Hey, this is Russell Brunson.
For all you guys who are just tuning in,
right now we are doing a show.
We're answering your number one questions
about growing companies, building funnels,
driving traffic, making money
and a whole bunch of other fun stuff.
Today's question is about business failure.
What are your 'Top Rules' for avoiding business failure
and what was your biggest mistake?
I got so many big mistakes I could share.
But the top rules for avoiding business failure,
I would say, if you look at a business,
for some reason, I don't know if it's just me but,
I think most people that get into business,
they think it's like this weird thing, right?
We go to business school, and we go to all these things.
I remember taking business classes
and they taught me all sorts of weird stuff
that didn't make any sense to me, right.
Like, supply chain management and,
just, anyway I can't even remember most of my schooling,
if I'm completely honest, yet I built a huge company
because most of those things don't actually matter.
You start thinking about like,
what actually matters in business?
The number one thing, and most people
aren't going to tell you this.
The number one thing really is relationships.
I wish that in my business class,
they would've had a class that just said this
"Russell this is the deal, people do business
with people they like, so you should become
someone, first off, that people like
and, second off, find other people
and be really really nice to them, 'kay?"
And this is tough sometimes 'cause a lot of times,
you'll get into business, you'll be working with people
and you have somebody who will treat you so bad
and you look at them and you wanna do,
what I wanna do sometimes and just like,
pound their face and destroy them 'cause you're so angry.
But, what you have to understand is that,
no matter how somebody treats you in a business relationship
you always have to keep, no matter what happens,
you have to keep a good relationship.
I'm gonna share a story, I'm not gonna share names
because I don't want to do that but,
there was somebody when we were first launching Clickfunnels
who was a close friend and a partner.
We'd done a bunch of partnership projects in the past
and when Clickfunnels came, we were about to launch it,
he actually stepped back and came back to me like,
the day before we launched it,
"hey sorry, I decided, instead of being a partner with you
and helping you sell this, I'm actually
gonna be a competitor of yours
and I'm really really sorry."
And I remember being so frustrated
and angry and upset and I wanted to just like,
fly to his home and like, you know, rip his arms off
and whatever, I don't know, I was not happy at all.
And instead I was like, you know what,
I need to maintain this relationship
'cause I have no idea what could happen in the future,
he's been a good friend up to this point
and maybe, you know, whatever,
I'm just gonna bite my tongue
and so I just wrote back, said "no worries,
totally understand and good luck in the future
and hopefully we'll work on something later."
And I just stepped back, and I'm so grateful I did
because about a month and a half later,
he came, said "you know what? That thing fell through
and I apologize, I should have thought through this
and I was just being short-sighted,
I got excited about the opportunity, whatever."
He said "will you forgive me?"
and I was like "yeah, totally cool",
he's like "sweet" and he came back
and for about two years he was our number one affiliate,
inside of Clickfunnels.
And I'm so grateful I didn't burn that relationship.
So, have relationships and, no matter what happens.
I dropped my red one, but I need it
because we're about to build a fire.
Do not, there's my log, and there's the fire.
Sorry, I wish I was better at drawing.
But do not burn the relationships,
keep them alive, no matter what
because you never know when that person
could be useful to you and when
you could be useful to them as well.
So that's the top rules, understanding
that the relationship is the key.
Number two, focus on your list.
Build your list, build your list, build your list.
I remember when I got started 15 years ago,
for those who've been around that long, you may remember,
in fact, my first mentors name was Mark Joyner
and Mark is amazing.
And I remember he would always tell me, like,
"Russell, you gotta build a list."
And I was like "why?" And he's like,
"you gotta focus on building a list,
that's the key to making money online."
And, so I started building my list
and first I had, you know, a hundred people join my list
and then a thousand and then five thousand,
it was growing really slowly.
And then, about that time is when AdSense came out,
this is 15 years ago.
And if some of you guys remember AdSense,
it was like, you could make these garbage websites,
throw up these little Google ads on it
and Google would rank these sites really really high
and if someone clicked on it, you'd get paid.
I had friends making half a million dollars a month
by just making garbage sites and I'm like,
this looks way easier, I don't have to do anything,
I just gotta make garbage and I get paid.
And Mark was like "no, focus."
He's like "that's gonna go away,"
he's like "they always do," like,
"just focus on building your list,
focus on building your list, focus on building your list."
I'm like, "but there's so much money right there."
He's like "no, focus." And so I focused on building my list
and I'm so grateful I did.
One of my friends told me that,
the metric and this metric doesn't hold true all the time,
but for the worst case scenario,
you should average...
$1...
per...
month,
per name on an email address on your list, 'kay?
So for example, when I had 500 people on my email list,
I was averaging about $500 a month.
When I had a thousand people on my list,
I was averaging a thousand a month.
When I got to 10,000 on my list, 10,000 a month.
When I got to 100,000, I was averaging 100,000 a month.
And a million, a million a month.
Like, it synced pretty close.
Now the better you are at this, at building relationships
with your list, the more that'll go up.
Some people I know make five, six, seven, eight, ten dollars
per month, per name on the email address list.
So it can go up and down but that's like,
the worst case scenario, right?
So I was focusing on building this list,
I got to 500, then a thousand, then 10,000
and then about that time is when AdSense crashed.
And friends I had making a half a million dollars a month
went out of business overnight and they were done.
And luckily for me, I had this list,
I had this asset and I was able to keep emailing this list
and keep growing it, right?
And this list got bigger and bigger.
Twice my business, I almost went bankrupt.
Two times.
And I say almost because both times,
I should have been bankrupt by any, like,
I did some stupid things, we made some bad mistakes,
the market shifted, all sorts of reasons
and excuses but looking at a paper,
I should've went bankrupt both times
and both times I didn't because of my list.
My list came through, saved my butt when like,
everything was crashing around
and I had no more money.
Everything was falling around, I was like,
"how do I keep the doors open?"
I was like, "I need to make a really good offer for my list"
and I thought about what could I create for them?
And I created an offer, I emailed my list out
and money came back in.
So focusing on the list is number two.
And then number three...
Is...
no...
shiny...
objects.
Which kinda ties back into this list right here.
Go back to the fundamentals, kay?
There's always new stuff popping up.
I remember when Amazon first hit a couple years ago,
it was like "oh everything's on Amazon."
And people went to Amazon, it was awesome,
then guess what happened?
Amazon started slapping you and kicking you out.
And then, it was like "oh E-commerce here,"
and then "oh Adsense" and like people have been jumping,
as like as I've been doing this game for 15 plus years,
people have been jumping everywhere.
The only thing that's been consistent,
through the ups and the downs, are the fundamentals.
What are the fundamentals?
If you read the Dotcom Secrets book,
these are the fundamentals.
Here is how you build a funnel,
here's how you attract customers into your funnel,
here's how you communicate with those funnels,
with those people, here's how you do, like,
this is the fundamentals of how you build
and grow a company, kay?
So focus on the fundamentals,
don't get distracted by the new shiny object,
focus on the fundamentals.
What kind of product am I creating?
How am I selling that product?
How am I getting people to show up?
That's all fundamentals.
If you look at, like, if I simplify this down,
to like the easiest thing possible,
this is all business is, right?
Number one, creating a product or an offer,
so here's like, here's the thing I'm selling
and make sure it's awesome.
Then, I gotta figure out some way to actually sell
that product, so what's the sales message?
And then I gotta figure out how to get people,
over here, to come and see the sales message.
Get people, come see the sales message
and then I make them a really good offer
and they give me money, that's the fundamentals of business.
Kay? That is a funnel.
And so, those are the fundamentals, like,
if I was you guys, I would focus on
nothing but the fundamentals of how do I build a funnel?
How do I grow my list?
Like, how do I do this, over and over and over again?
Because things are gonna shift.
Mark Zuckerberg someday, as nice as he is right now,
tomorrow he's gonna kick a bunch of us out, right?
Same things gonna happen on YouTube, on Facebook,
on Instagram, like, the platforms are gonna change
but the fundamentals don't.
So focus on the fundamentals and that is the biggest thing
to make sure you don't have failures
and so you can avoid all the big mistakes
that me, and a lot of the people I've been watching,
over the last decade and a half, have had,
when they've tried to play this game.
Thank you so much for watching,
every single week we publish new secrets just like this,
so make sure you subscribe, so you don't miss any of them
and I will see you on the next video.