportunities. Here are some of the things to listen for in today’s episode: Find out how level 10 opportunities came onto Russell’s radar. Hear how Russell met Todd and see what they thought their level opportunity was going to be originally. And see how they managed to build Clickfunnels, after Russell had been trying to develop something similar for 10 years prior. So listen here to find out how you can be on the lookout for your own level 10 opportunity.  ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you guys enjoyed last episode on finding your level 10 opportunity. So this is going to be the exciting conclusion of that presentation that I gave at Stephen Larsen’s OfferMind. And it’s not the whole presentation, it’s the intro. I talked about 30 minutes about finding your level 10 opportunity. And I think it’s a mindset thing because so many people need to get, you know, they hear me talk a lot of times about One Funnel Away, you’re one funnel away. And they’re waiting for this funnel that’s going to change everything. No, no, no, no, you have to multiple funnels. Your first funnel, your second, your third, you keep doing these funnels until you find your thing. And that’s what I wanted to share with you guys. So that’s kind of the context, and with that said I hope you guys enjoy the conclusion of this presentation about how to find your level 10 opportunity. I want to fast forward to 8 or 9 years ago, 7 or 8, I don’t know. I’m so bad at years. Some people are like, “In 1996” I can never remember. I was in Kenya, that’s all I remember. So I was in Kenya, and it was my wife and I had a whole bunch of marketing nerds, and most of them had wives too, and this was back before there were too many female entrepreneurs, I don’t think we had any female entrepreneurs on that trip. And the last time we went to Kenya we had like half of them that were female entrepreneurs, which is a huge testament to the females. I love it. It makes me happy every single time I see that. But back then we were all hanging out and I remember because we did this long ride inside of this little jeep, and it was my wife and I and then 2 or 3 other couples, and all the dudes were talking business and all the wives were annoyed. So we got to this stop where we had lunch and then all the wives were like, “Do you guys mind if we go in this jeep over here, and you guys go in this jeep because we don’t want to hear you talk anymore.” We’re like, “But it’s like a 4 hour drive.” They’re like, “Exactly. We do not want to go for 4 more hours with you guys.” We’re like, “Oh, I guess.” So we jump in another jeep, and I’m sitting next to this guy named Bill Harrison, anyone here know Bill? A couple of you guys. Okay. Bill is probably one of the smartest marketing dudes I’ve ever met. So for context, he’s married now, but when I first met him, he was probably, I don’t know, 50, never been married. I might have got that wrong. But he was obsessed with marketing, and his house, I saw pictures of it. You go in his house, imagine a bachelor pad, but he’s rich, so it’s a big bachelor pad, and every room from floor to ceiling is marketing and sales books. He didn’t have bookshelves anymore because he can’t handle it. Every single room is just piled with books. In fact, he used to send me boxes of books as gifts. He’s like, ‘Hey Brunson, I just sent you a bunch of books.” And I’d show up and there’s like a microwave box with like 500 books in it. And I’m like, “Are these good?” He’s like, ‘Oh, they’re all good. I’m not going to send you crappy books.” I’m like, “This is amazing.” So Bill is one of the smartest dudes I’ve ever met when it comes to marketing and sales, like obsessed. You guys think I’m obsessed, he’s that to the next level. He’s awesome. Anyway, so we’re sitting in this jeep geeking out about all sorts of stuff, having a bunch of fun. And we’re like 2 ½ hours into this bumpy jeep ride talking and he tells me this story that just, man, it rocked everything, my whole world. And I’m probably I don’t know, like 6 pages into funnel building at the time. I’ve done a million different things, launched a bunch of stuff, had some successes, had a lot of losses, but as a whole we were doing really well. And we’re sitting there in this jeep and we’re talking and he says, “Man, it’s so interesting.” He’s like, “I feel like I’m one of the best marketers in the world. Russell, I feel like you are too. We’re some of the best, most passionate people who geek out about this the most, but do you know what the biggest problem is?” I’m like, ‘What?” because I would love to know. I’m doing well, but I would love to do more. And he’s like, “We have the wrong opportunity.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, and he goes on, “I have this friend, who he is not a good marketing dude at all. He’s maybe like a level 2 skill set of being a marketer. But he got into this opportunity with this big company and he was able to apply his level 2 skill set into a level 10 opportunity. They just took their company public for over a billion dollars, he cashed out and made insane amounts of money, because he had a level 10 opportunity.” And he’s like, “If I look at this, as I see in this jeep, I feel like I’ve got a level 10 skill set, and my company, while it does really, really good, I feel like it’s like a level 3 or maybe a level 4 opportunity, with a level 10 skill set. So because of that I’m only able to get to a certain level. The same thing is true for you dude. You’re at a level 10 skill set, but you’re looking at level 2 maybe level 3 opportunity, that’s why you’re stuck at this thing.’ I was like, oh my gosh. I’d never thought about that. And I was a little frustrated and I was like, well crap, what’s my level 10 opportunity. I don’t even know what that is, or what it could be. I felt like all the stuff I was doing was good. And if you look at the, you know, I look at all the people through my lens and I’m doing better than all the people around me, like my friends, my family, stuff like that, I’m making more money. But man, what is actually possible? And I didn’t know. I remember coming home from that trip and just thinking, well, what’s my level 10 opportunity. I didn’t know, but I didn’t stop everything like “Well, I’m just going to wait until it comes here.” I was just like, okay, now I know that I’m looking for a level 10 opportunity. And I want to make sure that as I, when I find it that I’m ready and prepared for it. If they would have handed me Clickfunnels 8 years ago and like, ‘Here, run this thing.” guess what would have happened? I would have crashed it to the ground and burnt it and it would have been a really bad, painful, public humiliation in front of everybody. I wasn’t ready for it. But now I knew that I have my eye set, I’m going for a level 10 opportunity, but until that happens I’m going to move forward. I’m going to do the next one and the next one. I’m going to try this one and this one and this one and this one. And hopefully in that journey I’m going to have faith as I’m running as fast as I can, I’m looking for opportunities, I’m trying to find stuff and figure things out. And the right people are going to come into my life. I’m going to be introduced to people, I’m going to find opportunities, and maybe this one’s not the big success, but I’m going to open the door for the next one and the next one, and maybe I meet someone through the deal. I don’t know what that’s going to be, but I’m going to run with faith as fast as I can and just do funnel after funnel, after funnel. But I’m going to have my eyes open, looking for what is that level 10 opportunity. So that’s how it started. So from that point forward I started looking. And as I started looking, these weird opportunities started coming into my path. And some of them weren’t really pleasant. One of them I built a huge company up and the whole thing burnt and crashed to the ground. And that was really painful. Firing 80 people overnight is not fun. And I’m not going to get deep into the pain of that story, but it was bad. And I thought like, man, this whole thing I don’t even have a level 0 opportunity now. I got nothing. But I kept moving forward, and as I was moving forward I was trying thing after thing, after thing, and I remember in this process of trying a bunch of stuff, I remember buying this website because I was like, “This has got to be a level 10 opportunity.” So I bought this site, it was called championsound.com. Anyone here ever heard of Champion Sound? No, because it never, one person. Because it’s one of the ones on the list. It didn’t do anything though. I bought it off flippa.com, I tried to launch it, it didn’t work, we had some people sign up and started buying it. The software crashed, it was like an email and text message auto-responder for bands. I was like, “Gall, I thought this was going to be a level 10 opportunity.” Maybe like, I’m doing this thing. And in the pain of this thing not working I was trying to find a developer to help me fix this software. I went to, what was it back then Upwork, or Odesk, I can’t remember what. I was trying to find someone to hire to fix the site, and I was trying thing after thing and I couldn’t find anybody to fix it. And finally I was just frustrated like, “Alright, this isn’t going to work.” So I sent an email to the host and said basically, “Shut down the site, it’s not going to work. I don’t want to support the people, it doesn’t work, I can’t fix it.” And then I was walking out the door to leave, and as I was walking out the door I had this thought. And the thought I heard for a second it said, “There’s probably someone on your list who could fix this for you.” I’m like, my list? My list isn’t that big. There’s not people who are developers. It’s just like, but I’m like, alright. I try to listen when I hear voices like that. I’m like, alright. So I walked back into the office, I turned my computer back on, I send an email out and it just says, “If you know Ruby on Rails, I’m looking for a partner.” And I just kind of told them the story, “I got a site, it’s not working, it’s broken. I’m going to throw it away, but if you know Ruby on Rails, and want to be partner, email me back.” I sent it out there and an hour later I get an email from this dude in Atlanta who looks like he’s younger than me, which is kind of funny, except he’s got a beard. And I click on it and read this thing, he’s like, “I’m a Ruby on Rails developer, and I’d love to look at it.” So I send the login, he logs in, I go to bed and wake up in the morning and it’s like, “all the issues are fixed. Here you go.” And that was Todd Dickerson, who came into my world. And what’s crazy, Todd, it’s fascinating because Todd came into my world at the bottom of everything, broke, broke. Out of money, nothing left. And he came in and he came in a weird spot and he’s like, “I want to come work with you.” And I’m like, ‘I can’t pay you.” And he’s like, “That’s cool. I’ll just work for free.” And he worked for free for over a year. Coming in because he was just like, same thing, looking for an opportunity, looking for an opportunity. So we’re like a year into this relationship, friendship, working on different projects. And we went to a Traffic and Conversion event together and I could tell, I remember how broke we were because we shared a room. This is probably 7 years ago now, so we’re sharing a room and that night we’re walking around hanging out and I see Bill Harrison and we bump into each other again, and we start talking. And somehow in this conversation the whole level 10 opportunity thing came up again, which was kind of random because it was just like a freak thing. We talked for like 15 minutes and we left, and it reminded me of this thing in Kenya that happened a couple of years earlier. I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot about that. So that night I told Todd, I was like, “Look, this is the deal.” I told him the idea that I just told you guys about a level 10 opportunity. And Todd’s like, ‘Dude, what’s our level 10 opportunity?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Do you know?” He’s like, “No.” I’m like, “Crap, we gotta figure this thing out.” And then we’re like, “Oh my gosh, I know exactly what it is. It’s this thing and it’s going to be called, WPUndies.” And we got the word press logo and we got someone to design it with underwear, tighty-whitey’s on it and we were freaking out excited. And Todd started coding this thing, and it’s one of the things on this list down here, I’m not sure which page it is. But we’re like, ‘Dude, this is the big idea. It’s going to be this thing that you put on your word press site like underwear that helps protect it. And a third of all the websites in the world are on word press. It’s going to be insanely big.” So we’re so freaking out on our level 10 opportunity we start working, we start building this thing, and we’re doing it. And as we’re building it we find out that word press sucks because you plug in a thing, and then you have like 8000 different hosts, and somebody shifts the hosting over here and over here. And after we got the thing out there, we’re trying to support like 5 customers, we’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is the worst business we ever were in. This is not a level 10 opportunity.” We start freaking out and we’re not sure what to do and Todd’s flying back to Boise to plan, “Okay, what’s the next thing we’re going to do?” And on the flight over, Todd lives in Atlanta, he’s in the airport at like, I don’t know, I was still asleep here in Boise. It was the same day, some of you guys have heard this story before, it was the same day that leadpages got $5 million dollars in funding. So Todd’s jumping on a plane, reads this article and then he forwards it to me. And he jumps in the air, he’s in the air for 4 hours flying to Boise. And he’s flying, he’s just livid because Todd is the most genius developer in the world, and he knows that leadpages sucks. And he’s like, ‘I could build this today.” So I wake up in the morning and I read the article, I’m like, ‘Leadpages? That software sucks, we could build this today.” He shows up into the office, he walks in little Todd is all angry. I’m like, ‘What?” He’s like, “Leadpages got $5 million. What are they doing that we’re not doing?” I’m like, ‘I don’t know.” He’s like, “I could build Leadpages today. Do you want to build it.” I’m like, “Yes, we’re gonna build leadpages, we’re going to take them out.” We’re all excited. “This is our level 10 opportunity. We’ll get $5 million in funding too, it’s going to be awesome.” So we’re so excited, and then Todd asks this question, “Well, if we’re gonna set it up from the ground up, do you want to make it better than leadpages?” I’m like, “Heck yeah.” And he’s like, “What do you want?” and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, are you serious? Let me show you.” And I started showing him like all of these, “I want to be able to do this by myself without you guys because you guys are way too… I want to be able to do this. I can’t do Photoshop and Front page and all these people to do this.” And that started this journey onto Clickfunnels. Let me show you guys real quick, if you pull my slides up, level 10 opportunity, and this is kind of a side story, before somewhere in this journey, actually before I met Todd, it wasn’t like Clickfunnels was a unique idea. I wasn’t the first person to think like, “We should build software that makes it easy to build funnels.” I wasn’t the first person. In fact, this was in 2005, this was the first time I tried to build it and we called it Clickdotcom.com that would have been confusing huh. I would tell people that, “So Click.com?” “No, clickdotcom.com” they’re like, “Wait? What?” I’m like, “No, it’s…” Anyway, so this was the first time I was like, ‘If we build this, it’ll be huge.” So that was here in Boise, I ended up hiring 6 developers. I was selling all this crap and I was trying to take all the money to build this. I thought this was going to be huge. 2005, so this was like almost 10 years earlier we had tried this. And this was all different pages, if you look at it it’s kind of funny because I think we called it, it was before sales funnels, I think we called them sales processes and sales flows before we ever called them funnels. But we had built the whole software, we designed it and tried to build it. It’s funny because I talk about how if I would have got Clickfunnels 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. And its what happened. We tried it 10 years before I had Todd. I didn’t have the right people. And it crashed and burned. Again, we spent probably 2 or 3 years trying to build this, ran out of money during that whole crash, we gave up on it. That’s why when I did meet Todd and I asked him, can we build it? Part of me was like, “I’ve tried it before. I know other people who have tried it. I had a lot of other business partners, not business partners but friends who sat down like, and tried it as well. It just didn’t work. It was a good idea that just wasn’t simple to do. But we met Todd and then Dylan and made it possible. So this was 131 funnels later, this is the night that we started on the Clickfunnels project. It’s the only picture I have from that night. I wish we would have done more. So this is Todd here on the right hand side, some of you guys know Todd. On the left hand side is Dylan, and Dylan is no longer part of Clickfunnels, but he was one of the original cofounders with us. Dylan’s the one who built the original editor. So if any of you guys like the editor, that’s Dylan’s brainchild. He had spent 6 or 7 years prior trying to build a website editor for himself, we started building Clickfunnels we partnered together and plugged it all into one super system. But I wanted to share this story with you guys because as soon as we were aware of a level 10 opportunity, our eyes started looking for it, but we didn’t stop. I want, hopefully that gives some, a lot of you guys out here, especially ones who you’ve been doing this for a year or less than that, or a couple of years, who just  haven’t hit it yet, or you’ve had marginal successes. Don‘t stop. The key is not waiting for the big opportunity. “I’m waiting for my Clickfunnels.” It’s do your thing as fast as you can and keep doing it, and doing it, and keep doing it. And as you keep doing it, you’ll get better and you’ll get better, and eventually it will get worthy enough that when a level 10 opportunity shows up you’ll be prepared for it. That’s the key. So don’t get upset like “Oh my funnel didn’t work. This thing didn’t work.” It’s going to be tough, there’s going to be frustrations, things aren’t always going to work the very first time, or the third time, but if you keep doing it and keep doing it, for me it was 131 times before I hit my big thing. And I’m hoping for you guys, you get it a lot faster than that. But even if you don’t, it’s worth it. I’m now, man, 16 years in this business, and it’s funny because I get people all the time they’re like, “You guys just came out of nowhere.” And it’s like, yeah. 16 years, that’s a long time I’ve been focusing on this. But it’s something I’m obsessed with and just kept doing it, and kept doing it and kept doing it. And when you keep doing your thing, the opportunities appear, they show up, and if you’ve done the work you’ll be prepared and ready for them.

Let's talk about paint.....Corvette paint. Steve Garrett talks with Todd Cooperider, a Master Detailer who owns Esoteric Detail in Columbus, Ohio. Not only does Todd and Esoteric work on very high-end cars like Ferrari and Pagani, he is also a Corvette owner (C7 ZR1). So Todd has worked on and knows about Corvette paint, first hand. Don't miss this episode of CORVETTE TODAY!

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="no" equal_height_columns="no" menu_anchor="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="center center" background_repeat="no-repeat" fade="no" background_parallax="none" parallax_speed="0.3" video_mp4="" video_webm="" video_ogv="" video_url="" video_aspect_ratio="16:9" video_loop="yes" video_mute="yes" overlay_color="" video_preview_image="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding_top="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" padding_right=""][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" center_content="no" last="no" min_height="" hover_type="none" link=""][fusion_text]Listen via YouTube video if desired[/fusion_text][fusion_youtube id="https://youtu.be/pmbM8PPmINo " alignment="center" width="" height="" autoplay="false" api_params="&rel=0" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" /][fusion_text] Transcription (was completed by automated process. Please ignore any speech-to-text errors)   When bad things happen - Part 3 - when evil acts.mp3 Hi, everybody, this is Penny Thomas again, and welcome to this next session of Get Sellers Calling You with Beatty Carmichael. Beatty is the CEO of Master Grabber, creator of Agent Dominator and one of the top marketing experts in the real estate field. Beatty, I'm excited for our listeners today. I'm excited to be chatting with you. What do you have for us today?   [00:00:24] Well, I'm really excited about today's call for two reasons. Number one, we get to do another radical faith call. And so for those of you who may just be joining in on our podcast, if you're joining in for real estate marketing, this is not going to be one of those episodes. This is where we're going to be talking about living as a Christian. And so if you don't want that, go and get this episode and go to the next one. So that's number one reason I'm excited as we get to do a radical faith call. The second reason I'm excited is as I was preparing for this call, it dawned on me that the conclusions that the scriptures talk about that we're going to talk about today are opposite of what most people expect. And so it's kind of like one of those. Wow. Is that really in scripture? So this is going to be a really exciting call.   [00:01:18] I cannot wait to dive into this.   [00:01:21] Yes. Me, too. So as we dive in, kind of alluding to that last comment I made. We're talking about when bad things happen. Is it God's will? Okay. And this is actually part three of our series. And today the subtitle is When Evil Acts. Okay. So in the past, if you recall the previous sessions, our first session, we talked about that God directs our every step. And so when bad things happen, sometimes it's God's will directing us toward our destiny. That's I actually put the second call was about as we talked about the life of Joshua. Excuse me, Joseph in the life of Esther and how the bad things that seemingly were bad were actually all furthering God's ultimate destiny for the will of their lives. So sometimes when bad things happen, it's actually good. Sometimes you have to back up and see it. And once you have a bigger, bigger perspective today, I want to talk on the topic of when evil comes in. By the way. Are you aware that there is evil in the world?   [00:02:38] Yes. Is evil good? No, no.   [00:02:44] So we have to include this when bad things happen because there is evil. And as I mentioned just a moment ago when I started preparing for this, I had kind of a conclusion that I thought was the right conclusion. But I tried to support everything through scripture. And when I started researching it, I found out I was wrong. So I kind of took a huge U-turn on this topic for today. And it's just really exciting. So let me set the stage. Okay. So when bad things happen, there's essentially four things that could be going on. This is what we were talking about earlier. It could be God's destiny for you, moving you toward your ultimate place. And that's the case. All those bad things ultimately are a good thing. Or it could be God's discipline. God's discipline is when you do something wrong and he comes involved to correct you. It says that he corrects every child. So things that could be bad or could be parts of discipline. The third thing that could be going on is, is we talked about through scripture that God directs our every step. But we have the ability to disregard his direction and stumble. This is what Psalms talks about. And when we do that, then sometimes these bad things are simply a consequence of us making our own decision rather than following God's leading. Does that make sense?   [00:04:09] It does. Okay. And then the fourth thing, and this is what we're going to be talking about today is evil when evil comes in and actually impacts our life. But here's what's really interesting.   [00:04:20] If you take these four things, destiny, discipline, consequence and evil, it's it's basically gradient of how closely were aligned to God's will. The more we're aligned to God's perfect will, the more everything is destiny, the less we are aligned to God's perfect will, the more everything becomes evil. Does that make sense? As we talk about evil in my church, I often hear and I'm going to use this term and I use it not critically, but kind of just descriptively, God being accused of being. The source of every bad thing, they don't really believe it, but they do believe and let me see. Let me share this. Here's the idea. This is kind of how it comes out. The idea is because God is sovereign, God is in control and because God is in control, all things that happen must be his will. Does that logic make sense? No, that's not what we've we've accomplished through scripture. But does that make sense how people can come to that conclusion?   [00:05:26] Absolutely. And so therefore, here so here is the implication of that conclusion. I'm sick and suffering. It must be God's will. Have you ever heard someone say that? Okay. Or if a loved one dies, gets killed in a car accident at an early age, well, it must be God's will.   [00:05:48] And then if it must be if it's God's will, then maybe God's trying to teach me something. Does that you'd say that logical string. Okay. So God's word says that man's wisdom is folly to God. Right. And so what happens is we try to put our wisdom into this and it's all folly and we come to wrong conclusions. There's an element of truth, but there's more of an element of truth here. And I wanted to see if I can back up in scripture. What's actually going on. So let me ask you a few questions. A real story. The cousin of a family friend is a 23 year old young woman. She's, uh, she's actually the only Christian in her family. She was recently in a car wreck and those injuries were fatal. But they were able to keep her alive on life, support the hospital until their sister could arrive and say her final goodbyes. And then they pulled the plug and she died.   [00:06:48] So here's the question. Did God cause her to have that wreck and die? What do you think? No. I don't think so. Was it God's will for her to die young?   [00:07:01] No. Is that accent somehow part of God's master plan for her life?   [00:07:13] Yes, and now it could be. So right now, here's kind of where we sit. We don't really have enough information to come to an absolute conclusion. Does that make sense? Yes. But it appears from all that we know about God and from Scripture that generally speaking it doesn't sound like this is what God's plan was.   [00:07:37] I would agree with that. Generally speaking, everything I want to talk about today is kind of. Generally speaking, because there are some very clear absolutes in the Bible where we're now treading, it's going to be not quite so absolute. Okay. So let me give you another real story. A woman had a very important meeting in downtown New York, and it was critical that she be there on time for her career. But she wasn't for whatever reason, she got to the train station late and missed the train.   [00:08:14] Now she's late. She misses the meeting completely. She's fuming inside because she's so upset and frustrated and stretched out. She's concerned that she may actually lose her job and ultimately by her job was actually gone. So the question is, did God cause her to miss that train and this meeting?   [00:08:39] Was that bad? Yes.   [00:08:44] Okay. You're laughing, you know, I'm probably setting you up. Okay. So we really don't know at the moment.   [00:08:56] Is it really good or bad because we can't discern it. But let me give you the rest of the story.   [00:09:05] She ends up going back home. Her meeting was in the World Trade Towers, and that was the day the towers fell.   [00:09:13] Now, let me ask, was missing the train good or bad? Do you think it could have been guided by God's hand that she missed it? Absolutely. OK. So now this is kind of what we talked about on the last session. Once you have a further enough away perspective of everything, you can start to piece things together. But in the midst of it all. Sometimes we just don't know. Does that make sense?   [00:09:39] Yeah. Okay. So now here's a bigger question. Was the crash of the World Trade Towers and the huge loss of lives. God's will? In other words, did he cause it to happen or did evil cause it to happen?   [00:09:56] Yeah, I think so. I want to talk about how that happens and also partly how do we discern it. There's another story I want to share. This actually happened very recently. I was talking with a Christian lady named Joanna and she's been suffering from depression all of her life. And sometime this cloud, that's her entire life, there's a cloud hanging over there. Sometimes it has a crippling effect in her life.   [00:10:28] Is that God's will for her to have depression? No. Do you think God somehow is the cause behind that depression? In other words, he is God. Do you think God authorizes that depression upon her? No. Okay, so here's the issue. If you're going through really tough times, how do you handle it? How do you make sense of it?   [00:10:53] Do you blame God, accused God or attribute to God? Well, it must be God's will. Do you ask God? Why do you even know what's really going on? Because so often in our little perspective, we just don't know. There's a lot more at play, and the more you understand what's likely going on, then the better you can manage these things in your life. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So today I want to give you that better understanding of what is going on. My little disclaimer on this, this is a really complex subject. I don't claim to have all the solid answers, but I want to give you what I see in scripture and kind of my interpretation of that. So take this for what I'll call not for what it's worth, but for what I think. Scriptures generally teach us.   [00:11:51] So there's a passage in the Gospels that we call the Lord's Prayer. Are you familiar with the Lord's Prayer? Okay. So let me ask you a question. If God is sovereign and in control, is everything that happens God's will now cut you on this one, the first set on our first session. So what do you think the answer to that is?   [00:12:20] No, I don't know.   [00:12:23] But some of my conservative friends who use the logic God is in control. God, a sovereign God is in control. He's all powerful and therefore everything that happens must be his will. Otherwise he would have stopped it. If it was his will. So our logic. Okay. So if that is, where are some of our friends who are listening in on right now? I want to show you just one very simple verse that creates some very complicated questions about that logic.   [00:12:53] Turn, if you would, to Matthew 6 9 3 13. This is the Lord's Prayer and let's use the living version on this is just kind of cleans and makes it simple. So Matthew, 6 9 through 13, the Lord's Prayer. Go ahead. Okay.   [00:13:13] All right. This, then, is how you should pray. Our father in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debt, as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.   [00:13:36] Okay, so this is Jesus basically giving some nation prayer. Here's how you should pray. These are the things you should be praying for, and all these are real important and they basically encompass what's important in life. As a believer, before I get into what I want to comment on this one, I was going through this. I remember some what I call my Lord's Prayer funny's 3 year old Reese, the way he prays.   [00:14:01] Our father, who does art in heaven, Herald is his name or a particular four year old, prays it this way and forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets and forgive us our trespasses. Right.   [00:14:22] This is from a mother teaching her 3 year old daughter, Caitlin. The Lord's Prayer. First, she says for several evenings at bedtime, she would repeat after me the lines of the prayer. Finally, she decided to go solo all by herself. And the mother says, listen with pride. She said each word right up to the end of the prayer lead us not into temptation. She prayed. But deliver us some e-mail. I share that to make a point. It's funny sometimes when the children misunderstand the Lord's Prayer, but how often do we misunderstand it?   [00:15:05] You say that this makes sense. For example, if everything that happens on earth is God's will. Then why does Jesus tell us to pray for God's will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven unless it's not always done on Earth? Does that make sense? Yeah. So we have this challenge. So let's now move into the real me to what I want to get into. I want to talk about calamity when bad things happen. Calamity. Question Does God cause calamity in people's lives? No. Does God send the evil spirits to attack people and cause in their lives? Okay. Now let's turn real quickly to Jobe. And we're going to read Jobe One Twelve.   [00:16:05] And in chapter 2, 3 through 6, chapter 1, verse 12, Chapter 2, 3, 3, 6. All right, so one verse twelve, then the Lord said to say to be before you, let me just give the background for those who may not be okay. So this actually Jobe is most scholars believe is the oldest book in the Bible thar pre-dating Abraham. And if you're familiar with J-O-B toward the end, God is talking to Jobin says. Ask him all these questions showing God's sovereignty and superiority. And he talks about an animal called Leviathan. And he says This animal's so powerful that a spear can't pierce it skills and it breathes out fire and smoke.   [00:17:02] So this is an animal that we've never experienced in our life and we don't see it anywhere in scripture.   [00:17:09] So this is a it's a real old book. And what's happening at this scenario that we're just about to read is God is in his court room in heaven, and Satan comes up. God says, where have you been? He said, I've been roaming around the earth. Very vague, almost like a teenage son. Where are you, Ben? I've just been out. What've you been doing with friends? And then God says, Have you considered my friend Jobe?   [00:17:41] And Satan says, Oh, he just loves you because you bless him. Let me touch him and he'll curse you. OK. So that's kind of where we pick up. Pick up now on verse 12.   [00:17:55] The Lord said to Satan. Very well, then. Everything he has in your power. But on the man himself, do not lay a finger. Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.   [00:18:08] All right, then go to job to verse three and six. And as you go there. So what's happened now is Satan goes out and destroys everything that Joe has, kills all of his children and destroys all of his business.   [00:18:24] And now everything he's got is totally gone. And now we pick up in verse three of chapter two.   [00:18:34] Then the lord said to Satan. Have you considered my servant job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity. Then you incited me again to ruin him without any reason. Skin for skin. Satan replied, a man will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face. The Lord said to Satan. Very well, then, he is in your hands. But you must not. Sorry, but you must spare his life.   [00:19:12] Let me ask you a question. Did God send an evil spirit to attack J-O-B?   [00:19:23] This scripture.   [00:19:25] Yes. Boy, that's not what we expected, is it? Does that sound like a loving God?   [00:19:37] Scripture.   [00:19:40] Did God have any reason to do it? It says, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason. Does this seem like almost an arbitrary act?   [00:19:56] Do you think this is a different view of God than most people have? Yes. Yes.   [00:20:03] Does this one, I might add, if people if this is someone's only view of God. I can see how they would not want anything to do with God.   [00:20:15] You know what? If someone's only view of me is one little part of who I am and they don't know me as a whole. I can always find some part of me that someone would be detested about. Yes. So this is the purpose of what I want to do today. A lot of times we have wrong conclusions based on who we want God to be and what we want things to be. Everything must be God's will because God is sovereign and powerful and controlling. If it wasn't his will, he could have intervened. And the fact that he didn't intervene must mean that it was his will.   [00:20:54] That's the logical conclusion. The logical conclusion about God. God is a loving God. He would never hurt someone. Would he send calamity on someone? Absolutely not. He you sent an evil spirit upon someone? Absolutely not.   [00:21:04] And yet, right here in scripture, we see it happening right in front of our eyes. And if we're going to truly follow the Lord and make sense of things, we have to understand all aspects. Okay. So now let me ask you. What good could possibly have come out of God allowing Satan to attack? What good could possibly come out of that?   [00:21:37] Wow. A lot of spiritual maturity and growth and jobe. All right. What else? Mitt increased faith in Joe and just the fact that he would have to really. Rely on the Lord to take care of.   [00:21:57] All right. Those are all possible, but I think they're missing what I think is the biggest impact. What do you think the biggest impact might be?   [00:22:07] Tell me. It has nothing to do with Jobe individually. Can you imagine how many millions and billions of people have been impacted to trust the Lord and learn more about the and large character by reading about what happened and imagine the impact? Could it be that what God did with Joe was not for Joe's sake, but for God's holy purpose to use to impact millennia of followers of the Lord Jesus?   [00:22:41] So sometimes we have to get further far enough back in perspective to see what's going on. Sometimes we will never understand it. But I think we could come to that conclusion. All right. So God doesn't cause calamity and he doesn't send evil spirits to attack people is what I think I heard you say earlier. And I think we're starting to see that what most people believe about God may not be quite so accurate, but this is just one instance, one one instance. Maybe that's not really God's character. So let's turn to Isaiah, 45, verse 7.   [00:23:21] Love the book of Isaiah forty five seven. I formed the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things.   [00:23:39] Read it also in the E.S.P. Version.   [00:23:43] Forwhich.   [00:23:49] All right. Verse 7 I form the light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things.   [00:24:01] This God bring calamity on people.   [00:24:03] According to that verse, yes, he did it to.   [00:24:07] According to this verse. God's trying to tell us something maybe about part of his character. All right. Now, the amplified in the notes, it makes a really great clarity and comment. And here's what the note says. It says, God brings physical calamity or physical evil, but moral evil comes from man's heart, not God. I think that's a good differentiation to discern. But gosh, surely that's all.   [00:24:43] But wait, there's more. Let's turn to Limitations Lamentations, Chapter 3.   [00:24:51] And if you read this one in i.v versus 37 3:39 Lamentations 3:37 3:39.   [00:25:04] All right. Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the most high that both calamities and good things come?   [00:25:18] Keep on one more.   [00:25:19] Why should a living why should the living complain when punished for their sins?   [00:25:25] So say that God brings calamity. Sure. Why does God bring calamity? What does this say in this section?   [00:25:41] I'm going to reread it. Who can speak and have it happen if a Lord has not decreed it? It not from the mouth of the most high, those calamities and good things have come. Why should they complain when punished for their sins? Well, according to verse 37, the Lord decreed it.   [00:26:00] According to verse thirty nine to see decree it.   [00:26:06] Because they're being punished for our sins.   [00:26:10] So now we have something to do with sin. And when sin happens, there's a decree that could go out that brings calamity of some form. Does that make sense? But wait, hold on. We're forgiven for our sins, right?   [00:26:29] That's right. I was just thinking of it now. Praise Jesus.   [00:26:34] Okay. So we've been forgiven of our sins. Remember a few sessions back we talked about no longer under law, but under grace.   [00:26:43] Does that mean we're no longer under consequence for sin? No. Okay. So we find that calamity.   [00:26:53] And I'll put the word sometimes has root and sin. Okay. The calamity for Jobe was not based on sin. So this is why I'm saying this is really complex. It's not a black and white. Here's a simple answer. We got to understand the bigger picture of all the things going on at play. And the more we understand, the more we see this picture of who God is. And by the way, we haven't even begun to get into the depth that we're about to get deeper. So let's. But wait, there's more. Let's go first, Samuel. Let's see if we can blow our minds even more. First, Samuel, sixteen vs. fourteen. Do this and they give you a background. Okay. God calls Saul to be king of Israel. The first king. And so becomes king and Sol starts to disobey God, and essentially that's kind of where we pick up here.   [00:27:53] All right, verse 14. Now, the spirit of the Lord had departed from soul and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him, a tormenting spirit.   [00:28:08] The Lord, the Lord God that we know of or the way the God that we have thought about now.   [00:28:17] No.   [00:28:18] Is it right? And holy that a holy God would send an evil spirit against somebody.   [00:28:30] Now, it's not according to this, he did it.   [00:28:36] It doesn't seem like it's right. Let me say it's not. It doesn't seem like it's right from the human standard. But here's the impact.   [00:28:47] If we form a picture of God, that is not true based on our own human logic and desire, could it be that we end up not honoring the Lord as much as he wants? Could it be that we end up missing out on a lot of things the Lord has for us because we have a wrong view of God?   [00:29:10] Absolutely.   [00:29:13] So is this.   [00:29:15] Hyper warping your view of God and changing it is just starting to rain is just going in a million different things. All right.   [00:29:27] That way we're not through yet. Oh, it's gone. You think this is change is warping. Wait till we get to a couple more verses. Okay. So now let's go to First Kings. Twenty to. Versus 23 22. So let me give you the backstory on this. Saul was king.   [00:29:52] Then David took over. Then David's son Solomon and then his son Oboma. Belmondo Kingdom was split between Judah and Israel, and Israel was the king was jeroboam and jeroboam was an evil king. And I think right after jeroboam or one or two, right after is another king named Ahab. And Ahab is the most wicked king, according to scripture, by that time in Israel. And so now we pick up Ahab has made an alliance with not forget the King of Judas name, but the king of Judah, who is a righteous king, makes an alliance with Ahab, the unrighteous king. And Ahab wants to go into battle with Ramus, Gilliard and Ramus chiliad, or battle with the enemy at Ramus. And so they are the king of Judah says, well, let's check with the Lord first before we do this. And so all of these prophets of Ahab start telling him, you're going to have victory, you're going to gouge them, you're going to win.   [00:31:13] And then a prophet of the Lord by Judas request comes in and gives a contrary message that says, if you go to this battle, Ahab, you will die. And then one of the prophets of Ahab's says, know what happened? When did God Spirit leave me and go to you?   [00:31:39] And that's basically the scenario where we are right now. And this is the prophet of the Lord relaying what actually happened in the heavenly, heavenly realm. So now with that as a backdrop, I'll let you begin. First Kings 22, starting with verse 20.   [00:31:57] And the Lord said, who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramus chiliad and going to his death there. One suggested this and another that finally a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, I will entice him. By what means? The Lord asked. I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. He said, You will succeed in enticing him, said the Lord. Go and do it.   [00:32:31] Told me that she is deceiving and lying. The same thing.   [00:32:39] Generally speaking, no, I mean, they're right on the line, right on line.   [00:32:46] Okay. Okay. So my translation says I will be a lying spearritt in the mouth of this profits, a dissaving spirit, a lion spirit. But here's the point where I'm going. One of the Ten Commandments says thou shall not lie.   [00:33:04] Is God sending a lying or deceiving spirit?   [00:33:11] To a Hartington, there is a lying or deceiving spirit.   [00:33:17] Evil God is actually sending an evil spirit to attack someone. According to the scripture, to mislead. According to the scripture. Sounds like you are trying to disqualify your answer. Every single one of these scriptures is true and infallible. Is that correct? Yes, absolutely. So then, is God sending an evil spirit against somebody? Yes or no? Okay. Okay. Let's don't try to be equivocate. Alright. Well let's don't try to explain it away. Let's read it for what it is, what God is telling us and then let's understand what he's actually doing. Makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. So God is about to bring calamity upon Ahab, is that right? God is directing it. Because he's sending a deceiving spirit to see they have Ahab will go to the battle. So God can kill him. Is that guy bringing calamity on someone? Yes. That's amazing. Not only is God bringing calamity, but he's sending an evil spirit to cause it to happen.   [00:34:40] Wow. Let's look at another first. We still haven't gotten to the big one. We're about to hit the big one. These are just kind of teeing it all up. So Psalm 44, do this one in the living Bible.   [00:34:54] We're going to go to Psalm 44. We're going to read two sections, Psalm 44, eight, nine and 10, and then jump over to 17 and 18. Eight, nine, 10, 17 and 18.   [00:35:11] My constant boast is, God, I can never thank you enough and yet for a time. Oh, Lord, you have tossed us aside in dishonor and have not helped us in our battles. You have actually fought against us and defeated us before our foes. Our enemies have invaded our land and pillaged the countryside and then 17 and 18. And all this has happened. Lord, despite our loyalty to you, we have not violated your covenant. Our hearts have not deserted you. We have not left your path by a single step.   [00:35:50] Why did God bring calamity upon his people? Does it sound like he was cruel and harsh? They didn't do anything to deserve it. Was there any reason they knew of. On why he did it? No. Kind of sounds like a joke to a degree, doesn't it?   [00:36:09] It does.   [00:36:12] Now, here's the big question. Could there be a reason that they don't know of? Absolutely. So now we're starting to get into. We don't know everything. There's a lot more to the law than what we understand. So now let's get into the big one. This is just setting the stage and I'm hoping we can get all this done in one session. It may end up having to go. Let's go to let's go to Matthew. Matthew, 18. Versus 21 3:35.   [00:36:57] Now, this is a real interesting story. Read the first verse or so about. Peter, one of the apostles asking about forgiveness. I just want to make a comment before you get into the parable.   [00:37:12] Verse twenty one. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked Lord, How many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who stands against me up to seven times?   [00:37:23] Don't you think Peter was just. He was being so proud. We're going to forgive my brother sister up to seven times. That's a lot. I'm holy. We're up to seven times. That's a lot of time to forgive. Okay. Now here we have man's logic doesn't really match God's truth. So let's now read what Jesus says. 22 through 35, 35.   [00:37:57] Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his bets as he began the settlement. A man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay. The master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had sold to repay the debt. This the servants fell on his knees before him. Be patient with me, he begged. I will pay back everything. The servants master took pity on him. Cancel the debt and let him go. But when the servant went out, he found one of his one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred silver coins. He grabbed him, and they began to choke him. Pay back what you owed me! He demanded. His fellow servants fell to his knees and begged him, Be patient with me, and I will pay you back. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged, and they went and told their master everything that had happened. Master, right there.   [00:39:12] Right there. Let me let me give you the short scenario. Just put some things in perspective. The king goes to his servant, number one servant. No one owes him in today's dollar about sixteen billion dollars. That's an amount. When it says ten thousand bags of gold or ten thousand talents. Ten thousand was the largest number that they had in the Roman counting system. This is Jesus saying he owed the absolute most anyone could ever, ever own. So in today's dollars, it works out to about 16 billion. The guy says, I can't pay. The king, says Romans. Throw you into prison. The guy says, please have mercy on me. So the king says, OK, have mercy on you and I forgive you. So then servant number one goes his servant. Number two, who owes him about ten thousand dollars?   [00:40:06] Pay me. I can't. So he throws him into prison. So that's the magnitude that we're looking at. OK. And now let's finish up with versus 34 and 35.   [00:40:19] Okay, let's say I think I was I am 32 in all this. Yeah. Perfect. Then the master called the servant and you wicked servant. He said, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant? Just as I had on you in his anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat you. Each of you, unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.   [00:40:56] How is Heavenly Father going to treat us? What does it say? Wow.   [00:41:04] We will be handed over to be tortured.   [00:41:09] Does that really sound like what it sounds like?   [00:41:13] That's what it says.   [00:41:15] All right. Now, there's another thing that Jesus talks about forgiveness. Let's turn there real quick. Matthew, 6, 14 and fifteen. And let's see if we can maybe connect some dots. Matthew 6, 14 and 15 4.   [00:41:31] If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.   [00:41:43] What does this mean, do you think? This is talking about salvation. Going to heaven or hell? Or do you think it could be talking about something different?   [00:41:54] I think it's probably talking about.   [00:41:58] Something different. I think it's just talking about forgiveness.   [00:42:01] All right. But if it says it to, my father will not forgive you. What's the implication of that? Well, then we have. Then turn real quickly to Ephesians 2 8 and read effusions to a.   [00:42:21] Psm. Some dots for us real quickly. The parable of the master of my heavenly father do to you. Take you and send you to the torturers unless you forgive your brother. Then in Matthew 6 here, it says if you do not forgive others, your father in heaven will not forgive you. We know that salvation is through the forgiveness a sin. So we make this connection that this must be talking about. Probably something related to salvation or going to hell. Does it those dots make sense?   [00:42:58] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now let's read evasions to wait for it is by grace.   [00:43:04] You have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourself. It is a gift of God.   [00:43:13] Not as. Or maybe the first time. Keep going.   [00:43:17] Not by words, not by words so that no one can boast.   [00:43:23] So it is a gift of God. There is nothing we have to do for it. Is that correct?   [00:43:29] Hmm.   [00:43:30] Not by forgiving somebody b something we do.   [00:43:38] So if we don't forgive and our father doesn't forgive us.   [00:43:44] Could that really be talking about losing salvation or based on this passage and others by grace, through faith, believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved. Whoever believes on the sun will have everlasting life. All these things talk about believe, not forgiveness.   [00:44:08] So is it safe to say that this passage of the parable about forgiveness and torturing is not talking about salvation?   [00:44:21] Yes. Okay. Did you say scripturally why that's true? Yes. Yes. Okay. So then let's see who is she's talking about. Obviously, he's talking to the non-believer about God torturing them. Right.   [00:44:40] So go back to Matthew, 18, verse 21.   [00:44:46] Who was asking the question to Jesus?   [00:44:52] Peter Right.   [00:44:54] Peter Then Peter came to Jesus and asked Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sends against me up to seven times?   [00:45:03] Okay, then read Matthew 1835.   [00:45:10] This is how my heavenly father will treat you. We'll treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.   [00:45:17] So is he talking to the non-believers or is he talking essentially to the believers, his disciples?   [00:45:23] His disciples, the believers.   [00:45:26] Wow. Does this sound like a loving God to want to send someone to the torturers?   [00:45:33] No.   [00:45:35] Does this change your thinking of who God is? Does this expand your thinking? Got it. Okay, okay. Okay. So we got a problem, don't we? Mm hmm. So let's let's ask a few more questions. Who authorizes the act of torturing and that parable? The master, the master and the master is a parable representing God. Would you agree? I do, yes. God is authorizing that torturing. Who does the act of torturing? Does the King or one of his servants do it? The jailer's, one of those are one of the servants. Okay, so now try to picture that gaoler in your mind, this guy who tortures people. First off, do you think this guy who tortures people? Likes inflicting pain on someone.   [00:46:38] I mean, it's his job. He's gotta like it a little bit.   [00:46:43] Yeah, okay.   [00:46:44] Try to picture an image of that torture in your mind. Now, do you come up with someone who's handsome, debonair, sort of a princely young man who would grace the social circles of the king? No.   [00:46:58] Or do you maybe come up with some evil, hideous looking type of beast of a man and some sort of dark dungeon that just takes pleasure in exacting pain in people's lives? Yes. So from what you know about God's kingdom, the spiritual being, do you think would more likely play that role of the torturing trailer, an evil bear?   [00:47:24] Oh, the same thing we've been reading about in all these other passages. Is that what you're telling me? Oh, wow. Okay.   [00:47:34] So an evil spirit is actually there. What I see what you did there. Do you think that evil spirit is a friend of God?   [00:47:49] Might be. Do you think that gaoler is a friend of the king? Yes, you do.   [00:47:56] In a social circle, oh, well, not in the social circle. I just met him. He knows that and has a relationship with them over.   [00:48:06] Let's clarify friend versus servant. Do you think that gaoler is a friend of the king or simply a servant of the king? Servant? Do you think that evil spirit is a friend of God or simply a servant of God? Servant? Was he created by God? Yes.   [00:48:28] Is he being used by God as part of His Holiness and righteousness and all those other attributes that God has about him?   [00:48:38] Okay, so now we're starting to see a different side of God that most of those probably turn our eyes from, because we can't comprehend a God that does this. But God has made it very, very clear multiple times. And these aren't the only times there are others. But he makes it very clear that this is kind of what things are set up. Okay, so here's what's going on. Jesus is saying that we're going to be given over to the torturers if we don't forgive our brother. These tortures are most likely these evil spirits, as you mentioned, and their whole purpose is to torment us. Okay, now keep in mind we're talking about when bad things happen. Is it God's will? How do you how do you handle evil in the world? Okay, so we're now starting to move that direction a little bit more. Let me ask you a question. Do you recall any other places in the Bible where God gives people over to evil spirits?   [00:49:50] We just write a whole bunch of it more. Okay, so here's the question is being tormented good or bad?   [00:50:00] Not a trick question. Good. You think so?   [00:50:06] Yes. Because it's bringing about the end. Result that God's looking for him.   [00:50:13] So if someone dies a premature death. Is that what God is looking for?   [00:50:24] Maybe not by someone.   [00:50:27] If someone commits adultery against his wife, is that what God's looking for?   [00:50:32] The act? No. Then being tormented. Good or bad?   [00:50:42] Do you want to be tormented?   [00:50:44] I do not. It's okay. But going back to what you said. Did I say the big picture? What does it bring?   [00:50:58] It's all it's all part of God's holiness and righteousness.   [00:51:02] But that doesn't mean it has to be good, because evil is not good. Evil is bad. But here's a big question. Is a tormenting spirit authorized by God?   [00:51:21] According to these scriptures, yes.   [00:51:23] Okay, so now we have this really big challenge. Evil is bad. But it's authorized by God. How can a loving good God authorize evil?   [00:51:41] I don't have a great answer for that, by the way, but that's a question that we ponder on. So let's go in and ask a few more questions.   [00:51:51] So Peter originally thought if he only forgave his brother seven times, he's doing something really, really great. Would you agree? If he had done that, is it possible that he could have incurred a tormenting spirit without even knowing why?   [00:52:09] Possible. Is it possible that if bad things happen to us? We could actually be incurring some sort of a tormenting or evil spirit of some sort. That's been authorized by God. For violating some law that we may not clearly understand. Yes. Is God to blame if we do that? No. OK. So now we're starting to get greater clarity. This kind of making sense of where I'm going now. Okay.   [00:52:44] So God set up the rules. We don't understand them.   [00:52:52] But blaming God is saying, hey, God, I'm innocent. There's no reason I should be going through this. Right. And if he set up the rules and we broke them. Who's to blame? We are.   [00:53:07] Does it matter if we know that those rules exist or not?   [00:53:13] No, it doesn't really matter now. Romans I Romans 1 tells us that they're already written in our hearts. So we know them, but we don't. We can't clearly articulate like you're driving 70 miles an hour. You hit a speed zone. You don't even know it. The speed limit sign is down or behind a bush. It says 45 miles an hour. You'll still get a ticket even though you don't realize that you're doing wrong. Right. So then does that mean that everything that bad, everything that happens that's bad is our fault?   [00:53:53] Is it our fault? Is it always because we violated something? I'm extrapolating at this point I'm kind of going to the point of saying this parable that Jesus did. Can you extrapolate this into all things?   [00:54:10] I don't think you can. This is one of those things. I don't think you can. Let's go back real quickly. The Lord's Prayer. You don't have to go back to. I just want to repeat one part of it. The Lord's Prayer is kind of a summation of things. Right. And that we are the high level things to be praying for. One of those is Lord forgive us for our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And there's something really important about forgiveness. It's in the Lord's Prayer. It's in this parable. Jesus talks about tormenting. If you don't forgive, my father will authorize tormenting against you torture. And I won't share this quick story to show you how this starts to illustrate and come out in our lives. I remember listening to this guy who was ministering to someone. He's praying for healing. The man that he's praying for has really bad back pain and he prays for healing. Nothing happens in this guy's name is Todd. And usually when he prays a lot of time, most of the times people are getting healed. And then the Lord gives Todd what's called a word of knowledge. Okay. Supernatural knowledge of what's going on. And the word of knowledge was the man has bitterness against his mother, unforgiveness for his mother. So Todd asked the guy, hey, tell me about your relationship with your mother. And the guy responds immediately, why do you ask that? I hope she dies and writes in hell. I mean, really horrible. So Todd starts working with him, leads him to Christ essentially, or at least leads him to forgiveness of his mother. And then top price for his back and he's instantly hill. Could it be that there is unforgiveness in our lives that's causing some sort of a tormenting spirit that causes bad things and we don't even realize it because we didn't forgive someone over here, we did something over on this other spot, some violation of God's law. But the implication of that law is it opens the door to. For evil to somehow come, come in and impact our lives. Does that make any sense, what I'm asking?   [00:56:40] Yes, absolutely.   [00:56:42] All right. If we look at how people are tormented and wanting to get off of tormenting, but I'm just using this and using it as an example, because what I find is God works in patterns. The pattern articulate in this parable about tormenting is a similar pattern that works in other areas in how God works and where I know we're at an hour and we're going keep on going because I'm wrapping up and there's no good, good place to stop. So this is going to be a longer call than normal. But let me pause real quickly. Is this exciting stuff so far?   [00:57:18] Yes, absolutely.   [00:57:20] Is it blowing your mind?   [00:57:22] It is a solid ending.   [00:57:25] It's expanding my thought process and I get it.   [00:57:32] So think about the ways people are tormented in life. In other words, if we receive a tormenting spirit because we have unknowingly or knowingly violated some spiritual law that God, God's holiness and righteousness.   [00:57:54] What does that look like? I'd like to suggest mental anguish can be part of it. Stress and anxiety. Depression. Health issues. Our dreams and aspirations falling apart. Say, Jesus says that the enemy, by the way. Would you agree that tormenting spirits are the enemy? What does the enemy's purpose and goal in our lives?   [00:58:28] Do you remember what Jesus says to say the enemy comes to destroy, to steal and to kill?   [00:58:42] To kill? Come sit still. Kill, steal, kill and destroy. Do you think those could be acts of torturing? Yes. Okay, let's start wrapping this up so the Lord created everything that's been created. Would you agree with that? Yes. Are Satan. Demonic spirits, evil spirits and evil as a whole. Are all those part of God's creation? Yes.   [00:59:14] But they weren't created as Satan and the ones that wasn't created that way. Granted, but we don't. So this is one of those mysteries we don't understand, but we do understand everything that's been created. Somehow God created it. If evil exists, somehow it's part of the creation. We can't comprehend it. It makes no sense. We have no framework or fabric to put it together. No grid. But we understand that all things were created by God. And that includes evil. And we don't understand it. Okay. I've got some ideas, but they're only opinions. I won't go there. Not everything that is evil is good. But evil exists in some mysterious way as an act of God's will. Because it's been created and everything of evil is there for a purpose. We don't understand it. But if God created it, it's got to be for some purpose. All of this kind of connecting, making sense.   [01:00:31] A lot of questions I don't have answers to. This is where I'm saying my disclaimer. Okay. So then you have God is sovereign over all of creation.   [01:00:42] And just as the torturer in the parable with the king is not a friend of the king. Evil is not a friend of the Lord's. But just like the king used the torturer as part of how he governed his kingdom. God uses evil as part of how he governs his kingdom. Understanding the existence of it and understanding the reason behind it are two different things. I'm just right now clarifying the existence of this done mean I had the answers as to why, but we have to come to the conclusion it exists for a purpose because it was created then and this is where this starts to get even more complex. This whole issue is multidimensional. It's very complex. There's not one simple, easy answer to it. But here's the big picture of everything. Just kind of give us the big picture view. God created some sort of a legal hierarchy, an organizational structure in the spirit world. This is powers and rulers and authorities and Dominion's, which are not speaking about evil structure. God created the structure and an evil always copies what God does and then tries to subvert it. So all of this legal hierarchy that we see in Ephesians and the structure God created, it's much more complex in the heavenly rule than anything in the earthly Rome. And all of heaven is operated by laws and covenants and ordinances.   [01:02:28] Does that make sense so far? This is why the name of Jesus is powerful, because it's a legal authority. Everything is governed by that spirit. The demons, these fallen angels are all subject into this hierarchy of organizational legal structure that God has in place. And within that structure, evil has a legal authority to operate. This is what we're experiencing. It has a legal. This is what we've read in all of these things. They have a legal authority to operate. Satan had a legal authority to operate against Jobe, but only by God's authority. When God withdrew the authority, Satan cannot attack. This is what we see with the parable that we just went through, the Jesus and the torturer. There is a legal authority to act. So we see that is legal authority. That legal authority is either God decreeing a thing. One the passage we said nothing happens except by the decree of God. So either God decrees blessings or calamities or what I call on autopilot because it's part of God's spiritual laws. And when a law is violated, then there's a subsequent consequence that's already predetermined. That kind of making sense. Okay. So this is the kind of things that we're we're involved with when bad things happen. We've got to look at this at this higher level structure.   [01:04:02] We don't understand the laws. We do understand their existence. And probably an easy way to explain this because we see this all the time, but we don't really understand it. Imagine you're sitting in a room and there is a window on your right hand side and there is a wall on your left. You're reading a book and out of the corner of the eye, you see a shadow go against that wall instantly.   [01:04:25] You know, something went by the window. Would you agree? But you don't know what. It's a shadow of something that passed by. You recognize the existence of something there because there's a shadow that moved and when we look at our lives and we see and we look at all these things going on, what they show is a shadow of the spirit realm, the shadow of these laws we can't make. There's not a whole lot of concreteness to it for us. We can't write it down. We don't really know what it is. It's shadows. We see it in existence and displayed throughout scripture. We see the shadows displayed in our fiscal lives. But none of it is clear. We just know it's there making sense. And so this is why we say God authorizing saying to touch sending a tormenting spirit upon Saul and all these other things. There's something there. And so I want to give one other interesting thing, because it kind of ties up. And I want to be real sensitive on this because I don't want to freak you or any of our listeners out. But this whole realm of the spirit realm is real. This whole idea of evil spirits is real. Absolutely. Jesus cast out demons and that was real. So I was doing a deliverance with a lady named Alexis. She's a born again Christian. And in that deliverance session. Okay, so this was one of those really wild and crazy things where Alexis's personality actually goes into a trance and the personality that is now speaking is an evil spirit manifesting through her. Okay. So I'm interrogating, if you want to call it Who Are You? And one of those spirits was a spirit of depression. Why do you think depression was there? Do you think that was tormenting her?   [01:06:34] Absolutely. And she was a Christian and she had depression. And that is a spirit. And I commanded it out and it left. Then there was another spirit. It was a spirit of fear.   [01:06:49] And it had this I'll call it this interrogation.   [01:06:54] It had 25 other junior spirits in its kingdom within Alexis. And you know what the spirit here said why they were there to keep her from getting ahead. In other words, to prevent her from achieving the destiny that the Lord had for her holding her back. They were holding her back, causing everything she did to fall apart, constantly causing it to fail to keep her from getting ahead. That was the spirit of fear. And then there was a spirit of suicide. And it had. I was asking how many how many demons in your kingdom? Said 80. And then it volunteered this information to make sure she kills herself. Wow. I mean, this is real stuff. I know we're not supposed to. Don't don't get truth from a demon. I get that. But what I'm saying is, is this is real stuff. These things do exist. They do exist. And Christians. I'm not saying a Christian is demon possessed by any means. Christ possessed your spirit. But let me ask you a question on that. And we're going to do this whole session on healing later. Is sin evil or good? Then as evil does exist in your flesh.   [01:08:25] Yes. Are you a Christian?   [01:08:29] Yes. So that means that you are born again, but evil exists in your flesh. Does that make sense? That's correct. Why can't a spirit that's evil exist in your flesh as well? Because a lot of people say, well, if you're a Christian, you can't have an evil spirit, well, you have sin and all these spirits are evil. Depression is evil. Fear is evil. Suicide is evil. These are thoughts and attitudes. So I'm driving. I'm getting sidetracked. But the bottom line is this. All these fears are evil. And in some mysterious way. They were allowed to be in her life. I don't know exactly why, but my assumption and expectation from what we've read is there are some spiritual laws that were being violated. Somewhere along the line for life, they gave him authority. Does that make sense?   [01:09:28] Yeah. Okay. Okay. So now the question is, doesn't God love the Lexus? Do you think God loves a Lexus?   [01:09:35] Oh, absolutely.   [01:09:37] If God loved Alexis, why would he allow her to suffer?   [01:09:45] That is a big question.   [01:09:48] That's a huge question, isn't it?   [01:09:52] Can I give a suggested answer? Yes. All right. So let's look at an illustration. A man and a judge are friends. The man breaks the law and he comes before the judge. The judge's personal will list his said his friend free. But his judicial responsibility is to enforce the law. And the judge has the power to do either one. If the judge is righteous, what does he do?   [01:10:24] Does he violate his judicial responsibility to enforce his personal will? Or does it violate his personal Wiltern Borse his judicial responsibility? What do you think?   [01:10:39] Wow, that's a big question, too.   [01:10:42] All right, let's call it this way. Think about the Supreme Court. Do you think every justice on the Supreme Court has a desire of how they wish a law would have been written? When they render a judgment, if they're following their oath of office. Are they? Inputting their personal desire, regardless of what the law says or they interpreting exactly what the law says.   [01:11:15] To the best of their ability, I think the latter.   [01:11:19] So if you look at a judge, if he's a righteous judge. Does he violate his personal will?   [01:11:29] To perform his judicial responsibility or does he violate his judicial responsibility to perform his personal will? The farmer.   [01:11:39] He's going to do his judicial responsibility, and that's the same with God. He has the power to do his personal will. But just generally speaking, he doesn't violate the laws he's put in place. Sometimes we see him do it so. But usually he says judicial process. So sometimes when bad things happen, it could simply because there is evil in the world. Other times we may have sinned. And even though we're no longer in the law, but under grace, there's still a legal ramification of violating the law. And I guess that's kind of summing it up. I want to wrap up one last thing. There's a lot of other stuff, but I want to clarify one thing. And this is a message I texted with a friend. Give you the story on this, because I think this kind of shows how all of this kind of plays a part in one's life. I'm praying for a lady named Francis. She's been a missionary for 55 years. They're about in the last 11 year. She's been stuck in a wheelchair. So I prayed for her. She was instantly healed. She began walking around and she was in a wheelchair because of extreme pain. It was a surgery gone bad 11 years ago. And the doctors couldn't correct it. So now she's walking. There's no more pain.   [01:13:05] She's walking around. And then the pain comes back and she's has to get back in the wheelchair instantly. When that happened, I knew of the spirit. Because once healed your heel. Okay. Okay. You don't lose your healing. There's something else there. I think that's the message of all of this. There's something else there. It's not quite such a pat answer that we like to give. The pain came back. I knew it had to be a spirit. So following the process that there's some legal ramifications, some legal authority, that that spirit has to be there. We went through different things about repentance. She'd been forgiven for her sense. But in going through this, there was she remembered that there was a an organization many years that that she was involved with in high school called Rainbow Girls. I think it's kind of a subset of Freemasonry and it's basically kind of a cult. She didn't realize it at the time. She wasn't a Christian, but there was some sacred oath that she took as part of Rainbow Girls. When she mentioned that, I said, well, we need you need to repent of that. She repented of her involvement with Rainbow Girls and any oath that she took. And then we come in and dispirit out and guess what happened.   [01:14:22] She started walking again. The spirit instantly left everything we tried to do prior to that.   [01:14:28] The spirit and the pain would not leave as soon as she repented of her involvement with Rainbow Girls and we prayed again. The spirit left. Can you see a legal cause and effect on that? Absolutely. Okay. And then the pain came back. Wow. What happened, right. Okay. Then she says, well, Bury, her husband, says, well, God is trying to teach you something. So this is the train of thought. A lot of Christians have. This is why I talked about at the beginning all these bad things happen. God must be trying to teach me something because God is sovereign. God is in control. God is all powerful. Therefore, if anything bad happens, it must be as well. Therefore, something bad happens. He must be trying to teach me something. That's of a train of thought. So this is my text to her. I just want to read it because I think it really summarizes, as I said, I want to clarify something I said last night when your husband Barry suggested that the Lord might be bringing this pain upon you to teach you something. I said that God does not bring sickness upon his children. I believe that is true. But he does authorize spirits to attack us. I don't know how much that authorization is to attack us physically or simply in other areas, such as what happens in our lives.   [01:15:50] I'm still learning, but the simple fact that a spirit is attacking you means that within the spiritual laws the Lord has created. The spirit has authority to attack. Does that make sense so far? And since all of 30 is granted by the Lord. Ultimately the Lord has authorized it. If not directly, then at least indirectly by setting up those laws in the first place. That law is given jurisdiction over us at the fall. This is what you and I spoke about. No longer under law, but under grace that at the fall we became jurisdiction underneath the law. And so I said that law was given jurisdiction over assess the fall. So it's tied to the fall and not tied to the Lord. Trying to teach you something the Lord can and will teach you through it. But is not the purpose for why you're being attacked. I think that's the message. Another message I want to make sure we all understand when these things happen. It's not the Lord trying to teach you something. There's evil in the world that evil has authority. So let me tell you the rest of the story I was asking the Lord. Why did the spirit return? And the Lord said something happened between the time it left and the time it returned. They gave it the authority to return.   [01:17:16] And I said it's the Lord's share that I thought I knew what it was, I called Princeville backup and I started to explain this story, you know what it was?   [01:17:25] This will blow your mind. I said almost, yes. Yes. It was tied to doubt. So you've been in that wheelchair for 11 years. I bet. Unbeknownst to you, you've created an identity of being in pain and being in that wheelchair. And when that spirit left and you're no longer in a wheelchair. It was so unusual for you. It was. It wasn't who you've experienced yourself to be all these years that probably knows you. You kept that identity of pain and you invited it back in because that identity of pain is thin, because it doesn't conform to the image of God. So she said, let's repent of that. So you know what she did.   [01:18:17] By the way, before I do this, I said, Spirit, get out, pain get out. And she said, it's going, but it's not going all the way. It did stuck. It's not leaving.   [01:18:26] So then she said, Okay, we pray, Lord, I repent my identity. Your pain. And then we prayed again and instantly it left.   [01:18:39] That familiar spirit?   [01:18:41] Yes, that's exactly right. So here's the bottom line.   [01:18:45] Not everything that happens is God's will, but nothing happens outside of his authorization. And once we understand that there is a legal framework and authorization, then it helps us to start to understand maybe what's going on and maybe how to fight it in our lives. Here's the other thing I find the more you seek the Lord, the more you are in the center of his will. And therefore, the more that everything that happens to you is part of him guiding you towards your destiny. This is what we talked about last session, I believe. On the contrary is true. The more you ignore the Lord, the more you're out of the center of his will. And then the more everything that happens is evil trying to thwart you. And in some mysterious ways, both of all of this is tied into God's authorization. And so that when evil happens, that's how we start to understand what's going on. Was this a cool lesson?   [01:19:51] This was so great. Yes, absolutely. I love it. And just just being reminded of me, I was thinking of the word test a lot. And I know that gets a bad rap with believers. They don't like to think of God as being. Well, he's going to test me on that. But I also understand the reason behind it. And I think a lot of this to me was just an eye opener to recognize a lot of those moments in those seasons, in those circumstances as a test like Joe going to be faithful and trust the Lord. And I know that working this out for my destiny, I would say yes.   [01:20:32] But I like to make sure one more thing is understood, because last session we talked about was Joseph and with Esther. And a lot of that was part of God's plan moving in towards a destiny, which is kind of where wilderness is a test. But I think the thing if I could underscore one thing from today's session, it's. There are legal. Rules in place that give evil the authority to act in our lives and if we understand those rules. More were more likely to keep evil out of our lives. If you think about speeding. If you understood that the speed limit was 45, you would slow down to 45 before you got there. But if you're ignorant of it, you go barreling through at 7 and you get a speeding ticket.   [01:21:30] So the quote unquote, knowledge is power. Not really a spiritual term, but the more we understand how God has set up.   [01:21:40] His kingdom, the more we can operate in accordance with how it's set up and therefore we can avoid a lot of the hardships. A lot of the trials we can understand. There is some relationship and a cause and effect and we're not just at a mystery of what's going on. Just like with Princeville. She's been prayed for for years to get the wheelchair. One until I came on to my home because I understood the process better. She's able to walk free now. That's the implication.   [01:22:23] That's great. Obeidy, I think we're about out of time for today, we'd probably need to wrap up our call, but thank you so much for your time and your expertise and just all the time. I know the sacrifice of your time that you put into preparing this for today and this is a great call and I know it blesses all of you listeners out there and remember to share the podcast with your friends. Do you

James: Hey, audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth True Value-add Real Estate Investing podcast. Last week we had Kevin Bupp who's an awesome syndicator and a sponsor in the mobile home park space. And he gave a lot of insight on why did he choose mobile home park and what happened during 2008. And you know, how he rebounded in his real estate career and a lot of other things. So you guys want to check out that episode.  Today we have Todd Dexheimer. Hey Todd, welcome to the show.   Todd: How are you doing?   James: Good. Good. Very good. Very good. So Todd owns almost 550 units and he has been buying in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee. Is that right, Todd? I mean, is this all that you're focusing, which is completely different from the usual guests that we get who buys in Florida and Texas, right? So I want to really dive into these States, which is not the usual focus or not the usual point of discussion that you know, a lot of multi-families syndicators and investors have. So let's talk, you know, Todd, why not you introduce yourself in case I missed out something?   Todd: Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, a little bit about my background. I started doing this business actually right when the crash happened. I started in 2008 so the timing was great. At the time people were telling me I was stupid and crazy because the sky was falling, you know, but luckily I didn't listen to them. I, you know, buck the Trendon instead of running away, I ran headfirst in. So started buying single families, did a lot of fix and flips, did a bunch of them, probably 150 or so, and was really, they'll want you to focus on rentals at the whole time. So while I didn't have any money as I flipped, I would just keep a little bit of that cash that I would get from the flip and buy some rentals. And that's how I was able to build up my rental portfolio.    Bought a lot of one to four families, some small apartments, did that all locally in the twin cities. And I got up to maybe close to a hundred units just under that at one point in time before I kind of transitioned them. Yeah. Out of the flips, out of that smaller one to four family stuff and into apartments, I've since sold a few buildings in the twin cities, but I've been buying in mostly out of state; in Cincinnati, Kentucky area Tennessee. That's been my main focus now is just buying... I went from buying kind of 20 to 30 unit type buildings to then now and buying larger hundred-plus unit buildings. So that's my main focus now is looking at a hundred plus unit buildings and doing value add syndication.   James: Awesome. Awesome. I mean, looking at your bio, you also have done some office, some ski resorts, some mobile home park. And finally, I think now you're focusing a lot on, I mean, you have been focusing a lot on apartments, right? And why is that? I mean, didn't the other businesses make a lot more money than apartments?   Todd: Yeah, I mean, everything made plenty of money. They all make sense. And that's the beautiful thing about real estate and the confusing thing about real estate is it all make sense, right? I mean, you know, I can make a lot of money in office, I can make a lot of money in retail and warehouses and all kinds of stuff, and I can make money in development and owning land and mobile home parks. I mean, you talked about Kevin Bob, he's a fantastic guy. He's making a lot of money, I'm assuming, in mobile home parks. And so that's the beautiful thing about real estate, but you got to pick your focus, right? And so, yeah, I did some development, I did some land, like you said, I owned a ski resort, which is just super random.   James: Do you still own it?   Todd: I don't, I sold it. It was a distraction. It was a beautiful place. Look, it was like 190 acres or something like that. It was beautiful. A really nice river ran through one of the edges of the property. It was nice hills and it was an amazing property, but you know, it was a distraction and you've got to get focused. And I actually talked to my...   James: Can you hold on? Sorry, my dog is disturbing. Hey, Todd so it looks like you have done, you know, quite different types of business, right? Like an office, some ski resort and some mobile home park and you know, you started with smaller common, complex and all that. But finally you ended up focusing a lot on a common complexes. Right. And why is that?   Todd: Yeah. because apartments make you a lot of money. No, the answer is I needed to focus on one main thing. And I could've chosen office, I could've chosen retail and warehouse or buying, you know, distressed land, like the ski resort and I did all that. But there's just no focus when you're doing just random stuff like that. And I wanted to really focus and I wanted to build something big. And so ultimately, it was a choice of, okay, what do I really enjoy and what do I really want to focus on? You know, the beautiful thing about real estate, there's so many different options, every way makes money.   And I've gotten friends that do note buying. I've got friends that, you know, flip houses that wholesale, that do land development, everything. And they all make a lot of money if they focus on it and they do it well. So that's why; I just had to focus. I just had to have one niche that I picked and ultimately I was most attracted and most led to multifamily.   James: Awesome. Awesome. So looking at the States that you have invested right now, I'm not sure whether, you know, like the popular state, I would say like Texas, Florida, Las Vegas, Arizona, Phoenix and all that, right? I mean, how is the market different compared to this populous state? How's the market in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, different from the other markets that a lot of people know?   Todd: Yeah. So first of all, Minnesota is a totally different market than all of them. Minnesota is a extremely competitive market. You and I talked offline. I mean, it's a super competitive market. There's very little inventory, very competitive. Cap rates are extremely compressed. almost impossible to find deals. Not that you can't, but I mean, extremely hard. There's just not a lot of deals that sell, especially when you're talking a hundred-plus unit deals, just not a lot of deals itself.   James: The twin cities are there, right?   Todd: Yup. This is Minneapolis and St Paul, the twin cities. You know, if you go way out state, it's a different story, but you don't want to invest there cause nobody lives there. So if you're going to remain populous, which is Minneapolis, St Paul or the Rochester area, which is where the male clinic has...a lot of people know what the male clinic is. It's one of the best hospitals in the US, those are the two areas of most people are investing in and it's next to impossible to find a deal.   James: What is so special about these twin cities? I mean, now it's like what Phoenix and Las Vegas, but past three, four years, I mean, I used to read Marcus and Millichap report and they always say the top city to invest in is twin cities. And I can never Google it. And now you're telling me that it is the twin city, right? What's the real definition of it, where it's located and what is so special? Why is it the top city?   Todd: Yeah, well, look, I mean I think we're the 16th largest Metro in the US, if I'm correct and I think we've got 3.8 million people in the whole Metro area, which we called the twin cities. We have a large portion of Fortune 500 companies are based here. It went down recently because there have been some mergers, but they're essentially still here. It's just a couple of companies that merged. So we've got a very large amount of Fortune 500 companies. It's just a stable, steady place, right? We're never going to have big population gains, but we don't have population loss and our rents never go skyrocket up. I mean, they've skyrocketed recently, but we call skyrocketing three and a half percent increase, you know, that's skyrocketing for the twin cities as far as rent goes.    But we're going to see, you know, that just stable, that really stable, it's never that up and down. It's not like a Phoenix, it's not like a Florida, it's not like that. Just that roller coaster ride, we're just straight. And so people like that. Our occupancy rate in the twin cities is, I mean, I think we've now come down a little bit, but we're at about 97% occupancy up until fairly recently.   James: On average. Wow, that's really good.   Todd: That's amazing. People couldn't find places to live. I mean, if you were an okay landlord, you were full. The only people that weren't full were just the slum Lords and even they were close to being full.   James: And that probably could be the reason why, you know, you can't find inventory, right? Just there's no inventory. Right.    Todd: Yeah. Yeah, it's good. So the difference, that's one market. And then, the other markets that I'm really focused on are going to be like Cincinnati. Now as you start to really look, Cincinnati's in some of the lists now, market is to be looking at, and I just looked up the other day, like the cities with the best population growth, job growth, and Cincinnati was on there. So you're starting to see the markets that I'm invested in beyond those lists and they weren't on there before. So basically what it was is through my research, I wanted to find markets that hit all the criteria that I'm looking for. That's job growth. That's population growth, that's strong government and independent support for businesses, bringing in businesses. That's good rent affordability. That was huge on my list. I wanted cities that had good rent affordability, opportunity to purchase assets that were cash flowing with decent cap rates.    I wasn't necessarily looking for like a 10 cap, but I want decent cap rates. I wanted a market that I didn't feel like compressed to the point of where when we do see whatever recession is coming next, that they're gonna go way back up. And so those were the markets that I really tried to focus on. And that's what I feel like I've found. Now, since I found them, they have definitely compressed a lot more. You know, it's challenging, but when I first started in those markets, there's a lot of opportunities and there still is.   James: Got it. Got it. So how was your experience from going from buying and flipping houses into syndication, right? Why did you make that leap into syndication?   Todd: Yeah, flipping houses suck. It's a lot of work.   James: I mean, I've tried two times and I promised myself I'm not going to do it again.    Todd: Yes. It's just so much head damage in flipping houses. And can you make some good money? Yeah, I made some good money. I'm not gonna say I didn't, but there's just a lot of liability, a lot of head damage. You're dealing with a lot of contractors and you're in use always, and homeowners and emotions and it's just...you're always grinding. You're never...not that like I care about it, I enjoy grinding. I mean, I do it in multifamily right now, but I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere; where with the flips I felt like I was on that hamster wheel or I got to buy one and I got to immediately find another one and I'm always like running in a circle. And so that was kind of the reasoning that I wanted to get out of it.   Plus I'm paying, you know, short term capital gains or ordinary income, I just didn't like that. Now multifamily syndication made a lot of sense because I had a lot of investors. When I was doing flips, I was bringing in private money to my flips. I wasn't using hard money. I was using just private money. People I've met that wanted to invest in my deals and that's how I got them involved. And so when I wanted to transition into multifamily, it was pretty easy to say, Hey, this is what I'm doing. If you want to come on board or not. And all my investors said, yeah, let's do it.    Ultimately that was what James I wanted to do from the very start. When I first started this real estate journey back in 2007 when I started reading books, before I ever bought anything, I read several multifamily books, one by David Lindel called multifamily millions and another one by Ken McElroy called ABC's of real estate investing and I loved those books and that said, this is where I want to go. And I had always been kind of obsessed with it, but I had no clue how I was going to take down $1 million-plus building. And so, I just kinda got scared and let it fall by the wayside.   James: So how did you take that leap? Who helped you and was it like a aha moment? One day you wake up and you bought it or?   Todd: I had a business partner and ultimately it was time for us to kind of separate and go our own ways. I wanted to do something different than the flips and wanted to take this multifamily leap. I started by buying some smaller, you know, as I said, 10 to 20 to 30 unit buildings and that was making a big step there. And then just started like listening to people on podcasts and going, no, why am I doing this? I hired a business coach too and I remember talking to him and going, I think he said, like, what? Why are you buying another 20 unit? And I said, well, you know, like I got to keep on buying these and then eventually I'll get up to, you know, hundred-plus unit buildings. Why not do it now? And I'm like, Oh yeah, why not do it now? So it's just like somebody just needed to tell me like, what are you doing? Let's just do it now. Like, and it wasn't like, Oh wow, that's a scary thing. When he said it, I was like, well, yeah, yeah, let's just do it now. You're right. Yeah. So I don't know, sometimes you just gotta be told like, what are you doing? Just go do it.    James: Just go do it. Yeah. You just need someone to, I mean...   Todd: Just a little kick in the pants sometimes.   James: A little kick or a knock on the head, hey, you can do it now. Right. Why not you do it? Right. So that's very interesting. So what are the things that you when you started syndication, right? I mean, when you look at a deal, when you get a deal, I mean, first of all, you're already finding it hard to find inventory, right? But whenever you find an inventory that comes to you, what kind of things do you look at?   Todd: I'm sure kind of the same as most people. I'm looking, you know, beyond the city and the neighborhood, which I already kind of mentioned. I'm looking for that population growth, that job growth, I'm really digging into the neighborhood too. And I want the neighborhood to have the same fundamentals that I'm looking for in the city. I want that specific neighborhood to have too and low crime and that growth is what I'm looking for. So beyond that though, as property-specific, I'm looking for an opportunity that has something wrong with it. And it might have really high expenses that I can take down. You know, utilities are a big one where people aren't, you know, we can put some like led stuff and we can put low flow toilets and we can do energy-efficient stuff that's really going to cut down on our bills and increase our ROI.   We can do RUBS which is ratio utility billing and where we're charging back to the tenants,  those people who don't know. And then potentially, you know, depending on how the property is being run, there might be some other potential small things that we can do. And then of course on the income side, we're looking at can we raise rents by doing improvements to the property? We don't like to raise rents just to raise rents, I like to provide something good for my tenant base. And then, you know, there might be other things, like there might be a just occupancy issues that the other management company or other owner just wasn't on top of things, collection issues. Potentially. there are crime issues or there's other just management issues at the property where they have the wrong tenant basin and we can correct those problems that are happening.   James: Got it, got it. I mean, out of these five cities, five states that you invest in, is there any difference in landlord friendliness within this city?   Todd: You know, they're actually all fairly similar as far as this landlord friendliness. They all have different quirks to them. You know, some of them might have to give a like a five-day notice to the tenant before you can evict them. Some of them, you can't set their stuff out on the curb right away, you have to give them, you know, like in Minneapolis, if you evict a tenant and they leave stuff at the property, you have to hold onto that stuff for 28 days. That doesn't have to stay in the property. You can put it in storage or whatever. They have time, it used to be 60 days but they have time to be able to get their belongings. So they're all a little bit different. But I would say, all in all, they're kind of probably less right in the middle.   You know, I hear some other States are being better. For instance, Texas I hear is really good. But yeah, you just kind of raised your eyebrows and rolls your eyes a little bit and I've heard that too by other people. And I think what happens is, you know, and not saying every state is the same cause there are some states that I'm sure are really hard on landlords, but I think if you know and understand the laws and understand what you can and can't do to get your tenants out and that type of stuff, most States are just fine. Like it's not that difficult to move tenants. So, for instance, Minnesota, a lot of people have that kind of misunderstanding. I don't know where it comes from that you can't kick a tenant out in the winter and that's not true.    My company just evicted one of our tenants and there's date to be sat out is, I think December 12th. You know, so you can, you know, it's winter here. I mean, December 12th is...next week is going to be zero degrees out. So, you know, you just have to understand it and if you understand the landlord laws, the tenant laws, you're going to be just fine. So get the right people around you, surround yourself with the right people.   James: Got it. Got it. And also, I see in your bio that you have a passion to teach undeserved youth and adults on how to create financial independence. So can you explain about that?   Todd: Yeah. You know, so I've volunteered for a nonprofit called Junior Achievement, a lot of people know that and my passion and I don't know exactly where I'll take it, but my passion is just to continue to do that and raise awareness, raise money and for people who don't have the opportunity to have what we have and do what we do. A lot of people don't even know a business or being a business owner, being an entrepreneur is even like a possibility for them. And it's possible for everybody. Cause there's a lot of people that come from nothing especially, you know, I see people from different countries come here that have nothing or start with nothing and they do amazing things. And there are people living in this country that just don't even think it's possible. Like they don't know that it's there. So I want to just really educate people.    The other thing is I love to figure out somehow how to get financial education into the schools. And that's a tall task, I know, and it may never happen, but that's one of the things I really want to do. I used to be a high school teacher. I really think it's important to teach our youth about how to be responsible financially and just about the amazing opportunities that there are out there.   James: Yeah, absolutely. Especially in the US right. Where it's a capitalist country, right? Anybody can, you know, make a lot of money, as long as they're willing to work hard, you find the right people to be coached on, right. You're on the right path, you work hard, you should be able to make a lot of money. I mean, it's completely different from a lot of other countries out there. I mean, people may not appreciate how much freedom to create wealth in the US unless you have travel outside and you have lived in other countries, right? So a lot of people did not know that, so that's really good. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people take it for granted and a lot of people do think that somebody else owes them something.   Todd: Yeah. It's a hard mindset to change. I mean one of my very first tenants, and this is partly where it came from, one of my very first tenants in a single-family house, she moved in. She had section eight and she said, "You know, I'm not going to have this section eight for very long so could you take me when I drop out of section eight?"  I said, "Oh, absolutely, yeah, as long as your income and you meet the requirements, no problem."  "Okay, I'm going to do that. I'm getting my real estate license. I'm going to get out of this. My mom had section eight, my grandma had section eight and I don't want to be part of this circle." She never got out of section eight. I had to actually evict her because she wasn't even paying her portion of the rent and I don't know where she is at today. I'm hoping she's out of section eight but my guess, my gut is she's probably still in section eight and never learned really what to do and how to get out of it. And I'd like to be able to help end that cycle.   James: Yeah, that's a very good thing that you're doing because I think sometimes they need someone in the business circle to go back and, you know, just tell the possibilities out there in the business world. So, yeah, that's very important. So, Todd, when you look at the multifamily apartment, I'm presuming you're doing a lot of value add deals, right? Is there anything that you find in terms of what the most valuable value add when you're doing all this turnaround?   Todd: I mean, it's different for every project, but one of the things I like the most is trying to find expense, just expenses that we can cut but efficiently cut. Like I don't want to just cut repairs and maintenance because those are going to come back. And they're going to probably come back and bite me because I tried to cut those and be cheap. But now if we can do things, we can cut down by buying in bulk, by buying the right materials, by being efficient at our scheduled repairs versus just randomly doing it when it finally breaks. If we get into a more of a rhythm and a schedule, we can actually cut expenses, which a lot of people don't understand. Like how is that possible? Cause we're always on the property and always scheduling things.   But preventative maintenance is actually going to save you money versus having something that breaks, I mean, think about a furnace, right? If you go and you change the furnace filters, every month, you're going to extend the life of your furnace by potentially 10 or more years just by doing something like that. So that's one big thing. The other big thing with expenses and this is my favorite one, and I already mentioned this, is the utilities and cutting back on a lot of the utility costs by doing, there's a lot of different things we can do. We can replace the toilets with the low flows, we can put on a water reading system where it can tell and it can send us a rating if we have a water leak. You know, just silly things like that that seem like they shouldn't, you know, save you that much money, end up saving you a ton of money.    And the reason why this stuff is my favorite, the expense reduction is my favorite is because this is a recession-proof system, right? If we cut our expenses and a recession whacks us, guess what? Our expenses are gonna go way up. But if we jack our rents up today and a recession happens, what happens with our rents? They go back down. Right? And they do, and I don't care what people tell you that multifamily rents don't go down, they do. And so, so raising rents while I like that, and I'm not going to tell you we don't raise rents, but we know that by cutting expenses down, as long as we do it the right way and not just cut to cut because we want to be cheap, but if we do it the right way, that's recession-proof and that's going to continue to keep our NOI high during the recession.   James: That's a very interesting perspective because yeah, you're right. I mean, rents can go up and down, right? But once you optimize your expenses, you're probably going to be, you know, sticking to it, right? So you could invest on your expenses. That's a very interesting perspective. That's good. So Todd, let's go to a bit more personal side of it. So do you have any secret sauce to success? I mean on your personal side?   Todd: You know, I mean, there's no secret sauce, right? It's all out there. It's all about yeah, several different...if you can do the few things, focus, following one course until success...keeping yourself completely focused that's extremely difficult, right? But because we got so many distractions out there, but limiting those as much as we can. You know, never giving up, always pushing on, always continuing to persevere, being consistent and persistent. Those are all really big. I mean, it's very easy in this industry and in any industry to get kind of discouraged. You know, you get beat out on 10, 20, 30, 40 properties and you don't get one and you get discouraged. Look, I haven't bought a property since May. Do you think I'm excited that I haven't bought a property since May? No. I would love to have a property right now under contract, but I don't.    But I'm not discouraged. I'm going to keep on going and keep on pushing on and keep on putting on offers until I get one. So I think those are just really important things to focus on. I think obviously you need to be clear, you need to have goals, you need to understand where you're trying to go with this business. Those are all so important. So there's no secret. I wish there was and I found it, but you know, it's hard work. Being an entrepreneur can be lonely. That's out there all alone. You're getting your butt kicked in but it's a fun business at the same time, there's a lot of reward in the end when you're building something bigger than yourself.   James: Yeah. It's interesting. And even on the previous podcast, we were talking about how the world has changed compared to like past five to six years to now. Because now with social media you feel a lot of FOMO, right? Because you start seeing people are closing deals and doing deals and you are like, Oh, I didn't buy since March. You know, so you have to really, really control your fear of missing out. Especially when you can see everybody, what's happening.   Todd: Stop comparing yourself to others. For one, you don't know what others are doing. You don't know what type of ownership structures they have or anything like that. And when I look at my properties and I really probably dive into them, I have a really good ownership structure on my properties and some people that have three times the amount of units, four times the amount of units than I do, they probably have less ownership, less overall, whatever you want to call it, equity than I potentially have. And so if you want to compare yourself to others, you're always going to be disappointed. You just have to look at yourself and go, I'm happy where I'm at today. You know, where are the goals that I have for myself in the future and where am I today and what do I need to do to keep on pushing on? That's how you gotta look at it. If I look at what you're doing and what everybody else is doing, what Kevin Bop is doing, I'm going to be disappointed in myself. I'm going to want to buy these properties and I'm going to end up doing stupid stuff.    James: Correct. Yeah. I mean sometimes it's surprising. Sometimes people can claim they own a half a billion dollars in assets, but he may be poorer than the guy who owns a hundred units on his own. Cause they had half a billion, they probably own like a what, 10-20% out of it and out of the 20% they probably own like...   Todd: Or half a percent.   James: 30% out of it. And out of that 30% they probably gave so much money for all the capital raises that they are hiring.  And they probably wouldn't do the 0.001 of that billion. Right. So you know, I mean just audience, I mean, you guys really want to make sure that you don't get caught in all this marketing hype that you're seeing in Facebook or LinkedIn. So the real guys are really working. So you'll be able to identify the real guys just by talking to them in terms of what are they doing and how are they portraying themselves? And, you know, talking to their passive investors.   Todd: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of noise, like you said.   James: It's a lot of noise and sometimes the rise of social media, I mean, you have a Facebook group. I have a Facebook group. Sometimes they know the amount of I mean just in general, Facebook itself, there's so much of noise out there that it creates a lot of FOMO in a lot of people, so you have to be really watching out for that. Yeah. Was there any proud moment in real estate that you think I'm really, really proud of that moment? I'm really proud that I did something that's gonna stay with you for a long time?   Todd: Boy. you know, I guess just getting started from the beginning is probably what I'm most proud of is that well, like I said at the beginning, everybody goes 2008 that was an amazing time. you're a lucky guy. But at the same time ask yourself this, did you invest in 2008? You know, most everybody listening has to say no because they were either, well, maybe too young or they're running the other way. And I was young in 2008 but I just took that risk, I believed in it and I saw what was possible. And so that's probably what I'm most proud of when everybody else was running the other way, I ran right to the fire hydrant.   James: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, even now it's hard to find deals. I mean, it was the same thing in 2008, it's hard to find deals. Even in 2010, it's hard to find deals, all the time. It's always hard to find deals.   Todd: Well that's the thing is, and you said it, that's perfect right there. And I'm glad you said that because it's always hard to find deals. It's always easy to say there was a lot of deals back then. We might be saying in 2025 that every deal in 2019 and 2020, we should have bought. We don't know right now, but in 2011, 2008, you know, all those years while it was happening, there was not a lot of great deals to buy because the market was totally different than it is today. And you didn't know where it was going to go. You just didn't know. You have to buy on today's fundamentals. You can't buy on to tomorrow's fundamentals because we don't know where that's going.   James: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Hey Todd, why don't you tell our audience how to get hold of you?   Todd: Yeah, so I've got several things. If they want to listen to my podcasts, they can definitely listen to that. It's Pillars of Wealth Creation. They can reach out to me if they want to learn more about my company and invest in that kind of stuff. They can reach out to me at my websites venturedproperties.com or they can email me, todd@venturedproperties.com. And then I do coaching as well, run some mastermind groups and coaching. And if they want to learn more about that, they can either email me at the email address or they can go to my website, which is coachwithdex.com as well.   James: Awesome. Todd, thanks for coming on the show, you added tons of value. Give us a lot of perspective of different markets that I'm not familiar with and I'm sure a lot of listeners are not familiar with and how did you, you know, came up in life and you know, you have been giving back as well. So really happy for that. Thank you. Todd: Yeah, definitely. Lots of fun. Appreciate you having me on.   

Todd Tresidder is the author of seven personal finance books with an eighth coming out shortly. He created a course on strategic wealth planning and is the founder of FinancialMentor.com, a popular personal finance site. He is a self-made millionaire and was financially independent at age 35, which was more than two decades ago. Since then he’s been coaching clients on how to do the same giving him an unusual depth of experience. Todd has maintained his wealth by remaining an active investor and utilizing statistical and mathematical risk-management systems for investing. Through FinancialMentor.com he teaches advanced investing and advanced retirement planning principles. Take the next step beyond conventional financial advice and discover what works, what doesn’t, and why, based on years of proven experience.   “So he had all kinds of great stories about how this company was going to the moon and he didn’t understand the setback but this company was going to fly and I was a stupid kid and I bought it hook line and sinker and I put even more money into it. So I made this stupid mistake of averaging down on a loss you know chasing good money after bad and eventually went to zero, and I lost everything.” Todd Tresidder     Support our sponsor   Today’s episode is sponsored by the Women Building Wealth membership group, the complete proven step-by-step course to guide women from novice to competent investor. To learn more, visit: WomenBuildingWealth.net.       Worst investment ever Graduate joins HP, friend in credit department offers hot stock tip Todd made his first and worst investment when he fresh out of college. Holding a fine résumé for a new graduate, he had been the business manager for campus businesses. It was the mid-1990s and he had read the book In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters. He went straight from college to work for HP, one of the top companies employers at the time, and had a friend in the credit department. One day during a lunch-time chat, his friend told him about a new company they were working with that was buying HP mainframes, and they were listed in the pink sheets on the Nasdaq. Todd’s friend had put his money in the company’s stock after doing financial analysis on the company and all this. ‘Inside scoop’ meant he put in all funds he had saved for his MBA course So Todd felt this was a “cool insider scoop” on this “amazing emerging company”. The company had an algorithm that was dominating how mail was going to be sent. Todd said “it sounds so absurd now, but it sounded cool at the time”. He had been busily saving for tuition fees to study for an MBA after paying his own way through school, and was still trying to pay off his college costs. He was also saving some money but chose instead to stick his savings into the pink sheet stock. Initially, it went up. But he neither knew anything about how new stock issues work or about how this business worked. So he also had no idea that it was standard protocol for new issues to promote them in an over-the-top way to get people excited about the stock, that it was “going to the moon”, in order to create demand. Todd was in early enough to see an initial rise in the stock, and he kept pumping more money into it. The more he had, the more he would invest, thinking this investment was going to pay for his further study. Stock price turned and broker talked him out of selling He then watched his investment fall to zero Then suddenly it turned and started going down. Magically, the stockbroker called Todd (as though he could read Todd’s mind) and “had all kinds of great stories about how this company was going to the moon. And that he didn’t understand this setback, but this company was going to fly and I was a stupid kid”. Todd bought the broker’s story and put more money in. He made “this stupid mistake” of averaging down on a loss, chasing good money after bad and eventually it went to zero, leaving him with nothing of his original investment. That was Todd’s first and worst investment ever. So for his very first investment I lost everything. But it did set him on a course to learn everything about how to stop it happening again.   “It was only in hindsight, as I started to learn (about finance and investing), that I realized the depth and the level of all the different mistakes I was making.” Todd Tresidder     Lessons learned Don’t buy on hot stock tips Don’t risk money you can’t afford to lose Don’t buy a story If you think about it, you are actually buying a business, so if you are going to buy based on any sort of fundamentals, it better be business fundamentals. You must must must have a risk management plan in place This must include an exit strategy Don’t play a game that you don’t fully understand. Todd was in the new-issue market, which is a very specialized game. There are rules by which that game is played by and he admits violating them all “with pure stupidity”, because he did not know the game. Don’t confuse brains with a bull market Which is he says is what many people are doing right now. Don’t ever buy based on news Don’t send good money after bad by averaging down Don’t let a win turn into a loss       Andrew’s takeaways Collated from the My Worst Investment Ever series, the six main categories of mistakes made by Andrew’s interviewees, starting from the most common, are: Failed to do their own research Failed to properly assess and manage risk Were driven by emotion or flawed thinking Misplaced trust Failed to monitor their investment Invested in a start-up company Andrew says Todd’s case features Mistake No.2 “Failed to properly assess and manage risk” When we get excited about the returns and the opportunity, we often ignore the risks Part of managing risk it to assess the risk of that particular company but the other part of it is managing all the other risks, and that is about the position, size, how much money you put into it, and things like that. Have some kind of exit strategy for every single investment you have The hardest thing for an analyst and for any investor is the decision of what to do when the stock goes down. When we talk about emotion in investing, the emotion involved when our stock is starting to fail is intense. Nobel Prize research highlights that the pain of loss is two-and-a-half times the excitement you feel when you’re winning. When that emotion is involved, that really is the time to have a risk management system in place. It could be a stop loss, or something else. You must learn the game before you play That’s a critical lesson.   “(Risk management) It’s the first consideration in investing. I always think in terms of what can I lose and only secondarily do I consider what can I win? My focus is entirely on controlling losses.” Todd Tresidder   Actionable advice Focus on risk management, first and foremost. The reason for that is you can make all the other mistakes, but if you have a risk management strategy, you can still win in the long term.   “If you don’t have risk management any one mistake can bury you.” Todd Tresidder     No. 1 goal for next the 12 months Todd is finishing off his wealth planning course at FinancialMentor.com and he has one final module to create to complete that project. Then is will be time to build all the sales funnels and all the systems to support the site.   Parting words “It’s really not painful to talk about your losers.” Todd said, no one is born a smart investor. As a matter of fact, we are hardwired in our DNA that opposes what we should be doing as a smart investor. That’s one of the reasons he uses quantitative disciplines to overcome the natural human emotions. Recalling mistakes and how they are made is just part of learning how to invest.       You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming’s 14 Points Learn with Andrew Valuation Master Class - Take this course to advance your career and become a better investor Connect with Todd Tresidder LinkedIn Twitter Website Full bio Course Books Connect with Andrew Stotz astotz.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast Further reading mentioned Thomas (Tom) Peters and Robert Waterman (1982) In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies  

You probably know the line from the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, "If you build it they will come." Decades after the movie came out this line continues to resonate with us, because it's about faith. Faith in ourselves. In our own courage to follow our dreams. And faith in our fellow humans - that others will recognize our courage and affirm it by buying into our dream. This is the exact opposite of how we're taught in business school to launch a business. But passion-driven businesses can be just as successful as the more traditional, highly business-planned venture. Aileen's guests on this edition of Out to Lunch are both evidence of this. In 2013 Todd Buteaux wanted to escape the rat race in Los Angeles. He wanted his daughter to grow up knowing her family. And he wanted to spend time with his parents, who weren't getting any younger. So Todd abandoned his dreams of becoming an actor in Hollywood and moved back to Lafayette. Todd's wife, Rina, is Japanese American. Ironically, it has turned out to be Japanese culture that has fueled Todd's dreams since they moved back here. Today, Todd is co-owner and Marketing Manager of the Japanese restaurant Izumi Ramen, in Lafayette. He's also the marketing manager of the Hawaiian inspired restaurant, Poke Geaux in Lafayette. And he's the co-owner of Poke Geaux in Lake Charles. In 2001, Mark Falgout came back home from traveling the world and decided to open the type of guest house in Lafayette that he would like to stay at if he was a traveler here. That's how the Blue Moon Guesthouse was born. Because all travelers here want to hear music, Mark gave them that too, in the form of the Blue Moon Saloon. It turned out that the Blue Moon was a great place for travelers to meet locals, because locals made the Blue Moon one of the most popular places in Lafayette to go to hear music. So Mark gave locals another, bigger, venue - Warehouse 535. And in 2018 Mark came up with another idea. This one does not involve a piece of real estate. It's the SOLO Songwriters Festival. From its early success, it looks like Mark's music-booking skills and the years he spent as a board member of Festival International have paid off. Photos over lunch at Cafe Vermilionville by Lucius Fontenot. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why Dave Decided to talk to Steve Larsen: If you’ve heard the phrase “Lean into it” and “One Step Learning” then you most definitely have heard the name Steve Larsen before. Russell Brunson’s Padawan turned Master uses these sayings and principles to teach businesses and clients how to maximize their profits but today he wants to tell you how you can personally use them. He talks about the how and why behind each principle and how he used these exact principles to go from broke to a business coach. Like always, listen in for some great content and even learn how to maximize your knowledge gained at live events. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: (3:14) Steve’s Recent Geek Outs on the who (4:28) What Do You Know About “One Step Learning”? (6:44) Why Dave Loves One Step Learning (9:23) Everything Isn’t New: Steve’s Philosophy on Events (10:44) Steve’s Why’s and How’s for Frameworks (14:04) Leaning In is How Steve Gets Through Challenges (17:22) Sorry To Say It But...The Obstacle Is the Way Quotable Moments: (3:59) “They’re already a great fit, they don’t need to go create the problem and then go find the solution because they’re already feeling the problem.” (6:24) It’s all about identifying where you want to go, where you are, and only learning like a hunter for the next step in front of you. That’s it. Blinders on everything else.” (11:44) “ Understanding what those frameworks are and the natural step that most of the industry is taking that takes out most of the guesswork and it’s pretty hard to fail if you do it.” (16:01) “It’s brutal honesty in oneself and with where you are like, ‘Steven...YOU’RE BROKE’ you know? And being okay with that and not judge your value off that.” (19:08) “‘I don’t have any time’ Great, lean in. It’s not an excuse. I have empathy, but I have 0 sympathy for those kinds of scenarios.” Other Tidbits: Did you see Steve shaking at the Round Table Event at FHL? Our good friend is all good now but that’s just what happens when you’re trying to provide too much content on an empty stomach. With consulting for thousands of companies now, Steve has become amply talented at Funnel Hacking other business strategies to understand the reason they worked for them. Steve was unwillingly diagnoses with the symptoms of ADHD, he had too many goals and aspirations to allow the doctor to fully brand him as ADHD Important Episode Links: SteveJLarsen.comSales Funnel Radio PodcastFunnelHackingLive.com FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- 00:00     Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody welcome back to funnel hack black 00:18     radio. I literally have one of my most favorite people in the world on the show. He does not need an introduction, but I will introduce him afterwards. I want to welcome to the show with my dear friend, Mr Steven or Steve Larson. Welcome to show, but hey, thanks so much for having me, man. This is awesome. I am so excited. This is, I was going to try to go back. You are, I think what episode? Like 12 on funnel hacker radio. The one of the very, very first ones I ever did. I was so way, way, way back when, way back. Let's figure that one out. But it's been so cool for me to see your journey and you're just such a dear friend. You provide such massive value for those of us who were not at funnel hacking live. I don't know why you wouldn't have been there for some reason if you weren't, uh, just one of the many things that just epitomizes the kindness of Steve. 01:04     Do you want to go by Steve or Steven on this podcast? Which one you want is fine. Okay, so we'll go with Steve. So Steve was basically, they're at funnel hacking live. He was one of our round table hosts. You've already spoken. He just bought a ton of value. He's literally standing on a chair speaking to, he had the most people at anyone. I think we were like eight rows back of people around this circle. And so you basically have the knights of the round table with eight concentric circles behind it. Just couldn't get enough people around him. And all of a sudden I see Stephen sitting down. I'm like, Huh, that's kind of different. It's not normally like to you. And then I'll come over and he's like shaking. I'm like, dude, what's going on? He goes, I haven't eaten and I'm, and I'm like, stop everything. 01:45     You can't talk anymore. But like, listen, you guys are going to kill my favorite person in the world. You cannot do this to Steve though. Visit got us food. But that's just who Steven, I mean Steve, you give so much to everyone and it's just the most generous person in the world. The part I love is you just, you immerse yourself in content to a point that it is far beyond what most people would ever do. And because of that, the value that you're able to give people is so huge. I mean, I had people coming up to me, I would've paid $50,000 just to be, it's even stable. I mean people were so excited to be there, so we'll probably have to pay you next year to be around people. Hose. I was going to say, man, who is that guy? 02:26     But with that I just again see if thanks so much for being on. Anything else you want to say before we dive into some fun stuff and I appreciate that, that you know, I, I, the feeling is mutual. I just about passed out that day. I, I all the tricks, my vision actually boring. I was like, I'm not used to blurring out. And then I felt your hand on my shoulder pulling me down and I was like, oh, thank you. Oh my Gosh Dave. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Crazy. But honestly, the thing that I just love is Steve, you have this ability to connect with people at a level most people don't, which is, I know you're real strong. D I personality anyways. And with that you're, you're so driven, you get at the same time you have this heart of gold that people feel and they're just so drawn to you. I mean, it was funnel hacking live was so fun for me to watch it at the same time, scary because they've literally mauling you, they couldn't get enough of you. And it was just like, and I know you had friends there protecting and everything else, but every once in while it's like, listen back off. 03:27     Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. So it's just neat to see. But so tell me, what are some of the things that you're, what are you geeking out on these days? What are the things that you're really enjoying the most? Yeah. You know, one of the things I've been focusing on a lot lately is this whole concept of getting more clarity on, on the WHO that we all sell. You know, this past little while, like I'm so geek out so hard on the funnel itself, obviously in the offer and the sales message, but what I've been noticing, the thing is that there's these people out there who frankly have terrible funnels, terrible offers, really bad sales message, but they're making a lot of money and it's been a pattern I've been diving into really in the past eight months and following up and seeing what's happening and the piece that they've all gotten good at is the WHO and they're good at talking to these people who are already a great fit. 04:18     They don't need to go create a problem and then present the solution cause they're already feeling the problem. They don't need to go and see, oh if I already see the, how do I build up the value of this land? They already see the value because they've been trying all the other avenues and products that already exist and because they get clarity on that one piece, the rest of it, they can be terrible at and make a lot of money and has been the thing of a Gig and out a lot lately is how to identify that. Who and where they are. 04:44     One of these you said at funnel hacking live, which I've taken notes on and I'm actually making sure I implement my own life these days. And that is [inaudible] one step. Learning, learning one step ahead. Oh yeah. If you don't mind just kind of explain to people what that is cause it'll tie into exactly what you said when you were talking about this. Who, 05:00     yeah. You know I, it was probably three years after I really started trying to do business on my own and it was, it was challenging. You know, it's very challenging and, and I'm, I'm reading and I'm studying and immersing and I think that's important, especially at the beginning of any journey is to really go deep for a little while. But then eventually you got to stop and put everything down. I remember one day I was riding my bike home from campus. We're broke, we're living on loans, and uh, and I started beating myself up and which if you're listening or watching to this right now, like I asked you not to do that. We all do that as entrepreneurs and it's not really fair to us by what we're trying to solve, you know? And, and, uh, I started beating myself up and I was like, basically, I was like, dude, why are you still broke? You know, I was like, what is going on? And you know, I started doing what we all do little, I know what I would do in that guy's business. I definitely know what he's doing wrong and I'm over here broke, you know, who am I, you know, to say that. And I started kind of beat myself up a little bit and I realized that I was getting stuck in these learning 05:57     loops where I would just study for the sake of feeling motion and the seventh of motion, but not actually doing anything. And for a couple of years, that's the way it was. And for a while if necessary to kind of immerse, but I would, I recommend everybody as fast as you can to put the books down and uh, I'm not telling you not to learn, not to read or study and everything, but the learning style changes. Um, most CEO's, like we all know, they read a book a week, which is great, but most of us in the entrepreneur world are not CEOs yet, but we try to behave like one. And so we consume and consume, consume and all it does is it bogs us down because we're trying to distill all this information figured out to do with it, but we didn't even have a thing to do at two yet. 06:40     And that's the issue. So it's all about, it's all about identifying where you want to go, where you are, and then only learning. But like a hunter, you know, for the next step in front of you and that's it. Blinders on everything else you just learn for to take the step rather than to learn generally hit stop learning generally. I think that's the big piece that would really help a lot of people now. I totally love that. I, it's uh, it's interesting, I went through this, that experience last year. Uh, I end up hiring a whole bunch of different coaches in different areas and um, part of was I just wanted to, I wanted to up my game a ton and one of those I ended up hiring thing I mentioned made a mention to you was, you know, Jerrick Robbins, Tony Son. And I wanted it primarily on the relationship side. 07:19     Um, I've had this experience of uh, being probably a little too direct for people. And it's interesting in my role at click funnels I had obviously I forward facing, I see a lot of people and I want to make sure that I, I care so much about people, but at sometimes I, I'm just, I've got so much on my mind, I'm like, listen, I'm so ROI based that at times I'm like, this conversation is going nowhere. And I ended up too fast. And I thought, all right, so Jerry, I need some help on how to get out of conversations in a kinder way and yet at the same time not spend a whole bunch of time. And so it was fun when I was talking to him because he had the exact same approach that you set and that is, you don't pick one thing you want to focus on what's the one thing. 07:58     And so for like a month we just dive deep into my marriage for a while or we dive deep into how do you communicate with your employees or we dive deep into, you know, different things and literally spend that whole month. And so everything he was giving me, it was just in that one area and the port I I loved the most was I saw such massive growth and areas that I, before I thought I was just kind of dabbling in, but then all of a sudden within a month or six weeks, I would literally get like a year's worth of growth just because of that focused opportunity. Yeah, it was just crazy. And so I, at the end of the year, I basically kind of came down the end and I'm like, jerk, the thing I need next is we're churn for us right now at click is the most important thing I'm working on. 08:40     And he said, well Dave, that's not my specialty. And but he referred me to two different people. One Who, uh, was a dear friend of mine, Dan Martell. So Todd and I hired Gan and we're working through some of his stuff. And then Keith Cunningham who speaks at Tony's mastery is this genius guy on understanding the numbers. And so I'm going to his event in April with gear three white, he happens to be there as well just to really dive in on the numbers, which is something I don't like as much, but I know it's what the next chapter is for me to get involved with. And so I just totally, when you set that at funnel hacking live, I'm like, man, I've, I've had personal experience with that and it made a ton of sense to me. And yet I was, I wanted to literally stop you and say, now listen, everyone, stop what you do. 09:26     It just pay total attention, justice deep right now because this is the only thing I do, the entire event that matters to you is because you go to an event and I've had that experience would go in there. Oh, that's a great idea. That's a great idea. And that's a great idea. And you get done. You're like, I can't implement all this stuff and nothing. And so I just, I just wanted to thank you for that and I want to make sure that people were listening. If you do nothing else, take Steve's advice on that because it's a game changer. 09:50     That's so true. You know, and what's interesting is like, I think because we're entrepreneurs, we're creators and we come up with these new things, we think that everything is new. It really isn't. It's like 80% is the exact same thing as what's already been done. 20% is your little glaze. That is, you know, your creativity. And if you can't name the framework that you're following the model that you're falling, that's where all the wheels spinning feeling comes from. That I've noticed in these coachings that I'll do and what do I do next? What to do next? I'm like, well, you're in the info product model, so just do it. All of them do you know book. Of course I take a thing. There you go. I'm in supplements. What I do. Well, all of them have already proved out how to sell supplements. Like I'm unique, not that unique, you know, get back to the basics. You know I'm special. Not really. You know, it's like, it's so funny. I feel like he can't name what you want, where you are now, the next step and then really understand the model that you should be following that there in lies noise. That's the formula to be feeling lost, you know? 10:47     Well you just mentioned a keyword. I think that people don't understand the importance and that's framework. Russell's done an amazing job, but that you have been a phenomenal job of that. How does a person find the framework and what exactly is a framework if you don't mind addressing those two 11:00     questions? No. Yeah, totally. So if you think about like a phone like Stephen, I'm in the B two B space. When you have to realize is that like if anyone has been selling in that space successfully at all and you are not like you're the variable, right? So you got to go back and he study. You got to look and be like, what is wrong with my business model and what are all these other like it's not so much looking at the funnel, it's looking at the whole business. How are they bringing people in and fulfilling on it? And now they continue to do that and we can look at it from a very 30,000 foot view and be like, okay, this is how most supplement companies are doing it or Btb or retail. It doesn't matter. Um, and you're seeing as a whole, the majority of them tend to be doing it this way. 11:39     And when you can figure that out, the game gets really easy. So your product is what's unique, your sales message or you're the banner that you lead with the charge, you know the beliefs that's unique. You are the attractive character, unique, but you're sitting on top of a model that's extremely proven. And then the game like most of the risk gets taken out of it. And so I can go take s a summit and figure out what the summit model has been and just put my stuff in there. And so understanding what those frameworks are and the natural step that most of the industry's taking, that takes out most of the guesswork and it's pretty hard to fail if you just do it. So what's been your experience to find out what that actual framework is? Cause you just rattled off a dozen different ones and because of your experience and you've literally have consulted with at this point, I would say venture say thousands of companies or clients. 12:26     You've had a lot of exposure to that. How does a person who's new to it tries to figure out how do I find out what a framework is? Yeah, I think it, I mean it takes a lot of homework at the beginning, you know, um, I think this truly is really what funnel hacking is. Um, if you go in and you start looking to see, like I would go see, okay, like all beliefs are upheld by story. Right. And um, I love, I love Ryan holiday. He teaches that when it, basically, the thing I learned from one of his books is that if you want to control an industry, you have to control the content they're consuming. And so that's one reason to publish so much. So one of the things I like to go do is if I'm doing supplements or B to B or whatever it is I'm looking at, I liked that goes personally, I like to go see who the content generators are. 13:10     It's really easy to find them because they usually are the tops of iTunes, the tops of their blogs, the hop and go start listing them out and then see what models they're actually making revenue off of. I found that those who are willing to publish frequently, usually they have some kind of, not always, some of them are just publishing for the sake of it, but it's usually easiest to find people who are both publishing and or spending ad money. So go click on ads, go look to see specifically the content that's out there and start buying their stuff and let them sell you and lean into the sale. You know, like I think it's so funny. Oh they just want to sell me something. Yeah, good de like you're doing your homework, you know, let them sell you by slowly and watch everything that they're doing and you're not just funnel hacking the sales process. 13:53     You're actually hacking their business process and you can start asking questions about the followup, the fulfillment, how many people they have in there and people get excited about their business, actually talked to you about it and you go in and start figuring out, oh my gosh, of the 10 people I just talked to, eight of them are kind of doing this, you know? And you'll see that a lot of the times, even if they didn't mean to naturally industries tend to sell in the similar ways. I love that. You know, one of the things you said there, which you've become quite famous for and that's his whole idea as far as lean in. What exactly do you mean by lean in? I Dunno. Everyone listened and you put a little tough skin on. Now is this all right? Go as tough as you want. Uh, so I keep the coin on my desk. 14:34     So when I was in, I was in college, I started going to some counseling. I was going through a rough time when did some counseling and I got inside of this, um, his counselor's office and he said, hey, have you ever been tested for Adhd? And I got so mad. And I was like, please don't tell me something's wrong with me. Like, who are you to tell me that something's wrong with me? Because I had all these dreams and aspirations and things are doing now and I didn't want to feel disqualified. And so I went and reluctantly took this test. I handed it back to him and he's like, you don't have ADHD but you have a lot of symptoms of it. And I was like, isn't that how you tell? 15:08     And I was like, I don't get it. Well, for a while this became like a banner. I would hold this on my, on my shoulders, like a flag. It was a burden. It was an excuse for me to not be successful. The fact that I was stupid, but the fact that I didn't own a briefcase made me feel like I wasn't professional enough to be an entrepreneur. Stupid but so is everyone else's excuse. Um, I couldn't talk. I was very overweight. Um, I was, I, uh, there's no way you would've gotten me on a podcast. I believe that I am the least likely success story. And if you think about like what? Like it wasn't by me sitting back at, well, I'm not that fat, right. Broke. You know what I mean? Like it. That's what's hard about this is that most of the time it, when you're sitting back with all these people who are trying to build a funnel or a business or being an entrepreneur for the first time, it's not that the models that they're falling don't work. 15:57     They are not working the model. And most of the time what's happening is like the s the stuff between their head isn't geared appropriately for their own benefit yet. And so I have to go back and help them realize like, look, the reason I can talk is because I couldn't five years ago. Right. The reason why I will loop athletic more athletic nails because I wasn't. And so it's brutal honesty in one self and where you currently are, Steven, you're broke. You know, and, and being okay with that and not judging your value off of it, but clearly feeling the state that you're in. Stephen, you're broke. It's even, you're dumb, right? I got kicked out of college. I had to go back four years later and apply and then I had to learn how to learn. And, um, all right, Steven, you're dumb. You don't know how to do this, you don't do this. 16:40     You've got no discipline. You have a video game addiction. You know, and I had to get really raw and real and too many people are afraid that they, um, that they, that they're not to be able to do that. Here's what I've noticed happens in one phone away in 2000 coaching. And that us as adults, most of our train track is actually built for us for the majority of her life. And it should be, you know, hey, you know, I've got three girls. Hey thing one, you cannot throw your spaghetti thing too. You know, like there's train tracks, he can't, there's rules of life. But eventually what happens is, you know, as the truck stop, and I've noticed that the majority of adults that I consult and teach and coach with is that they have never in their life actually picked the hammer up on their own, had a fought put down a track and put them first nail. 17:25     And on their own. They have done everything that everyone else has always told them. They've never had ever gain the confidence to do those kinds of things in their life. And so the whole concept of lean in is that when you think about Steven, what are my tracks? What are the tracks that I need to go down and follow? The reality is that the obstacle is the way, right? If you don't know what the tracks to follow, oh man, you don't know how to talk to you and write it. Dime to get raw. There are obstacles away. Go learn. You're broke, broke as a joke baby. Right? You've got to figure that out. You're lost in the sauce and just admitted, right. It stopped trying to like save face or save pride. No, you're dumb man. You don't have to learn. You know, and just being hard about it. 18:04     I don't know the tracks to go build as right. The obstacle's the way, it's why I keep this coin on my desk, you know, it says the is the way on the Ba. You got Yours too. Nice. So I actually, she even are showing each other our coins. I have to give Chris total credit to Stephen for this. I actually loved the book from Ryan Holiday. The obstacle is the way, but I never took the next step like he did and actually bought the coin. So I bought the coin and then I bought the coin for every one of my, my kids, my wife. And it's so true, Stephen. I love it in Pendleton and advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way best. I love that. And so whenever I get a little negative Nancy or I get poopy pants syndrome and I'm like, man, I don't want to be doing this right now. 18:44     I picked this out and I'm like, look, Larson. All right, what do, what do you want? You know, and stop blaming other people. So that's what lean means. Just lean in to whatever you feel like is your obstacle. You find out eventually it's your super power. No one would know who I am if I did not like, I'm completely convinced had I had the money to get to my first funnel hacking live. I wouldn't have worked for Russell because I wouldn't have had to go learn how to build funnels. I wouldn't have. I learned how to bootstrap. I got me in a certain mindset, but then too many people were like, oh, I don't have any money. Like, man, you are. It is literally tailored to you what you're supposed to be doing right now. But we, oh, easy out. Let me take that. You know, the easy road here, easy streets, like I don't have any time. Great write, lean in. It's not an excuse. I have empathy. Have zero sympathy though for those kinds of scenarios. 19:33     I love it. It's actually a, one of the main reasons we're so excited to have you as our one funnel away coach because you do have so much empathy because you've been there. There's, there's not a single person who can get on a call and say, well Steven, my life is different than yours. Okay. Yes. I mean you've, you've been through it. There's not an excuse you haven't dealt with in your own life or in dealing with other people and I appreciate that. A time that I actually, my kids have more of a man crush on you than they do on me these days. It Chandler and Christian like, oh my gosh, did you hear what Steven said? I'm like, I said that to you, but it doesn't matter. It's Steve set it. So it came from Steve Larsen, therefore it's God and whatever he says happen. 20:09     So, uh, it's been fun for me to see how much they appreciate you because of the fact that you have leaned in. Uh, I was thinking about you this morning. I was doing the stupid bloodflow resistant bands on this box steps that I, for some reason mentally these box, that stupid box step has just, Oh, just has my number. I cannot, I'm literally, I'm crying. I'm mad at Eric. I just want to hit him. I'm just just, but anyways, I agreed after I got done afterwards I sat there and thought, you know, it's the whole idea as far as lean in, if I quit, if I had said, you know what? Oh Gosh, I got to go. Really? I, you know, there's a million excuses that could have come up with and I hate it. Even the first, even hour afterwards, I was still sore complaining to my wife and kids. 20:54     I'm never doing this again. But again, it's that idea as far as leaning in and you become good at those things. And I think again, you've done such an amazing job at that and not just massive Kudos to you for that. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Yeah, that's super cool. Well, tell me, I know kind of get close to wrapping things up here with you and I, I literally could talk to you for hours on end and I'm sure as, as you know, everyone else could do the same. Um, what's the best way for people to reach out to you? Honestly, Steve Jay larson.com and you know, that's the best. It's got all the, it's kind of my funnel hub. You know what a Dj Larson, l. A. R. S. E. N. It's not common. I think that's awesome. You're taking the same Garrett white thing with the, the middle initial only cause the guy wanted, Steve Lawson was asking for like 20, 30 grand. 21:42     I was like, oh my gosh, crazy. No, I totally understand that. Uh, again, if you guys aren't following seed on his podcast sales funnel radio, by all means, please listen to him there. Uh, you should be definitely signed up for the ones on a challenge is literally, it's the coolest thing for me, Steve, just to sometimes I, I laugh only because I hear you louder than I hear my own thoughts when you're in the room. I feel bad man, because if you guys don't know, it's literally on the other side of the wall is Dave and I'm like, crap. He's on a call here at cons and I'm known for the boom boom. I'm like, oh gosh. Well, the best part is there's about three inches of foam on that wall as well. Supposedly is supposed to absorb some of it. But for me, I love it. 22:25     It's a, it's a neat for me to see the excitement that others have following you. Uh, it's, you've been such a magnet to so many people and I think it's really, it's exciting for me to see as we look at our, you know, our two, two Comma Club coaching program, how many of them got started with you? And as they progress in and their sign up again next year because I need more, Steve, I need more of Steve. And it's because you give so much, you're the most gracious guy in the world. You care so much. And again, I think there's a huge difference between empathy and sympathy. And you do an amazing job of really, you'll pour your whole heart and soul into a person who's trying. Yeah. And if they're not, it's like, dude, I don't have time for you. Which is how it should be. Yeah. Any parting words? My friend? Very excited. Thank you so much for her, for having me here. Obstacles away, everybody. Awesome. Thanks Steve. 23:14     Every, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. And one of the things we're really passionate about is trying to get everyone up and running as fast as they possibly can. And one of the things we've done recently that has helped so many people, and that is our one funnel with challenging. If you don't mind, if it's something of interest to you, we actually will pay you $100 for anybody who signs up for the one funnel away challenge. Or if you want to go ahead and sign up and do it yourself, just go to one funnel away. challenge.com again, that's one funnel away, challenge.com sign up, go through a 30 day challenge. Uh, it's one of the great, we've got Russell. Basically give me a 10,000 foot level. Julie's Swain comes in and gives you, kind of hear the nuts and bolts of exactly how to make it work. And then Steven comes in every single day and spends time basically telling you exactly what to do on a daily basis. So he'll you to hold your feet to the fire. Super Accountable. We've had more people get more success and things out of this than anything else. So go ahead and sign up at onefunnelaway.com. Thanks.

Listen to part two of my private coaching session with Nic Fitzgerald. The lessons I shared with him here are the same ones I would share with you if we could meet face to face. On today’s episode Russell continues his chat with Nick Fitzgerald and gives him a list of seven things he can do to help his business grow. Here are some of the awesome things to look forward to in this episode: What a few things that Nick got close to doing totally right, but missed a few key elements. How Nick can collaborate with others in the Two Comma Club X to be able to grow his customer list. And how Russell went from being a nobody, to having Tony Robbins call him to ask for help and how Nick can use that advice to advance his own business. So listen here to find out what the 7 things are that Nick and anyone else can do to grow a business. ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m so excited, I’m here on stage right now at the Two Comma Club X event with Mr. Nick Fitzgerald onstage. A year ago I gave a podcast to him about how to make it rain and this is section number two. Now those of you who don’t know, in the last 12 months since I did that podcast he’s been making it rain and he’s been changing his life, his family’s lives, but more importantly, other people’s lives as well. And it’s been really cool, so that’s what we’re going to cover today during this episode of the podcast. So welcome back you guys. I’m here on stage with Nick Fitzgerald, so excited. So I made a list of seven things that if I was to sit in a room with him in front of a whole bunch of people I’d be like, “Hey Nick, you’re doing awesome, but here’s some things to look at that I think will help you a lot with what you’re doing.” So number one, when Nick first kind of started into this movement that he’s trying to create, I don’t know when it was, if you created this before or after. When did you create the Star Wars video? Nick: This was, we talked in July, it was September/October. So a few months later. Russell: How many of you guys have seen his Star Wars video? Okay, I’m so glad. For those who are listening, about 10% of the room raised their hand, the other 90% who are friends and followers and fans of Nick have never seen the Star Wars video. His Star Wars video is his origin story and it is one of the best videos I have ever, by far the best video I’ve seen him do, it is insanely good. It comes, do you want to talk about what happened in the video? It’s insanely good. Nick: So I told the story of, I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, so if you didn’t know that, now you do. When I was young my grandma who lived in the same neighborhood as me, she took me to go see Return of the Jedi in the movie theater and I was such a Star Wars nerd, even at a young age, that when I was playing at the neighbors house, and you know, it’s the 80s, so mom and dad are like, “Nick, come home for dinner.” That kind of thing, I would ignore them. I would not come home until they called me “Luke”. No lie. I would make them call me Luke, or I would ignore them. I would not hear them. Russell: Had I known this in high school I would have teased him relentlessly. Nick: So my grandma took me and I remember going and it was so fun because we took the bus, it was just a fun thing. And we went and I just remember walking in and handing my ticket to the ticket person. And then popcorn and just the smells of everything. And again, this is the 80s so walking in the movie theater; I almost lost a shoe in the sticky soda, {sound effects} going on. I just remember how my feet stuck to the floor and all that stuff. And then just being so excited to see my heroes on the big screen and Dark Vader, I just remember watching it. This is such a silly thing to get emotional about, but you know I remember the emperor and Darth Vader dying and all that stuff. It was just like, ah. It was a perfect day. Sorry sound dude. But it was just a perfect day with my grandma who has always been dear to me. So the purpose of that video, I’d put it off for a long time. I knew I needed to tell my own story if I’m going to be helping somebody else tell theirs. And I put it off for a long time, because working through things, I was afraid that if it sucked, if the story was terrible, if the visuals were crappy, that was a reflection on me and my skills. I had worked on a bazillion Hallmark Christmas movies, you know how they put out like 17 trillion Christmas movies every year, if one of those sucks, no offense, they’re not riveting television. Russell: They all suck. Nick: That wasn’t a reflection on me, I was just doing the lighting or the camera work. I didn’t write the story, it wasn’t my story. But this was me, so I put it off for a long time because I knew if I didn’t execute how I envisioned it, that it would reflect poorly on me, and it would be like I was a fraud. So the purpose of the video, there were three purposes. One to tell a story and get people to connect with me on a personal level. As I told that story here, how many of you remembered your feet sticking to the floor of a movie theater? How many of you, when I talk about the smell of popcorn and that sound, you felt and heard and smelled that. So it was one thing, I wanted people to connect with me and just see that I was just like you. Then I wanted to show that I could make a pretty picture. So I had that and I used my family members as the actors. And then I went and talked about how…and then I wanted to use it to build credibility. I’ve worked on 13 feature films and two television series and shot news for the NBC affiliate and worked in tons of commercials. So I’ve learned from master story tellers and now I want to help other people find and tell their story. And then I showed clips of stories that I tell throughout the years. So that was, I just remember specifically when I finally went and made it live, I made a list of about 20 people, my Dream 100 I guess you could say. I just wanted to send them and be like, “Hey, I made this video. I would love for you to watch it.” And Russell’s on that list. So I sent that out and made it live and then it was just kind of funny, it didn’t go viral, I got like 5000 views in a day, and it was like “whoa!” kind of thing. But it was just one of those things that I knew I needed to tell my story and if I wanted to have any credibility as a story teller, not as a videographer, but as a story teller, being able to help people connect, and connect hearts and build relationships with their audience, I had to knock it out of the park. So that was my attempt at doing that. Russell: And the video’s amazing, for the 10% of the room who saw it, it is amazing. Now my point here for Nick, but also for everyone here, I wrote down, is tell your story too much. Only 10% of the room has ever seen that video or ever heard it. How many of you guys have heard my potato gun story more than a dozen times? Almost the entire room, for those that are listening. Tell your story to the point where you are so sick and tired of telling the story and hearing it, that you just want to kill yourself, and then tell it again. And then tell it again. And then tell it again, because it is amazing. The video is amazing, the story is amazing. How many of you guys feel more connected to him after hearing that story right now? It’s amazing. Tell t he story too much. All of us are going to be like, “I don’t want to hear the story. I don’t want to tell the story again.” You should be telling that story over and over and over again. That video should be showing it. At least once a week you should be following everyone, retargeting ads of that video. That video should be, everyone should see it. You’ve got 5,000 views which is amazing, you should get 5,000 views a day, consistently telling that story, telling that story. Because you’re right, it’s beautiful, it’s amazing and people see that and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need that for my business. I need to be able to tell my story the way he told that story, because the connection is flawless.” And I think my biggest thing for you right now, is tell your story more. Tell that thing. You’re telling good stories, but that story, that’s like your linchpin, that’s the thing that if you can tell that, it’s going to keep people connected to you for forever. Anyone who’s seen that video, you have a different level of connection. It’s amazing, it’s shot beautifully. You see his kids looking at the movies, with lights flashing, it’s beautiful. So telling your story more, that’d be the biggest thing. It’s just like, all the time telling that story over and over and over again. That’s number one. Alright, number two, this one’s not so much for you as much for most of everybody else in here, but number two is that energy matters a lot. I’m not talking about, I’m tired during the day. I’m talking about when you are live, or you are talking in front of people, your energy matters a lot. I was hanging out with Dana Derricks, how many of you guys know Dana, our resident goat farmer? By the way, he’s asked every time I mention his name is please not send him anymore goats. He’s gotten like 2 or 3 goats in the last month from all of our friends and family members here in the community. Please stop sending him goats. He loves them but he doesn’t want any more. Anyway, what’s interesting, I was talking to Dana, and he’s like, “Do you know the biggest thing I’ve learned from you?” and I’m like, “No. what?” and I thought it was going to be like dream 100 and things like that. No, the biggest thing that Dana learned from me, he told me, was that energy matters a lot. He’s like, “When I hang out with you, you’re kind of like blah, but when you get on stage you’re like, baaahh!” and I started telling him, the reason why is when I first started this career, in fact, I have my brother right now pulling all the video clips of me from like 12 or 13 years ago, when I had a shaved head and I was awkward like, “Hi, my name is Russell Brunson.” And we’re trying to make this montage of me over 15 years of doing this and how awkward and weird I was, and how it took 8-10 years until I was normal and started growing my hair out. But I’m trying to show that whole montage, but if you look at it like, I was going through that process and the biggest thing I learned is that if I talked to people like this, when you’re on video you sound like this. The very first, I think I’d have an idea and then I’d just do stupid things. So I saw an infomercial, so I’m like I should do an infomercial. So I hired this company to make an infomercial and next thing I know two weeks later I’m in Florida and there’s this host on this show and he’s like the cheesiest cheese ball ever. I’m so embarrassed. He asked me a question and I’m like, “Well, um, you know, duh, duh…” and he’s like, “Whoa, cut, cut, cut.” He’s like, “Dude, holy crap. You have no energy.” I’m like, “No, I feel really good. I have a lot of energy right now.” He’s like, “No, no you don’t understand. When you’re on tv, you have to talk like this to sound normal. If you just talk normal, you sound like you’re asleep.” I’m like, “I don’t know.” So we did this whole infomercial and he’s like all over the top and I’m just like, trying to go a little bit higher and it was awkward. I went back and watched it later, and he sounded completely normal and I looked like I was dead on the road. It was weird. Brandon Fischer, I don’t know if he’s still in the audience, but we did…Brandon’s back here. So four years ago when Clickfunnels first came out we made these videos that when you first signed up we gave away a free t-shirt. How many of you guys remember seeing those videos? I made those videos and then they lasted for like four years, and then we just reshot them last week because it’s like, “Oh wow, the demo video when we’re showing CLickfunnels does not look like Clickfunnels anymore. It’s completely changed in four years.” So Todd’s like, “You have to make a new video.” I’m like, “I don’t want to make a video.’ So finally we made the new videos, recorded them and got them up there and we posted them online, and before we posted them on, I went and watched the old ones, and I watched the old ones and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is just four years ago, I am so depressing. How did anybody watch this video?” It was bad, right Brandon. It was like painfully bad. I was like, “oh my gosh.” That was just four years ago. Imagine six years ago, or ten years. It was really, really bad. And when I notice the more energy you have, the more energy everyone else has. It seems weird at first, but always stretch more than you feel comfortable, and it seems normal, and then you’ll feel better with it and better with it. But what’s interesting about humans is we are attracted to energy. I used to hate people talking energy talk, because I thought it was like the nerdy woo-woo crap. But it’s so weird and real actually. I notice this in all aspects of my life. When I come home at night, usually I am beat up and tired and worn out. I get up early in the morning, and then I work super hard, I get home and I get out of the car and I come to the door and before I open the door, I’m always like, Okay if I come in like, ugh, my whole family is going to be depressed with me.” They’ll all lower to my energy level. So I sit there and I get into state and I’m like, okay, whew. I open the door and I’m like, “What’s up guys!! I’m home!” and all the sudden my kids are like, “Oh dad’s home!” and they start running in, it’s this huge thing, it’s crazy, and then the tone is set, everyone’s energy is high and the rest of the night’s amazing. When I come in the office, I walk in and realize I’m the leader of this office and if I come in like, “Hey guys, what’s up? Hey Nick, what’s up?” Then everyone’s going to be like {sound effect}. So I’m like, okay when I come in I have to come in here, otherwise everyone is going to be down on a normal level. I have to bring people up. So we walk in the office now and I’m like, “What’s up everybody, how’s it going?” and I’m excited and they’re like, “Oh.” And everyone’s energy rises and the whole company grows together. So l love when Dave walks through the door, have you guys ever noticed this? When Dave walks through the door, I’m at a 10, Dave’s like at a 32 and it’s just like, he wakes up and comes over to my  house at 4:30 in the morning to lift weights. I sleep in an hour later, and I come in at 5:45 or something, and I walk in and I’m just like, “I want to die.” And I walk in and he’s like, “Hey how’s it going?.” I’m like, “Really good man. You’ve been here for an hour.” And all the sudden I’m like, oh my gosh I feel better. Instantly raised up. It’s kind of like tuning forks. Have you noticed this? If you get two tuning forks at different things and you wack one, and you wack the other one, and you bring them close together, what will happen is the waves will increase and they end up going at the exact same level. So energy matters. The higher your energy, the higher everyone else around you will be, on video, on audio, on face…everything, energy matters a lot. So that’s number two, when you’re making videos, thinking about that. Alright number three, okay this, you were like 90% there and I watched the whole thing and I was so excited and then you missed the last piece and I was like, “Oh it was so good.” So a year after that Facebook message came, you did a Facebook live one year later to the day, and he told that story on Facebook live. And I was like, “Oh my gosh this is amazing.” And he told that story, and he was talking about it, and I was emotional, going through the whole thing again. This is so cool, this is so cool. And he told the story about the podcast, and this podcast was an hour long, and the thing and his life changed and all this stuff… And I know that me and a whole bunch of you guys, a whole bunch of entrepreneurs listened to this story and they’re at bated breath, “This is amazing, this is amazing.” And he gets to the very end, “Alright guys, see you tomorrow.” Boom, clicks off. And I was like, “Aaahhh!” How can you leave me in that state?  I need something, I need something. So the note here is I said, make offers for everything. Think about this, at the end when you ended, and everyone’s thinking, I want to hear that episode, where is that? How would it be? Now imagine you take the opportunity at the very end that says, “How many of you guys would like to hear that episode where Russell actually made me a personal podcast? And how many of you guys would actually like if I gave you my commentary about what  I learned and why it was actually important to me? All you gotta do right now is post down below and write ‘I’m in.’ and I’ll add you to my messenger list and I’ll send you that podcast along with the recording where I actually told you what this meant to me.” Boom, now all those people listening are now on his list. Or they can even go opt in somewhere. But all you did was tell the story and everything and we were all sitting with bated breath and I was just like, at the end make the offer. You guys want the stuff I talked about, you want the thing? You want the thing? And then you send them somewhere and now you captured them and consider them longer term and you can do more things with them. It was like, hook, story, dude where’s my offer? Give me something. But it was awesome. How many of you guys felt that way when you listened to that thing and you’re just like, “I don’t even know where to find that episode. Russell’s got eight thousand episodes everywhere, I don’t even know where to look for it.” You could have been like, here’s the link. Just the link….if you guys can’t figure out how to make an offer, go listen to a whole bunch of stuff, find something amazing and be like, “oh my gosh you guys, I was listening to this Tim Ferris podcast, he did like 800 episodes, every one is like 18 hours long, they’re really hard to listen to, but I found this one from 3 ½-4 years ago where he taught this concept and it was insane. It was amazing; I learned this and this. How many of you want to know what that is? Okay, I have the link, if you message me down below I’ll send you the link to exactly where to find that episode.” Everyone will give it to you. You’ll be like, “But it’s free on the internet Russell.” It doesn’t matter. You know where it’s at and they don’t. They will give you their contact information in exchange for you giving them a direct link to the link. Back before I had anything to give away for opt ins, guess what I used to do. I used to go to YouTube and I would find cool videos from famous people. One of my favorite ones we did was I went and typed in YouTube, “Robert Kiyosaki” because he was one of my big mentors at the time. And there was all these amazing Robert Kiyosaki videos on YouTube for free. Tons of them. Hour long training from Robert Kiyosaki. Four hour long event from Robert Kiyosaki. All this stuff for free listed in YouTube. So I made a little Clickfunnels membership site, I got all the free videos and put them inside a members area and just like, “Tab one, Robert Kiyosaki talking about investing, Robert kiyosaki talking about stocks, Robert Kiyosaki talking….” And I just put all the videos in there and made a squeeze page like, “Hey, who wants a whole bunch of free, my favorite Robert Kiyosaki videos?” and I made a little landing page, people opt in, I give them access to the membership site, and then I went and targeted Robert Kiyosaki’s audience and built a huge list off his people. Dream 100. Imagine with Dream 100 instead of doing just one campaign to all the people, if each person in your dream 100 you made a customized membership site with the free content right now, be like, “Hey, you’ve listened to a lot of Grant Cardone, he’s got four podcasts, 5000 episodes, there’s only four that are actually really, really good. Do you guys wan tto know what they are? Opt in here, I’ll give you the four best episodes of all. I currated all these for you to give you the four best.” And target Grant’s audience with that, now you got all his buyers coming into your world. Is that alright, is that good. Alright number four ties along with this. Number four, start building a list ASAP. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do a call to action to get a list anywhere, have I? After today’s session you’re …..just build a list. If you got nothing from this event at all, every time you do a hook and story, put them somewhere to build a list, because that’s the longevity. Because that’s where if Zuckerberg snaps his finger and you lose all your fans and followings and friends, and all the sudden you’re trying to build over somewhere else, it won’t matter because you’ll have those people somewhere external and now you can message them and bring them back into whatever world you need them to be at. But that’s how you build stability in business. It’s also how you sell this time, you want to sell it the next time and the next time, the list is the key. Funnel Hacking Live, the first Funnel Hacking Live it was a lot of work and we sold out 600 people in the room, and we kept growing the list and growing the list, the next year we did 1200. Then we did 1500, last year was 3000, this year we’re going to be at 5000. We’re building up the list and building up pressure and excitement and then when you release it, it gives you the ability to blow things up really, really fast.  Okay, that was number four. Okay number five, I wrote down integration marketing, adding to other’s offers to build a buyer list. So this is a little sneaky tactic we used to back in the day when I didn’t have my own list, but I had a couple of skills and talents which you do happen to have, which is nice. If you have no skills this won’t work, but if you have skills you’re lucky. So Frank Kern used to do this as well. Frank is sneaky. He used to do this all the time and I saw him doing it and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, he’s brilliant.” So Frank did a one hour presentation somewhere and he called it Mind Control, it wasn’t Mass Control, but it was something like about how to control the minds of your prospects through manipulation and something sneaky. And the title alone was amazing. It was a one hour presentation he gave somewhere. And he put it on these DVDs and what he did, he went to like Dan Kennedy and he’s like, “Hey Dan, you have all of your buyer and you send them this newsletter every single month,” at the time they had 13000 active members, these were their best buyers. He’s like, “This DVD I sell for like a thousand bucks. Do you want to give it to all your people for free?” And Dan’s like, “sure.” And all the sudden the next month, Franks got his best CD with his best stuff in the mailbox of the 13000 best customers, every single person that Dan Kennedy’s been collecting for the last 15 years. So think about this. With your skill set, look at the other people in the market, all the dream 100 who are doing things and how do you create something you can plug into their offers, and every single time one of those people sell a product, your face is popping up as well. It’s called integration marketing, my first mentor Mark Joyner wrote a book called Integration Marketing, it’s a really fast read. You can read it in an hour, but it will get your mind set thinking about it. How can I integrate with what other people are always doing? Because I can go and make a sell, and make another sell, but I was like, when we launched Clickfunnels I was like, “How can I figure out other people’s sales processes that are already happening and somehow inject myself into all these other sales processes?” That way every single time Steven Larsen sells something or someone else sells something, or all these people are selling something, it always somehow gets flown back to me. I want every product, every course, everything happening in the internet marketing world to somehow have people saying my name. That’s my goal. How many of you guy have been to other people’s events and I’m not there and they say my name? It makes me so happy. I get the instagrams from some of you guys, “Hey so and so just said your name.” I’m like, that’s so good. How have I done that? I spent a lot of my life integrating into everybody’s offers. Initially when I first got started, every single person who had a product, I was an interview in everyone’s product. I was like, looking at people launching a product, specific product launches coming, I’d contact them. Product launch is coming up, “Hey man, is there any way I could do a cool thing for your people? I could create this and give it to you and you could plug it into your product?” and everyone’s like, ‘Sure, that’d be awesome.” And all the sudden, boom, they get 5000 new buyers came in and every single one of them got my thing. They’re hearing my name, hearing my voice and it’s just constant integration. I think about how I met Joe Vitale, I talked about that earlier with the greatest showman. He was in an interview in a course I bought from Mark Joyner, I listened to it, fell in love with Joe Vitale, bought his stuff, given him tons of money over the years, a whole bunch of good stuff because he was integrated in that. So looking at other ways to integrate, the skill set that you already have into other people’s marketing channels because then you’re leveraging anytime any of these partners make a sell, you’re getting customers coming through that flow as well. Cool? Nick: Yeah. Russell: That was number five. Number six, I call this one rainmaker projects, because we talked about rainmaker during the first podcast interview. So rainmaker projects are, and again when I first started my career I did tons of these, where it’s like, I was really good at one piece. For you, you’re really good at video and story telling. And I look out here and be like, okay who is someone else here that is awesome? So and so is really good at making a product on Facebook ads. “You’re really good at Facebook ads, so I’ll do the video for this course, you do the Facebook, you do the actual ads for us.” And then, you’re awesome at doing the traffic and you bring in four or five people, like this little avenger team, and you create a cobranded product together and you launch it and everyone makes a bunch of money, split all the money, 50/50/50/50, that makes more than 100,but you know what I’m talking about, everyone splits the money, everyone splits the customer list and all the sudden you’ve all pulled your efforts, your energy, your talents together and everyone leaves with some cash, and you also leave with the customer list, and that’s when you start growing really, really rapidly. When I started I didn’t have a customer list, I had a very small one. But I had a couple of skill sets so that’s why I did tons of these things. That’s like, if you guys know any of my old friends like Mike Filsaime, Gary Ambrose, I could list off all the old partners we had back in the day, and that’s what we did all the time, these little rainmaker projects. We didn’t call them that back in the day, but that’s what it was. It was just like, we all knew what our skill sets were, and it’s like, let’s come together, let’s make a project. This isn’t going to be how we change the world, it’s not going to be something we’re going to scale and grow, but it’s like, it’s going to be a project, we put it together, we launch it, make some money, get some customers, get our name out in the market, and then we step away from it and then we all go back to our own businesses. It’s not like, that’s why it’s funny because a lot of times people are scared of these. Like, “Well, how do we set up the business structure? Who’s going to be the owner? Who’s the boss?” No, none of that. This is an in and out project where all the rainmakers come together and you create something amazing for a short period of time, you split the money and you go back home with the money and the customers. But it gave you a bump in status, a big bump in customer lists, a big bump in cash and then all those things kind of rise and if you do enough of those your status keeps growing and growing and growing, and it’s a really fast easy way to continue to grow. How many of you guys want to do a rainmaker project with Nick right now? Alright, very, very cool. Alright, and then I got one last, this is number seven. This kind of ties back to dream 100. The last thing I talked about was, and again this is kind of for everyone in the group, is the levels of the dream 100. I remember when I first started this process, I first got the concept and I didn’t know it was the dream 100 back then, but I was looking at all the different people that would have been on my dream 100 list. It was Mark Joyner, Joe Vitale, all these people that for me were top tier. Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, and I was like, oh, and I started trying to figure out how to get in those spots. And the more I tried, it was so hard to get through the gatekeeper, it was impossible to get through all these gatekeepers, these people. I was like, “Man don’t people care about me. I’m just a young guy trying to figure this stuff out and they won’t even respond to my calls or my emails. I can’t even get through, I thought these people really cared.” Now to be on the flip side of that, I didn’t realize what life is actually like for that, for people like that. For me, I understand that now at a whole other level. We’ve got a million and a half people on our subscriber list. We have 68000 customers, we’ve got coaching programs, got family, got friends. We have to put up barriers to protect yourself or it’s impossible. I felt, I can’t even tell you how bad I feel having Brent this morning, “Can you tell everyone to not do pictures with me.” It’s not that I don’t want to, but do you want me to tell you what actually happens typically? This is why we have to put barriers around ourselves. Here’s my phone, I’ll be in a room, like Funnel Hacking Live and there will be 3000 people in the room, and I’m walking through and someone’s like, “Real quick, real quick, can I get a picture?” I’m like, “I gotta go.” And they’re like, “It’ll take one second.” And I’m like, ahh, “Okay, fine, quick.” And they’re like, “Hold on.” And they get their phone out and they’re like, “Uh, uh, okay, uh, alright got it. Crap it’s flipped around. Okay, actually can you hold this, my arms not long enough can you hold it? Actually, hey you come here real quick, can you hold this so we can get a picture? Okay ready, one two three cheese.” And they grab the camera and they’re off. And for them it took one second. And that person leaves, and guess what’s behind them? A line of like 500 people. And then for the next like 8 hours, the first Funnel Hacking Live, was anyone here at the first Funnel Hacking Live? I spent 3 ½ hours up front doing pictures with everybody and I almost died afterwards. I’m like, I can’t…but I didn’t know how to say no, it was super, super hard. So I realize now, to protect your sanity, people up there have all sorts of gatekeepers and it’s hard. So the way you get through is not being more annoying, and trying to get through people. The way you get to them is by understanding the levels of that. So I tried a whole bunch of times, and I couldn’t get in so I was like, “Crap, screw those guys. They don’t like me anyway, they must be jerks, I’m sure they’re just avoiding me and I’m on a blacklist….” All the thoughts that go through your head. And at that time, I started looking around me. I started looking around and I was like, “hey, there’s some really cool people here.” And that’s when I met, I remember Mike Filsaime, Mike Filsaime at the time had just created a product he launched and he had like a list of, I don’t know, maybe 3 or 4 thousand people. And I remember I created my first product, Zipbrander, and I was all scared and I’m like ,”Hey Mike, I created this thing Zipbrander.” And he messaged back, “Dude that’s the coolest thing in the world.” A couple of things, Mike didn’t have a gatekeeper, it was just him. He got my email, he saw it, and he was like, “This is actually cool.” I’m like, “Cool, do you want to promote it?” and he’s like, “Yes, I would love to promote it.” I’m like, oh my gosh. I had never made a sale online at this point, by the way, other than a couple of little things that fell apart. I never actually made a sale of my own product. Zipbrander was my very first, my own product that I ever created. So Mike was that cool, he sent an email to his list, his 5000 person list, they came over, I had this little pop up that came to the site and bounced around, back in the day. I had 270 people opt in to my list from Mike’s email to it, and I think we made like 8 or 10 sales, which wasn’t a lot, but 67 that’s $670, they gave me half, I made $350 on an email and gained 300 people on my list. I’m like, oh my gosh this is amazing. And I asked Mike, “Who are the other people you hang out with? I don’t know very many people.” And he’s like, “Oh dude, you gotta meet this guy, he’s awesome.” And he brought me to someone else, and I’m like, “Oh this is cool. “ and Mike’s like, “Dude, I promoted Zipbrander, it was awesome, you should promote it.” And then he’s like, “Oh cool.” And he promoted Zipbrander. I’m like, oh my gosh, I got another 30-40 people on my list and there were a couple more sales. And then I asked him, “Who do you know?” and there was someone else, and we stared doing this thing and all the sudden there were 8 or 10 of us who were all at this level and we all started masterminding, networking, figuring things out, cross promote each other and what happened, what’s interesting is that all of our little brands that were small at the time started growing, and they started growing, and they started growing. All the sudden we were at the next tier. And when we got to the next tier all the sudden all these new people started being aware of us and started answering our calls and doing things, and Mike’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I met this guy who used to be untouchable.” And he brought him in and brought them in and all the sudden we’re at the next level. And we started growing again and growing again. And the next thing we know, four years later I get a phone call from Tony Robbins assistant, they’re like, “Hey I’m sitting in a room and I got Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, all these guys are sitting in a room with Tony Robbins and he thinks that you guys are the biggest internet nerds in the world, he’s obsessed with it and he wants to know if he can meet you in Salt Lake in like an hour.” What? Tony Robbins? I’ve emailed him 8000 times, he’s never responded even once, I thought he hated me. Not that he hated me, it’s that he had so many gatekeepers, he had no idea who I was. But eventually you start getting value and you collectively as a level of the dream 100 becomes more and more powerful. Eventually people notice you because you become the bigger people. And each tier gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So my biggest advice for you and for everybody is understanding that. Yes, it’s good to have these huge dreams and big people, but start looking around. There are so many partnerships to be had just inside this room. How many deals have you done with people in this room so far? Nick: Quite a few. Russell: More than one, right. Nick: Yeah, more than one. Russell: Start looking around you guys. Don’t always look up, up, up and try to get this thing. Look around and realize collectively, man, start doing the crossings because that’s how everyone starts growing together and there will be a time where I’ll be coming to you guys begging, “Can you please look at my stuff you guys, I have this thing called CLickfunnels. You may have heard of it. Can you please help me promote it?” And that’s what’s going to happen, okay. So the level of the dream 100 is the last thing, just don’t discount that. Because so many people are like swinging for the fence and just hoping for this homerun like I was, and it’s funny because I remember eventually people would respond to me, that I was trying for before, and they’d contact me. And I was like, oh my gosh. I realized, I thought this person hated me, I thought I was on a black list. I was assuming they were getting these emails and like, “oh, I hate this. Russell’s a scammer.” In my head right. They never saw any of them. Until they saw me, and they reached out to me and the whole dynamic shifted. So realizing that, kind of looking around and start building your dream 100 list, even within this room, within the communities that you’re in, because there’s power in that. And as you grow collectively, as a group, everyone will grow together, and that’s the magic. So that was number seven. So to recap the seven really quick. Number one, tell your story way too much, to the point where you’re so annoyed and so sick and tired of hearing it that everybody comes to you, and then keep telling it even some more. Number two, in everything you’re doing, energy matters a lot. To the point, even above what you think you’re comfortable with and do that all the time. Number three, make offers for everything. Hook, story, don’t leave them hanging, give them an offer because they’ll go and they will feel more completed afterwards. Number four, start building a list, it ties back to the first thing. Make an offer, get them to build your list, start growing your list because your list is your actual business. Number five, integration marketing. Look for other people’s marketing channels and how you can weave what you do into those channels, so you can get free traffic from all the people who are doing stuff. Number five, create rainmaker projects, find really cool things and bring four or five people together and make something amazing. Share the cash, share the customer list, elevate your status, elevate your brand, and it’s really fun to do because you get to know a whole bunch of people. And Number seven, understanding the levels of the dream 100. Find the people at your level and start growing with them together collectively as you do that, and in a year, two years, three years, five years Tony Robbins will be calling you, asking you to make his video and it will be amazing. Does that sound good? Awesome.

Today show is all about life!! Remember the old phrase "buy Term and invest the difference"? So Todd talks all things Life Insurance today. Buy Term...buy a Whole Life or UL permanent insurance plan...when should you do this? Your life is on the line with Todd today!!

The three essential personality types to launch any new startup. On this episode Russell talks about the three personality types you have to have for a startup company, and who each of them were with Clickfunnels. Here’s some fun stuff from today’s episode: What it means to have a hipster, a hacker, and a hustler in a company and what jobs they do. Why not having each of those things will result in it being harder to start your business. And find out why the founders in a startup are usually their own target audience. So listen here to find out if you’re a hipster, hacker, or hustler, and which piece you’re missing while trying to get your business off the ground. ---Transcript--- Hey what’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m still laying in bed, but I got one more thought for you that I just gotta share. Alight so, I just finished the last episode and I was about to go to bed and then Todd and I were talking about this concept and then I started Googling it and I found an image and a diagram and it’s so exciting that I gotta share it with you. Okay, so what we were talking about, back in the early days of Clickfunnels, when the whole thing started and we didn’t  have any money to afford 40 developers who were in the office today, and the 200 support people who are at home working for you and the entire team that is amazing and here to support Clickfunnels. And we were talking about, just the good old days and what happened and how we do these hack-a-thons. It was funny because we decided to go to bed at 11:30 tonight, and it was funny because we’re like, “Remember back before when we were broke and poor and hustling and had to…” We were pulling all nighters like 5, 6, 7, 8 nights in a row just to get Clickfunnels live. And some of you guys probably, if you have binge listened to this podcast you’ve heard those episode. I’m driving home at 4 in the morning, “I’m doing this episode so I won’t fall asleep and I won’t die.” That happened more than once. And if you haven’t listened to this go to marketingsecrets.com/binge and download the binge guide and go binge listen to all the episodes because I’ve been going on this journey with you guys. Anyway, so we were just reminiscing about that and we’re like, “We’ve got more money now, we should just go to bed.” But we’re like, “We miss the good old days and how fun it would be if we went on vacation and locked ourselves in closet and just built our team again.” Anyway when we were talking about that Todd said he’d read an article or saw a post or something about how there’s like three core personalities that you have to have in a start up. And it’s fascinating, because if you look at the original founders of Clickfunnels, there were three of us. Shortly thereafter we brought in a few partners and team members, and then it grew from there. But initially there were, and it’s funny as he said this, I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s true with us.” So if you look at the three co-founders of Clickfunnels, originally. Number one, well I’ll give Todd number one. Todd’s number one, right and if you look at the archetype of his role, I’ll pull up his image, he is the hacker, or the engineer. Number two then was our second co-founder who is no longer a part of the company, but he was one of the original co-founders, his name was Dylan, and Dylan is the hipster, or the designer. And number three is you have to have the hustler, who is the entrepreneur who is out there drumming up business and selling stuff. So the three architects, the three types you need is a hacker, a hipster, and a hustler. So the hacker, the hipster, and the hustler. And we were dying laughing because we’re like, “Oh my gosh that is true.” Todd was the hacker, who hacked together software, we didn’t have a big development team. So Todd  had to do everything from database administration to coding, to frontend, to backend, all that stuff. It was just him. Then the designer, Dylan was doing the UI design and the graphic design and the logo design and the sales letter design. And the hustler, I was writing copy, I was doing webinars, I was making phone calls, I was doing JV’s. And initially it’s just, that’s what it is, the hipster, the hacker, and the hustler. So I thought that was awesome. And the other thing, as I was Googling it tonight, looking at it, there was one kind of caveat here that said that, this phase of the business, the start up phase where there’s the hipster, the hacker, and the hustler, the founder is or was the target user of what they were creating. I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so true.” When you start doing a startup, what is it you’re creating? When you’re creating a new info product or a new software company, or a new supplement company, whatever, you the founder, you are the target market. You’re the target user, that’s why you don’t have to get focus groups and have people go out there researching and talking to customers, all that stuff, because you are the customer. That’s why Clickfunnels works so well. Because I am you, I am our dream customer. In fact, as I was working with the dev team today and we were talking, it was kind of funny because I was like, “I am the biggest hyper user of Clickfunnels.” I feel the pains as much, if not more than every other member on our platform. Anything you guys are frustrated by, I promise I am 100 times more frustrated by it, which is why we care about what you guys are doing, because we care about ourselves. We are the target user. So in this startup phase, the founder is or was the target user. So for you, you’re the target user for your product and that should be your focus groups. And then the second piece is like looking at your team and who are the pieces you need. And I love this definition of the hipster, who is the designer. The hacker, who’s the engineer. And the hustler, who is the sales and marketing dude who is out there selling like crazy. Anyway, I thought that would be fun to share with you guys as a lot of you are in startup mode, as you’re thinking through things, or maybe you’re trying to grow and you’re stuck and you’re like, “ahh.” And maybe it’s like, “Oh, that’s it. We’re missing the hipster. We’re missing the hacker. Or we’re missing the hustler.” Finding those people. Its interesting, I see people in the startup phase, one of the biggest mistakes people make is they’re not going into it with all the different essential personality types you need to run a business. I did an episode a while ago about the DIS test alone. If you look at DIS test and it’s like, if you don’t have someone on your team that’s a high D, that’s driving this thing, it’s going to be really hard off the ground. And if you’re starting and you’re the founder and you take the DIS test, and you don’t have a high D and no one does, it’s like, my guess is that you guys have been procrastinating for a long time. You’re six months, a year, two years into this and you’re not successful yet. Because you don’t have a driver. You need that personality archetype to be able to push this thing and get it off the ground. So this is just another one of those lenses of like, it’s funny, it makes me laugh because it’s exactly what we had when we were doing this, the hipster, the hacker, and the hustler. Again, look at that as you’re building out your team, as you’re looking at why we’re struggling. Which one of those pieces may you potentially be missing? And then from there it grows out right. And it’s interesting, we were talking about this as well, if you look at that, from his side, the hacker. From the hacker now, he was the one personally doing all those things initially. And then it’s like, you start hiring a team, it’s like, okay we need someone who just specializes in this one piece, and specializes in this piece, and this piece. And it’s like, it takes a dozen people to be able to do all the individual pieces, but that’s how you get to the next phase of growth. Think about with me initially, I was literally writing copy, designing the funnels, designing the graphics, doing the emails. I was doing all the different pieces, and I was doing them good, but now it’s like we find people who are great, but they specialize in each of them. So we got one person who’s better at copy than me, one person who’s better at graphics, one person that’s better at funnels than me, one person that’s better that, you know, that’s kind of the second phase of it, I believe. Anyway, I thought that was kind of cool and exciting as I was thinking through it. So there you go guys, if you’re wondering, it’s the hipster, the hacker, and the hustler. I hope you enjoyed that. I’m going to get to bed for real this time. Appreciate you all and I’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.

The new coming-of-age comedy Eighth Grade is one of the surprise success stories of the summer, turning a tiny story of a 13-year-old girl’s last week in the titular grade into a much larger tale of the universally awkward and cringeworthy experience of being an adolescent just trying to figure shit out. Its hero, young Kayla (played by the remarkable Elsie Fisher), deals with trying to launch her YouTube channel, with a crush that goes nowhere, and with her feelings of inadequacy when compared to more popular girls or older teens. So here’s the part where we point out that it’s somewhat remarkable the film is the product of a man, writer-director Bo Burnham, who makes his feature film directorial debut with Eighth Grade. Burnham launched his career as a teenager making funny videos on YouTube, but he’s gone on to be a hugely successful standup comedian, a director of standup specials, and an actor in numerous great movies and TV shows. But Eighth Grade marks him as an unusually empathetic and humanist director — and as perhaps the first filmmaker to really grapple with the internet not as a blessing or a scourge but as a simple fact of life. So Todd had Burnham on the show to talk about how to put the internet onscreen, what other movies get wrong about technology, and why he chose to make his first movie about a teen girl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Taylor is getting married! Just like Batman. So Todd is joined in the studio by comics writer, artist, editor, publisher, PJ Perez. PJ talks about The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe. If you haven't read any Squirrel Girl yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. This book sounds like a great place to start if you love awesome art, clever writing, and poking fun and too serious superheroes. Todd plays "Gotcha" with PJ and surprises him with his pick, San Hannibal, a book PJ edited and published. This dark detective story involving a secretive club of millionaires involved in a sex trafficking operation would be noir if it weren't for its electric color palette. Google "San Hannibal" for some swatches and then pick up the book on Comixology, Amazon, or PJ's own Pop Goes The Icon.Find PJ Perez here:https://twitter.com/pjperezhttps://www.popgoestheicon.com/And pre-order The Utopian Foundation here: https://www.popgoestheicon.com/product/the-utopian-vol-2/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hari Kondabolu identified a problem. His self-hosted, self-produced 2017 documentary, The Problem With Apu, which aired on TruTV, discusses how The Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon created a caricature of South Asians and perpetuated a stereotype that hung over South Asian kids like Hari and followed them into adulthood. The documentary isn’t a call for Apu to be removed from the show or fired into the sun or anything like that. No, it’s an earnest discussion of how these types of stereotypes can still hurt people. But The Problem with Apu has come to define Hari’s work in a way that is both deserved — it’s a really good little documentary — and maybe a little unfair. See, Hari is also a tremendously funny stand-up comedian, someone who tells jokes about racism and the divisiveness of American politics, all the while making you laugh at the way many of us have only built up those divides. In his new Netflix special Warn Your Relatives, Hari jokes about race, homophobia, the Trump administration, and the time he got heckled by fellow comedian Tracy Morgan. So Todd was thrilled to be joined in the studio by Hari, who discussed telling jokes about Donald Trump, telling jokes about his mom, and, yes, telling the truth about Apu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todd Uterstaedt interacts with high-powered leaders all day, guiding them as they build their teams, create their company culture, and practice the productivity hacks that help them transform from founders to CEOs. But ask the founder/CEO coach and "From Founder to CEO"podcast host just how he stays focused on his priorities as he juggles a family and demanding clients, and his answer may surprise you: pool walking. Yup, you read that right. Uterstaedt's secret to being a high achiever hinges upon whether he can get to his local pool and unplug for an hour while walking laps. "Productivity and mental clarity are intimately connected,"Uterstaedt explained to me. "You have to exercise, right? You have to do things that give your mind peace and clarity so that you know the single biggest thing to do as it relates to productivity, which is appropriately prioritize. "You can't prioritize things if your mind is racing and you haven't given your mind the opportunity to be clear about exactly who you are, exactly what your company's doing and exactly what your responsibilities are within that company." Uterstaedt experienced a major moment of professional clarity during his time in the Army. He was stationed in Berlin just after November 9, 1989 — a.k.a. the date the Berlin Wall fell. "I was enlisted at the time and watching military officers do their work as intelligence officers. I was doing well and heard about a "Green to Gold" scholarship, in which an enlisted individual can apply to go back to school, finish their degree, and become army officer." Not one to back down from a challenge, Uterstaedt decided to go for it, and got it. Now, he credits that year in Berlin and the amazing things that were happening there with him going after his first big professional moment. And the achievements have only piled up since then. Today, Uterstaedt brings people together through his peer group for founding CEOs, Trail Team 10. Recognizing that founders need a group of peers to bounce ideas off of, Uterstaedt launched Trail Team 10 about a year ago to help a group of founders from different cities come together on a regular basis and solve practical problems. And despite being from different cities, Uterstaedt helped this group foster a distant intimacy that felt real and authentic. But whether you're a founder/CEO or a regular 9-5er trying to grow professionally, Uterstaedt has one piece of advice for setting and achieving your goals. First, he suggests setting six month goals instead of annual goals, reasoning that a year is too long for most goals and a June check-in can be much more valuable. Second, Uterstaedt recommends sharing that goal with two key people: one who knows you personally and "just gets you," and one professional acquaintance who "knows the industry" and can offer their perspective there. To hear more of Uterstaedt's tips for founders and CEOs and apply them to your own goals, listen to our episode of #WeGotGoals. Don't forget to rate and review on iTunes. --- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLIfe.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Kristin Geil.   KG: Good morning, Jeana.   CK: Good morning, Jeana.   JAC: Good, morning, Kristen and Cindy.   KG: So this week I spoke with Todd Uterstaedt, who is the founder and CEO of a company called from Founder to CEO. He's got a podcast of the same name and his goal is to help level up your leadership. So he's a founder and CEO coach and he has a lot of really interesting insights into productivity and the sort of ways that you organize your day and the small changes you can make to make you not only a better more productive manager but a better leader and a better CEO.   CK: There were so many things that I thought were interesting about this interview, Kristen, and one of them was the way that Todd uses both old school techniques and technology to achieve his goals and to help others achieve their goals. I thought his workout of choice was particularly fascinating, pool walking, because this is something that as a runner who has been injured I have forced myself to do when I've been hurt but the idea that if somebody does that as their workout of choice it's fascinating and I think some of the reasons were really interesting. Can you talk to me a little bit about that.   KG: Yes absolutely. So Todd, as you will hear in this podcast, he loves technology. He is all about using technology strategically to help us replace time-sucking administration tasks. One he mentions specifically was the act of scheduling a meeting. You know there's always a lot of back and forth about. No I've got this time at this time.   But what about location and he mentioned a technology that specifically takes that back and forth out of scheduling so all you have to do is sign up for a time slot and you are good to go with your partner that you're trying to meet with. However, when everything's getting to be a little too much and he needs to clear his head his favorite way to do that is to go completely off line for some pool walking. And he said that he loves the Zen aspect of it. He loves the fact that he physically can't have a phone or an iPad or a computer with him obviously because of the water. And he said it's when he gets some of his best thinking done. So I think there's other ways to do it if pool walking has bad memories for you Cindy, I'm sure you know running without technology could be something similar. Any way to unplug throughout the day and really sort of get into a flow state where you can let the ideas come to your mind more naturally instead of having a brain that works on overdrive trying to solve every one of the world's problems in the next 24 hours.   JAC: He talks to a lot of people who have gone from starting their own company to really moving into the role of CEO. And one thing he sort of preaches is the act of accountability. Can you talk a little bit about that?   KG: Yes. So one thing that I thought was really interesting. We've all heard about accountability buddies. You know someone that you text in the morning to make sure that they're going to the gym at the same time as you or someone who is maybe trying to reach a similar goal to you at the same time so you can work on it together. And he encourages his clients to do that as well of course but with a slight twist he wants his clients to share their goals with two people. One person that you know personally and who gets you, who sort of understands the way that you're wired and maybe why you're choosing to accomplish certain goals and maybe how you'll stand in your own way or what particular strengths you have that will help you in that process. But aside from that personal friend he wants you to share your goals with one professional acquaintance who can hold you accountable while knowing maybe more about your industry and you know wha tips and tricks you can use, other people in your network who might be able to help you and sort of having this dual accountability really keeps your goal well-rounded and makes it more of a focus because you're not just segmenting it off until like this is a professional goal or this is a personal goal. It really helps to incorporate it into your whole life.   CK: Yeah I loved that and I think that that is just one of the pieces of practical advice that people are really going to be able to take away from this interview. So here is Kristen with Todd.   KG: Welcome to the #WeGotGoals podcast. My name is Kristin Geil and today I'm here with Todd Uterstaedt, the founder and CEO of From Founder to CEO. Todd, how are you doing today?   TU: I'm doing great Kristen, how are you?   KG: I'm good. Thank you. We're so excited to have you on this podcast because leadership and goal setting is something that we're very passionate about over here on aSweatLife and we've loved hearing from you about how you take people to the next level especially when they're cofounding and founding their small businesses and really going through that process to become leaders. So to kick us off can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you got the idea for From Founder to CEO?   TU: Yeah. So I'm a former Army intelligence officer who kind of transformed myself into a management consultant at one point in time. And we started our own executive coaching firm and along the way we started getting lots of phone calls from startup CEOs who said, hey, Todd can you coach us? And Kristen, our business model was not set up for them. It was usually it was set up for mid-sized companies and for corporations. So I got the crazy idea saying well why don't I do a podcast interview successful founders about kind of their personal leadership transformation into CEO because it's really hard to scale a business and scale yourself at the same time. And so yes we started this podcast called from founder CEO and it just took off.   KG: Who was a recent guest that you had on? Anyone interesting?   TU: Yeah. Do you know Adam Braun of Pencils of Promise?   KG: No. Tell me more.   TU: So Adam wrote this book a New York Times bestselling book called Promise of a Pencil. And it describes his journey from starting Pencils of Promise, which builds schools around the world in underdeveloped areas and they've built over 400 schools now. And Adam is just a rock star. He's really great guy and he's starting a new company called MissionU. And his book is really about the transformation of him of founding Pencils of Promise into a real organization. And so it was really a joy to have him on the show because I'd read his book and he's really a good guy.   KG: That's awesome. I can't wait to check it out. One of the things we asked everyone who comes on the #WeGotGoals podcast is, what is a big goal you've achieved in the past and why was it so important to you. And how did you get there?   TU: Yeah that's a big question. I love how you guys ask that question because it's so fundamental to our lives don't you think.   KG: Yeah yeah. Really getting into the deep stuff right away here.   TU: Yeah well when we started the podcast maybe I'm a little bit ashamed to admit that we didn't really come up with a monetization version of it. We just said you know see if we can build an audience and help people around the world and now we're listened to in over 100 countries around the world. And so at some point in time I said, Well you know this is a lot of work but at the same time people started asking us well what else could you do for us? You know they would e-mail me and say we like to podcast but we need a little bit more help. So I had this goal of creating a group of founders from different cities to come together on a regular basis to really help them solve their practical problems while simultaneously helping them navigate that road from founder to CEO. And so a year ago we started it and it was a lot of work, Kristen. I mean from the branding of it into a setting you up in marketing the marketing of it was a big deal. And a year ago we launched our first group. And in the first 48 hours we got like half of our members right away. And it was just so gratifying to know that we listened to our audience and we created something that they said yes we need this. And then a couple of days ago we had a reunion. They missed each other and we had a reunion and hearing them all described their 2017 and how powerful it was and how well they were doing really made setting that goal of creating what we call Trail team 10. That's the name of the group. really kind of come full circle. Wow I'm so glad that big crazy goal to create this group called Trail Team 10 actually not only came true but also has so impactful in people's lives   KG: Ah, that's so fulfilling. I'm sure that must've been a really big moment for you.   TU: It was you know it didn't really hit me until we had this reunion call and everyone was saying it had their best year yet 2017 was their best year yet and they just were so excited to see each other again and they missed each other and it was gratifying to see them all doing so well. Because all I did was bring them together and facilitate a dialogue and help keep them focused and really bring them together in a way. It's funny that a friend of mine said to me, well Todd, how are you going to get all these people to connect with each other in a group when they don't know each other. And one of the requirements is they have to be from different cities. And I found that I didn't have to worry about it because they had what we call now distant intimacy. Because they were in different cities they felt real and authentic about sharing. And it worked out really well. So it was very gratifying to answer your question yes.   KG: You mentioned right at the start of the interview that you were an army intelligence officer. And I know that you were in Berlin soon after a major moment in human history. Can you tell me a little bit about what that moment was like and how it impacted you as a young man and still today? Not to imply that you're not a young man but it's been a few years since you were in the army.   KG: Yes yes that's true. No that's OK. You call me an old man. That's all right. No, you know, it was you know at the time I took it for granted. I was stationed in Berlin Germany just after November 9th 1989 when the wall quote-unquote came down. But it took a while to take the wall down. And I was there after November 9th 1989 and it was really a pivotal moment in my life and it actually turned out to be one of my big first goal setting kind of experiences because I was watching all the military officers and I was enlisted at the time, enlisted in the U.S. Army. And I was watching the officers do their work as intelligence officers. And I was doing well as an enlisted soldier kind of in Berlin Germany when a lot of historical things were happening so it was really interesting time period and they had this thing called a green to gold scholarship. Where basically an enlisted individual can apply to go back to school, finish their degree and become an Army officer and at some point in time I said wow you know I think I really want to strive for this really big goal of competing for this scholarship to go back to school and then go back in the Army as an Army officer. And Kristen, I had no idea whether or not I would get it or not but it was a lot of work to put out the application again and get all the recommendations and just a lot of work.   And lo and behold I got it. So I credit that year in Berlin and all the really amazing things that were happening there with me kind of getting my first big professional career goal and accomplishing it.   KG: Wow that's amazing. It was such a transformative moment in human history and it's interesting to hear about how it impacted the world at a macro level but then also how in you on a micro level and then came right back out as you work to transform other people as well.   TU: Yeah it's funny you haven't thought about that way that way until you just mentioned it but there were so many people's lives that were transformed in that year. I mean East and West Germany came together, East Berlin and West Berlin came together. Families that were separated for decades and it just was really impactful on me to see the power of the human spirit overcome oppression, overcome difficult circumstances. And it just reminded me that gosh my goal was to compete for this scholarship and go back in the Army as an officer. That's a pretty micro goal compared to the big goal of reuniting two countries and it just put things in perspective for me you know.   KG: Yeah I totally get that. As you said just now you saw a lot of people overcome huge challenges and obstacles during this time in history. But you also help founders, new founders of emerging startups face their own challenges. What challenges have you found that the founders that you work with face typically that slow them down on their way to becoming an effective CEO and leader?   TU: You know it's funny because it's my intention to go back and kind of mine our podcast episodes and pull together kind of an empirical research project and just go back to all of them and kind of catalog all of that.   But off the top of my head I would say probably the biggest issue of a founder moving to CEO is being self aware enough to know at the different inflection points the new type of leader is that they need to be for their company. It's hard because it's a constant self-awareness and you have to start off with being someone who is very in tune with who you are and that's not easy to do when your company is growing fast. You know what I mean?   KG: Yeah, absolutely. I was thinking when I was brainstorming questions for this interview I thought that maybe a ton of founders that you work with might tend to get caught up in just the small day to day administration of running a new and fledgling company which sort of leaves them hanging when it comes time to big picture and more strategic thinking.   TU: I think you're right that exactly it is exactly one of the things that happens because when you are a founder maybe there's you know three or four people on your team maybe they're all cofounders. You tend to wear many hats and it's very difficult to know which hats to begin to take off per se and give those responsibilities to someone else. And so many of them I mean the phrase, the so common phrase Kristen that all of them say is it's hard letting go right? But it means different things at different points in time in that journey. But it's a common phrase because to your point they get used to doing things and now the organization requires them, is asking them sometimes is demanding them to be a different leader and kind of rise up above some of the tasks and focus on larger issues like for example hiring key people and establishing the culture of the organization and managing the culture of the organization which is often kind of the differentiator between a successful startup and scaleup and unsuccessful one.   KG: You know that reminds me of one of our favorite things that we say at aSweatLife and that's that everything is better with friends. I also tend to think of that as a way to remind me to keep key people around me. I think of it as like my personal cabinet right. The people that I go to for advice or for help with major decisions or just when I need like a good slap on the face be like wake up a little bit. This is what you need to be doing. So what sort of advice you give the people that you work with for finding those people and maybe not just defaulting to the people who make you feel good but the people who challenge you.   TU: Yeah it's a great question the way that those people around you they serve different purposes for you personally right?   KG: Right.   TU: So I think the same it's the same thing for a founder It's realizing that you need different types of people around you to support you for various different reasons and that takes the shape of many different resources for a founder. So for example if you if you're a funded company your board obviously plays a big role in that. If you're an unfunded company you can create your own personal board of advisers to be a board for you. A lot of founders will join an organization. There's Young Presidents Organization, there's EO. There's an array of organizations to your point to bring people around you and that's why we created Trail Team 10 too because we saw a need for startup CEOs to different cities to kind of be able to come together and challenge each other kind of sharpen each other to be better. But I think it's important to remember that it's okay to have different people sort of different roles so someone could be a really good expert on you have someone who's a mentor about financial issues and you know you get together with him maybe twice a year and it could be a friend it could be a relative or it could be somebody you pay it could be just somebody who takes an interest in you in your business. But bringing those types of people around you is so important. Everyone talks about that and every interview that I've ever done and I know that there's a lot of there's like CEO roundtables that are part of a lot of chambers in different cities that are a lot of people joined as well so I think it's important. You're right not only just from the professional perspective but from a friend perspective to know other people are kind of experiencing some of the things same things that you are.   KG: Yeah it gets lonely at the top I hear for CEOs.   TU: It does. I just had a lunch appointment today with someone who literally is three doors down from my office who listens to my show. I had no idea who he was and we were just talking about that I said and he was working on some issues as you know my company really knows about all the decisions they have to make on this as it's pretty lonely isn't it he says. You don't even know, Todd. I said, of course I know. He says, oh yeah that's right. So yeah it gets very lonely but it doesn't have to be. And that's one of my kind of mantras to people is it doesn't have to be lonely. Most teams want you to be transparent with them share. Tell them what you're how you're feeling. They can't be overly maudlin about it because then they'll get scared. Right. But you have to share your emotions and how you're feeling about things.   That's the pathway for the most successful founding CEOs that I've worked with and I've interviewed.   KG: That's awesome. Let's pivot a little bit and talk about productivity. Your website and your podcasts tend to focus on practical, actionable tips that founders can take to follow their dreams. What have you found that works personally for you in your daily life?   TU: Yes so there are a lot of things now that technology wise that don't necessarily make you more productive. Like, they don't make a task for you more productive they actually replace tasks which makes you more productive. So we're used to doing things. So maybe I'll be able to do this faster. Well nowadays for example there's an x.ai which completely takes the task of scheduling meetings with people out of your list because it talks to a computer with some artificial intelligence that looks at your calendar and their calendar and sets up the meeting for you without having to do a thing but CC Amy at x.ai. And so that's an example of productivity where founders nowadays are not saying Hey I just want to be able to faster X Y Z they say no I want to use some technology and some other things that replace some of the activities that I do. I think that's the first major insight that many of them have taught me as I've interviewed them. That's number one. Number two is I personally believe that productivity and mental clarity are intimately connected. That you have to have you have to exercise. Right?   KG: Right.   TU: You have to do things that give your mind peace and clarity so that you know the single biggest thing to do as it relates to productivity which is appropriately prioritize. If you can't prioritize things if your mind is racing and you haven't given your mind the opportunity to be clear about exactly who you are exactly what your company is doing exactly what your responsibilities are in that company. And that requires you know sometimes I'll go to I work at Lifetime Fitness in Cincinnati and I'll go pool walk because it's mindless and no one bothers me and that sounds silly. But just walking back and forth in the pool because it's mindless. Instead of walking outside where there's no resistance it's walking in the pool. But that for me clears my head so that I can then prioritize correctly and then that affects my my productivity.   KG: And with that pool walking you have the added bonus of generally not being reachable by phone. You actually have to unplug unless you've got some really fancy waterproof case that I just haven't heard of yet.   TU: That's my favorite part. Next time you said I was in the pool and couldn't call you back.   KG: Well that is a lot of technology. But you use any fine tools as well.   TU: Absolutely. I still use it right here next to me a little notebook. My favorite version is the Moleskin. I love the Moleskin little books, do you know what I'm talking about?   KG: Yes absolutely.   TU: And every night before I go to bed I write down what are the top three things that I need to get done and the next day. And I do that the day before and I put it in my moleskin notebook in the morning when I wake up I'm I'm able to focus on the things that I need to do in the morning, which is take care of my family get my kids off to school make them breakfast make benefits my wife breakfast. I'm not worrying about having to prioritize what my next day's going to look like. So I do that in my little Moleskin notebook handwriting. I used to use technology for that but I find that doing that and notebook is much more KG: I'm the same way. I still use pen and paper planner which are redundant because of course I've got my google calendar my icalendar all synced up. But everything has to be written down in a paper planned as well just so that I it gets it into my memory a little bit better right like I can remember my appointments easier if I find that I've written down beforehand.   TU: There's something about handwriting isn't there?   KG: Yeah yeah. Plus not to mention the satisfaction of actually crossing something off your list.   TU: My favorite part.   KG: And it's off your plate for at least another few days.   TU: Yeah well plus you know I don't know about you but like when you do something or computer it feels ephemeral, it feels ... but in my notebook I keep my notebooks and sometimes I go back and look in them. Oh yeah I actually did get a lot accomplished.   KG: Yeah absolutely it's a great way to actually track the things that you did get done. I mean who hasn't written something in their notebook that they've already done just so that they can cross it out and feel that sense accomplishment. Right.   TU: Yes. Yes Will I also use that notebook too once a week I'll journal and I'll say hey what's bothering me right now what am I grateful for and what will bring me joy in the next couple of weeks and I just do that once a week in my notebook with my other tasks because it gets me kind of thinking bigger picture and the handwriting part I think is to your point is key because it kind of engages my brain differently.   KG: We are also big believers at aSweatLife in starting your day off strong especially starting your Mondays off strong. We started carpe Monday. The idea is just to start your week off strong so that your set the tone for everything else that you're going to accomplish the rest of the week. And I feel like that's something that everyone asks CEOs right. So I was wondering if you had a strong morning routine and noticed that the founders and CEOs you work with have similar routines or they have quirky little differences that help set them up for success for the rest of the week or the day?   TU: Yeah. So I think I'll put them in two categories and I fall into one category. One is those that have kids and those that do not have kids because for me personally I'm the mom with kids. My wife is a physician and so I always want to give her the gift in the morning of peace before she sees 30 patients in a day. And so I make breakfast for her. I make sure the kids are downstairs eating breakfast and make sure they're ready to go out the door because she brings them to school. So for me my beginning of my morning is about making three other people's lives better and that actually makes me feel good. And I can focus on the rest of the day because I know they're off to a good start. So my getting off to a good start is actually about getting three other people off to a good start. That I think gives a lot of entrepreneurs and founders and founding CEOs who have kids there's usually somehow involved in that. But for those that don't often find a lot of them will meditate or pray. Many of them tell me that they will work out. First I think many of them work out in the morning because they find that the endorphins and everything else that kick in makes them sharper during the day rather than working out at the end of the day. But I think the other thing that they often do is they have a huddle meeting with their team. This is becoming more and more common where it's not one of these big overarching meetings. It's especially for a lot of the virtual ones. They will have a huddle meeting hey here's the three things that I'm focusing on today and here's something I may need help with. Some of them will do. Hey what's your one minute win from the previous day so that they all have some sort of positivity in their lives as they start their day. But usually it's just huggle meeting. That's not long it usually last 10 15 minutes. It's not over. You think that sets the course a lot for many of them.   KG: And with those huddle meetings do they find that accountability is a key part of that you know announcing to the group what you're working on helps you sort of stay true to your tasks and maintain that focus during the day?   TU: Absolutely. And it does. Another thing I think because of that it helps the founder hear from others so they can in their mind overlay the things that they're doing with the current priorities and strategy of the company since things change so quickly. They're listening to what people are putting their efforts in and then they're able to go back and help them make adjustments. If for some reason something's changing so again it's not heavy but it gives them the kind of that touch base to be able to say oh yeah you know what my team is still focused on the things that we all agreed are the priorities or someone has something personal going on that we need to help them out with. And also maybe rise to the occasion and do their work for them so that kind of alignment with the team is a big factor in addition to the accountability piece.   KG: It sounds like it also helps keep the CEOs grounded in terms of being up to date on what exactly their employees job descriptions are and what they're having to do everyday because I know in those companies world can shift really quickly right. And sometimes a CEO might not necessarily know the many hats that someone under him is wearing.   TU: Absolutely. I think you're right. And you know they don't talk about it that way mostly but I think the roles and responsibilities is something I often talk with him about. And now that I'm thinking about some of the stories I hear on the course of time some of them actually have a chart. In fact many of them are doing this now. You know they kind of. who has primary responsibilities in this area and who is their backup and they use that conversation to figure out whether or not the backup person needs to move in to their primary role. If as you say a role is changing.   KG: Interesting. Yeah that's a great little system for people to start right from the beginning.   TU: Yeah I think you're right.   KG: Well of course not everyone who listens says podcast is a founder or a CEO. But they are probably taking this month of January to evaluate their new goals and habits that they want to set for the rest of the year. Which of your favorite productivity hacks can be adopted by non CEOs like me?   TU: That's a great question. You know I find that sharing your goal with two types of people. One a family person or someone who knows you personally could be a family person could be a friend could be someone that just knows you as a human being rather than a role and then a second person is someone who really knows you professionally. Sharing with them your first six months goal. I don't think it should be an annual goal because it's too far, too many things happen in a year. But I do think between now and the end of June sharing that that goal with two key people. It's hard when it's the same person for the personal professional that's why I think it's important to have to kind of break that out a bit. You are much more likely to accomplish that goal if you told those two people because at least one of them is going to ask you in the next two to three weeks Hey how's it going with x y z. Right. Because they're just curious. And you've stated to them unequivocally and with intention and purpose and so they are naturally going to be interested because we all kind of want to know how we're doing and you know what happens mid February the gym drains. Right?   KG: Right. There is a literal day on the calendar called quit day or quit your resolutions day.   TU: Is that what it is? I didn't know that.   KG: Yeah, it's sometime around the sixth week of the year. Sometime in mid February. I've seen it happen.   TU: It's so interesting I did not know that. It's the same idea with any other goal. You know? Whether it's fitness or whatnot if you tell at least two people then you increase the odds that you'll follow through with that six month goal in the new year.   KG: It's interesting that you break it down into six month goals instead of a full year goal. Do you envision people reevaluating that goal of the six month period to adjust their course or just hoping to be accomplished within that time frame?   TU: No definitely reevaluating definitely. In fact when I worked with founders I always tell them hey you should be having offset from your quote unquote performance evaluation conversations, offset from that you should have your career and goal setting conversations with individuals on your team because the two are very very different. And when you conflate your performance with your goals and your aspirations and hopes it's too difficult to get down. If for example you're not performing well in certain areas will you want to make sure you keep that positive energy.   And so I recommend they offset those conversations--and it's the same thing with us we have to revisit the goal setting conversation kind of separate from other things in our lives so that we can look at it and kind of give ourselves the attaboy if we accomplish it or to retweak it right because it may change because something happens between now and June. It's too long ago here.   KG: You know you sort of touched on this just now but I imagine that in your work with founders a lot of them are probably focused on very tangible results that they want to achieve for their company. Right. You want to hit this metric you want to hit that. But at the same time as you help them on their journey to becoming really effective leaders and CEOs there's some what I call fuzzy things that they're going to have to change about themselves right? Like how to become a better leader. Well how how can you really measure that? So how do you help reconcile the differences between a less measurable goal with something maybe a little bit more tangible?   TU: There is a great question and that is actually the secret sauce about what we do at from founder to CEO because we really help the individual as a human being transform themselves into someone who has more responsibility for more people. And you'd be surprised about how you can actually measure the immeasurable, or the things that you see that are appeared to be measurable. For example one way to measure. You mentioned leadership is to do a quality qualitative or quantitative 360 degree feedback with an individual at the beginning of a time period and later on in the end of a time period. And what that does is you crowdsource feedback from the key stakeholders around you. It could be friends, direct reports, peers, customers, family and you get a really good sense of self awareness around your effectiveness and some of those more intangible areas. And if you do a qualitative interviews with those individuals as well it really adds to a robust set of measurements, quantitatively and qualitatively around those issues. And then you redo that in maybe six months and you can see a shift. It is very clear whether it's just leadership or self-awareness in general.   KG: General that's a great idea. It sounds like it must be pretty humbling for the people seeking that 360 degree feedback too.   TU: You know there are times people tell me they never got so much feedback all at once about themselves.   And it can be overwhelming but at the same time to so many people tell me when I do that exercise with that it is transformational not just to them as a leader or as a founder,  founding CEO but as a person because it's about quality feedback. We all get feedback on a regular basis but frequently it's reactive. And that's important that's you know. We want to give an individual an opportunity to fully think through who we are and how we lead etc. And when we do that in a more formal way the richness and robustness of that data produces patterns that are very clear.   KG: Interesting. And once you start to recognize those patterns you can start consciously putting in the habits to change them.   TU: Absolutely and that's what we do all the time. We help create development plans from that information that get to the heart of an individual's journey from founder to CEO. Because it can be disorienting because especially a fast growth company where you know a year from now there's 25 employees and you had two at the beginning of a year and 25 is the magic number where a lot of the wheels fall off the organization for a lot of different sociological reasons and you have to rethink who you are and how you're leading. Dan Shapiro, the founding CEO of GlowForge told me in his interview--and he has a book called the Hotseat, it's a really good book. And he said a lot of founders will hire someone who is not very good at some of the jobs you're giving up to hedge their bet about if when they get like 25 employees if they're not good at leading that number of people they can go back into what they were doing before. Because they're kind of concerned about their ability to lead. And I found that so interesting that and I see that now kind of how we sabotage ourselves because to your point we're not quite certain we can do these things and we don't have any measurements around them.   KG: It sounds like you work with a ton of interesting people and you know really put in the legwork in helping them accomplish their goals. Let's circle back to our second big question that we asked everyone who comes on our podcast. What is a big goal that you have for the future and how do you plan to reach it?   TU: This is hard for me because we're just talking about this right now and we're struggling with it. Our Trail Team 10 program is pretty successful and we're proud of it. And it's really producing great results not only for our customers but also for our company. But I think it's time to create a membership program for founders at a price point that is not overwhelming to them so that they can come and go into the membership when they have needs without it being a six month commitment which is what our Trail Team 10 program is. And so my goal is that by June we will have mapped out what that looks like. Got enough feedback about it we can launch a beta membership for founding CEOs. And it's a lot of work you know and I'm a little bit cautious about bringing it up but I figured if I don't talk about it, if I don't share it with you then you know and so I wouldn't be practice what I preach. But that's our big, as Collins says, are our big hairy audacious goal is to kind of create that membership platform and program that can really serve our audience of founders around the world in a different way so that they can really take advantage of democratizing what we call executive coaching for leaders who are growing fast and help them grow faster because businesses are just crazy now and they're growing faster than ever before but our ability to grow as a leader at the same speed is lagging in a membership platform where people can get what they need without having a long term commitment and a larger price point is something I'm really passionate about.   KG: While I look forward to hearing from you in June about how successful you were.   TU: Yes, holding me accountable.   KG: Just like you said. Todd, do you want to tell us where we can listen to your podcast or check out anything else about from Founder to CEO?   TU: Absolutely. We invite you all to check us out at FromFoundertoCEO.com. We are on Spotify. Super excited couple weeks ago Spotify invited us to come on their platform. We're on iTunes or on Google Play. You can pretty much find the podcast on any service that you use to listen to podcasts and I'm also probably more active on LinkedIn than any other social media platform. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and if I can help out in some way I'm happy to do so.   KG: Awesome. Well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today, Todd. We really appreciate it.   TU: It's my pleasure Kristen you take care. Thanks for the opportunity.   KG: Thank you.   CK: This podcast is produced by me. Cindy Kuzma. And it's another thing that's better with friends. So please share it with yours. You can subscribe whereever you get your podcasts. Hey while you're at it please leave us a rating or review. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music and our guest this week, Todd Uterstaedt.  

Show Rundown: We welcome our Star Trek Jeff Bond and maybe Alexandra August (we kid) to join us in a talk about what STAR TREK means to us as a lead up to STAR TREK DISCOVERY which premieres this Sunday! We’re going to be doing weekly recaps and discussions after each episode, so consider this your warm up. In our second segment, Todd Bishop, co-founder of Geek Wire and our old boss at The Orion, the weekly newspaper at Chico State, joins us to talk about Silicon Valley-ing of Hollywood: How Silicon Valley is impacting storytelling. And finally we end our show with a quick recap of Sunday night’s Emmy Awards. What were our favorite moments? Least moments? And why is this one show that’s supposed to celebrate the best TV has to offer the most boring thing on TV? Topic 1: The Meaning of Star Trek and Preview of Star Trek: Discovery w/Jeff Bond and mentions of Alexandra August Star Trek, to put it simply, is the bedrock of science fiction for millions around the world. Many of us were first introduced to the magic and wonder of science fiction storytelling by Gene Roddenberry’s unkillable show decades ago, and ever since every aspect of genre storytelling has been their influenced by the adventures of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, or their successors, like Picard, Data and Riker, or Sisko, Odo and Kira, or Janeway, Chakotay and Seven, or Archer, T’Pol and Trip. Or back again to Kirk, Spock and McCoy from the new movies. All of this is introduction to our discussion of Star Trek, and our upcoming episode by episode reviews of Star Trek Discovery starting next week and this simple question: Is Star Trek still a thing? Joining us today to talk about it are two people who will be talking Star Trek Discovery every week. First up is Jeff Bond, my favorite living pop culture critic. He wrote the book on STAR TREK MUSIC, has helped release the amazing STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES COMPLETE SOUNDTRACK boxed set, he even played Dr. Leonard H. 'Bones' McCoy on the late, great STAR TREK: NEW VOYAGES. This December his new book, The Art of Star Trek: The Kelvin Timeline will be released and I will be reading by noon on Christmas day.   Topic 2: Silicon Valley Disrupts Storytelling w/Todd Bishop of GeekWire.com To talk to us about how the Silicon Valley will be changing and remaking the stories you watch, we’re bringing in an old friend the Award Winning Journalism program at California State University, Chico. Don’t laugh. That’s Todd Bishop. Since graduating with Sonia and I, he’s gone onc to become a hell of a journalist… one out of three ain’t bad… covering Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, modern technology all from the tech news website he co-founded, GeekWire.com. So Todd, welcome to Dorking Out.   Topic 3: Emmy Awards 2017 Reactions   Find The Dorking Out Show here... Dorking Out Show Blog http://dorkingoutshow.com/ Dorking Out Show Twitter https://twitter.com/dorkingoutshow Dorking Out Show YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ufLeNHiA59ANCMPlAdAOQ Dorking Out Show Facebook https://www.facebook.com/dorkingoutshow Dorking Out Show Patreon https://www.patreon.com/DorkingOutShow Sonia’s Twitter https://twitter.com/TheSoniaShow The Sonia Show Blog http://www.thesoniashow.com/ The Sonia Show Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/TheSoniaShow Chris’ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JettJergens The Jett Jergens Blog https://jettjergens.com/ Jett Jergens Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/JettJergens/

Finally! We have come back to.... PODBEAN! Yes, we left SoundCloud after learning of its recent "financial" troubles. So Todd, ported all the episodes back to SoundCloud and we now have our inaugural Podcast! This week we discuss GoT 5th episode, "EastWatch," and a special guest calls in. Don't worry, noone wanted to hear from him either.

You’re just one funnel away… On this special two part episode you will hear the second part of Russell’s “One Funnel Away” presentation from Funnel Hacking Live. In this episode you’ll hear: How Russell nearly lost everything when his merchant accounts closed. Why Russell didn’t know he hadn’t paid Payroll taxes in a year and could have gone to jail. And how Russell turned it all around and along with Todd created Clickfunnels. So listen here to find out how Russell went from nearly bankrupt to amazing success with Clickfunnels within just a few years. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone this is Russell again. Welcome to the next episode of Marketing Secrets. This is part two of the One Funnel Away presentation. I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s episode. If you did like it I hope you have shared it and told people to go listen to it. Today is going to be the exciting conclusion of Russell’s bankruptcy and failure stories. I hope you enjoy it, it should be a lot of fun. Listen to it online at marketingsecrets.com, you can watch it, there’s a video there, you can share and see the actual presentation there as well. I hope this helps you, hope it gives you faith and hope in what you’re doing, what you’re creating and where you are trying to go with your business and people’s lives you are going to serve. With that said, enjoy my failures, I hope you guys have a good time with it, see you guys soon. Bye. Now the pros and the cons of this. The pros, this is really, really awesome. As a beginning entrepreneur I was like, we nailed, lets scale this thing. I probably shouldn’t have done some of this stuff, but we got excited. If this worked here, we should hire more people. We started this and we went from this little thing with 5 or 6 of us to 2 years later we had about a 100 people operation, where this is the model we were doing. Cd’s calling them on the phone, selling coaching, having continuity and it grew really big. During that time there were some really positive things that came from it, some negative things, some ups and downs, and I’ll share a lot of those things. One cool thing is that while this was happening and it was going really well, my name got out there, so I got a chance to go speak a lot, which is cool. I’d seen a lot of other people speak from stage, and this is where I’ve told you guys this story, anyone who’s gone from Perfect Webinar, I spent about 2 1/2 , 3 years on the road going to seminars, standing in front of a bunch of people like this, talking and trying to sell something and nothing happening, it’s a really horrible feeling. Has anyone done that before? My first presentation was on a stage like this, probably had 300 people in the room. I did the presentation and tried to do what speakers do and close, hope everyone runs to the back. Nobody budged and then the guy forgot to turn the music on and it was crickets and I was just awkwardly walking off the stage, and then running. I was so embarrassed, when you have those events that are multi-speaker events and all the speakers are selling and everyone is bragging about their numbers, I knew that I didn’t want them to ask me my numbers, because not one person signed up, so I hid in my hotel room. I remember ordering coconut shrimp and Haagen Dazs Ice cream for every meal for the next two days, while I hid in the room eating it and watching movies because I didn’t want to go back downstairs. It was really bad and awesome at the same time, because coconut shrimp and Haagen Dazs is awesome. But I did that and learned how not to sell and then I started learning from some amazing speakers and people, learning the process and how it works. All the stuff we talk about in the Perfect webinar, all the stuff we talked about day one, about creating belief and breaking belief patterns. All those things I learned on the road in front of people on stage. It was scary, but it was such a good time for me to learn it and understand that part of the process. As we started to grow, I wanna make sure I cover all the cool things, we had a bunch of different offers we came out with. One of the ones that was more successful for us was a front end offer like this, called Micro Continuity. How many of you guys remember Micro Continuity? This is awesome. So this is the one, it’s probably 8 years ago now. We put it on an MP3 player from Hong Kong, it had 6 hours of this training and that was the funnel we put through. We kept creating front end funnels to get people into this program and it worked awesome. We grew the company from nothing to 3 or 4 million dollars a year and it was doing awesome. At the time I started looking at other people in my industry. Hopefully one of you guys will get a good idea from this one. I had this funnel, we talk about the value ladder, I had this really cool value ladder here and I was ascending people up and I realized that I was the only person in the market that had a real value ladder. Everyone else was kind of doing stuff down here and that was it. I was the only person selling really expensive stuff. So I started calling my friends. I called Mike Filsame, “Hey man, all of our customers, we call them and sell them these $5000 things, and lots of people buy that. You should do that.” And he’s like, “I don’t want a call center.” And I was like, “Do you want us to call your customers and sell it?” and he’s like, “Yeah.” So we hooked up with Mike and became his backend. I called up Frank Kern and same thing, we became his backend for a little while. We started calling up a whole bunch of people and then we started becoming the backend. So all these people had frontend funnels and we became the backend for a lot of them. That’s how we took the company from 3 or 4 million dollars to 10 million dollars and it became really big. I was going to say big and fun, but I don’t think it became that at all. It became really big. We had 100 employees, we had 60 people on phones in a big, huge call center. We had 20 people doing coaching for all the things we were selling and then had about 20 people driving leads and customers and stuff like that. It got really big, and I don’t know if you guys notice this, but I’m really good and selling and stuff, but really bad at the management of stuff. I was not good at managing all these people and it kind of started getting too big. This is about the time, I was telling you guys, if you read the Dotcom Secrets book, I started waking up and was like, “I do not like what I created.” I got so excited that I started building this thing and then one day I woke up and was like, huh, do I really want to do this? I think half the conversations I have with inner circle members when they first come in is this, “Do you really want to build this business? Yes, that would work, but sometimes it’s horrible when you get there. Think it through. What do I actually want to do? Who do I want to become? Who do I want to be when I grow up?” Luckily during that time, it was probably one of the most painful times in my life, but looking back now, it was probably one of the most important times in my life. We had this huge operation and everything was working and then one day in January, literally 11:30 in the morning, one of my sales guys came in and said, “I’m trying to run a credit card and it’s not working. I’m not sure what’s wrong.” I’m like, “That’s weird. Try one of the other merchant accounts, maybe there’s something there.” then someone else came in, “Hey all the continuity orders are failing, I’m not sure why.” Three or four people came in and I’m like, “What’s happening?” I logged into the backend system and not….at 11:37 or something like that, every sale stopped. No sales. I was like, what is happening. I was freaking out so I called our merchant account company and there’s a busy signal. I call again, busy. Call again, busy. I can’t get a hold of anybody and all the sudden I start hearing from friends. “Dude, everything got shut down. Are you still able to process?” I’m like, “No, what’s happening.” “I don’t know, I don’t know.” And soon I found out that it wasn’t me, I eventually found out that it was 3 or 400 people at the same time. Anyone who was doing any kind of continuity stuff, the merchant accounts basically came in and said, “Look, we think what you guys are doing might be illegal and we’re shutting all of you guys down and you’re guilty until proven innocent.” I was like, “What? I’ve got 100 people that I’m feeding. 100 people and their families, it turns into 100’s of people. You can’t just stop processing.” Finally after an hour I get through to somebody and the lady on the phone says, “Yep, we shut you down. Good luck ever getting another merchant account ever again. I gotta go.” Boom and hung up on me. I was like, “What?” at the time I thought I had diversity. We had 9 merchant accounts, all through one company, different merchant accounts but all through one bank. I found out that is the equivalent of having one. Which is why I’m a big believer now in having multiple merchant accounts in multiple different banks, which is a lesson hopefully for everybody. If you don’t know Alex Rowe yet, I don’t know if Alex is in here. But meet Alex, he’s the man who can get you hooked up with lots of merchant accounts. He’s done that for us, he’s amazing. But it was bad, finally we got a hold of these guys and I’m trying to figure some things out. Basically they said, “You’ve got to prove that you are a good guy.” So we went through, it took us two weeks for them to go through all our stuff, look at our documentation, look at all of our stuff. Two weeks, and they came back and said, “You’re right. You’re doing everything clean, everything is above board. We’ll turn your merchant accounts back on and you’re good to go.” I’m like, “Sweet.” And during that time, when there’s that kind of instability, sales guys are freaking out, they can’t handle any kind of instability, they’re leaving like crazy. People are walking out the door. I was freaking out, we had all this payroll and no money coming in, so I’m paying it out of my own pocket, everything to just keep things afloat. Going through this process it’s getting scarier and scarier and finally the merchant accounts are back on, you’re a good guy. So you guys, we gotta do a launch really quick to make a bunch of money. So we put together this huge launch and push it out to our customer list and in a weekend we made $250,000, and I was like, “Thank you.” That’s so great. Monday we should get the money, we can pay payroll, I’m telling everyone, “Tell your wives and kids we’ll have money soon. It’s coming I promise. It’s in the bank, going to be here any day now.” And the money didn’t come. Monday it didn’t come, Tuesday it didn’t come, Wednesday it didn’t come. By Thursday I’m calling, “Where’s our money? We need this money.” The guy looks at the account, “It’s definitely in there.” I’m like, “When’s it coming to our bank?” He’s like, “Well it’s not going to come to your bank.” And I’m like, “Why not?” and he’s like, “You’re on 100% reserve so we keep 100% of your money.” I was like, “What? That’s not good for me or for anybody. How am I supposed to be in business? I got people to pay.” He’s like, “That’s just how it works. The good news is that it looks like you are a legitimate company. No one’s charging back or refunding this money that we’ve collected so far, so what we’ll do is drop you down to 10% reserve.” I’m like, “Ah, thank heavens.” He’s like, “But the $250,000 you collected in the last week, we’re keeping that for the next 6 months as collateral to make sure nothing bad happens.” I’m like, are you kidding me. We gotta create another funnel. So we make another thing, push it out there, make some money. We start paying payroll for whatever we can but everything’s collapsing around me. That started in January and that started happening at the same time we’re trying to find other merchant accounts at other banks. And all these other banks are like, “Oh yeah, we’re cool. Come in, we’ll give you a merchant account. This is how it works, you gotta make $100,000 a month.” I’m like, “Cool, we’re going to do that in like 2 days. I’m going to need 4 merchant accounts. We can make money. We just need you to give it to us after we make it.” They’re like, “We’re cool, we’re good at that, don’t worry.” So okay, cool. We get a merchant account, get it all setup, drove a bunch of traffic, and twice we made over the $100,000 a month we were allowed within a day, day and a half, and they froze our accounts and said, “You made too much money too fast. We’re freezing your accounts. We’ll give this money back to you in 6 months.” I’m like, “6 months? Please stop doing this to me.” We ended up with 4 or 500,000 dollars locked up in merchant accounts and it kept getting worse and worse throughout this whole year. It was the hardest year of my life. It kept going down. Every single day I’m laying off friends and family members and people who I loved and cared about and I’m coming in, “I don’t know what to do man. I’m so sorry. I gotta let you go.” It was such a dark time in my life with thing after thing after thing. I wish I could say from there it got better. That was an entire year, the next January started and one of our friends was doing an event in Vegas, I’m like, “I’m going to go out there and see what everyone…. I gotta re figure out my whole business. Everything’s completely collapsed.” At the time, by the way, we were in this big, huge office we had rented, that we were leasing. I think it was 20,000 square feet because we all the call center and stuff. I went to the landlord and I’m like, “Hey man, I can’t afford to pay you anymore.” And he’s like, “Okay, well we’ve got a 3 year contract. If you don’t pay me, I’m going to sue you and you’re probably going to end up in jail.” Are you kidding me dude, I’m trying. He would not work with me at all, I had all this fear behind that. So I’m in Vegas a year later, trying to ask friends what’s happening, what they’re doing in their business, and they’re trying to tell me their stories. I’m like, this is, I don’t even know what to do. That night I got an email on my phone from my dad, I opened the email and it was a shot in a gut. Probably the worst second in my life, that I read that. The email said, “Hey Russell. I’m so sorry.” My dad was doing my books at the time, but we had a bookkeeper in the office, and the bookkeeper was trying her best, but she didn’t know. She knew we were struggling and she didn’t want to stress me out, so she didn’t tell me how much we were struggling. It turns out what she had been doing is she had been paying the bills she could, and the one’s she couldn’t she was trying to not pay them and delay them. And to hide it from my dad and everyone else she was saying in Quickbooks that she paid bills, but then not actually paying them. So it looked like it was clear. But he had gone through and audited it and found out that she hadn’t paid payroll taxes in almost a year. In the email my dad said, “Just so you know payroll taxes aren’t something where they fine you. If you don’t pay payroll taxes you’re going to go to jail. It’s over $150,000 you owe in payroll taxes.” I was like, that’s the end. It had been an entire year. Every penny I had ever earned was gone. All my people in my teams, it had all fallen apart. I’m sitting there like, “I don’t know what to do.” The next morning I got on a flight from Vegas back to Boise. I get there and walk in and the call center is empty, all the guys are gone. There’s two people that are left and they said, “Just so you know, the call center across the road just recruited us and we all left. We’re out, see ya.” They walked out. I was like, “I owe the government $150,000, I have no one to help me sell. I don’t know what to do.” I want to quit, so bad I want to quit. But if I quit I go to jail. I also sold coaching to a lot of people I cared about, if I quit all these people that bought coaching from me, I can’t help them. That’s not right. That’s not the right thing to do. I don’t know what to do. So I went to a bankruptcy lawyer, “How does this work man? I don’t know what to do. I gotta figure this out.” I kind of explained the whole process, told him about my lease. “The landlord says he’ll come after me, the government’s going to come after me. I don’t know what to do.” And he’s like, “The best thing to do is, I should come with you to your landlord and explain that you’re going into bankruptcy and maybe they’ll be nice to you.” So I’m like, “Alright.” He’s like, “Do you have any money?” I’m like, “No.” and he’s like, “What do you got in your pocket?” I was like, “100 bucks.” And he’s like, “Cool, give me $100 and I’ll come and I’ll tell the landlord you’re going bankrupt.” I’m like, “Alright man, here you go.” So he comes with me, which is actually the best $100 I ever spent. He comes with me to the landlord and he’s like, “Russell’s screwed man, he’s going through bankruptcy. He just hired me. He can’t pay you. You can come after him, but he’s done.” It was this old man, he’s like, “He’s done. The Government’s coming after him. You’re screwed, don’t even try.” And basically convinced our landlord that it was a useless cause. So the landlord was like, “Alright, be out by Friday.” And we had a big space with office cubicles and phones and craziness. So I’m like, “Okay, we’ll be out by Friday.” But 90% of my team was gone at this point. From 100 employees down to about 7 or 8. The few people that stuck by me, people like Brent Coppieters, love that guy to death. Brent and John and some of the people back then, Brent had taken a pay cut, a 50% pay cut and never…..amazing people. So the few of us that were left, we were packing up stuff, we put up ads on Craiglist, we got tons of computer and crap, things we’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for, we were selling for hundreds of dollars just to get out of it. We made I don’t know, maybe 5 or 6 grand on all of our crap, getting rid of it. We had a huge dumpster, just throwing away everything we had ever created because we had to downsize. Trying to figure out how to get into a smaller building and how do we keep the people we have to have to be able to fulfill on coaching. We have to cut everything else that we have. So we were downsizing everything, going out and the night we were moving, that Friday we were supposed to be out at midnight or whatever it was, I was sitting in the office, the desks were gone, everything was gone, all I had left was my laptop. I was sitting there, I had my socks on, I had some levi’s and I had no money. I was like, “We have to make some money or else we can’t even move into…I don’t know how to do anything.” So I sent out an email to my list I had at the time, got a bunch of people to register for a webinar. I was sitting there in a chair with my laptop on my lap, doing a webinar, praying that something would happen. And that webinar saved us. That webinar made $150,000 in sales over the next 3 or 4 days, which gave me the money I needed to pay everyone to not leave, get a new office, get us moved in and get us stability so we could actually breath for a few minutes and figure out the next step, what do we want to be when we grow up. So we downsized from 20,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet. And we had this really cool moment where we’re like, “What do we want to do when we grow up? What do we want to be?” And as painful as that process was, it was one of the coolest things ever because we didn’t have to keep going on this path. We could pick anything. That’s when I started thinking about, who’s our dream customer? Who do we really want to serve? What fires us up? What gets us excited? And we started thinking through that and during this process, we started creating again and having fun. What should we do? I had a friend at the time who he had this website that was making him 2 or 3 thousand dollars a month and he got in some trouble, and I had a couple things making a little money at the time and he’s like, “I need to get rid of this site. Can you pay me some money?” So I paid him $20,000, he gave me this little website. This little machine that you zap and it gets rid of cold sores, and on autopilot it was making 2 or 4 thousand dollars a month and I was like, “Oh this is so cool.” So we had this little thing and I was like, “That little business just kind of runs. What if we had another one.” So we started creating other ones. We had one in the couponing market, we set it up and had a guru in there, it started running and making money. Then we’re like, “What’s another one?” we did one with weight loss, and another. And in a year’s time we launched 12 different companies, each making different amounts of money. During that time is when we launched Neurocel, our supplement company, all these things were happening and it was starting to get exciting again. We were creating we were doing, doing the business instead of teaching the business, which was so much fun for us to do, to learn and see why this stuff works in this market, but not this market. One of the things that would drive me crazy about teachers in my industry is that they come in and act like the marketing techniques that work in one space work everywhere. And I learned during that two or three period of time that that’s not true. Everything’s different. There’s intricacies in couponing versus business versus weight loss versus diet versus supplements. There’s differences and I came to respect that because we had a chance to do it in so many different businesses and different things. We spent the next two or three years creating stuff and during that process, one of the really cool things is I go to Flipa.com all the time and try to find cool websites we could buy and turn to businesses. And there’s a website called championsound.com that was for sale. And it was this cool little email, text message auto responder for bands. I was like, “I’m going to buy that and we’re going to take it and niche it for every market. We’ll make email auto responders and text message auto responders for dentists, or chiropractors.” I was so excited. It was 20 grand, we didn’t have that much money but I was like this is the future of our company. We have to do it. So we ended up buying this website from these guys off Flipa. We get the website and we’re trying to transfer it to our servers after we paid them the 20 thousand dollars. And as they’re trying to transfer it, they’re like, “You can’t have the Linux server, you need the Ruby server.” I’m like, “What does that mean?” They’re like, “It means that this is not coded in PHP, it’s coded in Ruby on Rails. You have to have a different kind of server.”I’m like, “What does that mean?” “It means you have to go over here and pay $800 a month for a new server.” Are you kidding me, I don’t have $800 a month for a server. But we bought this thing, so we did and they installed it. Then it didn’t really work. I didn’t know what to do. None of my tech guys had ever used Ruby on Rails so I went to Odesk to hire some guys and they couldn’t fix it. I tried 5 or 6 guys and finally I was like, I wasted 20 grand. I was so upset and frustrated because I didn’t have that money. On the way out of the office one day I was like, “I wonder if anyone on my list knows Ruby on Rails?” shot in the dark, I have no idea. So I send the email out to my little list at the time. Subject line was like, “Ruby on Rails, looking for a partner. If you know Ruby on Rails, I’m looking for a partner.” I said basically the story I just told you guys, “bought this thing, can’t make it work, if you know Ruby on Rails, become my partner, we’ll make a bunch of money with this thing together.” Sent the email out. About an hour later I get an email from this guy in Georgia named Todd Dickerson, and Todd’s like, “Hey man, I know Ruby.” I’m like, “You do?” I looked at his picture and I was like, “You don’t look like a nerd. I don’t think you do.” And then I went to Facebook and I Facebook friended him, it was actually six years ago last week. I Facebook Friended him and he’s got a beautiful wife, he’s got a daughter. I’m like I don’t think he’s a coder. I don’t know if I believe that. He’s like, “Yeah man, shoot me the login, I’ll fix it.” I was like, “Whatever I have had 8 guys try to fix it for the last 4 or 5 months and nobody can do it. Whatever, here’s the login.” So he logs in and an hour later he’s like, “Okay, done. It’s fixed.” I was like, “What?” and he’s like, “Yeah, I got it fixed. I just did blah blah blah. And it worked.” I’m like, “Dude, how did you do that?” and he’s like, “I just love Ruby on Rails. I’m amazing.” He didn’t say that, he’s super humble. But I was like, this guy’s amazing. I’m like, “I have all these other things. Want to help me with these other things?” So Todd came and we started working on this other project. We had an idea for an auto webinar, Todd built out the software behind the scenes, which was Clickfunnels verson 0.0, pre-everything. He built this auto webinar software because Mike Filsame had been talking about auto webinars. Rick Shephard had put in a webinar report. A couple of guys had started talking about auto webinars but nobody had done one. No one was really doing them. So Todd custom built this whole platform so we could do them, we launched an auto webinar through that and in that auto webinar we made a million dollars in 90 days. The first thing I did from that million dollars is took the money and paid off the IRS and I was like, I’m free. I’m not going to jail. The IRS is paid off, the fines are paid off. That auto webinar literally saved me, literally gave me freedom. Up to that point every night when I went to bed at night I was like they could come knock on my door. I have not paid payroll tax in that long. And that webinar freed us. We kept doing thing after thing, and what’s funny with Todd and Dylan used to design half of these things, just the contract, he’d design these pages and Todd would take them and code them up and make these funnels. He did funnel after funnel after funnel. We probably had 15 different companies, within those company 2 or 3 funnels. We probably had 40 funnels we built over, thing after thing after thing. And the last funnel we actually built the old school way was the Neurocel funnel. That’s one of the ones that blew up big and made tons of sales, we were having a bunch of fun with it and about that time is when Todd was like, “We should really create something so I don’t have to keep creating websites for you every single day.” And that was where the idea came for Clickfunnels. So we started that project in front of a whiteboard, like we talked about yesterday. We mapped this whole thing, and Todd went to work to build Clickfunnels and we partnered with Dylan to build the editor and the UI. And then fast forward 7 or 8 months later, we came and we were like this thing is going to change the world. I was so excited. I was like, “We’re going to do a free trial.” And I think the very first month our goal was to get 10,000 members the first month. I’m like, this is going to be the greatest thing in the world. So we put it out there we created the first funnel, had all the stuff in there, there was a free trial, we had a bunch of people lined up to promote it, we launched it, there were crickets. People came and then left. I was like, “Dude, do you not understand what I’m giving you? I made that page you’re looking at, it’s really good.” Nobody got it, why don’t they get it? There’s something wrong with my messaging. So we changed the funnel again, launched it again, a few of you guys signed up and that was it. They hit it and then they left. We tried again and again. We rebuilt that funnel not once or twice or three times or four times or five times. It was six times it took us before the Clickfunnels funnel worked. The sixth time was because one of my friends, Mike Filsame invited me out to his event and he’s like, “Hey Russell, I want you to come and sell Clickfunnels, I think it’s awesome.” I was like, “Dude, Mike, nobody’s buying Clickfunnels. We gotta figure out our next deal or figure out something because it’s not working.” He’s like, “No, my people need it, you need to come speak on it. You gotta sell it for $1000.” I’m like, “It’s a free trial and nobody even wants it.” So Mike’s event was happening that weekend, I was literally sitting in my office watching the event streaming and as I was sitting there I started writing my webinar and I had my slides open, I was following the Perfect Webinar script that I had been working on for ten years. I started filling in the blanks, started making this webinar, true to the Perfect Webinar Script. I literally was watching it, adding the things in while watching Mike’s event happen. That day I finished the slides, next morning I jumped in a plane and flew there. Got to California, put the slides up on the thing, okay here we go. I started it and the title slide was “My weirdness funnel is currently make $17,947 per day”, talking about the Neurocel funnel and how you can knock it off in less than ten minutes. Showed the first slide, started going through and when we got to the end, got to the stack and the close, we did it and 30% of the room jumped up and ran to the back, jumping over the tables, fighting to get back there. I was like, we did it. That was the message, that was the key. Now I know how to sell Clickfunnels. We took that message, went back and as a lot of you guys know, especially inner circle members, we started doing webinars every single day, sometimes two a day. One time I did three in a day, which was really hard. Over and over again, I did that webinar live over 70 times over the next year and a half and we went from being a startup with no members to after the end of last year we had over 10,000 members, after this year we have over 30,000 members and it’s continued to grow and grow and grow. And it was that one funnel that changed everything for me. So this process, for all of us you guys, is an up and a down. It’s always happening and all of you guys are somewhere in this wave right now. Some of you guys are at the top riding it, some of you guys are at the bottom going to crash. Some of you guys are somewhere in between. Always going up and down, but if nothing else at this event, I want you guys to all understand that no matter where you are, there’s hope. It might not be this funnel. I can’t tell you how many funnels flopped. I guarantee I have failed at more funnels than anyone else in this room because we tried over and over and over again. Because of that we found out what worked. The only way to do that is to do it over and over and over again. It’s a lot easier now, I promise you it’s a lot easier than what we used to do. Poor Todd and Dylan had to custom code every single thing, every single time. Now you can test things really fast. The first time I met Trey, first call he said, “Russell, I’m going to launch a funnel a week, every single week.” And I watched as he launched a funnel, and another funnel and another funnel, he had some marginal success, a little success, more success, more success. I saw him launch a funnel last year, one funnel and within 90 days became the biggest selling funnel in the history of the world. I was talking to some of the guys at affiliate summit. They said there’s never been a funnel that’s made more money in a shorter period of time than one of Trey’s funnels. I’m not privy to share all his numbers and stats, but it was insane. And it came from doing a funnel a week until he hits the one that just explodes. You don’t know what that’s going to be. It’s important, that’s why this tool is so important. Because you can do that, you can test and try over and over and over again.

You’re just one funnel away… On this special two part episode you will hear the second part of Russell’s “One Funnel Away” presentation from Funnel Hacking Live. In this episode you’ll hear: How Russell nearly lost everything when his merchant accounts closed. Why Russell didn’t know he hadn’t paid Payroll taxes in a year and could have gone to jail. And how Russell turned it all around and along with Todd created Clickfunnels. So listen here to find out how Russell went from nearly bankrupt to amazing success with Clickfunnels within just a few years. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone this is Russell again. Welcome to the next episode of Marketing Secrets. This is part two of the One Funnel Away presentation. I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s episode. If you did like it I hope you have shared it and told people to go listen to it. Today is going to be the exciting conclusion of Russell’s bankruptcy and failure stories. I hope you enjoy it, it should be a lot of fun. Listen to it online at marketingsecrets.com, you can watch it, there’s a video there, you can share and see the actual presentation there as well. I hope this helps you, hope it gives you faith and hope in what you’re doing, what you’re creating and where you are trying to go with your business and people’s lives you are going to serve. With that said, enjoy my failures, I hope you guys have a good time with it, see you guys soon. Bye. Now the pros and the cons of this. The pros, this is really, really awesome. As a beginning entrepreneur I was like, we nailed, lets scale this thing. I probably shouldn’t have done some of this stuff, but we got excited. If this worked here, we should hire more people. We started this and we went from this little thing with 5 or 6 of us to 2 years later we had about a 100 people operation, where this is the model we were doing. Cd’s calling them on the phone, selling coaching, having continuity and it grew really big. During that time there were some really positive things that came from it, some negative things, some ups and downs, and I’ll share a lot of those things. One cool thing is that while this was happening and it was going really well, my name got out there, so I got a chance to go speak a lot, which is cool. I’d seen a lot of other people speak from stage, and this is where I’ve told you guys this story, anyone who’s gone from Perfect Webinar, I spent about 2 1/2 , 3 years on the road going to seminars, standing in front of a bunch of people like this, talking and trying to sell something and nothing happening, it’s a really horrible feeling. Has anyone done that before? My first presentation was on a stage like this, probably had 300 people in the room. I did the presentation and tried to do what speakers do and close, hope everyone runs to the back. Nobody budged and then the guy forgot to turn the music on and it was crickets and I was just awkwardly walking off the stage, and then running. I was so embarrassed, when you have those events that are multi-speaker events and all the speakers are selling and everyone is bragging about their numbers, I knew that I didn’t want them to ask me my numbers, because not one person signed up, so I hid in my hotel room. I remember ordering coconut shrimp and Haagen Dazs Ice cream for every meal for the next two days, while I hid in the room eating it and watching movies because I didn’t want to go back downstairs. It was really bad and awesome at the same time, because coconut shrimp and Haagen Dazs is awesome. But I did that and learned how not to sell and then I started learning from some amazing speakers and people, learning the process and how it works. All the stuff we talk about in the Perfect webinar, all the stuff we talked about day one, about creating belief and breaking belief patterns. All those things I learned on the road in front of people on stage. It was scary, but it was such a good time for me to learn it and understand that part of the process. As we started to grow, I wanna make sure I cover all the cool things, we had a bunch of different offers we came out with. One of the ones that was more successful for us was a front end offer like this, called Micro Continuity. How many of you guys remember Micro Continuity? This is awesome. So this is the one, it’s probably 8 years ago now. We put it on an MP3 player from Hong Kong, it had 6 hours of this training and that was the funnel we put through. We kept creating front end funnels to get people into this program and it worked awesome. We grew the company from nothing to 3 or 4 million dollars a year and it was doing awesome. At the time I started looking at other people in my industry. Hopefully one of you guys will get a good idea from this one. I had this funnel, we talk about the value ladder, I had this really cool value ladder here and I was ascending people up and I realized that I was the only person in the market that had a real value ladder. Everyone else was kind of doing stuff down here and that was it. I was the only person selling really expensive stuff. So I started calling my friends. I called Mike Filsame, “Hey man, all of our customers, we call them and sell them these $5000 things, and lots of people buy that. You should do that.” And he’s like, “I don’t want a call center.” And I was like, “Do you want us to call your customers and sell it?” and he’s like, “Yeah.” So we hooked up with Mike and became his backend. I called up Frank Kern and same thing, we became his backend for a little while. We started calling up a whole bunch of people and then we started becoming the backend. So all these people had frontend funnels and we became the backend for a lot of them. That’s how we took the company from 3 or 4 million dollars to 10 million dollars and it became really big. I was going to say big and fun, but I don’t think it became that at all. It became really big. We had 100 employees, we had 60 people on phones in a big, huge call center. We had 20 people doing coaching for all the things we were selling and then had about 20 people driving leads and customers and stuff like that. It got really big, and I don’t know if you guys notice this, but I’m really good and selling and stuff, but really bad at the management of stuff. I was not good at managing all these people and it kind of started getting too big. This is about the time, I was telling you guys, if you read the Dotcom Secrets book, I started waking up and was like, “I do not like what I created.” I got so excited that I started building this thing and then one day I woke up and was like, huh, do I really want to do this? I think half the conversations I have with inner circle members when they first come in is this, “Do you really want to build this business? Yes, that would work, but sometimes it’s horrible when you get there. Think it through. What do I actually want to do? Who do I want to become? Who do I want to be when I grow up?” Luckily during that time, it was probably one of the most painful times in my life, but looking back now, it was probably one of the most important times in my life. We had this huge operation and everything was working and then one day in January, literally 11:30 in the morning, one of my sales guys came in and said, “I’m trying to run a credit card and it’s not working. I’m not sure what’s wrong.” I’m like, “That’s weird. Try one of the other merchant accounts, maybe there’s something there.” then someone else came in, “Hey all the continuity orders are failing, I’m not sure why.” Three or four people came in and I’m like, “What’s happening?” I logged into the backend system and not….at 11:37 or something like that, every sale stopped. No sales. I was like, what is happening. I was freaking out so I called our merchant account company and there’s a busy signal. I call again, busy. Call again, busy. I can’t get a hold of anybody and all the sudden I start hearing from friends. “Dude, everything got shut down. Are you still able to process?” I’m like, “No, what’s happening.” “I don’t know, I don’t know.” And soon I found out that it wasn’t me, I eventually found out that it was 3 or 400 people at the same time. Anyone who was doing any kind of continuity stuff, the merchant accounts basically came in and said, “Look, we think what you guys are doing might be illegal and we’re shutting all of you guys down and you’re guilty until proven innocent.” I was like, “What? I’ve got 100 people that I’m feeding. 100 people and their families, it turns into 100’s of people. You can’t just stop processing.” Finally after an hour I get through to somebody and the lady on the phone says, “Yep, we shut you down. Good luck ever getting another merchant account ever again. I gotta go.” Boom and hung up on me. I was like, “What?” at the time I thought I had diversity. We had 9 merchant accounts, all through one company, different merchant accounts but all through one bank. I found out that is the equivalent of having one. Which is why I’m a big believer now in having multiple merchant accounts in multiple different banks, which is a lesson hopefully for everybody. If you don’t know Alex Rowe yet, I don’t know if Alex is in here. But meet Alex, he’s the man who can get you hooked up with lots of merchant accounts. He’s done that for us, he’s amazing. But it was bad, finally we got a hold of these guys and I’m trying to figure some things out. Basically they said, “You’ve got to prove that you are a good guy.” So we went through, it took us two weeks for them to go through all our stuff, look at our documentation, look at all of our stuff. Two weeks, and they came back and said, “You’re right. You’re doing everything clean, everything is above board. We’ll turn your merchant accounts back on and you’re good to go.” I’m like, “Sweet.” And during that time, when there’s that kind of instability, sales guys are freaking out, they can’t handle any kind of instability, they’re leaving like crazy. People are walking out the door. I was freaking out, we had all this payroll and no money coming in, so I’m paying it out of my own pocket, everything to just keep things afloat. Going through this process it’s getting scarier and scarier and finally the merchant accounts are back on, you’re a good guy. So you guys, we gotta do a launch really quick to make a bunch of money. So we put together this huge launch and push it out to our customer list and in a weekend we made $250,000, and I was like, “Thank you.” That’s so great. Monday we should get the money, we can pay payroll, I’m telling everyone, “Tell your wives and kids we’ll have money soon. It’s coming I promise. It’s in the bank, going to be here any day now.” And the money didn’t come. Monday it didn’t come, Tuesday it didn’t come, Wednesday it didn’t come. By Thursday I’m calling, “Where’s our money? We need this money.” The guy looks at the account, “It’s definitely in there.” I’m like, “When’s it coming to our bank?” He’s like, “Well it’s not going to come to your bank.” And I’m like, “Why not?” and he’s like, “You’re on 100% reserve so we keep 100% of your money.” I was like, “What? That’s not good for me or for anybody. How am I supposed to be in business? I got people to pay.” He’s like, “That’s just how it works. The good news is that it looks like you are a legitimate company. No one’s charging back or refunding this money that we’ve collected so far, so what we’ll do is drop you down to 10% reserve.” I’m like, “Ah, thank heavens.” He’s like, “But the $250,000 you collected in the last week, we’re keeping that for the next 6 months as collateral to make sure nothing bad happens.” I’m like, are you kidding me. We gotta create another funnel. So we make another thing, push it out there, make some money. We start paying payroll for whatever we can but everything’s collapsing around me. That started in January and that started happening at the same time we’re trying to find other merchant accounts at other banks. And all these other banks are like, “Oh yeah, we’re cool. Come in, we’ll give you a merchant account. This is how it works, you gotta make $100,000 a month.” I’m like, “Cool, we’re going to do that in like 2 days. I’m going to need 4 merchant accounts. We can make money. We just need you to give it to us after we make it.” They’re like, “We’re cool, we’re good at that, don’t worry.” So okay, cool. We get a merchant account, get it all setup, drove a bunch of traffic, and twice we made over the $100,000 a month we were allowed within a day, day and a half, and they froze our accounts and said, “You made too much money too fast. We’re freezing your accounts. We’ll give this money back to you in 6 months.” I’m like, “6 months? Please stop doing this to me.” We ended up with 4 or 500,000 dollars locked up in merchant accounts and it kept getting worse and worse throughout this whole year. It was the hardest year of my life. It kept going down. Every single day I’m laying off friends and family members and people who I loved and cared about and I’m coming in, “I don’t know what to do man. I’m so sorry. I gotta let you go.” It was such a dark time in my life with thing after thing after thing. I wish I could say from there it got better. That was an entire year, the next January started and one of our friends was doing an event in Vegas, I’m like, “I’m going to go out there and see what everyone…. I gotta re figure out my whole business. Everything’s completely collapsed.” At the time, by the way, we were in this big, huge office we had rented, that we were leasing. I think it was 20,000 square feet because we all the call center and stuff. I went to the landlord and I’m like, “Hey man, I can’t afford to pay you anymore.” And he’s like, “Okay, well we’ve got a 3 year contract. If you don’t pay me, I’m going to sue you and you’re probably going to end up in jail.” Are you kidding me dude, I’m trying. He would not work with me at all, I had all this fear behind that. So I’m in Vegas a year later, trying to ask friends what’s happening, what they’re doing in their business, and they’re trying to tell me their stories. I’m like, this is, I don’t even know what to do. That night I got an email on my phone from my dad, I opened the email and it was a shot in a gut. Probably the worst second in my life, that I read that. The email said, “Hey Russell. I’m so sorry.” My dad was doing my books at the time, but we had a bookkeeper in the office, and the bookkeeper was trying her best, but she didn’t know. She knew we were struggling and she didn’t want to stress me out, so she didn’t tell me how much we were struggling. It turns out what she had been doing is she had been paying the bills she could, and the one’s she couldn’t she was trying to not pay them and delay them. And to hide it from my dad and everyone else she was saying in Quickbooks that she paid bills, but then not actually paying them. So it looked like it was clear. But he had gone through and audited it and found out that she hadn’t paid payroll taxes in almost a year. In the email my dad said, “Just so you know payroll taxes aren’t something where they fine you. If you don’t pay payroll taxes you’re going to go to jail. It’s over $150,000 you owe in payroll taxes.” I was like, that’s the end. It had been an entire year. Every penny I had ever earned was gone. All my people in my teams, it had all fallen apart. I’m sitting there like, “I don’t know what to do.” The next morning I got on a flight from Vegas back to Boise. I get there and walk in and the call center is empty, all the guys are gone. There’s two people that are left and they said, “Just so you know, the call center across the road just recruited us and we all left. We’re out, see ya.” They walked out. I was like, “I owe the government $150,000, I have no one to help me sell. I don’t know what to do.” I want to quit, so bad I want to quit. But if I quit I go to jail. I also sold coaching to a lot of people I cared about, if I quit all these people that bought coaching from me, I can’t help them. That’s not right. That’s not the right thing to do. I don’t know what to do. So I went to a bankruptcy lawyer, “How does this work man? I don’t know what to do. I gotta figure this out.” I kind of explained the whole process, told him about my lease. “The landlord says he’ll come after me, the government’s going to come after me. I don’t know what to do.” And he’s like, “The best thing to do is, I should come with you to your landlord and explain that you’re going into bankruptcy and maybe they’ll be nice to you.” So I’m like, “Alright.” He’s like, “Do you have any money?” I’m like, “No.” and he’s like, “What do you got in your pocket?” I was like, “100 bucks.” And he’s like, “Cool, give me $100 and I’ll come and I’ll tell the landlord you’re going bankrupt.” I’m like, “Alright man, here you go.” So he comes with me, which is actually the best $100 I ever spent. He comes with me to the landlord and he’s like, “Russell’s screwed man, he’s going through bankruptcy. He just hired me. He can’t pay you. You can come after him, but he’s done.” It was this old man, he’s like, “He’s done. The Government’s coming after him. You’re screwed, don’t even try.” And basically convinced our landlord that it was a useless cause. So the landlord was like, “Alright, be out by Friday.” And we had a big space with office cubicles and phones and craziness. So I’m like, “Okay, we’ll be out by Friday.” But 90% of my team was gone at this point. From 100 employees down to about 7 or 8. The few people that stuck by me, people like Brent Coppieters, love that guy to death. Brent and John and some of the people back then, Brent had taken a pay cut, a 50% pay cut and never…..amazing people. So the few of us that were left, we were packing up stuff, we put up ads on Craiglist, we got tons of computer and crap, things we’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for, we were selling for hundreds of dollars just to get out of it. We made I don’t know, maybe 5 or 6 grand on all of our crap, getting rid of it. We had a huge dumpster, just throwing away everything we had ever created because we had to downsize. Trying to figure out how to get into a smaller building and how do we keep the people we have to have to be able to fulfill on coaching. We have to cut everything else that we have. So we were downsizing everything, going out and the night we were moving, that Friday we were supposed to be out at midnight or whatever it was, I was sitting in the office, the desks were gone, everything was gone, all I had left was my laptop. I was sitting there, I had my socks on, I had some levi’s and I had no money. I was like, “We have to make some money or else we can’t even move into…I don’t know how to do anything.” So I sent out an email to my list I had at the time, got a bunch of people to register for a webinar. I was sitting there in a chair with my laptop on my lap, doing a webinar, praying that something would happen. And that webinar saved us. That webinar made $150,000 in sales over the next 3 or 4 days, which gave me the money I needed to pay everyone to not leave, get a new office, get us moved in and get us stability so we could actually breath for a few minutes and figure out the next step, what do we want to be when we grow up. So we downsized from 20,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet. And we had this really cool moment where we’re like, “What do we want to do when we grow up? What do we want to be?” And as painful as that process was, it was one of the coolest things ever because we didn’t have to keep going on this path. We could pick anything. That’s when I started thinking about, who’s our dream customer? Who do we really want to serve? What fires us up? What gets us excited? And we started thinking through that and during this process, we started creating again and having fun. What should we do? I had a friend at the time who he had this website that was making him 2 or 3 thousand dollars a month and he got in some trouble, and I had a couple things making a little money at the time and he’s like, “I need to get rid of this site. Can you pay me some money?” So I paid him $20,000, he gave me this little website. This little machine that you zap and it gets rid of cold sores, and on autopilot it was making 2 or 4 thousand dollars a month and I was like, “Oh this is so cool.” So we had this little thing and I was like, “That little business just kind of runs. What if we had another one.” So we started creating other ones. We had one in the couponing market, we set it up and had a guru in there, it started running and making money. Then we’re like, “What’s another one?” we did one with weight loss, and another. And in a year’s time we launched 12 different companies, each making different amounts of money. During that time is when we launched Neurocel, our supplement company, all these things were happening and it was starting to get exciting again. We were creating we were doing, doing the business instead of teaching the business, which was so much fun for us to do, to learn and see why this stuff works in this market, but not this market. One of the things that would drive me crazy about teachers in my industry is that they come in and act like the marketing techniques that work in one space work everywhere. And I learned during that two or three period of time that that’s not true. Everything’s different. There’s intricacies in couponing versus business versus weight loss versus diet versus supplements. There’s differences and I came to respect that because we had a chance to do it in so many different businesses and different things. We spent the next two or three years creating stuff and during that process, one of the really cool things is I go to Flipa.com all the time and try to find cool websites we could buy and turn to businesses. And there’s a website called championsound.com that was for sale. And it was this cool little email, text message auto responder for bands. I was like, “I’m going to buy that and we’re going to take it and niche it for every market. We’ll make email auto responders and text message auto responders for dentists, or chiropractors.” I was so excited. It was 20 grand, we didn’t have that much money but I was like this is the future of our company. We have to do it. So we ended up buying this website from these guys off Flipa. We get the website and we’re trying to transfer it to our servers after we paid them the 20 thousand dollars. And as they’re trying to transfer it, they’re like, “You can’t have the Linux server, you need the Ruby server.” I’m like, “What does that mean?” They’re like, “It means that this is not coded in PHP, it’s coded in Ruby on Rails. You have to have a different kind of server.”I’m like, “What does that mean?” “It means you have to go over here and pay $800 a month for a new server.” Are you kidding me, I don’t have $800 a month for a server. But we bought this thing, so we did and they installed it. Then it didn’t really work. I didn’t know what to do. None of my tech guys had ever used Ruby on Rails so I went to Odesk to hire some guys and they couldn’t fix it. I tried 5 or 6 guys and finally I was like, I wasted 20 grand. I was so upset and frustrated because I didn’t have that money. On the way out of the office one day I was like, “I wonder if anyone on my list knows Ruby on Rails?” shot in the dark, I have no idea. So I send the email out to my little list at the time. Subject line was like, “Ruby on Rails, looking for a partner. If you know Ruby on Rails, I’m looking for a partner.” I said basically the story I just told you guys, “bought this thing, can’t make it work, if you know Ruby on Rails, become my partner, we’ll make a bunch of money with this thing together.” Sent the email out. About an hour later I get an email from this guy in Georgia named Todd Dickerson, and Todd’s like, “Hey man, I know Ruby.” I’m like, “You do?” I looked at his picture and I was like, “You don’t look like a nerd. I don’t think you do.” And then I went to Facebook and I Facebook friended him, it was actually six years ago last week. I Facebook Friended him and he’s got a beautiful wife, he’s got a daughter. I’m like I don’t think he’s a coder. I don’t know if I believe that. He’s like, “Yeah man, shoot me the login, I’ll fix it.” I was like, “Whatever I have had 8 guys try to fix it for the last 4 or 5 months and nobody can do it. Whatever, here’s the login.” So he logs in and an hour later he’s like, “Okay, done. It’s fixed.” I was like, “What?” and he’s like, “Yeah, I got it fixed. I just did blah blah blah. And it worked.” I’m like, “Dude, how did you do that?” and he’s like, “I just love Ruby on Rails. I’m amazing.” He didn’t say that, he’s super humble. But I was like, this guy’s amazing. I’m like, “I have all these other things. Want to help me with these other things?” So Todd came and we started working on this other project. We had an idea for an auto webinar, Todd built out the software behind the scenes, which was Clickfunnels verson 0.0, pre-everything. He built this auto webinar software because Mike Filsame had been talking about auto webinars. Rick Shephard had put in a webinar report. A couple of guys had started talking about auto webinars but nobody had done one. No one was really doing them. So Todd custom built this whole platform so we could do them, we launched an auto webinar through that and in that auto webinar we made a million dollars in 90 days. The first thing I did from that million dollars is took the money and paid off the IRS and I was like, I’m free. I’m not going to jail. The IRS is paid off, the fines are paid off. That auto webinar literally saved me, literally gave me freedom. Up to that point every night when I went to bed at night I was like they could come knock on my door. I have not paid payroll tax in that long. And that webinar freed us. We kept doing thing after thing, and what’s funny with Todd and Dylan used to design half of these things, just the contract, he’d design these pages and Todd would take them and code them up and make these funnels. He did funnel after funnel after funnel. We probably had 15 different companies, within those company 2 or 3 funnels. We probably had 40 funnels we built over, thing after thing after thing. And the last funnel we actually built the old school way was the Neurocel funnel. That’s one of the ones that blew up big and made tons of sales, we were having a bunch of fun with it and about that time is when Todd was like, “We should really create something so I don’t have to keep creating websites for you every single day.” And that was where the idea came for Clickfunnels. So we started that project in front of a whiteboard, like we talked about yesterday. We mapped this whole thing, and Todd went to work to build Clickfunnels and we partnered with Dylan to build the editor and the UI. And then fast forward 7 or 8 months later, we came and we were like this thing is going to change the world. I was so excited. I was like, “We’re going to do a free trial.” And I think the very first month our goal was to get 10,000 members the first month. I’m like, this is going to be the greatest thing in the world. So we put it out there we created the first funnel, had all the stuff in there, there was a free trial, we had a bunch of people lined up to promote it, we launched it, there were crickets. People came and then left. I was like, “Dude, do you not understand what I’m giving you? I made that page you’re looking at, it’s really good.” Nobody got it, why don’t they get it? There’s something wrong with my messaging. So we changed the funnel again, launched it again, a few of you guys signed up and that was it. They hit it and then they left. We tried again and again. We rebuilt that funnel not once or twice or three times or four times or five times. It was six times it took us before the Clickfunnels funnel worked. The sixth time was because one of my friends, Mike Filsame invited me out to his event and he’s like, “Hey Russell, I want you to come and sell Clickfunnels, I think it’s awesome.” I was like, “Dude, Mike, nobody’s buying Clickfunnels. We gotta figure out our next deal or figure out something because it’s not working.” He’s like, “No, my people need it, you need to come speak on it. You gotta sell it for $1000.” I’m like, “It’s a free trial and nobody even wants it.” So Mike’s event was happening that weekend, I was literally sitting in my office watching the event streaming and as I was sitting there I started writing my webinar and I had my slides open, I was following the Perfect Webinar script that I had been working on for ten years. I started filling in the blanks, started making this webinar, true to the Perfect Webinar Script. I literally was watching it, adding the things in while watching Mike’s event happen. That day I finished the slides, next morning I jumped in a plane and flew there. Got to California, put the slides up on the thing, okay here we go. I started it and the title slide was “My weirdness funnel is currently make $17,947 per day”, talking about the Neurocel funnel and how you can knock it off in less than ten minutes. Showed the first slide, started going through and when we got to the end, got to the stack and the close, we did it and 30% of the room jumped up and ran to the back, jumping over the tables, fighting to get back there. I was like, we did it. That was the message, that was the key. Now I know how to sell Clickfunnels. We took that message, went back and as a lot of you guys know, especially inner circle members, we started doing webinars every single day, sometimes two a day. One time I did three in a day, which was really hard. Over and over again, I did that webinar live over 70 times over the next year and a half and we went from being a startup with no members to after the end of last year we had over 10,000 members, after this year we have over 30,000 members and it’s continued to grow and grow and grow. And it was that one funnel that changed everything for me. So this process, for all of us you guys, is an up and a down. It’s always happening and all of you guys are somewhere in this wave right now. Some of you guys are at the top riding it, some of you guys are at the bottom going to crash. Some of you guys are somewhere in between. Always going up and down, but if nothing else at this event, I want you guys to all understand that no matter where you are, there’s hope. It might not be this funnel. I can’t tell you how many funnels flopped. I guarantee I have failed at more funnels than anyone else in this room because we tried over and over and over again. Because of that we found out what worked. The only way to do that is to do it over and over and over again. It’s a lot easier now, I promise you it’s a lot easier than what we used to do. Poor Todd and Dylan had to custom code every single thing, every single time. Now you can test things really fast. The first time I met Trey, first call he said, “Russell, I’m going to launch a funnel a week, every single week.” And I watched as he launched a funnel, and another funnel and another funnel, he had some marginal success, a little success, more success, more success. I saw him launch a funnel last year, one funnel and within 90 days became the biggest selling funnel in the history of the world. I was talking to some of the guys at affiliate summit. They said there’s never been a funnel that’s made more money in a shorter period of time than one of Trey’s funnels. I’m not privy to share all his numbers and stats, but it was insane. And it came from doing a funnel a week until he hits the one that just explodes. You don’t know what that’s going to be. It’s important, that’s why this tool is so important. Because you can do that, you can test and try over and over and over again.

The secret to get people through the failure gap. On today's episode Russell talks about disagreeing with a designer on what a customer needs from Clickfunnels and how they were basically saying the complete opposite of each other. Here are some of the interesting things you'll hear in the this episode: Why listening to what customers want is a good idea, but how it can only take you so far. Why giving you're customer little wins on their way to their goal, will help them stick around. And some of the wins are that Russell is giving his customers to help keep them as members of Clickfunnels. So listen here to find out how to confuse activity with achievement to keep customers from leaving. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Alright everybody, welcome to Marketing Secrets. I’m here today in the Clickfunnels kitchen, the first time I’ve ever filmed in here. I’m excited. You guys want to see a quick view of what the kitchen looks like? Oh, there’s Dave. We’ve got a whole bunch of cool stuff. We actually built this kitchen because for a lot of the products we work with, for some reason we always need kitchen scenes, so we always rented different kitchens. And then we’re like, if we build a kitchen make sure we have a good scene so we can actually film stuff. So we do, but since we’ve had it we’ve never used it for filming. For today, I want to share with you guys something kind of interesting. And I want to make sure when I say this that it doesn’t come off bad. Because it has a good purpose, but it’s important for you guys to understand. Some of the background behind this, to set it up so it all makes sense to you guys. We had a designer that worked for us for a while to come on and help with user interface, UIUX, those type of things in Clickfunnels, a really smart guy. What he liked to do is call and interview customers. At first I was really excited. So he’d go and call 40 or 50 customers and interview them, finding out what they want, what they didn’t want. All those kind of things, which I thought was cool. We’ve never done that before. Some of you guys might have actually talked to him, which is cool. Based on that he was trying to build UI and structure based on customer’s feedback. A couple of things I found with it. One is it was kind of almost a frustration, because I came to him saying, “This is what I want to have done.” And he treated me kind of like if I was a customer, “Hey, cool. These are good ideas.” I’m like, “No, you need to do this because I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I’m not a survey.” We always kind of went back and forth and in his mind it’s like, we need to find out what the customers want, which I agree with. But also this comes back to Henry Ford’s quote about if I were to ask my customers what they wanted; they would have said they wanted a faster horse. You have to also understand that customers don’t always know the vision where we’re going. That’s why we’re creating stuff, we’re visionaries. We know where we’re trying to go. So it’s kind of interesting, so he no longer works with the company, still an awesome guy, but that was kind of this frustration I had. I remember for a long time we’ve wanted to update our on-boarding in Clickfunnels, and we wanted to do a whole bunch of cool things we haven’t been able to do. This week is actually fun for me because we’re focusing on that. Another side story, I was listening to Growth Hacker TV, there was an interview with a guy who bought the Warrior Forum. He also owned Freelancer.com and a bunch of other companies. He was talking about how they grew to a billion dollar evaluation. And one interesting thing he said is that they buy these companies and then they look at the traffic coming through and spend a lot of time optimizing the processes inside the processes to make more money from all the traffic coming, which is kind of the phase we’re in right now. We have anywhere from 800 – 1000 new people a day that sign up for Clickfunnels, just organically. They’re coming from who knows where. And thank you for coming, I don’t even know where you came from but I’m grateful to have you here. And they’re coming in and we lose a bunch of them the first month, there’s a big drop off. After that it stays really steady, but there’s a big drop immediately. So we’re trying to figure out that process. How do we capture people and keep them in? There’s a lot of cool stuff we’ve done that decreased our churn rate, which is the number metric we look at. It increased our retention. But right now we’re in a big overhaul, how do we simplify the sign up process? How do we make everything easier? It’s fun, you guys will see some new stuff coming to Clickfunnels here in the next 60 days. A lot of new stuff will be coming live, which just simplifies the process and makes Clickfunnels easier to use. So we’re excited for that. But I was listening to this guy, and he talked about that’s what he was doing. They just worked on the optimization of the sign up flow and that’s how the companies blew up. They didn’t really focus on the traffic and these other things. And we’re always focused on the traffic. But it’s like, how do we make sure the funnel’s right so we’re not losing people out of the holes in the bucket? So with that said, there’s a bunch of on-boarding stuff that I wanted to do and I know Todd wanted to do, so we kept trying to get this guy to do that. We want prize, we want to do free t-shirts, we want badges, we want to gamify the process. And he kept coming back saying, “How does gamifying the process help the people get the end result? We need to get people to the end result and this is just keeping people busy in the middle.” And it’s funny, Todd mentioned that this morning to me and I Voxed him back, there’s this quote from Dan Kennedy that I heard back in the day that actually ties this in, but I couldn’t remember exactly what it was. So I ended the Vox and said, “I’m going to go find the quote and come back to you.” So I ended up finding the quote and I posted it there in Voxer and the quote said, “You’ve got to confuse activity with accomplishment.” Now I’m going to be careful when I say this because some of you guys are going to look at that and it might be frustrating or confusing or whatever. So I posted that and in the thing it said, Dan Kennedy, “You have to get your customers to confuse activity with achievement.” So Todd read that first before my Vox, and he thought I was saying, “Oh the designer was right. That’s just going to get people confused. Focusing on activity as opposed to achievement.” But if you listen to my Voxer, it was actually the exact opposite. So what’s kind of funny, me and this UI designer both said the identical thing but for the exact opposite side of the argument. He was saying you don’t want to give people activities that keep them from the achievement. And I was saying, you want to give them activities so that they feel achievement, so someday they get to achievement. You want to confuse activity with achievement. Does that make sense? So Kennedy said that, basically, as a retention strategy. People come in and are going to leave. He said, no you need to give them things to do, so they have activity that’s happening. Because the activity is what keeps them engaged. If we look at our Clickfunnels stats right now and numbers and things like that, the interesting parts are people that stick are people that have a custom domain, they log in at least 2 ½ times per week. There’s all these stats. People that stick are people that are going in and doing stuff consistently. So we know that’s the metric. People logging in and using it are the key. So how do get them to log in and use it? Well just telling them to build a funnel, you’re going to have achievement, you’re going to achieve a funnel. People will try for a little bit and then they’re going to leave because they didn’t achieve anything. Because the goal is this huge thing. The goal is you’ve got to eat the whole entire cow. That’s the goal. If you’re giving your customer the goal to eat the cow, the problem is they’re going to come in and if they don’t eat the cow really quick, they’re going to leave. So what you have to do is confuse achievement with activity. Give them activities to do that make them feel like they’re achieving something along the way. So they come in and you set the table, you give them their appetizers, they eat that and they achieve something. For us we’re gamifying the process. You come in, watch the video, build your hero funnel, we send you a t-shirt. So you had activity, so you felt you achievement, even though you didn’t achieve the thing you want yet. You felt achievement, which then drives you forward to do the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing. All of us want our customers to have the achievement at the end, the problem is that they sign up and then there’s the achievement, there’s this huge gap in the middle that they’re going to fall into, disappear and die. So because of that we have to confuse activity with achievement, because that activity will make them feel micro-achievement which will get them to the big achievement at the end. That’s the goal, that’s the message for you guys. As you’re creating your training programs, software, ideas, products, services, whatever it is you’re creating and doing, I want you thinking about that. You have to go and create activities that get people to feel small wins, small achievements so that it will drive them through this chasm, this gap, to get to the big goal, the big achievement that you want them to have. If you don’t have those, if you’re not confusing activity with achievement initially, they’re never going to get to the achievement. So that’s kind of the message for today. I thought it was kind of interesting. I thought it was funny that we both we had the same argument for why we wanted to do this on-boarding process. But he was saying it was a negative thing, but I was saying it was a positive thing. I think it’s very positive, and I think we all can and should be visiting it. So I hope that helps you guys, and with that said, have an amazing day. Go back through your programs, products, services, member’s area and figure out how you can weave those things in, because as you give people little wins along the way, it will give them the momentum they need to get the big wins. That’s all I got for you guys today. Thanks so much for everything, see you guys soon. Bye.

The secret to get people through the failure gap. On today's episode Russell talks about disagreeing with a designer on what a customer needs from Clickfunnels and how they were basically saying the complete opposite of each other. Here are some of the interesting things you'll hear in the this episode: Why listening to what customers want is a good idea, but how it can only take you so far. Why giving you're customer little wins on their way to their goal, will help them stick around. And some of the wins are that Russell is giving his customers to help keep them as members of Clickfunnels. So listen here to find out how to confuse activity with achievement to keep customers from leaving. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Alright everybody, welcome to Marketing Secrets. I’m here today in the Clickfunnels kitchen, the first time I’ve ever filmed in here. I’m excited. You guys want to see a quick view of what the kitchen looks like? Oh, there’s Dave. We’ve got a whole bunch of cool stuff. We actually built this kitchen because for a lot of the products we work with, for some reason we always need kitchen scenes, so we always rented different kitchens. And then we’re like, if we build a kitchen make sure we have a good scene so we can actually film stuff. So we do, but since we’ve had it we’ve never used it for filming. For today, I want to share with you guys something kind of interesting. And I want to make sure when I say this that it doesn’t come off bad. Because it has a good purpose, but it’s important for you guys to understand. Some of the background behind this, to set it up so it all makes sense to you guys. We had a designer that worked for us for a while to come on and help with user interface, UIUX, those type of things in Clickfunnels, a really smart guy. What he liked to do is call and interview customers. At first I was really excited. So he’d go and call 40 or 50 customers and interview them, finding out what they want, what they didn’t want. All those kind of things, which I thought was cool. We’ve never done that before. Some of you guys might have actually talked to him, which is cool. Based on that he was trying to build UI and structure based on customer’s feedback. A couple of things I found with it. One is it was kind of almost a frustration, because I came to him saying, “This is what I want to have done.” And he treated me kind of like if I was a customer, “Hey, cool. These are good ideas.” I’m like, “No, you need to do this because I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I’m not a survey.” We always kind of went back and forth and in his mind it’s like, we need to find out what the customers want, which I agree with. But also this comes back to Henry Ford’s quote about if I were to ask my customers what they wanted; they would have said they wanted a faster horse. You have to also understand that customers don’t always know the vision where we’re going. That’s why we’re creating stuff, we’re visionaries. We know where we’re trying to go. So it’s kind of interesting, so he no longer works with the company, still an awesome guy, but that was kind of this frustration I had. I remember for a long time we’ve wanted to update our on-boarding in Clickfunnels, and we wanted to do a whole bunch of cool things we haven’t been able to do. This week is actually fun for me because we’re focusing on that. Another side story, I was listening to Growth Hacker TV, there was an interview with a guy who bought the Warrior Forum. He also owned Freelancer.com and a bunch of other companies. He was talking about how they grew to a billion dollar evaluation. And one interesting thing he said is that they buy these companies and then they look at the traffic coming through and spend a lot of time optimizing the processes inside the processes to make more money from all the traffic coming, which is kind of the phase we’re in right now. We have anywhere from 800 – 1000 new people a day that sign up for Clickfunnels, just organically. They’re coming from who knows where. And thank you for coming, I don’t even know where you came from but I’m grateful to have you here. And they’re coming in and we lose a bunch of them the first month, there’s a big drop off. After that it stays really steady, but there’s a big drop immediately. So we’re trying to figure out that process. How do we capture people and keep them in? There’s a lot of cool stuff we’ve done that decreased our churn rate, which is the number metric we look at. It increased our retention. But right now we’re in a big overhaul, how do we simplify the sign up process? How do we make everything easier? It’s fun, you guys will see some new stuff coming to Clickfunnels here in the next 60 days. A lot of new stuff will be coming live, which just simplifies the process and makes Clickfunnels easier to use. So we’re excited for that. But I was listening to this guy, and he talked about that’s what he was doing. They just worked on the optimization of the sign up flow and that’s how the companies blew up. They didn’t really focus on the traffic and these other things. And we’re always focused on the traffic. But it’s like, how do we make sure the funnel’s right so we’re not losing people out of the holes in the bucket? So with that said, there’s a bunch of on-boarding stuff that I wanted to do and I know Todd wanted to do, so we kept trying to get this guy to do that. We want prize, we want to do free t-shirts, we want badges, we want to gamify the process. And he kept coming back saying, “How does gamifying the process help the people get the end result? We need to get people to the end result and this is just keeping people busy in the middle.” And it’s funny, Todd mentioned that this morning to me and I Voxed him back, there’s this quote from Dan Kennedy that I heard back in the day that actually ties this in, but I couldn’t remember exactly what it was. So I ended the Vox and said, “I’m going to go find the quote and come back to you.” So I ended up finding the quote and I posted it there in Voxer and the quote said, “You’ve got to confuse activity with accomplishment.” Now I’m going to be careful when I say this because some of you guys are going to look at that and it might be frustrating or confusing or whatever. So I posted that and in the thing it said, Dan Kennedy, “You have to get your customers to confuse activity with achievement.” So Todd read that first before my Vox, and he thought I was saying, “Oh the designer was right. That’s just going to get people confused. Focusing on activity as opposed to achievement.” But if you listen to my Voxer, it was actually the exact opposite. So what’s kind of funny, me and this UI designer both said the identical thing but for the exact opposite side of the argument. He was saying you don’t want to give people activities that keep them from the achievement. And I was saying, you want to give them activities so that they feel achievement, so someday they get to achievement. You want to confuse activity with achievement. Does that make sense? So Kennedy said that, basically, as a retention strategy. People come in and are going to leave. He said, no you need to give them things to do, so they have activity that’s happening. Because the activity is what keeps them engaged. If we look at our Clickfunnels stats right now and numbers and things like that, the interesting parts are people that stick are people that have a custom domain, they log in at least 2 ½ times per week. There’s all these stats. People that stick are people that are going in and doing stuff consistently. So we know that’s the metric. People logging in and using it are the key. So how do get them to log in and use it? Well just telling them to build a funnel, you’re going to have achievement, you’re going to achieve a funnel. People will try for a little bit and then they’re going to leave because they didn’t achieve anything. Because the goal is this huge thing. The goal is you’ve got to eat the whole entire cow. That’s the goal. If you’re giving your customer the goal to eat the cow, the problem is they’re going to come in and if they don’t eat the cow really quick, they’re going to leave. So what you have to do is confuse achievement with activity. Give them activities to do that make them feel like they’re achieving something along the way. So they come in and you set the table, you give them their appetizers, they eat that and they achieve something. For us we’re gamifying the process. You come in, watch the video, build your hero funnel, we send you a t-shirt. So you had activity, so you felt you achievement, even though you didn’t achieve the thing you want yet. You felt achievement, which then drives you forward to do the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing. All of us want our customers to have the achievement at the end, the problem is that they sign up and then there’s the achievement, there’s this huge gap in the middle that they’re going to fall into, disappear and die. So because of that we have to confuse activity with achievement, because that activity will make them feel micro-achievement which will get them to the big achievement at the end. That’s the goal, that’s the message for you guys. As you’re creating your training programs, software, ideas, products, services, whatever it is you’re creating and doing, I want you thinking about that. You have to go and create activities that get people to feel small wins, small achievements so that it will drive them through this chasm, this gap, to get to the big goal, the big achievement that you want them to have. If you don’t have those, if you’re not confusing activity with achievement initially, they’re never going to get to the achievement. So that’s kind of the message for today. I thought it was kind of interesting. I thought it was funny that we both we had the same argument for why we wanted to do this on-boarding process. But he was saying it was a negative thing, but I was saying it was a positive thing. I think it’s very positive, and I think we all can and should be visiting it. So I hope that helps you guys, and with that said, have an amazing day. Go back through your programs, products, services, member’s area and figure out how you can weave those things in, because as you give people little wins along the way, it will give them the momentum they need to get the big wins. That’s all I got for you guys today. Thanks so much for everything, see you guys soon. Bye.

 Facebook – The Billionaire LifeStyle   iTunes  – The Billionaire LifeStyle     Stitcher: – The Billionaire LifeStyle Lose your Ego Gain the world. Todd Lemense is the author of Lose your Ego Gain the world. My interest his best-selling Amazon.com book interested me for two reasons. First due to the obvious presence of human ego causing problems in the world. Secondly, the book was written by a man. I hope you don't find me sexist for the second reason, but many of the help and self-help books today have a very feminine energy, therefore the prospect of a man is appealing, as it is an outlier.  [caption id="attachment_888" align="alignleft" width="300"] Author Speaker Todd Lemense[/caption] The focus of the Book, Lose your ego, Gain the world. Todd's book has been written not for the individual but for companies and the relationship with their employees. The corporate climate in America and maybe other industrialized nations has been strained over in the preceding decades stemming from down economies and jobs being farmed to countries with cheaper labor. Todd's experience as a former owner-operator of a successful construction company provided many opportunities but also required some humility. The success of his construction company during his early adulthood caused his ego to get out of check, as Todd Stated during our interview. Now with his new book, Todd shares wisdom from the lessons he has learned. hindsight is 20/20, so he put the rear vision to good use for others to move forward. What NOW! The construction business is Todd's past. The benefits of having the construction business were not just financial but brought a wealth of wisdom and insight available for the world to gain. Todd helps companies build their employer to employee relationships for a more fruitful workplace, product and people in the various workplaces he counsels. The book is written for the perspective the workplace and companies. I asked Todd if companies seek him out. His reply, the companies who require the most training and inspiration have no clue they need it. So Todd has to be the shameless self-promoter. Shameless Self Promotion,  Several takeaways from the interview with Todd. Anything you want takes work! Be a Shameless Self-Promoter of yourself. You learn the most when you lose or make mistakes. Develop your social skills for diversity. Discover your own story and live it. Proud to have his book endorsed by Florence Henderson ( Brady Bunch Mom for those who don't know who she is) Successful people do more and fail more often. Invest in yourself. Our conversation covered many topics such as the National Speakers Association (NSA), Toastmasters International and the process of being better. Todd has lectured in several countries and appeared on several televisions and news programs MSNBC, ABC News, Forbes, Fox News, The Huffington Post and NPR to name a few. I was very grateful to have the opportunity of conversing with Todd. Please visit or contact Todd: Available on Amazon [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="157"] Lose your ego, Gain the world[/caption] Todd Lemense - 206.432.7448 http://www.toddlemenseauthor.com/ https://www.facebook.com/todd.lemense.3 https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddlemense/ Facebook – The Billionaire LifeStyle   iTunes  – The Billionaire LifeStyle     Stitcher: – The Billionaire LifeStyle Now go live The Billionaire LifeStyle

Now that we’re a legitimate company, this is the actual process. On today’s episode Russell talks about how stuff used to get done so fast and he would make fun of big corporations that moved slow. He also discusses a few things that are going live today. Here are a few fun things you’ll hear on this episode: Why Russell used to be able to get things live faster, and why that’s not possible anymore. How other software companies work, and why Clickfunnels has to work the same way. And find out what new things are going live today. So listen below to hear how things have changed to make fixes slower, but why it’s better in the long run and see what’s new for Clickfunnels today. ---Transcript--- Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Hey guys and gals and everybody else who’s hanging out with us today. It’s a rainy day in Boise Idaho, but guess what today, we have stuff going live, so I am excited and pumped up. I want to tell you a story about my life pre-Clickfunnels. Pre-Clickfunnels we would, even not just pre-Clickfunnels, even like, the first year of Clickfunnels, we would have an idea, we’d do it, and then it would go live and it was amazing. Stuff would just get done so so fast. I used to totally make fun of corporate companies, for example ClickBank, we’re really good friends with those guys, but we needed some tech stuff done and we’re like, “hey you need to do this.” And they’re like “Okay we’ll do that in Q 3 of 2092.” It would be like on their desk schedules so far out that nothing could get done. It was just so much it was ridiculous. We could never get anything done. I was like, I’m so grateful we can move fast and be nimble and things like that. At least we used to be able to. We used to could. Now we struggle. So what happened is, as Clickfunnels started growing both from a members standpoint and also from a code standpoint, what would happen is, we would have an idea and be like, “hey let’s change this really quick.” So Todd or Dylan would go and edit something and push it live and we’re like “Sweet that feature is done, everyone is going to be happy and we’re so excited.” But we didn’t know that by doing this thing over here, it would go and affect something out way over here. It’s like the butterfly effect. The butterfly flaps it’s wings in the San Francisco and it goes and causes a Tsunami across the ocean in Hong Kong or whatever. That’s what would happen. We’d fix something and something else huge over here would break. We’d fix that thing over here, then three other things over here….It was just this weird thing. And I’m not a code guy so I don’t know exactly how it all works, I just know that it was frustrating. Our users got frustrated. I’m sure you guys remember this in the early days of Clickfunnels. You guys are like, “ Hey we need this thing fixed.” So we’d fix it and then something else would break. You’re like, “This has always worked. Why has it stopped working?” and we’re like, “Because we fixed this, it caused this.” It was really frustrating. Fast forward now a couple of months we found an amazing developer and now partner who came in and basically said, “Hey, this is the way that legitimate software companies are run.” And we’re like, “Cool we didn’t even know any of that.”  So build out so that basically around every… you know we spent the last 6, 8 months or so, and we’re actually hiring a team now to help increase this. But going back through all the code they’ve ever written and writing tests around this code, which is super supposedly really monotonous and boring. And it’s slowed our progression down dramatically because it’s no longer we can just keep doing new things and fixing bugs and moving stuff forward. Every line of code we write they write tests around it. And the way that works is there’s all these tests around all this code, this is my limited understanding, I’m not someone who really gets it, but supposedly that way when we do a new bug fix or add a feature or whatever, we add the feature and click a button and it goes and tests what does doing this line of code, how does that effect everything else in the system. It’ll go and it’ll run against all these tests. And we’re like, “Sweet, this line of code didn’t break anything else, push it live.” Or “Hey, if we do push this live these two things will break.” So we gotta go figure out how to do this so it doesn’t break those things. So because of that, we’ve had to slow down our process to be able to get all these tests in place. and now when we roll any new code, same thing it’s slower because we got to put all these tests in place and we got to test it. But what it does long term, is it gives you guys, the users, the ability where every time we fix or add something cool it doesn’t break ten other things! So this has been in place for the last 8 months or so. So on my side it’s frustrating because it’s like, I want things to get done so much faster, and it’s just a slower process now. But it’s how legitimate software companies do it so that when we decide to add new fonts, the entire editor doesn’t break or whatever. So it’s a good thing, it just slows things down. So that’s been my frustration and I know that some users who are like, “We want things faster.”  We’re like, “We’re trying as hard as we can, but you don’t understand what we’ve built, it’s huge, it’s insane.” So the reason why I’m excited about today, is today we’ve got a bunch of amazing things going live, which I’m excited for. Things I’ve been begging for and waiting for. Especially things…..(sneezing), Whoa! Excuse me, there is a sneeze, proving once again that we don’t edit these podcasts. You’re getting it as live and as real as possible. Whoa that was a big one. I can barely see right now. Anyway, so today I’m excited because a bunch of stuff I’ve been waiting for regarding the affiliate program and tracking ideas and things like that are going live. As well as hopefully the new sales letter, as well as the 21 Day Ignite Your Funnel program, and a bunch of other cool things we have in place. To hopefully get more people excited for Clickfunnels, get people to stick longer, reactive old members and then make our affiliate programs way more amazing. You can do tracking ID’s you can search by tracking ID’s. you can see commissions. Not only for Clickfunnels but we’re basically moving all of the Russell Brunson Dotcom Secrets brand products into Clickfunnels over the next 30 days. So if you promote my book, we’ll we push people to Clickfunnels you’ll be paid a commission. You promote The Perfect Webinar Script you get commission on Clickfunnels. If you promote anything, it’ll all be going back and be Clickfunnels. Anyway a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes to make this happen and now it’s pretty much happening, which is exciting. So that’s what’s happening today. I’m excited. So hopefully you’ll see some new stuff from me and Clickfunnels. From everything happening for the next couple of days, actually couple of weeks. We have a bunch of big editor updates going live before the event and just even more amazingness happening. So that’s what’s happening, I’m at the office. I’m going to go in there and play. I’m excited to show you guys the new stuff that’s coming out. In future podcasts, I’ll explain some of what we’re doing with the 21 Day Ignite Your Funnel program to increase your retention and stick the desire of members as well as a bunch of other stuff. Anyway, fun things happening here at the labs, and I’ll be sharing with you guys here on the Marketing In Your Car podcast.