The Dark Playbook Behind Success (Mind Control & Propaganda)

        [music] [music] and Sigman Freud was the psychologist who discovered our subconscious mind or he called our unconscious mind and he was the one who first was like using these concepts in psychology to help people and to change their lives right no one ever thought to use this stuff for business or for marketing and then his nephew his name's Edward Bernay's Edward's sitting there and he's listening to Frey talk about all this stuff and Freud's using it for like a psychology like here's how you help patients and you know how how to fix their the things that are holding them back in life and he was like I could use these things to create mass movements to get people in mass to move and to change everything. So he took all of Freud's concepts he was teaching and then he came to America and he started using them. And it was funny cuz Freud was actually super mad about it. Like he's like you shouldn't be using these things for marketing and sales, but Bernay's like he saw the vision. And so the first campaign he actually used was World War I. Nobody wanted to be in the war. And normally people when they would sell concept, they would sell like here's the features and the benefits, right? Here's the features of the war. Like it's going to be really good. We're going to win this, you know, like logically they try to sell things. And Bren's like no, people don't choose things logically. They do emotionally. And so he started creating stories to emotionally get people to buy into the war. And within a year or so, he had everybody like America as a whole was like bought into the war. They believed in it. And it was all because he influenced their feelings. Prior to this, especially look at America back, you know, a long time ago when they would buy products. People bought what they needed, right? I need to go get a new shovel. My toilet broke. I'm going to buy that thing. And what he came in saying, "No, if we play off people's desires, we can create wants and then get people to buy what they actually want." Putting these desires in people's hearts. they wanted something and then he could get them to move to buy things or to whatever the thing might be. And so it's super applicable today because if you look at like when I'm selling from stage or in a webinar or during a challenge, I am not going off of what people need. Like they don't need a funnel. They don't need whatever, right? And I create that desire and then that desire is the thing that actually sells them, right? It's tapping into their subconscious beliefs and desires and that's how you get people to move. Like we have a whole event, the whole premise of the event is called subconscious selling. And it's all based on these same principles that Bernay's figured out and how to use them. Again, Freud used them for clinical psychology. Bernay's used them for mass control to get people to to move and we're using now for challenges, events, webinars, video sales letters, all the stuff we do in online marketing today. One of the principles that Bernay teaches in this book talks about people are normally trying to sell products. He's like people don't necessarily going to buy products, they buy identity. You take a product over here and then you're gonna attach it to an identity and that's the key. So a practical example when we built Clickfunnels, Clickfunnels is a product, right? It's software. People aren't passionate about software typically, right? And so I was like, okay, I can't just sell a product. I need to attach it to an identity. So I was like, what's the identity of the person who will be using this software, right? So we started thinking about that. And so for us, it was like, okay, we're going to create an identity called the funnel hacker. And this is what funnel hackers do and what they believe and how they show up and how they serve. And these aren't people who are trying to get rich quick. These are people who are trying to change the world, right? And we create this identity and then we attach the identity to the product, right? Right. Bernese has a really cool case study in propaganda where he did the same thing in the smoking industry. He said that it was after the war happened and then um I can't remember who it was, whatever the smoking company at the time was they hired him to like we saw what you did getting everyone excited about World War I. Can you do that for smoking? He said right now men smoke but women do not smoke. It's not a thing that they do. And so he went back to Freud like hey what would Freud do over here? And he developed a campaign. And what he did is he took the the product a cigarette, right? And he had to create a new identity. And so he figured for the female audience who weren't smoking now, what's the identity? what does that look like? And he crafted this whole campaign for women and then he organized like this dramatic demonstration where news cameras and TV and everything happening and he had all these beautiful women come out all smoking cigarettes. They said it was like this torch of for women to show like they were independent and all this kind of thing. And it used the identity of that is what got people to move, not the cigarette, right? Because they couldn't get women to smoke. They tried changing the colors. They tried everything. They couldn't get them. And then when they he created an identity that other women would want and he attached it to the smoking then people moved in the masses. attaching identity product just one like such [snorts] a simple such a powerful concept that's been huge for us inside the click funnels world and that initial concept came from Bernay I had a chance to speak at Grant Cardone's 10X event and there were 9,000 people in the room most of them never heard of me before like I was not the famous guy in the room I was the guy coming in to sell and so I got on stage first 10 minutes of my presentation I was like I have to create an identity I have to create something like that and so I did this whole thing at the very beginning in fact we handed out to everybody in the audience all 9,000 people we had this packet in the audience and it had a big sticker said don't open till Russell Brunson comes on stage. So, I came on stage and I grabbed the packet, opened it up, and they pulled out and there was a pen and an order form and some notes and stuff like that, but there was a sticker that said funnel hacker on it. And I explained to everyone what a funnel hacker was. I'm like, "This what a funnel hackers is how it works." I basically told them what it was. I was like, "How many guys sound like you? Does it sound like you?" And they're all like, "Yes, yes, yes." I'm like, "Hey, you guys are all officially now funnel hackers. Welcome to our community. We're so glad to have you." We had this like literally like a sticker they could put on their laptop or on their their their iPhone case or whatever that that showed that they were funnel hackers. There's the speaker on the stage and there's the rest of the audience, right? And you're trying to build rapport very, very quickly. But not only am I trying to build rapport, I'm trying to create an identity they can attach to very, very quickly. And so I did it by showing case studies of other funnel hackers who they related to, who they wanted to be. They saw those people in themselves. And then I'm like, "Okay, how many you guys want to be a funnel hacker? Here's like the identity. Like here's the sticker." If you look at what we've done in the Click Funnels community, when somebody comes in, we give them a funnel hacker t-shirt. Man, we've been giving out t-shirts for 10 years that say funnel hacker. I've seen them all around the world. People wearing them. I remember showing this to Caitlin Poland and she did the same thing for the lady boss movement. She gave people shirts that say I'm a lady boss. But was fascinating. She said when people put it on, she's like it's like putting on their superhero cape. And when they said that, I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's like it's like taking this identity of like I'm a lady boss or I'm a funnel hacker." And they're putting on this this superhero cape where all of a sudden like they become something different. They have a new identity. They're no longer Russell Brunson like the guy on the side of the street. Like I'm Russell Brunson. I'm a funnel hacker. Like they identify with this thing which brings them together. And so that's just like one simple way to do that from a stage presentation, but also as you are building a movement of people is like giving them an identity and literally having them wear their new identity on their shirt like a superhero cape. A lot of the mas he talks about in here are religious by nature, but not not all of them are. This was kind of something that that popped out. He calls this unifying agent. So how do you unify a movement? How do you get people to come together? And this is so cool cuz he said the most powerful unifying agent thing that unifies people the most is hatred. Which is kind of a like wait what hatred? I thought it was going to be like this positive vision or this mission. It's like no the thing that unifies people the most is hatred. He says hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. He says mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in God but never without the belief in a devil. And so what he's talking about here is for you to create a mass movement like you have to create a common enemy. That's part of it right? If you look at any good mass movement, there's always like us versus them. Like that's what separates a movement and gets people to actually move and to follow with you, right? So you think about that. It's like, okay, think about religious, right? You always have like there's always God and the devil. Like there's always two different things, right? And you look at how most religions work, like the way they're getting people to move towards God is by focusing on the hatred of the devil. Like you don't want the devil. This is going to be bad, right? When I was doing the the research for Expert Secrets, I was trying to find a lot of examples cuz I didn't want people like, "Oh, that's a religious example, but I'm different." Right? So I remember I was like I'm going to find a religious. So I looked at Christ. If you look at Christ like he was very divisive. He said I came with a sword to divide. Like he wasn't trying to make peace. He was trying to divide people. And then you So you look at Christ who I believe was the greatest of us all. Right? And you look on the opposite side like the evil you look at Hitler. Like what did Hitler do? Like Hitler was the same way. Like they had a common good but they had a common enemy that he attacked the whole time. Right? Two different people but same tactics. And I was like okay I don't want to talk about religion anymore. I want to talk about different topics. So we started shifting to businesses. Right? You look at like what Steve Jobs did with Apple. It's like, hey, here's Apple, but then who are they fighting against? And so, like, I was looking at just business, religious, political things. Like, politics are huge, too. You see this every single time, right? Democrats, Republicans, like what are they doing? They are picking a common enemy. And like if you look at the last political cycle, it was a lot less based on like look at my candidate, how great they are. And like most of the messaging was look how bad this other candidate is. Like that was the reality of the entire election cycle, right? Was all focused on hatred, right? Cuz it's the greatest unifying object that we have according to Eric Hoffer. Devil for ClickFunnels. It shifted over time. Initially when we first launched it was us trying to prove that click funnels were a thing. So the devil became like anything that wasn't a funnel. Like websites are dumb. Like we did this whole death of the website campaign stuff like that. So at one time that's what it was. Other times we actually picked companies. Like I remember um thinking okay who's like I'm very competitive so I'm always like who's the next person I got to beat? Like when I was wrestling or I want to be a state champ like who's the state champ? And like I would think about that person. I would dream about them. I put their picture on my wall. Um like there wasn't a moment in my life didn't go past that I wasn't thinking about how I could beat that person. Right. Won my state title. Next thing was the national level. Like it was like obsessive for me. And so when I we were launching Click Funnels, like after we started getting some traction, I was like, "Okay, who's who's ahead of us?" And for me at the time, there was a company called Lead Pages. Most people haven't heard about Lead Pages anymore because we came pretty aggressively after, right? They had just gotten like I think 30 or $40 million in funding. And I was like, "That's our competitor." And so we were very aggressive trying to surpass them. Positioning psychology like different brands in a business like number two always attacks number one, right? Pepsi always attacks Coke, but Coke never even acknowledged that Pepsi exists, right? And so for us it's like when Leaf Pages was the target like we were talking about them we were trying to beat them till eventually we pass them and then we can't talk about them ever again like they're they're now dead to us we can't talk about them and then our next target was like okay who's our next biggest person it's infusionoft right and so that became the common enemy that we united against we fought against this common enemy right after we surpassed them we stopped talking about them and then it started transitioning for us it was like as opposed to doing like actual companies or brands now in my older age I don't feel as comfortable doing that kind of stuff I don't think I would do that again in the future but it became more uh based in ideas so we started fighting like venture capitalists versus bootstrappers. And like we became bootstrappers, like our our community, our people versus like venture capitalists who are cheating. Like they're not like they don't even run real businesses. They have horrible ideas, but they're just cheating by getting money, right? Like they became the common enemy. I did a whole presentation at Funnel Hacking Live about being a bootstrapper and and people got, you know, they went around that. After I read Napoleon Hills, Outwin the Devil, he talks about, which by the way, Napoleon Hills great this creating the the common enemy, but he talks about the devil is trying to get people to become drifters. And so for our community, I did a whole presentation on being driven versus being a drifter. Obviously, I wanted people to be driven, but the focus was on not becoming a drifter. And that became the common enemy. I used it a lot over and over and over again in different areas, different aspects, different places, but um realizing that you have more power to unify people when you're focusing on hatred and on the devil than you ever do on focusing on the positive. One of the caveats I always give people who are in a lot of our higher end events is like you have to be careful because you can use these powers for good or for evil, right? And you've seen it like you look at the mass movements throughout time like these principles have been used for good and for evil. And I think one of the the biggest problems people have a lot of times is they don't know what they're doing, right? They get started, they start doing these things, start applying these principles and they're doing it with a good heart. Fame is a scary thing. Like you see people who start having success and people start falling and then all a sudden they start drinking their own Kool-Aid. They start believing their own bios and all these things start happening and like that's when things start shifting and that's when you see these these big movements, these big companies and then they crash and burn. I think I was lucky when I got started early on. I started building my first company. and we started growing and this is man 14 15 years ago pre-Click funnels and I got to the spot in my life where I literally was doing the same thing when you're building a movement like a true believer it's like it always leads with a charismatic leader I got step number one expert secrets if you look at the diagrams like step number one is attractive character so you lead with that and so I was building my company was it was building and everything I started getting that spot where again I believe my own bio I was drinking my own Kool-Aid like I thought it was I thought it was something special and I remember about that time is when my entire company collapsed like it fell apart overnight I had to fire almost 100 people in a day. We had to move from a big huge office building to shrink down this little tiny thing. We were scrambling just to keep alive. He was a guy. He was a business owner. He was trying a bunch of things. He was buying hotels and trying to start a business. And somewhere along the line, he found an old book in his attic. And this book, and we'll probably do a YouTube video on this book in the future because it's a very important one. But it was a book by Samuel Smiles called Self-Help. It was the first ever personal development book ever written over in Europe. Somehow this book had found it into Orson Swedar's home. He found this book in the attic. He read it and it changed his life. Like he just understood [music] personal development and success and all these different principles, right? And he got so excited that he started like thinking about these things and he started writing. He wanted to write his own book. He spent 15 years writing a [music] manuscript. When the 15 years was over, it was about 5,000 pages that he had been writing this book and he was so excited to publish it. And it was inside of one of the hotels that he owned and one night the hotel burned to the ground and the entire 5,000page manuscript was gone. You think about most people, what would happen if adversity hit you like that? like you were writing a book for 15 years on Google Docs [music] and then Google, you know, crashed or you lost your Microsoft Word doc or whatever it is, right? You lose it. Like what would most people do? They would throw their hands up and like I'm out. Instead, they said like the accounts of what happened, he was like literally there in [music] the ashes of this hotel realizing that his life's work had been destroyed. And what he did that night is he walked over to [music] the to the convenience store, whatever. He bought a 25-cent notebook and he tried really quickly to remember like what he had written before and started rewriting this book [music] from memory because he wanted to bring what he called his dream book out to the world. So he spent the next however long rewriting this book and he published it. The book was called Pushing to the Front and he launched it out to the world and it became the number one bestselling personal bone book of all time up to that point. And it's credited like you look at all the presidents of the United States back then. They all read it. They quoted it. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, all these guys like like all the people back then read this book. like it wasn't just like some random guy like it was literally the first person book really published here in America that had a big impact that was kind of the first success and then after that shortly after is when he had this idea like how do I get these principles out to the world and that's when he came up for the idea was for success magazine and so a couple years later is when he put this whole thing together and he printed the very first issue on December 1897 that's when the very first issue went went out and that's when this this success thing wasn't just a book that some people bought but became a magazine across the entire country that everybody could actually read and it changed the landscape of America forever. When I first heard that story the first time, I look at so many people in my world and in my life myself a times as well where it's like [music] you hit an obstacle and the obstacle stops us, right? I mean, I just think about like I know how much work it was for me to write my books on Google Docs, right? Where it was like it's not that difficult. I can cut and paste like back then in the early 1900s or sorry late 1800s to write a book like it's typewriters. It's manual. It's cutting and pasting. It's handwritten stuff. Like the amount of work going into something like that and then to have it gone and just lost. Like most people would just walk away, [music] right? But there's something about when someone's got a vision or a dream that's so much bigger than themselves, like it doesn't matter what the obstacle, it doesn't matter how big it is, like you would push through [music] that. And again, that's where most people fail. I think about that a lot of times like I've seen so many people who've come into my world as an entrepreneur, someone who wanted to be an entrepreneur and they're going going, they hit a trial and they fail. They hit a trial and they fail. And the ones who are successful realize that there's going to be trials along the way. I get so many thing after thing after thing after thing, right? And so I see what happened to him before he ever had any success and just [music] it hit and it was such a I mean 15 years he spent writing this manuscript and it was gone overnight and instead of doing what most do people stop he's just like all right let's just keep going. Let's just start over from scratch. What's fascinating about is this this pattern like followed him throughout the rest of his life, right? They always say that like you know people that win like winners win, right? You know how to win, you continue to win. And so he's just a good example of a winner. So after he launches this magazine, think about this. He launched this magazine. It's hugely successful. Starts growing around the world. Again, 1897. It launches. By 1908, this thing is huge. There's there's literally millions of people around the country reading it. They moved their offices to downtown New York. They were in a 12story building. Uh the building's still there. I haven't seen it yet. I'm going to go next. I'm in New York. I'm going to go find the building, but it's a big building, 12tory building, and that's where Success Magazine was being published from. Shipped out. They had the publishing, the printing, everything happening here. And they'd ship this magazine out through the entire world. And it was having a ton of success again 1908. And then by 1911 he had brought in some investors and things had happened and investors had changed the magazine from being personal development to trying to like make it more businessy and and all these ups and downs. And by 1911 the magazine actually failed and by uh 1912 it was it was gone. Like it completely finished. And think about it he spent the last 12 13 years of his life publishing his magazine putting it out there just to have it fail. And on top of that even though there wasn't social media back then there were newspapers and there were all sorts of stuff. And so people like I don't know there's a time when like people love the the hero story of a hero building up and trying to create something but then people love watching a hero fail like you see it all the time like you know the same people that were cheering you as you were growing or the same ones that like you fail or like want to laugh at [music] you. So he he this magazine fails. What happens is all the publishers all the all the writers around the country they all start publishing literally the headlines were success fails [music] and they were so excited to announce to the world that success magazine teach successful it actually failed. And I look at that, I'm like, can I imagine like you've been teaching people success principles for 15 years of your life. You're so proud of it and it fails. And instead of like just having this thing you kind of walk away from and don't want anyone to notice like everybody's watching this failure across the country. It's in every magazines on the radios. It's like and everyone's so excited to talk about the fact that his magazine failed right now. Again, most people they done that spot like you would have like you would have walked away. You would have hid. You would have like changed the industry. You would have done anything. But instead, like he's there. He's like, "I still believe in these principles. Like yes, we failed, but it doesn't mean we're failures." which is where most people end up failing, right? Is like they they say I'm a failure. He said this failed but I'm not a failure. And so for the next few years, Orson went back and he kept a couple people from the staff and the from the magazine printing company and he started writing books. And if you look at the number of books he's written, probably I don't know exactly 30 to 40 other personal development books that are amazing. Some of my favorite books Orson wrote during this window of time while he was trying to figure out how do I get the magazine back? So he's trying different things. He's trying to figure stuff out. And fast forward to so between 1912 and 1917, nothing was published. for 5 years he's trying to figure this out and then in 1918 during World War I he finds an investor who's willing to invest some money to bring Success Magazine back. So he gets this investor, he go back and he buys the magazine out of bankruptcy and he relaunches it 5 years later, right? And then what's crazy is over the next time basically from 1918 to 1924. So for the next 6 years of his life, he starts publishing this magazine. He brings it back and in the next 6 years he gets the subscription to this magazine. More people are subscribed to the magazine when he died in 1924 than at the peak prior. I look at that, it's just like one of those like comeback stories that you're just like this guy who lost everything in the public eye and everyone's talking about him. Instead of like doing what most of us are doing and hide and shut down, he came back and like all right, I'm going to mount a battle plan. How am I going to win? I'm going to figure out how to win cuz I'm a winner and winners win, right? Came back, mounted this battle plan, comes back and over the next six years, builds it bigger than when he had it originally. That's the story of Orson Sweat Martin, like one of my favorite characters in history, but specifically history of like the personal development world, right? In this book, he basically is having a conversation with the devil. It's almost like the devil's like in a court room. He's on he's on the stand and Napoleon will ask him questions and anything he asks, the devil has to respond. He has to tell him the truth. He's not allowed to lie or else it'll perjure himself, right? So, he's doing this conversation and he's trying to figure out from the devil like how are you able to control the hearts of man. Like, in Think and Grow Rich is all about here's all the steps you got to be successful. But when the devil is about like people are trying to be successful, but but the devil is holding or like something's holding them back. Like what is what's holding them back and why are they doing it? so controversial that Paul Hill writes this the year after Think and Grow Rich and he never publishes it. He's scared. In fact, he even talks about it in the book like the devil warns him like if you ever publish this book like you'll be destroyed, your career will be ruined. No one's going to ever trust you again. And um he shares a lot of things about the tools that the devil uses to hold people back. And a lot of them are religion and school and all these things that are controversial nowadays but were very controversial in 1910, 1920, right? 1930s. And so that's what this is about. Again, I'll show you this real quick. I'll open this is the actual manuscript. This was his wife's copy. This is signed by Andy Lou Hill. Napoleon Hill died. Uh he never published this book. After he died, Annie Lou got it. And again, this is her literally her copy from Napoleon's Typer. He uh she got it, she read it, and she's like, "There's no way we can publish this. This is too controversial. It'll ruin it'll ruin everything." So, she didn't publish it. After she died, it went to the Napoleon Hill Foundation. They got it, and they read it. And uh the first couple, you know, the CEOs of the foundation were like, "We're not going to publish, not going to publish it." And eventually one one of them got it and said, "This is probably the best thing he ever wrote. We should finally publish it." And so, uh, they worked with Sharon Lechner, who she took this manuscript and she edited it and cleaned it up and pulled out all the stuff that's not relevant nowadays and made by far the best version of the book. It is insane. If you haven't had a chance to read it, I recommend listening to it though, the audio book's the best because you hear the devil and Napoleon Hill fighting back and forth and back and forth. And in this book, you learn one of the most powerful principle or powerful things that the devil uses to hold you back, which when Napoleon Hill calls drifting. In fact, one of the books I'm working on right now is called The Driven Versus the Drifters. is all about kind of like step two of this of like how the devil's trying to get people to drift. Now, I want to tell you why I'm so excited cuz this week I found this magazine. I got it shipped to me and it's the first time outside of you know 70 80 years after Napoleon Hill wrote this book that we found proof that he was that he was like thinking about this. He wrote an entire article which was basically the precursor the precursor to outweighing the devil and it's here inside the magazine. So, I'm going to show this to you really quick because when I found this I was like there's no way that this is a thing. January 1940. So it have been somewhere between the time he was writing this book or finished the book but again he never published it in his life. Uh it's called the devil confesses January 1940 the place the devil's headquarters in Washington present the devil and a philosopher who has discovered how to appropriate the devil's secrets and it goes directly into the dialogue just like the book. I don't know if it was written before or after the book but as you read it there are things that are very similar but also things that are that are a little bit different and it was just so fun to read. the only other time that Napoleon Hill specifically talks about this conversation that he had with the devil about how the devil's holding people back from being successful. And um that's why I was freaking out and I wanted to show you guys on a video because this is the only copy I've ever seen. I don't think anybody even knew it existed uh until I discovered it this week. Literally one of the coolest things I've ever found in my life. [laughter] I'm a nerd. I'm so excited. In the book Outwitting the Devil and in this article, they talk about a lot of things, right? He's asking the devil like, you know, how do you like what are you doing? How is it working? So we can kind of reverse engineer it. He goes through a whole bunch of different things. And one of the things that the devil talks about is a thing called hypnotic rhythm. And I think about hypnotic rhythm like whenever I think about hypnotized, you know, it's like the you're getting sleepy, you're getting hypnotized, and you get into this like hypnosis. The hypnotic rhythm is like it's like a pattern, right? It's something you get back to over and over and over again. And as I was reading that, I was thinking about just my own life first off. Like there are times where I've used like hypnotic rhythm to be more successful. Like I get in these these habits, these routines, and I do something over and over again that are really positive. But I also have things I do that are very negative, right? I think most of us, we get our phones and also we're in hypnotic rhythm where we're swiping and you're just kind of going forever, right? And he said the goal of this getting people in this hypnotic rhythm is to get them to drift, to become drifters. And he said that there's two types of people in world. There's drifters and there's non-drifters. What are all the characteristics of somebody who's drifting, right? And it's like people they don't think for themselves. Like they just uh everything they hear on the news or on TV, they just believe it's true. They don't do their own research. like all these things where they don't take control of their own mind, letting other people influence their mind and influence their brain. I think all of us see this so much on social media. But I think what a lot of people aren't willing to do is to point backwards and be like, is this happening to me? You know, in fact, Napoleon Hill in a lot of his books, uh, one of the laws of success, he didn't always have it as one of the laws of success moved around, but one of them was called accurate thinking. And it's like learning how to think accurately, not just what's given to you. He also talks about drugs and alcohol. You know, when he wrote out when the devil back then there weren't a lot of people fighting against drugs now. It wasn't like a thing. They didn't know that the health b health risks of it. And he was coming out back then saying you shouldn't be smoking. You shouldn't be doing these things. You think about why. It's like well because it creates this hypnotic rhythm that's destroying your health over and over and over. And he's talking about that. He's talking about just all the things that the devil uses in his in his powers to get you into a drifting state. If you get into a drifting state, then you get stuck in this hypnotic rhythm. It's really easy to stay there. He said that the devil controls 98% of the world. 98% of the people he's convinced them to drift. Only 2% of those who have a definite purpose, who are driven, who are the non-drifters. And when I read that the first time, uh, I started looking at myself and I'm someone who's pretty driven, but there are areas of my life where I drift. And it's interesting. I started thinking about like, okay, in this area of my life, my business, like I'm very driven. Like I'm awesome, right? But over here at the time, like my health, I was I was struggling health. I'm like, man, I'm completely dri drifting in my health, right? Spirituality, like I'm drifting here. And my family, I'm doing good here, but not over here. And so I started looking at just different areas of my life and not just classifying myself like oh yeah I'm one of the 2% it's like I'm one of the 2% in this area but not these other areas right and I started looking at those things and how do I accurately think how do I make sure I'm not getting addicted to things that put me in hypnotic rhythm and I think that's why I loved outweighing the devil so much is the first time where he takes the other direction not like here's the things you need to do instead it's like looking at what are the things that are keeping you from being successful right um and I think that's almost more fascinating it's the things that hold most people back because you can Look at here's the laws of success. Follow these processes. Here's the step-by-step things I need to be successful. Be it. If it was just following those steps, why isn't everyone doing this? Because there's resistance pulling you the other way. He calls it the devil. You may call it resistance. You may call it, you know, laziness, whatever you want to call it. But that tugof-war between the two is the the battle we're fighting every single day. And I think Napoleon Hill in this stuff is the first time I ever found it in a way that's just fun to read. It's interesting and it and it shines light on um on what you know he says is the devil's number one secret which is getting people to become drifters. If you look at how people create offers throughout time there's different levels right the very first level is what's called repair re repair. So if you think back like go back to like the late 1800s early 1900s um back in the day like entrepreneurs for most people they didn't have the cash to go and like go and start a car company or selling washing machines or those kind of things right so they were the big brands that would create the first version of products right and so for entrepreneurs the way that we built companies back then was all about repair like you had a car that was broken we're going to repair it we're going to fix it right you had a dishwasher it doesn't work we're going to repair it that was like the first version of entrepreneurs that came out where people are all focused on repair and so everybody would created offers. The offers are all about repair. That was kind of the first version. Then fast forward over the next, you know, a couple decades. The next phase inside of business after repair was called improvement. Okay? And this is I remember um when I was going to high school and learning business in school, this is what they always talked about, right? In fact, you probably have heard people talk about like if you want to be successful business, find somebody that built a mousetrap and you just got to build a better mousetrap, right? That is what an improvement offer is. Okay? And so repair means you like uh if you want to put this let's let's talk about this the analogy is the car right so if if I'm if I'm uh in the repair business then someone's got a broken car I'm going to repair it okay an improvement is you have a car I'm going to give you a better car or a faster car or a whatever usually if there's an er behind it like better faster smarter anytime there's an er when you explain your offer then it's called an improvement offer right now improvement is better than repair okay you can make more money selling an improvement offer than you can a repair and again most people I'd say 85% of businesses on the internet today are all creating some version of an improvement offer. In fact, I I'm curious. I'd love for you in the comments down below to explain what you do and see if you use the words er like I'm kind of like Uber only faster. I'm kind of like uh I'm kind of like, you know, whoever like Tony Robbins only I'm uh I for a younger demographic or whatever. Like whatever your ER is, that is means it's improvement offer. So again, it's better than repair, but um there is something that's better. And that's what Dan talks about in opportunity concepts is instead of going repair or improvement, the third version and by far the best instead of you getting cut off here, uh is what's called a new opportunity. Okay, this is the third and the best. So if repairs, like you have broken car, we're going to fix it. Improvements, like there's a car, but it kind of, you know, your car is kind of lame. I have a better car. New opportunities like we don't drive anymore. I'm going to show you how to fly. It's changing the whole paradigm. It's shifting the whole thing, right? And so what I got into um after I learned this, right, was about the same time I was launching ClickFunnels. And it was interesting because I was trying to understand like how does this work for me? How do I create a new opportunity? Right? And you have to understand a new opportunity is not typically like I'm creating a whole new product. It's how you position the product. Does that make sense? And so I started looking at it and uh and I I realized, okay, if I would have launched Clickfunnels, I'd be like it's kind of like um it's kind of like Mailchimp only better. It's kind of like infusionoft only it's it's it's better, right? It's got more features. It's faster. It does this. It's kind of like lead pages but it builds better pages. Like if I would have done that would have been improvement offer, right? And so instead I was like okay like focusing and channeling my inner Dan Kenny. If I was Dan Kenny I was if I was positioning this how to do it differently. So what we did is we we created a new opportunity. Okay. At the time nobody was doing funnels, right? And yes our you know Click Funnels has a CRM. It has a page builder. It has email marketing automations. It has affiliate platform. It has all the things right. It has better versions of all those. But what we did, we focused on what's the new opportunity. And for us, the new opportunity was this thing called, can you guys guess? It's called a salesunnel, right? It's like like that is the thing. We're going to build sales phones. That was the new opportunity that we wanted to introduce into the world. Okay? And so when we came out, it wasn't saying this is a better way to grow a business. It was like there's, you know, it's not better. This is the new opportunity, right? It's not a website, it's not this, it's a new opportunity. It's a thing called a funnel. Okay? Another good example, if you look at throughout history, like Steve Jobs was the best at doing this, right? Um if you look at like when he came out with with the iPod initially he wasn't saying hey I have a better way like right now you get you can get 50 songs on you know typically CD has 10 songs he wasn't saying there's you know now we've created something you can get 50 songs on a CD he was like no no no it's like CDs are dead instead and he pulls out his pocket boom the iPod right a dozen years later he comes out not just a better phone or different phone he comes out it's like like everyone else doing phone calls we have boom an iPhone it was a new opportunity right a new category was created And by doing that, that opens up the whole world to you, right? When you become a category of one. And so when you create a new opportunity, that's how you grow. That a new opportunity will outconvert any improvement offer all day long. And so most people struggle because they they put themselves in a category with a whole bunch of other people. You see it all day long. Like mine's better, mine's faster. As opposed to saying, well, it's a new opportunity I can create that's different. Like that's the key to being successful. And so that's the real like of all the things I learned from Dan Kennedy inside this opportunity concepts course, this was the most powerful thing I learned because it gave me a way to position my offer that was that was completely different. All right. Now, I want to show you guys one little hack that I learned just recently that if you ever study with me or or read my book.com Secrets, I talk about this concept called the value ladder, right? Where you come you your business comes in, you take somebody through this process, right? Where on the lefth hand side is your price and over here is your value, right? And so as the price goes up, it increases in value. So what I always teach people is like for example, if you're launching a new business, right? This is the thing you want to sell at the end of the day, right? Uh the most expensive thing. This is the way this is going to be the most expensive. Provides the most value to somebody. Like that's the dream thing you want to sell to somebody, right? The problem is like if I walked up to you on the street, I'm like, "Hey, my name is Russell Brunson. I know I look like I'm 11 years old, but I want to build you a salesunnel. And if you give me a million dollars and 20% of the sales that funnel, I'll build you an entire funnel." If I told most people that, they'd be like, "You're crazy. You look like you're 12. there's no way I'm going to give you a million dollars to build a funnel, right? Because I haven't provided value at to people at that point. So, what we do instead is at the bottom of the value ladder, we create something that gives them some value, right? They go through this process. If they receive value and they enjoy it, what happens? They naturally want to send up to the next level to get more. And if they get value at this level of the value ladder, they're naturally going to want to send up and get more. Okay? Till eventually, this seems like a really good opportunity for them, right? Same thing is true in in dating, in relationships. I met my wife the very first day. If I would have walked to my wife like, "Hey, you're gorgeous. We should get married, have a bunch of kids." She would have freaked out, right? So instead, what I do, I come down the bottom of the value ladder. We go on a date. We have a good time. If she likes me and she gets value on the first date and I ask her for a second date, she's like, "Yeah, I'd love to do that." Right? We go on the second date and then we then, you know, it keeps progressing till eventually when I'm like, "Hey, you want to get married?" She's like, "Of course I do. You provided so much value at every step in the relationship that it makes a lot of sense, right?" So that's what the value ladder is. In the um showmanship and business book, there's actually a four-part framework that every business who's successfully applying showsmanship follows these four principles. And so I'm going to write these out for you. Kind of talk about and share some stories with each one. So the first step to have showmanship in your business is is to attract. And this one is something in our world a lot of times online we talk about like creating a hook. Something that's going to grab somebody's attention is the first key, right? How do you attract somebody's attention? So I always think about this like if I was to go to the food court at the mall and there's like 400 people and they're eating and talking. If I was to stand up on a chair and yell something out, would it grab their attention? Would they ever stop and look at me or and would they be intrigued or they kind of like and they walk away? So I always think about that like I got to say something that's going to get their attention make them stop talking like oh what's happening over here that's what I'm always thinking through in the book he shares an example because again this book was written in 19 I think 36 and so this is before you know obviously the internet and stuff like that but one of the examples they talked about the traction is that there was a movie theater and they had all this candy at the movie theater and there's a bunch of candy that nobody was buying just kind of you know it sat there for week after week and they were trying to figure out how do we attract attention to this and so what they did is they got this little spot like almost like a flashlight and they shown it on the candy that nobody was buying and because it looked like it was an attraction like people saw saw that they're like there's something like why do they lighten this up? There's got to be something here that that candy end up selling out the most and it became the highest selling candy because they added some attraction to it. They added a light to it which is kind of a simple example. So it's like finding something unique and like and shining light on. Right? It's like again my birthday promotion. It's my birthday. Shining a light on it. I'm trying to attract people's attention to it. I'm going to Dan Kenny's house shining a light on it. Right? So that's the first step in the framework. Number two is to emphasize. So it's like after you got their attention you have to emphasize either the problem or the things happening so people see it so they're going to remember it. Right? Like that's what showmanship is an extra level. Not just attracting their attention, but he emphasize it. In the book, the example he shares is really cool. This guy named Walter Chrysler, you may have heard him, you know, a company called Chrysler. One of the stunts he did to emphasize after he got people's attention, he actually took his cars and he had people come and he brought elephants out and he had these elephants come and actually step on top of the car. Now, if you see that kind of dramatic demonstration, you see somebody emphasizing something, you see someone with elephants on top of their car, that's one of those things you're never going to forget, right? Like after that happens, it's like, "Okay, I'm never going to forget this thing." I think about this. some of the best that I've ever seen doing this, right? Like I love watching and studying infomercials, but if you remember Billy Mays back in the day, Billy Mays was the guy did Oxyclean and you know most of the great infomercials of the 90s and 2000s, he was the best at this, right? He'd grab your attention really quick at the very beginning of the infomercial and then he he'd do a demo, right? He'd always do something where it's like he have your white shirt and he like put it through grass where it's all green and a nasty and then he's like gets it Oxy Clean in 5 seconds like oh it's Oxy Clean now it's done. He like emphasizes the problem and then the react like how the thing solves it, right? Because you could be like oh yeah these cars are really dirty, right? Or you can have an elephant stand on the car. That's the difference, right? Oh yeah, this will get stains out of your clothes. Or let me put a stain on it. Let me show you. You're emphasizing it to make it real inside their mind. That's showmanship. That's the next level beyond just marketing or just advertising. Number three is emotionalized. In the book, you said that people don't buy facts, they buy feeling. And this is something that is very, very true. When I'm doing a webinar or a challenge or anything, you a lot of times we share the facts because we're speaking to people consciously and their logical mind is like, "Oh, that makes a lot of sense." But the thing that gets people to buy and to move and take action is the emotion. Like what do they feel about the thing? The more I study and the more I write about the subconscious mind, the more fascinating is because people don't do what they think about. They do what they feel. Like if I feel like doing it, they're going to do it or they're not going to do it, right? And so feeling is what you're trying to create. So I attract their attention, right? Emphasize the things. This thing gets burned and seared into your brain. And then I got to emotionalize it, right? So I'm bringing emotion to the table. You're telling stories. You're showing examples. Like you're showing why this should be emotional to them. And emotionally be a lot of things. It can be sad. I've seen people who are really good to tell their story. They get emotional, right? Or they can be fear, they can be pain, right? I've seen people at Funnel Hacking Live Stage who use some of our best speakers, but they use anger to emotionalize thing where I'm not really someone who comes in angry and hot. I come in very much more like visionary, trying to show like cast a vision, show people what's possible, right? And that's how I emotionalize things. So, there's different ways to do it based on your style, but adding that emotion is the next phase. And then number four, which is the last part of the framework here, is to create action, which for all of us, you know, is like call to action. tell them to do something. It says in the book, it says all this leader means nothing unless you have action at the end. Doing a dramatic demonstration, showmanship, doing all these kind of things, you get their attention, you give them emotion, all that kind of stuff. If you don't have them do something, there was all kind of for nothing. And so that's the framework from the book is you're trying to figure out like for you specifically like how could I create a dramatic demonstration? Those are the things you're thinking through. Okay, what could I do that's going to track their attention? Okay, after we get them, how do we emphasize this so it like gets seared [snorts] into their brain? And then what do I do to create the emotional experience with them? And then where do I take them to actually take action? And those are kind of how we use showmanship inside of our business today. One more thing we do with showmanship in business. And again, a lot of times we think this is just if I'm selling an event or if I'm doing a course or whatever the thing might be. You can use this any part of your business. A couple years ago, we hired the Harmon brothers who do viral videos to make a video for us. Spent a lot of money to create the video. We're going to launch it on YouTube and drive ads to it. And then I was like, we got to do something bigger. Like we need to make this dramatic demonstration. Like how do we engage our audience, get people excited to make this more than just like us putting something out onto the internet, right? And so we created a whole campaign around it. And what we did, we rented out the boys football stadium. We went and got as many highlevel influencers as possible to come to the stadium for this event. We hired Gary Veaynerchuk to come and be our keynote speaker. And then to top it all off, I was like, we need something that's really going to attract attention, emphasize what we're doing, emotionalize, and create action. We decided to do the largest bubble soccer game in the history of all time. And this was all to launch a YouTube video, right? It wasn't just posting online just hoping for the best and maybe it goes viral. It's like, let's bring these people together and let's launch it together, make an experience, and create a dramatic demonstration. And so it was cool because we had almost two different ways. There was the internal people who came who had this experience and all them promoted it out to their followings and their list which helped this video to go viral. But then externally our entire audience was watching as we were doing this. They had a chance to like see behind the scenes this glimpse of like oh my gosh like you know they couldn't be here with us but we're taking them on this journey right we're not just doing these things in a silo but we're letting them kind of experience it with us. Um, one of the things I remember one of my mentors, John Olness, told me one time, he said that that our job as entrepreneurs, as advertisers, and he said that he got this from a movie in the 80s was a rockstar talking about this. He said for entrepreneurs, like our job is to live the life that our audience wishes they could live, right? They're living vicariously through us. And so, we're putting this thing on, but we're allowing our audience to watch it so they can vicariously live through us. like watch us like win the bubble sock or watch this video go viral like see Gary veins other people speaking and like we're sharing that experience with them and just takes the showmanship to the next level where that story and that message just keeps resonating and growing again that was just to launch a YouTube video. So next time you're putting anything out there, if it could be as simple as a podcast, YouTube video, or as big as a product launch, it's like figuring out how do you add showmanship into your business to get people talking, get people remembering you, creating emotion, and getting people to take action. If you don't know who Cory Rud is, the reason why is he passed away in a tragic accident. He built his company. It was the first company teaching internet marketing. He was the guy. I think on the back here it said he did over $40 million in sales before his 32nd birthday. Shortly after that, he got married. I think 7 months after he went out and he was racing [music] cars and he got in a car wreck and he passed away. And I remember to this day it was like this huge shock to the industry. It was the person we all looked up to the most, the person we were all learning from and studying. He was the trends setter in our industry doing all the things that we were modeling and learning. And he passed away and it was a very tragic event. But that is the reason why a lot of you guys don't know who Cory Rud is. But it's important to understand because he was literally the pioneer. All the great things that we have done and developed in the internet marketing world all came originally from this man. Principles I want to share with you guys that came from this. Again, I bought this course in 2002. So, I was 22 years old. This is a long time ago before some of you guys are even born. And it was interesting if you look at this, right? The internet was brand new. People were trying to figure this thing out. There was the dot bubble burst, all that kind of stuff. And you look at what most people were doing at that time. They thought the internet was going to be about branding, [music] right? They were focusing on brand and putting this money into these all sorts of stuff. And what's interesting is if you look at this course specifically, right, the goal of what they were doing is taking Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy is an old school direct response marketer. Back then, I don't know if he was as old school. It was more like he was the guy like teaching direct response and Cory Rud met him and Cory didn't do what everyone else was doing on the internet which is like branding and putting your brand out there. He learned from Nan Kenny said I'm going to take these direct response principles and I'm going to use them on [music] the internet. Right? That's what he used to blow up his entire company. It's so timely because again so many people nowadays they come online they see some influencers talking about stuff they try some stuff they make some money here and there but they build their foundation on sand. I can't tell you how many people in the last two decades I've seen whose businesses have come and gone and come and gone. The reason why is they base their business based on these little tactics or like the algorithm changes of the day that give them these little loopholes [music] that disappear and shift, right? But you look at like what Dan was teaching Cory and what Cory was teaching all of us back then was these core direct response principle. There's always a debate online, especially in the marketing business world is like brand versus direct response. And those who don't know what direct response is, direct response means we never put something out there just for branding, [music] right? Like branding is a byproduct of good direct response marketing. Direct response means I need to be able to track a direct response of everything I put out there. Back in the day when you'd watch TV, right, you'd see the commercials and almost every commercials, branding commercial, branding commercial, every once in a while you'd see a direct response commercial. In fact, most of them were like late night infomercials or the Billy May short ads would pop in the middle. But the direct response ones, what was different about those is the branding companies, if you look at the way that they're running their ads, what they would do is most of these companies, they have a budget for advertising. But for most of us, we come in the world and that's what we're see all the time like I'm going to do what they're doing, right? And we try to do it. We don't have an advertising budget. we can just spend money on. So direct response is where literally you can track every single thing you're doing. Right? So for a lot of us nowadays, you've heard me preach, you've heard other people talk about this a lot. The thing that Cory Rud taught so specifically here that's coming back from a Dan Kennedy principle initially is like all the advertising you're doing online. The goal isn't necessarily immediately just to make your money back. The goal is to start building a list. That's the big secret. And the guy said, "Let me explain how this works." And I remember in this article he kind of drew it He said, "A lot of these bigname gurus, whatever, the people that are following Cory, that are doing what he's saying, they focus their direct response marketing to build an email list, right? You see, think about this. Imagine if you built a list and you had 10,000 [music] people on a list, right? And you send an email out to that list and you're selling a $5 product, right? And let's say you get 10% of people to buy that. So if you get 10,000 people, right? 10% would be a,000 people who spend $5,000. They just made what's the math on that, right? $5,000. So now imagine if your list is bigger. Let's say your list is 30,000 people, right? >> [music] >> and you send an email out to that list and maybe your product, let's say your product is $50, right? So, a $50 product and I send it out and let's say I get I get 10% conversions. 3,000 people buy a $50 product. Now, the math's getting too big. They make a lot of money, right? And that's from sending one email to list. He said, "That's the big secret. That's what all these gurus are doing, right? They are focusing on building a big email list and then they create offers. So, they have the emails and they create an offer. They sell people the offer and they can do that every day, day in and day out, over and over and over again." [music] And I remember when he said that, like it all clicked for me. I was like, "That's that's a secret. That's that's it." Like, if I understood this, if I can figure out how to build an email list, it'll change everything for me. And so, everything that Dan and Cory were teaching is like how to use direct response marketing, yes, to sell products, more specifically to build an email list because that is the secret. That's the holy grail. That's the thing and how you win in this game. Shortly after I met Mark Joiner, who's my next mentor, and I remember I had learned this, but there were all these like shiny objects that were happening back in the day. Like people were doing AdSense and they were like putting ads on sites making money. People were doing like all these different things. And Mark Joiner was my next mentor. Mark was like, "Russell, you have to focus on building lists. Like, this is the most important thing." I'm like, "But there's all these people making tons of money doing this." He's like, "Those things will go away." He's like, "Focus on building list. That is the big secret." And so, [music] for me, I started focusing on building list. I was growing a list. And I remember during that window, somebody told me this number. It was something that changed my life. They said that you should be able to average $1 per month. If I spell month, per subscriber on your list, right? So, what that meant is like if you were to get a,000 people on your list, you should make $1,000 a month. You get $5,000 on your list, you make $5,000 a month. Now, at the time, my wife and I had just boughten our very first duplex. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I'm going to buy a house. So, we spent like $150,000 to buy a house. We put a renter into it and then we lived in the other half and it was cash flowing like $200 a month or $300 a month or something crazy like that. And I remember how much risk I put into that. It was a lot of work for the $200, $300 a month cash flow we were getting from this one house. And that's I was learning this right here. And I remember thinking $1 per month per subscriber. I'm like, if that's [music] true, this is going to be the coolest thing in the world. And so I decided to do my very first test. I created my very first product. It was a product called Zip Brander. And on Zip Brander, I had a pop-up cuz that's what Cory [music] said. We didn't have landing pages back in the day. We did pop-ups. So you would drive somebody through direct response ads. They would come to a page and you'd have a pop-up come up and you'd ask for their name and email. So I built my very first site. I launched it. Had a little pop-up come up. And when the pop-up came up the very first month, I remember I had [music] 217 people join my list. I remember that number. It's like seared into my brain. And so I was thinking, I was like, "Okay, if that's true, that means I'm going to make $2007 per month per subscriber." I'm like, "That's true. That's almost what I'm making for my rental property." And so I followed the process. I started emailing my list. I would make them offers. I'd provide value. And sure enough, my very first month, I ended up [music] making about $300 that month. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is insane. I need to focus on this. How do I get how do I go from, you know, 200 people on my list to 10,000 to 30,000? So, that became my focal point. I think the next tier I remember is I had a,000 people on my list. And that month, I did a little over $1,000 in sales. Okay? I kept focusing on two or three months I had 5,000 people on my list. I did over $5,000 in sales. And I remember like just I was like, I can't believe this [music] is working. Like, this is the coolest thing in the world. And it kept growing. I was on a call one day and somebody told me said, "The magic number is 30,000. 30,000 people on your list. You're financially free after that." because 30,000 people that's 30 grand a month which is what $360,000 a year like it's a great income like that's your financially free at 30,000 and so that became the the marching in my mind is how do I get to 30,000 people a month and I kept focusing on I was trying different things and eventually I got to 30,000 people on my list [music] and then 50,000 then 100,000 then a million I remember I was doing the interview with Dan Kennedy about this and I'm curious if you guys have the same thing but in my own head I have this thing where it's like I want to be a humble person I want to like for me to drive and to push forward and like have a team and a staff like I have to have an ego I know what I'm doing and know what I'm talking about People are looking for certainty, right? And a lot of times we we uh look at certainty and ego as like the same kind of thing, right? But then there's like the dark side of ego where you see like the horrible things that happen where it's like people's egos come in and it crushes other people and like and so there's this weird ying-yang in there. And I was asking Dan Kennedy about that and he shared this quote from Carnegie, which is um become one of my favorite quotes. If you know Carnegie at the time, Andrew Carnegie was the richest man in the world. That's where Napoleon Hill like got his commission to go right do all Napoleon Hills work. But Carnegie was the richest man in the world. And this is the quote Dan told me. um from Carnegie says, "No man achieves any great things in life unless in his private thoughts he believes he is superior to all other men." And I heard that I was like, "Oh my gosh." And I think that's part of like you look at the most successful people like most of them are humble outwardly and they they treat people well, but the ones that are most successful, they have exactly what Carnegie said here, in their private thoughts, they believe that they're superior to all other men. Like you have to have that kind of ego to be successful, especially in business, right? Think about business. You are stepping out into a stage, right, where you've got thousands of other people competing for your your audience's attention. Like, why should they listen to you? And if you struggle with that, like, well, I don't know. Why should they listen to me? Like, if you don't have, yes, confidence, yes, positive attitude, but having that egotism, which most people won't ever talk about, but if you don't have that, it's really difficult for you to create a movement to get people to move, to follow, where you can actually change their life. And so, it's one of those uh laws that was fascinating that even back in 1918, he was talking about it. I'm sure is even more controversial then it is nowadays but I do think that to be really really successful in your own mind your private thoughts you have to believe that or else it makes it very difficult to go and do the things you need to do to actually be successful so there's this like there's this dichotomy right where it's like we need to be humble but we need to have an ego right and it's it's a hard thing and I think at least for me when I was an early entrepreneur right I started I started doing this back when I was like 21 years old right I started building a business and there was a window where I start having success and one of the worst things happen that happens to a lot of entrepreneurs especially the first time they have success is that they start believing their own bio they start like thinking like wow I'm I'm amazing look how good I am like they they have this thing right and I think I definitely started having that where it's like everything I was doing was working and kept happening I'm like I'm a I'm the smartest man alive right I'm a genius and then I remember um as my business started growing I had the first big crash right where I had 100 employees we were making a bunch of money and then everything fell apart and I remember um at the the backside of that having the realization I'm like wow like yes obviously I I have a skill set I'm talented but it's not all based on me like there's other forces like there's a quote in the scriptures where uh it says that God will have a humble people either you can humble yourself or he will humble you and every time I hear that it's like I do not want God to humble me that sounds horrible and so I'm like okay I need to be humble so at it was funny at the end of that transition I my business had collapsed everything had failed and I was like just wrestling with this cuz then my own self-conidence my own egotism started going way and I was struggling even more because you need that edge also to become a driver and a producer, right? And I remember um I was at this mastermind in Mexico and one of the days we're sitting there and I'm at this dinner table and sitting next to me is this guy and he was like the keynote speaker for the mastermind like crazy like crazy successful guy. He had like bought and sold like 50 different companies and all all sorts of stuff. And we're having this conversation talking to each other and I remember he asked me he's like well tell me tell me about your your business like tell me about what's been happening. So, of course, I flip into like highlight mode like, "Oh, well, I did this and I did that." You know, I'm listing all the highlights and he's like, and Murray looked at me, he's like, "So, have you ever have you ever cycled?" I'm like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Cycled? Like, have you ever failed and and come back again?" I was like, "Actually, yes." And I told him my first cycle. And I was like, "And if I'm completely honest, I'm in the middle of a cycle right now. It is very, very painful." And he's like, "Oh, good." He's like, "I will never work with an entrepreneur who hasn't cycled at least once." And I was like, "Why? Why not?" He's like, he's like, the first time someone's an entrepreneur, they have success, they believe that they are the reason they were successful. Like, yes, they have to be they have to have skill sets, right? But he's like, but there's people there's there's there's the market, there's a million other things that make you successful. And like yes, you grabbed the opportunity by the horns and you ran with it, but there but he's like um if they haven't cycled once, they still he's like I remember he's like they still believe their own bio. They're still drinking their own Kool-Aid. He's like after they've cycled and they realize that, then I'm willing to invest them as an entrepreneur. But prior to that, I won't. And I remember the first thing was like I remember hearing the word cycle. I'm like that sounds so much better than failure. Like okay there's a word I didn't fail. I'm just cycling right now which sounds better. I hopefully for all you entrepreneurs like you can reframe that cuz failure is so painful. We're cycling. It's like okay everyone does this right? Every good entrepreneur cycles. They all go through the ups and the downs. In fact I believe like the bankruptcy laws from the founding fathers of this country were literally a gift from God. Right? It gives entrepreneurs like us the ability to go and try test and risk because if it wasn't for bankruptcy laws like other countries at least back in the day like you would fail a business they lock you up for the rest of your life right so like who would risk like it's the scariest thing in the world like the founding fathers gave us these laws so that you could try you could try to create something and if you failed it wasn't the end of your life like you could try again right it took the ultimate risk away and so for me it was like understand that cycling was really big and so as I started growing the business the second time like my second big business run was Clickfunnels it was three or four years after our big cycle I met my business partner Todd Dickerson We had the idea for Clickfunnels. He built the software and uh we started going out there and I remember the second time around I was like okay what are the lessons I learned from the first time that I don't want to make this time right the first lesson for me was like god will have a humble people either you can humble yourself or he will humble you and I was like okay I don't I don't want to be humbled I did that once and it was very painful right uh and I I do believe part of my first the first big cycle was because of that like I wasn't humble so I'm like okay I need to remember to be humble what does that mean for me right it means I need to give credit where credit's due I need to be thankful for the people that work with me I need to like acknowledge God's hand in everything I'm doing because it's not just me there's a lot of a lot of things that make this thing happen, right? And yes, I still need to develop my skill set, but I got to remember that like I need to stay humble. Number two, it's like I learned this along the way. It's like when you are building a business, when you succeed, you have to give credit to the people around you, to your team. But if you fail, you have to take the credit yourself. And that's a hard thing to do, right? You as the producer, as the entrepreneur who's going out there risking your money, your livelihood, your everything, you can't be taking the credit for it, right? When you succeed, you give credit to your team. When you fail, you take the failures on yourself. That's how you build a team of people who will go to war with you, right? And so that was my thoughts as we're building. It's like, okay, this is my fault. We fail, it's 100% my fault, right? I have to take that. And then I have to be so grateful for people on my team cuz cuz I couldn't do it without them, right? And we try to acknowledge that as often as we can whenever I'm meeting with our with our and staff and our employees, you will hear me say almost every single time like I fully am aware that people know who Russell Brunson is, but it is not me. It is the team of people behind us that make this all possible. And then third thing though, it's like, and it comes back to the Carnegie quote, like in my private thoughts though, right? Not publicly, but in my private thoughts, if I'm going to be the person who is coming through here and I have to develop a market, I have to smash through things. I got to show up every single day and get my face kicked in by the trolls and the haters and the all that kind of stuff. Like, if I'm going to be successful with this, like, I have to inside of my mind believe that I'm superior to all other men. What's up? This is Russell. Welcome back to my vault. Today I'm going to tell you guys about one of my favorite [music] advertisers of all times. Very famous guy most people have never heard of today. His name is Elmer Wheeler. He wrote a whole bunch of really good books. He's famous for inventing the concept of sell the sizzle not the stake. And this is one of his book. It's called sizzlemanship new tested selling sentences. And uh again [music] he's got dozens of really really good books on selling. This is one that I thought was really cool because uh it deep dives deep into like the actual sentences we use which for all of us online marketing nerds we use sentences all the time. We use headlines. We use copy. We use a lot of different sentences. And this helps you to learn how [music] to sell more sizzle inside of all your senses, which is kind of cool. I got this copy of the book on eBay for a huge screaming deal. It's only $5343. I [music] didn't even get a bidding war. People didn't even know this book exists, so I was able to get it for pretty cheap. There's six core points that Elmer talks about here inside this book. I'm going to break down for you guys going to help you to add more sizzle to everything that you are selling. A couple years ago, I spoke at Grant Cardone's 10X event. You probably heard this story before. I set a world record. We sold 3,000 our course. We sold over a thousand copies of it and what we did that was really powerful is because think about this people are coming to the event they hear me speak. I sell the thing but then they go back home and they their spouse is like you bought what for how what's a funnel right and so we created this little packet they went with everybody when they bought it and inside the packet there's a there's a letter it said letter to the spouse or significant other and someone would take that letter they open it up and inside it's like hey I know your your significant other just got home from this event they spent $3,000 on something you probably think they're a little crazy and you're trying to figure out what in the world they blew this money on. So, I want to make sure you had the same experience so you guys were on the same page. And so, I made a copy of my presentation right here and I had a QR code that would go and link to the presentation where their husband or their wife just bought. They can go watch it. And I logically explained the reason why your your your significant other bought this is because of boom, boom, boom. We gave a logical bullet point list of the reasons why this was a good investment. And uh and we gave that to the spouse. And I told everyone when you get home, give this to your significant other and you'll take care of all the stress you have because it's going to help them to logically understand why you bought it. and then give them the emotional hit they need to do to be able to be like, "Okay, I'm glad you bought this thing." So that's step number one is understand people buy it through emotion, not through logic. All right, step number two. You have to sell the sizzle over the stake. And again, Elmer is uh is the person who came up with that concept and made it popular. Right? So what does that mean? The sizzle, not the stake. Okay. Um I think sometimes for me the better way to uh to understand this a lot of times when people are selling, they're selling the process, not the destination, right? The sizzle, not the steak. So, for example, let's say you are selling a trip to Hawaii, right? You want to talk about the palm trees, the luau, the beach, the swimming. You don't want to talk about all the steps they have to do to get there, right? Cuz getting to Hawaii is a nightmare. I know we just went for spring break, right? You have to get on a plane with a bunch of people. You got to sit in these little tiny seats. The seats don't really recline. Your back starts seizing up, right? And then you got to go through customs where it's really hot outside. And then you got to like put your bag through the thing. And like there's all these steps, right? And people always try to sell that part of the trip, right? And you never do that when you're selling something. You sell the destination, not the process and how to get there, right? Does that make sense? And so that's what the whole selling the sizzle, not the steak is, right? Like the steak's not that great. You sell the sizzle, right? They hear the noise. You look at good TV commercials, right? When they were selling meat back in the day, like you see a picture, like you see a steak, it's like, "All right, but then you add the noise. You add the the emotional feelings, right? You hear the sizzle, you hear the butter popping, all kind of things." Like that's how you sell the steak. You sell the sizzle, not the steak. Okay, so that's point number two from Elmer Wheeler. Number three, use clear, simple language. Okay, this is one of the mistakes most people make. They want to show how smart they are, so they use very big words. I talk about this in the expert secrets book. I'm like, you have to learn how to speak at like a third or fourth grade level. Anything above that is too complicated. And the problem that most people have, especially experts, they want to show how smart they are. So, they will prolificate on these huge words and their audience, they hear them and they feel kind of dumb, but they don't want to say anything, but because they feel dumb, they're not likely to buy from you. Okay? And so what you have to do is you have to simplify your language. In fact, it's interesting during the first uh Trump presidential campaign with Trump versus Hillary. Uh I was writing the expert secrets book. And one of the things as I was doing the study, I was like, you have to write in a very simple language. And so uh we took one of Trump's speeches and we took one of Hillary's speeches. We ran it through um this uh this software that would show you what grade level the writing was done with, which is really fascinating. And I think Hillary was speaking at like an eighth grade level and Trump was speaking at like a third grade level, right? And like that's the concept. You have to numb down your speech so it makes it very simple for people to actually understand. Okay. Now, sometimes you have to use big words that are confusing. So, in the expert secrets book, I teach about a really powerful tool that we call a kind of like bridge. So, I said if you have to introduce a phrase that's that's that's kind of technical or confusing, as soon as you lead the phrase, you have to lead you have to follow it with what I call a kind of like bridge. So, for example, I wrote a video sales letter one time for a company called Prove It sells a product that gets people into ketosis. Okay. Now, when you hear the word ketosis, that is not a simple word. That's a complicated word, right? And so, um, and you get a ketosis and then you have ketones and this whole thing. And so, when I was going through the script, I talked about this thing. I introduced the concept of ketones. As soon as I said ketones, I stopped and I said, it's kind of like a million little motivational speakers running through your body, getting you energy and getting you excited, right? Because people understand what it would feel like to have a million motivational speakers running through your body. They don't understand what ketones are, right? So, I took a complicated phrase and I stopped and immediately I did a kind of like bridge. Okay? So, Elmer's talking about here is using clear, simple language. And anytime it has to be complicated, you immediately stop. Do a kind of like bridge to simplify it so people understand exactly what you're talking about. All right. Point number four, engage the senses and the imagination. The best salespeople in the world, they're not telling you about features and benefits, right? They're engaging you emotionally. They're helping you to see a vivid vision of what life would look like after you have this product or the service. I remember um I think I've shared this before on this channel, but I remember uh when I first got in this coaching business 20 years ago, uh I was studying Robert Allen. He was the biggest real estate guru in the world at the time, right? And I remember um I got on a teles seminar. This teles seminar, he spent like an hourlong process helping people to create a vivid vision. He talked about imagine your dream home and what does it smell like and what is it like when you walk through the door like do your kids come to you? Is it a dog? What does that look like? And I want you to like experience hugging him and what does it smell like? What does it taste like? What does the food taste like? And like he tried to create this thing where you're engaging the senses and the imagination. In fact, I remember I did a podcast episode saying you have to be an idiot to want to make $10 million a year. In my head, that's the destin. Why would you ever want to do that? Right? And I had these false beliefs. It was selfish. It was greedy. It was wrong. Like whatever those things might be, right? So my first plateau was like I can't make more than my dad. Next plateau was like a million dollars is like this scary number, right? And the next after that was just like why would I need that kind of like what was the purpose? You know, like it didn't seem like something that was of value. And so for me like there's always these different belief patterns. And a lot of times you don't realize what they are until you figure out how to break them or you're looking back or you find someone who already has and you're like, "Man, this person does not have those beliefs that I do." I think I've done four or five interventions with Tony where I bring him a question, he like does this Tony magic and like changes my brain. It was after Click Funnels has passed $100 million a year and I was stuck and I was like, I don't know how to get to the next level. I can't figure it out. And he's like, well, who are the people you're spending time with? I was telling him, he's like, well, cool. Those are all people that have gotten businesses to your level. The thinking that got you there will not get you to the next level. He's like, proximity is power. Like you you were in proximity to those people. got you to that level, but those people are at that level. He's like, if you want to get the next level, you have to get in proximity with people to the next level and that's how you're going to get cuz it's going to shift your beliefs, your mindset, your subconscious mind, and that'll get you to the next level. That was just a fascinating breakthrough for me cuz I thought, you know, like is there a level beyond this? And that's how you find it and that's how you figure out what beliefs are holding you back. So, the interesting thing about this book that's different than like a traditional book about subconscious is he's trying to show how your subconscious mind can bring out the creativity you need. Right? A lot of times, how many of us go and we have a problem that we're trying to fix, right? And so you're doing meetings, you're reading books, like trying to solve this problem, trying to solve this problem. You can't figure out the problem. And then, has this ever happened to you where you're in the shower not thinking about it? You're showering, all of a sudden, like the idea pops in your like it just shows up magically, right? Like that's what this book's talking about. How do you create those moments? A little while ago in the office, we same thing. We had like eight of us in the in the the bull pit talking about something, trying to solve this problem, trying to solve this problem. And we spent like an hour and a half, two hours on it without coming to any like none of us got an idea. And after about 2 hours, I'd been drinking way too many updates and, you know, drinks and stuff. I was like, I got to go to the bathroom. So, I went to the bathroom. I'm literally gone maybe a minute. I disconnect my conscious mind. So, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to the bathroom." And instantly, the idea just pops up, right? This is what his book talks so much about is is learning how to use your subconscious mind. In fact, on page 13 here, he's talking about business people, entrepreneurs sitting at desks. He says, "Desks are not thinking machines. In fact, they are with the paper and the clutter on them. They're apt to be distractions rather than help us to actually think. They are the one place where men get so close to his business they can get no perspective on it. So he talks about here is he starts talking about creating what's called he calls the six-hour workday. You know kind of like Tim Ferrris's 4-hour work week. He says 6 hour work day. He's like for 6 hours you're in there and you're able to work consciously like you're trying to figure out problems you're solving and stuff. He said the last two hours of the day well he found all the business executives he coached on this last two hours they would stop doing like active work and then they would try to like engage their subconscious mind. I need creativity. I need ideas. You don't do that by sitting at your desk working working. And you do that by disengaging. For most like they sit down last two hours of the day from 3:00 to 5:00. They're reading a book. They're talking to the co-workers. They're walking. One of the stories here talks about Henry Ford where he says Henry Ford who obviously one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. He said that he didn't ever sit at his desk. He would walk back and forth and back and forth. He said that's how he became so successful because he's never sitting here consciously doing work. He was spending time on the things he loved the most thinking about and then like the ideas would just kind of would pop up to the surface. And so that's what is one of the coolest things this book talks about. As you guys know, I am a workaholic. I love working. I love sitting at my desk writing, reading, like my days are jam-packed with a whole bunch of stuff. They have been for a decade plus since we launched Click Funnels. I have not stopped moving. Like it just keeps going and going. As you probably know, about a month and a half ago, I was at a wrestling tournament and I detached both my biceps. Literally, God is like basically took me and put me on the sidelines. Like, Russell, you cannot work for a little bit. So, I lost this arm first. I got surgery on this arm. I could not type. So, I had one hand. So, I'm typing one hand as fast as I can, you know, still trying to get everything done. And then on two weeks later, I got this one done and all a sudden, I'm in double cast. I cannot type. And so, I'm stuck there. And you know, we had an event. I was on stage at an event with Double Cast. I couldn't talk. Earlier today, Todd Dickerson, who's my business partner, Click Funnels, Todd brought to me and to our entire team like basically some big issues we were dealing with and struggling with, right? We sat there for like 2 hours trying to figure out how do we solve this problem? And same thing like we're going around, everyone's putting ideas in like we left the meeting uneasy cuz like no one knew the answer. And it's like you have to solve this problem or else there's going to be bad things that happen, right? Like you're going have to lay off team members, you're going to like it was one of those kind of problems. And I remember going home that night and I was tired. It had been a long day. I had no arms so I was frustrated. And normally what I would do is I would like, you know, have someone turn on YouTube and I would try to like sedate myself and numb my brain. But for some reason I I didn't want to. My wife left to his church activity. So I was home alone for a little bit. And so I remember sitting down there. I'm sitt on the couch. I'm just going to think until the answer shows up. So I sat on the couch. I'm just kind of daydreaming and thinking and stuff. And within 15 minutes all of a sudden like boom popped my head. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I think it solves the problem." I'm looking from this angle and this angle. Every single angle. I was like, "This solves the problem." like within 15 minutes it just showed up when I disconnected from me working and doing stuff and I was telling someone later I was like I feel like God literally like stop working put me on the sidelines and like let me like push something in your subconscious mind so he literally put me on sidelines so I couldn't do anything and all a sudden like all these ideas started coming and so four week period of time where I could not use my arms doing literally what talks about in this book like shifting from you know the 10-hour workday that Russell's normally doing even I couldn't even do a 6 hour workday that he talks about recommends in this book I was literally doing like a one or two hour workday and the rest of the time like I could just think or walk or you know whatever and that's when these ideas started Ed bubbling up. And so it's pretty powerful when you understand like that's how your subconscious brain works. Cuz if you can't find the answer consciously, your conscious mind can only find things through your five senses, right? So if you can't see it, taste it, touch it, smell it, or feel it. If you can't get the data from there, like you can't find the answer. If you can't find it from one of those five senses, you need to stick back and let your subconscious mind bring it to you. And when you understand that, that's the main principles book. That's how you start getting more creative in business. All these ideas will start bubbling. Now, this book obviously talks a lot about using your subconscious mind for creativity. But the other thing to understand is your subconscious mind. It's the belief patterns you have. Yes, it will give you ideas and those things will bubble up when you take the time to break away. But also like your subconscious mind, your subconscious beliefs are the level you're at. I remember Tony Robbins one time talking about how how your subconscious beliefs are and your identity kind of like a thermostat, right? Where if your thermostat set at 72, you may get a little above 72 or below, but like it snaps back up, right? Gets above like the air conditioner comes on, snaps back down. You go down below and the heater snaps back. But like that's like your floor, your subconscious floor, right? It's a lot of us like we have these beliefs and this is our subconscious floor, right? And we have desire to raise the temperature to raise the heat to 90 or 100 degrees where we want to be at, right? And so we have we set that conscious decision like I'm going to do the thing, right? What happens is it goes up a little bit and then your subconscious is like uh nope. It snaps you back down to where it believes you you belong, right? To that level. And so we all of us we have these subconscious floors, these beliefs we have. And so if you ever felt stuck, like that's the reason why. So understanding your subconscious mind, how to figure, okay, where's the beliefs that I'm at? How do I break those beliefs and set a new temperature right a new level? Like that's the key to start moving up and actually having more success than you are today.