How to Survive a Severe Economic Downturn | Russell Brunson

I hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by our sponsors at whoop you can save 15% off your purchase when you go to whoop calm and use the code I tee at checkout now enjoy the episode everybody welcome to impact theory today's guest is Russell Brunson he's the CEO and co-founder of clickfunnels which is now the fastest-growing non-vented back software company in the world with a following of roughly two million entrepreneurs along with his partner he took clickfunnels from zero to roughly 100 million dollars in revenue in just three short years and on top of all of that business success he's also an accomplished author and an extraordinary state champion all-american wrestler who finished his college career as one of the top 10 wrestlers in the country Russell thank you for having me I'm so excited it's really cool to have you here obviously we've gotten to know each other from our trips to Puerto Rico and and I have to say I'm very impressed with what you've accomplished and given what everybody is going through right now I wanted to start with some of the lessons that you actually learned in wrestling you've talked a lot about hard work and what you learned through the process one what makes you good at wrestling I think that's where I want to start so it's funny because I don't I know that I wasn't ever the best athlete but I am super grateful for a dad who was really good at like like watching what I would what I would do and make mistakes that made him sitting down with me and like figuring out how to fix things but never like the guy who was undefeated I was never the guy who who won every match I was the guy who would lose a match and come back and we sit down and we figure out what was were the mistakes what adjustments when you make and we practice and practice we practice the next time we go out we'd win and so that's kind of what made me a great wrestler that is awesome dude I love that story I love the way that you know when if somebody wins just from the jump they're sort of naturally gifted one of the things about Bo Jackson that I always found sort of heartbreaking is when you ask him like what made you so good he's always like mom I'm just naturally talented and I was found that crushing because it's like I'm not naturally talented so for me everything has sort of been the scramble of trying to learn but I went through this that that period you talk about of this sort of devastation where you expected to kill it and then you lose and you're like oh [ __ ] I went through that in film school where dude I thought I was just going to dominate I thought that I was a natural-born filmmaker and look I had my fears that maybe I wasn't but like I was sort of cruising on this you know I'm good at this I had natural talent and then I really got faced with the fact that I wasn't naturally talented and in fact at the time I didn't have really any talent for this thing that I loved at all and so my life one I went to a really dark period cuz this is all before mindset and stuff like that that that word had not entered my vocabulary at all at the time and so I had no sense of oh I can build myself up I can get better so it's rad that your dad really helped you you know focus on improvement and getting better talk to me a little bit about cuz talk to me about discipline is where I was headed because I think that what we're gonna see in through Koba 19 and the crisis and what I think is going to happen to the economy which is is gonna be less than ideal it's gonna be somewhere between less than ideal in catastrophic and so I think what the people who are going to win are the people that are gonna be able to start over and one thing that you've talked a lot about you certainly talked about in your newest book traffic secrets is understanding that look some things could just go away overnight and how you respond to that is going to be really really essential so what's the role of discipline in your life how can people get more of it in their own lives yeah I think now I've been thinking a lot about excite you know obviously I hope work the huge entrepreneur community of entrepreneurs and think a lot of them are freaking out right now for you know all the all the normal reasons and what's been interesting is watching a lot of them who just have like frozen up right now it's like I don't know what to do and as I work them and talk through with with a whole bunch of them it's like understanding that so many of them are so scared of like failure so scared of whatever the next thing is but they never they're not willing to like to take the step and so there's frozen witch like the worst the worst possible thing and I think one of the most valuable things I got out of wrestling that that ties back to this was like when you're wrestling you step on the mat and when you lose it's like I lost this match but it'll never sounds like I'm a loser that I lost this match let me go figure out what I need to do to win next time whereas it seems like the business so many people have it tied to their identity into their to everything that when they lose that they say I'm a loser it's because of that like they're scared to loose didn't want to feel like the loser they're scared of you know maybe they have a dream or a vision they're scared that they try to fails that the dream will disappear I think I think the biggest thing that's helped me throughout this I think that I think most people need to have is just is going in with the expectation of like it's okay if I lose this K if I fail like it doesn't mean I'm a failing means like this the situation failed but then when you detach yourself from that then it's so much easier to be like okay what was wrong what I need to tweak and go out and try it again and try it again and try it again because so many people were just so frozen right now and I think that's the that's the biggest thing I thing with mindset is just helping people to detach the the consequences of the failure being their own it and as opposed to failure being being like a match like the thing that just that failed that you can go back and fix and and figure out the next step with that makes sense it does one thing so I wrestled exactly one time in my life it was for I want to say what's what's a normal round three minutes in high schools like to two to two minutes okay so probably two minutes then and it was I'm not joking it was the single most physically exhausting thing I've ever done in my life it felt like I was fighting to survive I ended up so this was back in middle school I this is before MMA I end up putting the guy in a headlock and basically just trying to choke him because I was so [ __ ] tired I was like dude I have to do something like I'm dying over here and so in that I realized yo people that get good at this this [ __ ] is inhuman so what what I want to know is how do you like pain so there's an awesome quote I wish I remember who said it but fatigue makes cowards of us all and I think that people people are gonna face fatigue in this like the having to get up and try and try and try again if they've lost their job the thought of rebuilding a mad somebody in their 50s losing their job now and they're like yo I've got to rebuild like I'm [ __ ] tired the thought of having to start from scratch is is bordering on unbearable what what did you discover about yourself about the human animal in in building up that kind of conditioning where it's all on the line dude everybody is watching you you're there in the middle of a ring you were literally in a skin-tight outfit dude there isn't nowhere to hide and you've got to pull it out like uh one thing that to meet the ability to suffer is one of the most powerful things that an entrepreneur can build translate that for me from from the physical to the business world yeah man the story popped my head me start saying that was I remember it was in high school I remember which which year was but I remember um you know every sin every single week way to cut weight so we come in I weigh like 160 on Monday morning and I got be 130 by Thursday right so it's like every morning you come every week you come in right oh so you put the plastics on in the sweats on and all this stuff you start running and cutting wait I remember is that like a really really hard practice hadn't eaten or drinking much that whole week and just beat up and remember our coach pulled this all out into this like dark hallway kind of behind the gym and he had this conversation with us about attitude and I remember I remember the whole conversation ice mmm saying that like like no matter what happens you're gonna make weight no matter what happens it's gonna suck no matter what happens like you have to go through this process so that you can you can really affect is your attitudes you can have a good attitude or a bad attitude I remember that night laying there in bed just thinking like I like you I have been like that in the worst attitude if I'm hungry I'm thirsty I'm tired I'm worn out and I remember the next day I came in I put my sweats on my plastics on put everything on you know and before everyone showed up I was out there jump roping and I just thought I think I'm gonna have a smile on my face like the biggest smile I possibly can have and so I started to smile and also my teammates start coming in and they're all like just you know like how I felt but I was like I smiling I'm jumping rope and I brunson why are you so happy why are you smiling and I remember all I said I the thing popped my head I was like I don't know but I've never seen someone lose with a smile on their face so I'm gonna smile from now on and I just you know chills and so that became a thing and my other team a started doing that when we come out there and we were like as the more pain it was like we would put the smile on like just keep doing because I've never seen someone loses a smile on their face and so that's something that you know cuz I'm in business now this is my 17th year and there has been like the ups and the downs there's been you would build a company with the hundreds of employees and then like one day coming in and laying off 80 people overnight and then you know the same thing you know the the cycles that happen multiple times I remember that feeling coming in where it's just like you've got to lay off 30 people today and then you gotta concealer 50 that like they got to keep working and there's a vision and there's a mission and like remember thinking that a couple times from just like God like I I don't know if I even believe it anymore I'm so tired and be down and everything seems so heavy and then it was like but if I don't come in with a smile like that that's it right and and I you can't lose with a smile on your face so we come in and we regroup and we talk about again then we get back to working and keep going that's that's a like an obsession of mine so it's what I call physiological hooks so there are there are things in your physiology that allow you to manipulate your physiology so you're one of the most famous is the smiling thing so I tend not to get angry but when I get angry I stay angry and so I had actually early in my marriage that ended up being like a lot of wasted time I would get angry with something Lisa did that that she would even agree that I was justified in being angry but at the end of the day I just thought it doesn't serve me I just wasted all this time being pissed off like you said you control your attitude so I wrote this letter to myself and I said hey me it's me you have no ulterior motive but you know what the studies say if you force yourself right now to laugh out loud it will change your neuro chemistry and this is something that I think people in in this time are really gonna have to be thoughtful about is alright I've got to take control of my neural chemistry I've got to take control of the way that I feel because if I feel terribly like your friends coming in to practice and they're just moping about they're exhausted then that practice is going to be worse than it could have been if they had forced themselves into a positive mental state and then the performance is going to be worse because the practice was worse and like that to me that's not about wrestling that's about life that's about being the human animal why do you think like you were able to trans like this is something I see a lot you look at Arnold Schwarzenegger and all the success he had in bodybuilding he was able to translate into other areas of his life the success that you had early in wrestling you've obviously been able to translate what what's sort of the secret for you to to the level of success you've had you know it's it's interesting how similar my wrestling mindset and businesses it's not same a lot of people in fact I've had a lot of people last years I've kind of rub rubbed the wrong way because of it but I look at it as a sports like when I started my business I was looking around the first thing I looked at was like who do I have to be I remember when we came in there was a software company I was like all right that's our competitor and it was like I wasn't quiet about either made known to myself to my team to my entire community we're gonna beat them and then we went after him aggressively and aggressively and and just like I would if I was gonna be wrestling or competing against and I like a reverse injured everything he did I figure out what they were doing why they're doing listen to every podcast interview the founders on it understands myosin what he was doing and we we just like relentlessly pursued them until we caught them and then we passed them and if we passed them that I was like it's funny cuz I was like I need something new to go after and then there was another company that was bigger than then I was like eh that's the next company we started going after him the same thing I pursued them and like looked at and reverse engineer what they're doing and how they're doing and why they were teaming and trying to figure it out and I remember as we start getting closer and closer to them the CEO of that company called me one day and he was like he said why are you so upset at like why do you hate me and I hate our company so much I kind of caught me off guard like what do you mean he's like he's like you were out there always like trying to like you know do all he seems to beat us and I was like oh I don't hate you guys at all I got don't but respect like I know more about you than I think you do like I understand what you doing why do you love I don't believe you do I got I don't hate you at all but but you're my competitor if you're who I chose I have to beat you like that's that's how it works and he was like I'm ever he came back and he was like I he's like I wasn't really an athlete so I'm not used to that like he's like it's interesting I thought you mad you're mad at us he hated us sounds like no like it remind me of the scene in my favorite movies The Dark Knight where the very end Joker's falling off the cliff and Batman asking is like he's why are you trying to kill me and the Joker starts laughing is like I'm not trying to kill he was like he's like without you like there's no me like I can't do what I do without you and I feel like that that that's been such my mindset and in fact you know that we passed that company it's like hey who's the next people we found who they are studying them and understanding him in a deeper level I'm like and so for me it's I don't think I could be in business versus the businesses to to grow or without a without a goal or purpose or something to strive towards and to move move move forward I was married I remember reading them he was a pulling Bonaparte it said something about what man will do for a first scrap of ribbon I feel like maybe that's like in wrestling it's what it was for me like I did like I to go and I went to it I was a state champ then I was an all-american like I kept going for the whatever the next rapid ribbon I had to get it and I feel like in business it's the same thing for me it's just like it's a game there's competitors and we're trying to figure out the landscape where we fit in and how we how we pursue and how we go after him dude I think that is genius so as somebody I didn't like being competitive when I was younger because I was afraid I was gonna lose and of course I didn't want to say that so I was just saying or I may not even have understood it if I'm completely honest there was just it triggered some something in me which I would now recognize as insecurity which I can now articulate as I had this fear of having proof empirical data that I wasn't good enough which of course is my biggest fear when I was a kid and now getting into business and realizing yo [ __ ] like you've got to be going hard and this is like look I like you I would be shocked if somebody was was interpreting my competitiveness my desire to win as hate but it it is what I called the dark side it is a dark energy right there's the light side which is the beautiful things I want to create and the gratitude I have for what I have in my life and all of that and it's amazing but then there's also the competitive side of wanting to win of saying look I'm going after that person and the people who so I'm not a sports guy but like because of my mentality I constantly find myself drawn to athletes so I'll use that that language but please don't mistake me for an athlete but you know when you talk to the guys that are really really great and you look at the amount of tape they watch like how they study their competitors they study themselves they stare naked Liat their inadequacies it it dude there's something there and the fact that people don't put in that time and energy to learn what is going on is crazy the the amount of insights you'll get are extraordinary and that to me is is the power so as we go into this which probably is going to be a recession might be a depression how do you think about overcoming the obstacles that are gonna come your way how do you avoid falling into the trap of thinking that you know everything already like how do you stay nimble um so quite special when you know at this point our company's so big bit you have a lot of friends who are solar entrepreneurs and they're able to be nimble because like it's just them and they can you know now we've got 400 plus employees and it's a it's harder to B to be nimble I think it's been interesting because I've been trying to trying to figure that out and you know one of our mutual friends Dean Graciosa I talked to him about this a lot as everything start hit anything start shifting and I remember watching him because I again I'm I'm kind of a marketing nerd so I remember when I was in high school I used to sit back and I would watch input like I remember I watched Dean on infomercials back when I was a kid and I would take notes I'm like whoa like the way he said things I remember watching as it came up to like the last big recession kind of watching all Dean's infomercials in at a time there was probably I don't know 30 different get rich and real estate infomercials on TV like anyone who ever flipped a house and they're live for like I'm an infomercial guru and teaching people how to do it right and and then the recession hit and in the housing market crashed and went from like 50 infomercial gurus to like three down to one and then there was just Dean and Dean continued running infomercials the entire thing and then and then and then beyond and I remember I didn't know him at the time I remember watching and just being interested how like he was the only ones still on and so I asked him later how in the world is you did you survive when everyone else got got crushed and he said some super profound he's like they didn't shift I didn't shift my product I mean a product was still the same he's like I shifted our market in my product he said everyone else was speaking very aspirational like how do we how do we create this thing you know how do we how do we get rich how to make money high cleans like that he's like I shipped it for me an aspirational to looking at my business more like a life preserver like that like how do you how do you protect yourself how this product can can protect you and and so as we started coming in this thing I realized the same thing like in fact I talked a little about in traffic seekers I talked about the fact that when any customers coming to you they're they're either moving towards you they're they're moving towards you in one or two directions though they're moving towards pleasure or they're moving away from pain right it's like they're coming to me because they weren't started business when I get rich do they want to make money or they want to whatever or they're coming to me because I hate my boss and you got this pain like it's just a miserable I need to need to get out of pain if you look at the economy over the last you know seven or eight years most because for most people spend pretty good most people are buying any product or service whether it be Fitness health you know business anything for that matter it's like they're buying it because if I move towards pleasure but you know a couple weeks ago everything shifted where people are on pain now I think the companies are gonna survive and be nimble or ones I understand a ship their messaging where it's like how can how can the product or service I sell how does it get somebody out of pain and that's the marketing the messaging people need and they want right now and it's funny cuz like as I was launching the the traffic I literally we launched the book the same day that President Trump told everyone to go home and if you look like my marketing campaign ahead of time it was like you know how we built this hundred hundred million dollar your company and how traffic how much traffic we get all these things and then I was like that is the wrong message right now and so we literally like my team on my guy everything every ad we've written every pre-cell every video like just delete them all we're redoing everything and like this is the messaging the messaging is and which are talking about I got a buddy down the street who owns a local waffle place the best waffles in the world if your kind of Boise I'll take you there and and he opened the same day that the whole recession happened and it was crazy because you look a like he's got his business he opens the doors and it's the same day that the literally traffic you know usually restaurants you have you have cars right physical traffic driving by and people come and they they come in the evenings like the traffic stop and what happens all companies they just they die like traffic is the lifeblood of a company and so the whole messaging shifted to like look like if you want to survive during these times then thrive on the other side of this like you have to master trafficking customers in Guinea people in like this is literally your company's life preserver during these uncertain times so all the messaging shifted the ads shifted the like the mag everything shifted and and you know the book launch has done insanely well and everything's kind of come from that but but it all came from like shifting the message from towards pleasure to understanding that we're in a time of moving people away from pain I think that the companies understand that and understand that shift and messaging are the ones they're gonna that are gonna really win during this time you know one thing that I think people need to be very aware of is where they're at in their life are you moving towards something or away from something so I've we said that people fall into two categories and I think you're right it changes actually depending on where you're at in your life what's going on in the world but by nature I would say that people are motivated by one of two things either they're moving towards a goal or they're moving away from a problem I don't want to be broke I don't want to be homeless I and then there's other people that are like I want to achieve this goal I want to win this I want to be the best and knowing where you come from will help you navigate the world in a much more sane inducing way because if you're being sort of true to what aligns with you like for me moving away from something is never very interesting it takes me into like a very uncertain a very uneasy place whereas even if I'm in the middle of massive uncertainty and I have fears for me to shift my energy I need to pick a goal something that I'm excited about so that when I'm pursuing it even though the outcome is gonna be that I outrun this thing right I've been broke I've had crazy debt I've been in a place emotionally where I'm laying on my carpet and I just [ __ ] I don't have any idea how I'm going to create momentum in my life so I know what that's like but the things that got me up and moving were to believe that I could change to believe that I could grow to set a goal - to set a goal that I was excited about and then wake up every day and pursue that and that was the thing that it I think a big thing people have to do is like what where are you at as a baseline reference point if you're in looking at seeing all the problems and all the things that are wrong you're not in problem-solving mode if you can shift over into problem-solving mode so I've heard you talk about that waffle restaurant before and you gave the guys some brilliant ideas about what to do like hey are you sending people text messages and it's like yeah to be top of mind to remind people you know to incept them but you have to be in that problem-solving mode yeah is that something that you think about intentionally is that something you try to train your team to do is that that to me seems like going back to what you were saying at the very beginning with your dad of like all right you can look at you at the fact that you lost or you can solve this problem yeah I think is interesting too because I look at most business owners and like I and I know for me I did it I did it backwards the first a lot of times we come up with our products or our services like we have an idea like all I want to create this thing we create it and then a fleece is done like now we have to figure out how to sell it and you figure out like a sells message you create that and it's like now I got to go find people to sell to and then we're trying to find people and it's like it's like backwards if you look at the way the most successful businesses grow look at the way the we grew clickfunnels was when I had this realization of like I don't want to go and like create something and find somebody sell - I wanna go find the people that that that I'm passionate about serving and then just listen really really carefully right and I was so people like the the the more money makers will be like the money you make could be direct relation how simple you make somebody else's process right so for me it's like I hope you will build funnels to sell the products and services and so you know when I when I taught people the strategies here's how you do it I made good money we made software that made it simpler I made more money when we had like done 40 things making simpler to make more money and it's always like how do I simplify this process for whoever the customers how do I make it easier and and so like the mindset that we're always having in our here click funnels and me and my team it's like we're sitting there and listening to our audience like what is they're looking for what do they want what are they struggling and it's like hey how do we make this process simpler and every good product every good idea everything that's that's been a winner came from that like listening and then like figuring how to solve the problem all the ones were it was like Russell has this great idea to in the morning let me go let's go create it we're all hoping he gets together let me like try to give it to people those those are ones that don't typically do very well no matter how much like you know how much push for stand money we put into it to try to get adoption it's always harder than the opposite way we're just listening what people want to figure out how is the best way to solve that for them and anyway that's like the the simplest thing is just listening that how do we simplify this form how do we simplify and you'll get paid more the better you become at simplifying processes and and and things for people I love that idea of simplification that's something so do you not know a kagan yes yeah d all right super interesting guy and I think one of the things that makes him so effective he said the superpower is making money and what but what he means by that is his super power isn't simplifying its in breaking the process down into immediate action and those two things simplifying it and then taking immediate action to are the exact things people need to be obsessively focused with right now because right now like first and foremost if you're in a dire situation take care of your basic needs men like don't worry about launching the next Facebook like make sure that you've got a roof over your head that you can put food on the table right and that's where a lot of people are gonna crash and burn is yo Maslow's hierarchy of needs has stood the test of time for a reason like there are just certain things safety security like get those taken care of and you may have to do a job that you didn't want to do or you may have to call people up and be banging the phones if you're trying if you've got a product that really has value in [ __ ] like you don't know how to get it out like you've got to think like a direct marketer and this is like where I think my own story confuses people because like I'm so intense and you know I've got like that raw raw spirit but the reality is I'm not to burn the ships at the shore guy like I'm a yo keep your day job man like when we launched quest we had a software company so during the day I was running a software company and nights and weekends I was making protein bars because I wanted to see if this would work like you're saying make sure there's an audience before you go like we didn't get a warehouse and start buying equipment until we were selling protein bars I don't even think we bought the equipment until we were already profitable so we were making the bars by hand which was pure insanity making the bars by hand ourselves nights and weekends to make sure that there was something real there so what advice do you have for somebody who's like yo I just lost my job and I feel totally out of control what can they do as a solopreneur to get like that first audience to get that first sale yeah and I want to first off agree with you people who message me all the time like I get I read your book I'm gonna quit my job and do this thing I'm like no like no don't quit your job and do the thing like keep your job because you know as well as I do that like when you have that like the in certainty and like it makes the pressure so much higher and it makes it so much harder to like get creative and get figure things out when when those needs are met and well it's so much easier to go figure things out but someone like it's funny because I've had conversation with some close friends who've lost their jobs who are freaking out right now and and I and I try to explain what Mike you have to understand that like the money did just disappear like we're like this great wealth transfer things are shifting around like I you know Perry Belcher but he's one of my friends who own survival life.com and he look at survival life in the last 30 days has made more money than the last like ten years combined right like money is shifting over there you look at you know like it's not that it's disappeared like people slum either it's not going to the movie theaters and the restaurants they're spending in other places and like it's understanding that and so if your whole world just got pulled away from you it's not that the money just just evaporate it just got transferred somewhere so the first thing he was looking like you where like where is this getting tranche like what are the companies and the businesses that are making more money right now like they can't handle it that they're looking for more help because because man also because of this new circumstances everything is just just growing like crazy so that's the first thing second thing I look at is like what is the skill set that is the most valuable inside of a company and I've got a friend who's a dentist I tease them all time because you know most dentists like there's a dentist they like that's the most important person in the business right I'm the person who who does the thing on people's teeth and had this little conversation I'm like you're not the most important person your business yeah I'm not me they can't clean teeth I was like I was like the most important person in your business is the person who can get customers to come in the front door because that person can't bring customers in the front door you have no teeth to clean therefore your skill set is useless like the most valuable person any company is the person who we call Maury makers who can make it rain you can bring people in and it's like that's what it comes down to like this book traffic secrets is like the person you can drive traffic isn't bring the customers in it becomes the most valuable person in any company I have friends who are so good at driving traffic that they literally will find a company that's struggling or maybe on the downside and they'll come and say hey look I can bring you the thing that you're missing it's the holy grail for your business in all businesses its customers and I can bring you as many as you want as often as you want the only thing is like I don't work for money I work for equity so if you want me to do this I want 30% your company and people are like just handing them the company here you go because you can bring it you can make it rain you can bring me customers you can bring leads and so I start shifting like if I gotta figure out a skill set in this market it's like the most valuable thing I can learn is how do I make it rain for a company and then I can go plug in a company as I like find a coach like whatever that is but now you're so valuable they're like when when you know things start going down like I figured like the dental office that the two last people in standing is the dentist the dude who brings in customers they go fire the receptionist to fire the the the girl who does your teeth like all that stuff gone except for the person rings customer in and person doing the actual fulfillment of the service and so like it makes you so valuable I think that I'd be aligning with that figuring out the the markets the industries the businesses that are like booming right now and how can I go plug into those and become the Rainmaker because then you can write your own paycheck from this point forward and that's that's really the stability I think to all of us want is to be able to have that and if you have a skill so like that you become invaluable alright so let's talk about making it rain so one of the cool things about traffic secrets is you took an evergreen approach anybody else writes this book and I promise you it's gonna be something that goes out of vogue I mean honestly with the with what just happened it would have gone out of vogue before it even hit shelves so the fact that you stopped you said one of the key things you did here was you spent the beginning just stopping and thinking about how do I make sure that this is something that lasts no matter what the season no matter what's going on no matter what you said tik-tok didn't even exist when you started writing this by the time he came out obviously ticket is huge but the principles all apply regardless of the platform so what are some evergreen principles to being a Rainmaker so the first step is really identifying who your dream customer is at a deep level like most people are like oh like especially people that that only have one traffic like one traffic storm it may be they drive Facebook ads like they know like oh here's my interest my targeting and that's with their customers but like no you have to its go deeper that like really understand I'm in a deep level like know their likes and their fears and like what they're interested in where they hang out and like the better you understand that person the more powerful step two is the step number one is identifying who they are and step number two is understanding that like the power of the Internet is the fact that it gives us all all this crazy humans with the things that we're passionate about the ability to like group together online in different spots right say we take health and fitness or biohacking for example so this is biohacking everyone is passionate about biohacking like they are hanging out together on certain blogs right there's there's maybe a dozen or so blogs that all the bottom hackers go they read every single day that part of their in the communities and they're on these blogs and then you go to podcasts like what are all the podcasts that the bio hackers listen to and there's a passionate you know super passionate audience and they're listening to all these you know 50 different podcast and then what are all the Facebook groups turns and what are all the email newsletters they subscribe to and so we started looking at traffic instead of like targeting on Facebook we started looking at like where all these pockets of customers where are they at and we start looking at like oh my gosh there's 300,000 one Blagh right here and there's you know 2.3 million listen to this podcast every single and you start finding these pockets of customers and then our job as rain makers as traffic people is to come back and say okay here's all these pockets the customers how do I get access to them like what's the best way to to get and infiltrate these groups and one of the strategies that we talked about in the book is the strategy called the dream 100 and basically what the dream 100 is it's not figuring out like how do I get a hundred customers it's figuring out who are the hundred people that already have access to my dream customers so who's the person who owns that blog has three hundred thousand readers who's the who are the the podcast host that that have that have the the followings and the people that they're they're listening to you right and so one of the exercises I do inside I think it's page 41 in the book I have a little graph in there so it's okay here's Facebook and make a list of all the people in Facebook who have your dream customers already congregated I put all the Facebook groups so whether the fanpage is one of the people to already have like your dream customers hanging out there and then you go to Instagram who are the influencers already have congregated your dream customers we list out all the influencers and then go to podcast and who's all the podcasters and so you make this list and eventually got 100 200 300 people to have all of your dream customers on it and now it's like understanding that I can go and I can I can buy ads to the followings of these people and you should but if I can like if I can get to know and build a relationship with one of these people like a gatekeeper of this community they can click a button and open up the access to the entire community right for example right now I'm lucky enough to have you interview me on your on your podcast and you've got a huge following of people who are gonna hear about the book and hopefully someone come buy the book and it's like it's giving me access to this huge thing and it's it's interesting like we spend millions of dollars a month on ads so much we do in the businesses is building relationships with the people who have access to these huge audiences and then what's nice is I can I can spend more time and energy networking and marketing and building relationships and spending money because about you one of those people that say yes it can sell a hundred or a thousand or more of my products in fact I don't know if you've gotten this far in the book yet but I actually quote you in the book from an interview you did where you were talking about when you guys built Quest initially but first thing you did is you found here's all the influencers and you send them out quest bars with handwritten letters and you're like hey if you hate him let us know if you like him let us know but just want to send you some of our stuff and you do the same thing you watch all these influencers send me of ours handwritten letters and then from that how much people loved it start share with their audiences and boom it it I'm assuming that's kind of the the ground fire that initially launched quest but right yeah 100% and that is one of the most powerful strategies the both of those things so one are you able to identify your audience and then two are you able to put together a relationship like are you able to bring value to that person find some way to connect over time and that's where I say like you people have to take care of their needs first because to play this game right it's not about the short-term dollars and I've heard you tell similar stories to my own story which is in the beginning of your journey it was or I'll speak for myself though I've heard you say similar things out since the language I'm going to use is maybe derogatory I'll speak for myself so I did every get-rich-quick scheme you could imagine so when I was young dude I was about it I was like there was this thing for a while was typing for money and I was like yo they're talking about how much money you can make like you know transcribing things I was like I'm about it let's do it and I just tried I tried selling insurance door-to-door I did pyramid schemes it didn't I really believed in the product I was selling but still not necessarily a good look and I just I wanted it to happen fast and once I broke away from that and I just started thinking about okay I didn't obviously say dream 100 but really identifying like where is my customer base like the the people that would I would really be able to serve with this product where are they right which is something you wrote about the book me shout like you gotta pick a niche once your niche tout then it becomes a lot easier to win in that in that space right you're not competing against everybody they're dog they're easy to find online you can deliver a crushing amount of value so doing that and then playing the long game and building relationships not trying to get anything in the short term look I'm not a fool I get that acting in that way and adding value to somebody else it altima does come back to you some percentage not all of it but like one it feels good in the moment and then to you you'll be able to weather a storm because there gonna be other people there for you and it goes back to the story you told about Arsenio Hall which I think it's really powerful tell people that story it's it one I because I have a follow-up question about it which is building a platform isn't the only way and I'm super cute l the story because the people need to understand the punchline before I can believe yeah for sure so one of the I talked about the book is one of the most powerful ways to infiltrate your dream 100 get to know these people is by having your own platform because like what like what do I have to offer Tony Robbins what I have to offer you know these these people that I've loved to be you know all my dream 100 like a lot of times they have everything I'm not gonna pay them I'm not gonna you know so what I had offered the thing you have to offer is your platform and I think there's a lot of ways to infiltrate your dream 100 to get to know people but we're in the most powerful ways for sure is that like they're like the reason why I met Tony Robbins initially and I did a hold YouTube videos like 10 minutes long showing that a 10 year journey I went on with Tony of helping him serve him and do all these things for him before eventually he promoted something for me 10 you know decade later but it was like don't wait the door even opens because I had a platform as it will help promote him on top of my platform and opened the doors and so many other people have had a chance to meet it all came because I had a platform to to be able to offer him and it opens up opens up doors he can't get otherwise so I'm a huge believer that people should start their own show it could be a YouTube show could be a podcast could be a blog doesn't really matter what but something we can create a platform you can leverage to to get to know people that that own your your customers alright well then let's talk about that so I think we're gonna see the death of an influencer class as advertising revenues dry up so a lot of people that have been making it their livelihood it's going to I think stop being their livelihood but any time where there's massive disruption there is massive opportunity and I think there's going to be a whole new crop of influencer is to actually figure out how to crack this nut so what what are some of the as the king of something was secret in the title what are the secrets to building a platform yeah a couple things like number one is like yes arises our first year you are not gonna be good and I remember I started my first podcast was called the marketing your car podcast I called it that because I had a five minute commute from my house to the office and I was like Lisa I know I'll be consistent films get my phone out in a click record is gonna talk while I Drive and I did a five minute podcast every single day for five or six seven years now I mean it's been it's been a long long time and what's crazy is my first setup I didn't know how to track staff the first three years I hadn't I just didn't know I just set it up I started recording and my brother pug published him and I'd ask him that people were listening he's like I don't know how to check so we didn't even know I'm so grateful no I didn't know because because I just kept publishing I'm like I'm driving anyway might as well do these things and it was about 300 episodes in when we shifted it from the marketing in your car to marketing secrets and that time we switched the platform we set up the analytics and my brother's like oh my gosh we're getting like a hammer like ten thousand people perhaps so we're listening right now I was like oh I got had no idea this is amazing and we start looking back at the stasi look at like how how little it was for so long and then I remember one of my this guy that came to my world he's one of our hyper successful students now he was like when I came in you know I started I came in all episodes 300 I was like I'm the binge listen to everything so I started number one he's like man the first like 40 or 50 episodes were so bad he's like you were the worst ever he's like but about 45 46 you started like getting in the rhythm and then like it started getting good now like I love it and so the first lesson is like you have to publish long enough to find your voice like most people do like two episodes like god no one's coming but it's like no yeah it's like make this a commitment you got to do this for a long time because the first no one's gonna be listening and that's okay because you're gonna be really bad but it's gonna give you the ability to like find your voice that's number one number two is and I have an article here that from one of my friends Nathan Barry he wrote a blog post called endure long enough to get noticed he talked about he said like if you look at most good TV shows like usually you don't find out a good TV show so it's like in season five or season six right or movies they're like you know the third movie then you go back and watch all now because they've survived and he said that you know so because there's so much content being created all the time that us as consumers we wait for the best stuff to rise to the top and so the first one you're publishing all the time is because you're trying to find your voice that's step number one step number two is you're doing it long enough that your dream customers can find you and so it's coming down saying I'm gonna be consistent I'm gonna do this I always tell my people like publish something I can least a hundred episodes by the time you've done 100 episodes and I recommend at least it like in a year window so you're doing multiple times a week they've done in a year you'll found your voice your people have found you and you'll be financially free and so far anybody who's taking on that challenge by the end of the year they have done exactly that they've found their voice that people have found them they've been financially free and so it's just like one of those things that just it's it's scary it's weird and it feels painful at first cuz it's not fun when you're really bad but then you get in your stride and then it just it gets really good yeah I will echo that sentiment so when I first started this was back at Quest I started a show called inside quest which would be very recognizable to fans of impact theory but when we first started it even though I would say that if we all have some element of talent where we get just disproportionate wins mine is for sure verbal ability so the more I have practice the more energy I put into being able to articulate a message to be able to speak extemporaneously I just got disproportionate returns from that so somebody else might do the same thing if I'm getting a one point three X return on my time maybe they're getting a point seven right so for me like that's a that's a pretty big gap when I started I was so frustrated no one was listening I didn't think I was good at it and I went to my producer who I also happen to be married to and I said you know I look I'm I'm running a billion-dollar business over here like this doesn't make sense I'm wasting my [ __ ] time but like what are we doing and she said over my dead body and ironically what the exact amount of time she said was you're gonna do this for a year and she said if at the end of the year it's still not delivering like you don't feel that it's delivering enough value to be worth doing it then we'll stop but she was like I really believe in this I really think that you can add value to people's lives so just take the time to figure it out take the time to let the audience find you and of course now at the time it was just like one thing that we were doing to try it honestly started as a way to add value to my employees and now it's become my entire business model is predicated on creating content so the the platform is you're saying I think that's really really powerful one thing I would just kick myself in the face if I didn't ask you about that you brought up earlier you've gone through cycles before you've been in business for a very long time you've dealt with downturns I want to know emotionally you said you know you're coming in and you're laying off half your people you've got to convince the other half to stay and you've got to be tied to the mission and all of that how have you stayed passionate about what you do how much do you think about the why of what you're doing how do you survive those down times emotionally yeah it's I think anyone who's create something amazing has felt this before um instincts when I got into business like most people I think I did a lot of the type from home and the selling door so like I get it like weed eating cuz like we want the money and you started going after that that's what the initial draw a lot of times it is like I need to make some money and after I'm making money really quickly your eyes how unfulfilling that is and you're like ah that was not that cool and then and then you start seeing the success of the people that you're whatever you're selling to the people and then like that becomes this next level of win we're like oh my gosh like because I did something cool like that person had this big win and that becomes this drug that's like like at least for me I get unquenchable like I just keep I keep wanting I desire like the more it happens the more I want it and the more and so for me like that's this thing and so when when things would struggle I remember I remember I like I use boxers like my my motive of communication with most of the world so it's this little walkie-talkie app and an inbox er you can if the message is really cool we put a little star next to it so my kids had a cute thing I'll put a star next to it when people my friends or clients or customers sent testimonials I put a star next to it so you can go listen to all the stars you want and so like when times were down I'd go back and I'm just going to listen I click on the star section and listen and I just listen to like 30 40 minutes that people tell me how I change the life what happened how it worked and was just like alright and like listening to that got me back the spot of like okay I got to do this and then my favorite my favorite quote of all time is Churchill however long and hard the road and he's talking you know to the to Parliament about this this war they'd have to go on it's gonna be brutal all these things how hard it's gonna be in and then the variance says like we're gonna you know victory a victory at all cost victory however long hard the road and so whenever I listen to Rick reset on myself like this is where we got to go and then it's like all right we're going victory however long are the road whatever it's got to go but ever got to do we're just gonna go and we're gonna go and we're gonna go and that that phrase like however long hard the road like rings to my head all the time every time I'm tired and frustrated I think about the people I hear about success and then and then we go after it and that's kind of the draw for me the poll that's amazing dude that so that's the third time you can give me the chills in this talk today that call from Churchill have actually not heard that before and my all-time paper quote is also Churchill I need to just memorize it because whenever I try to paraphrase it doesn't have the punch but it's longer he's talking about never give in never give up not not for any reason like you keep going except for once you say good sense or something like that like you just go and go and go and it reminds me of exactly what you were just saying and you know one thing that's interesting about Churchill that I think is very apropos of the moment that we're in is he not long after the war they ousted him and he was the right man at that time who rose up and was exactly what that country needed and look if people are willing to reach within themselves like this is a time for people that are willing to step up and shine this is a huge opportunity how do you think about that like it it would be very easy to see this time as you know just a time to suffer and get through like when you were cutting weight or do you think that you know there is a way to reframe this is opportunity I think this is the grace I mean I'm I turned 40 this year this is the greatest opportunity in the four decades I've ever been on serf like I think you are right now people are scared there's fear and the people who everyone's looking to be led like they're like everyone's just freaked out even people who are leaders are like trying to find people to lead them right like everyone's everyone's struggling I think the people that are willing to stand up and raise their hands and say look I'm gonna leave come follow me now is like the the time and I always tell people like might have a big belief that like the business isn't just like a way we make money away we waste our time like I believe the business as a calling from God now he'll be like you've been called to serve a group of people and like now you've been call if you've ever held that tug before like they my friend Alex sharken calls with a call contribution like you feel this this this tug this pull like you've been called and there's a group of people that you have been called to serve that you can change their life but you've got to be willing to lie do the things to like step up and like there's so many fear I think that the tons of people are called but most people don't ever step up to and they they shrink back down but those who are willing to step up to that calling and say alright my job I got a gather group of people and with my gifts my talents I'm gonna serve these people to the best of my ability man on the other side of this they're gonna be ones that have the companies that have the brands that have these things especially right now like yeah we're giving like it's it's such a double-edged sword like there's there's all this fear was also blessed me right now you'll get ad cos like I don't know what you had seen our ad costs have dropped dramatically I went from spending four or five dollars for webinar registrants riding our plane 78 cents we had 17,000 17,000 people register for webinar I have tonight 17,000 like people are so cheap they're looking they're begging they're they're trying to find things I saw an article from Facebook saying that they're gonna lose forty billion dollars over the next couple months because AD knows buying ads and so we're coming in and like man out I'm we can gather people at a cost that's unheard of like I always tell like I should go back when Google is easy back you know 17 years ago I got started like it just happened like like three or four weeks ago I get it opened up the ad cos dropped it's like but I can gather people the cost now I never could before and so I think you know on the other side of this wasn't people who missed this opportunity others who were like look I jumped on and I found a group I've called to serve them I'm serving them and doing everything my ability I'm gathering these people together and and when others you know on the other side of this and people are gonna remember who is who was the person that got me through the hard times who's a person that gave me the hope in a brighter future like those the people they connect with and they're gonna keep following for for forever and so I think now such a unique awesome time and and and we can get attention from so many people such a discount it's just it's a good time for them to start to start stepping up and start publishing and start putting your voice out there yeah no question man how do I aggressively agree with that I I'm not sure how familiar people are but the way that you think dude I think is extraordinary I don't think it's any accident that you've had the kind of success you've had so where where can people find you where can they find traffic secrets the whole secret series what's the best way to connect with you yeah you know they go to traffic seekers calm right now we're in the pre-launch so we have an offering of the book for free you just cover the shipping handling it's hardbound it's like 400 page book so it's 18 months with the writing and you just got a couple of shipping handling you get it and so that's there and then obviously our my main company is called click funnels and so that's that's the place click funnels calm but yeah that's that's kind of it I'm all over the place I'm sure that if you google my name you'll find me everywhere yes you will good will auto-populate this man as you start typing letters so one final question what is the impact that you want to have on the world it's sad I talked earlier about how people are gatherers and I feel like my calling is to gather gatherers and to bring people together and give them tools and resources to be able to serve their audiences better so if you look at everything we do from from clickfunnels to software we have from the books I write to everything it's it's giving gatherers the tools to gather the people and to serve them and I feel like I look at as right now side click phones we have over a hundred thousand active members and I look at you know the number we're always excited this company a hundred thousand people but each person is an entrepreneur and each entrepreneur has the ability to change someone's life and I share with my team all the time like look I'm at about one of our entrepreneurs and so I talked about like kayln Poland for example so she's one of our clickfunnels members one of the hundred thousand and uh you know three years ago she decided Charlotte's weight loss business and they launched on clickfunnels had no had no idea they're doing with books but that launched launch their their first funnel now three years later they have like 1.5 million women on the list over a hundred thousand women have gone through their weight loss courses and how many lives like in families have been transformed and changed because like that one entrepreneur and we got like Chris at crispies Cancer calm a guy who goes through cancer and figure out a way to naturally cure himself and then he publishes on our platform and he's now helped thousands of people who were going through this fear of like of cancer and not that he cures everyone buddy helps people and I helps them understand like all these amazing things like that's one entrepreneur on the platform and then I could list off I mean hundreds and hundreds of names but for me it's like man every every entrepreneurial effect has the ability to affect a hundred or a thousand or a million people and so I anyway that's the impact that we're trying to have is how do we gather these gathers give them the tools and the resources and the knowledge they need to be able to gather the people and serve them at high level and if we can do that will change the world love that dude thank you so much for coming on man this was a lot of fun again I just love the way that you think I love the way that you're crushing it man I love you have optimism for the period that we're in right now I share that so brother I salute you thank you so much for coming on the show everybody if you haven't already gone into this man's world do it is extraordinary and if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care hey everyone I want to tell you all about our sponsor whoop life can be stressful we're all impacted by stress differently though from what we do 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