The gift I got today, that I want to share with you so you can keep moving forward.
On today’s special 257th episode Russell talks about how money doesn’t buy happiness, but how you can achieve happiness by helping and serving others, as well as by improving your inner self.
Here are some cool things to listen for in this episode:
So listen below to find out why money doesn’t equal happiness.
---Transcript---
Hey Everyone this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to episode 257, a very special episode of Marketing in Your Car. Alright everybody, I’m excited today and you may be thinking, Russell why is today so special? Well It’s special for a few reasons. First off, this is episode 257, that just sounds cool. Second off, right now, a little later on today we are taking these first 250 episodes and we’re putting them onto MP3 players that we will be giving away for free plus shipping, I think I talked about this a couple of months ago, but we’re going to do it. This is the last episode that will be on the MP3 player.
So for those of you guys that are listening on the MP3 player, you made it to the end, congratulations! For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, give me about a week or two, we still gotta get them back from China, but when you go to marketinginyourcar.com, you’ll be able to get a free MP3 player with the first 257 episodes preloaded, which will be kind of cool. And my brother, actually edited out the intro song on most of them so you don’t have to hear the intro song 8 thousand times either, so that’s kind of cool too. So that way you can go and you can geek out. You can binge listen to everything while you’re everywhere and you’ll have your own personal MP3 player with the first 257 episodes, so I’m excited. That’s number one.
So then with that said, I gotta think about something cool to say, because this is going to be the last episode that those that are on the MP3 player got. I can’t just end on a thought, it’s gotta end on something cool. So then I had all sorts of stress and pressure. I’m like, well crap. What am I going to talk about? Then it came to me, so I actually just drove back, this is my second drive to the office, I’m driving back home and back to the office because I wanted to get my notepad. This morning I had one of my coaching sessions with Tara, and it was interesting. Tara is my woo woo coach, you guys probably heard me talk about her a couple of times, super cool. They’re also in my Inner Circle and just some of my favorite people in the world. The coaching’s been really cool because its kind been coaching things but kind of you don’t know where it going to go and it goes different directions and every time there is something really valuable that comes out the other side of it. And this time it kind of answered a question that I don’t think it’s a verbal question I have had. Or I’m asking this question I’m asking out loud consciously. But subconsciously I think that probably all of us have this thought as we’re doing what we do in our lives and businesses.
The thought is does any of this even matter? I am fully aware that someday I’m going to be dead and it could be today, that car just drove past, boom, could hit me. I could be doing my podcast and driving and I get hit by a car and it’s over. And I am fully aware of that. When I die, guess what I get to take with me. Nothing. It’s done. My cool car, my cool house, none of my……it’s gone instantly. So I get that, I believe that, I understand that. So it’s like, why do we even care?
It’s interesting when my Grandpa passed away, probably a year and a half, 2 years ago now. I thought it was so weird, after he died they brought all my uncles together, basically they handed out his possessions he had left in life. There was a gun and a couple of things and that was it and I’m like, “Wow. My grandpa lived a full life. He was amazing.” By the time you get to the end you give away all your stuff, you got rid of them. It’s like, “Here are the 4 or 5 things I have left.” And you divvy them out and it’s done. Man that’s going to happen to me. The reality is none of this money stuff matters, even a little bit. Other than it helps make your life a little more comfortable here, but it doesn’t matter, it’s stupid, it’s ridiculous. My mission of helping entrepreneurs to share their message so they can make more money, and we talk about money a lot because that’s how we keep score. But does it even matter? When all is said and done, am I just kind of spinning my wheels? I think I subconsciously have that thought, maybe I should just shut down shop and focus on other places I can contribute. Does this contribution actually help, help people make money? You know what I mean?
So there’s the question that I didn’t consciously ask, but from today’s coaching session kind of came out of it. And if you could see my notepad, I actually grabbed my notes. This is the first Marketing In Your Car I’m actually teaching from a notepad, so that’s how prepared…….I have these little circles with arrows that go around in a bigger circle, I think there’s 4 circles and the top circle I wrote, “Triggers Fears” and so what does that mean? What I probably do for a lot of you guys, I’m guessing, hopefully I get you guys excited and help you see the vision of what can be and where you could go. But I’m sure with that comes a lot of fears. Like, oh wow, he wants me to do a podcast, or he wants me to go spend money on ads. He wants me to do a webinar every single week. Every week he wants……all these fears come up, right. And then I’m trying to be a good role model, so I’m doing these things that I’m telling people to do and I’m actively, consistently doing them over and over again trying to be, I hate saying this, sounds stupid, but being the model. Here’s something….I gotta try and practice what I preach so people can see that and hopefully say, “If Russell can do it, I can do it.”
That’s something Liz told me after she started having success, she said, “If Russell can do it, I can do it.” And I hope people feel that way. I want to be this thing, but a lot of what I’m telling people to do and teaching and coaching on there’s fear associated with it, right? If there weren’t fears, you would have already done it, but for some reason there’s these fears. And most of the time, most of the coaching and consulting I do is stuff people know. Sometimes there’s tactiful things that we bring to the table and they’re different. But most of the time, you kind of know the path, but there’s fears and concerns and false beliefs and things that keep you from that. So I’m coming in and I’m like a wrecking ball. Busting through these things and probably causing a lot of fears for you guys.
So that’s the first step in my little mission here. The second step is come back after you fall through with tools. So it’s like, we got a new webinar movie, go! I’m freaked out! Don’t worry, here’s the tools to actually make that possible. These are the tools and the training and the coaching and consistent repetition of this stuff. If you listen to my message, if you listen to all 257 episodes, you probably noticed there’s a lot of patterns and a lot of repetition and a lot of things we come back to that are essential. So after we get the fears, after we set off the triggers that cause the fears, then my next step is I’m delivering the tools and the things to make it possible. And then those people, unfortunately not everyone, but the people who step into those fears and accept them and then go after the tools to fight it, eventually when they follow that process they get to a spot where they get money or security in their life.
So it’s interesting because that’s typically the driving force for change. You go through this process, you have these fears, you learn these tools and then during this process you start becoming and that’s the word I want to stress. You start becoming something. You figure out what people need, you figure out how you can serve them at the highest level. You figure out your voice. You start learning it and developing as a human and as a person and you become something different, something more, hopefully. So when that happens, the way the world or the universe or whatever call it, rewards you for that sacrifice and that effort. And really it’s the transformation from growth to contribution. In fact, I have this as the overarching theme for the next Funnel Hacking Live, is like that transition from growth to contribution. There’s a point in our life where we’re growing and learning and studying and it’s all a growth phase for yourself. Because you can’t…..if you’re not prepared you can’t go out there and serve. So there’s a growth phase we all have to go through.
But if you keep growing forever, you keep learning and growing and you keep that to yourself, you can’t keep progressing. The only way, there’s a point where you can’t progress in life through more personal development, or more growth, it’s impossible. There comes a point where the only way you can actually grow in life is by transitioning from growth to contribution, and then your growth comes through the contribution. My company grows now….me as a person grow as I help and serve other people and contribute to them and as they have success, that’s what brings me joy, which is kind of cool.
There’s the religious tangent here that I probably won’t’ go too deep into because I know every time I talk about religion I get a couple funny stares, but for the Mormon’s who are out there listening. There’s a scripture that we believe in Moses 1:39 it says, “Behold this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortal and eternal life of man.” That’s God’s mission too. It’s not to make him more glorious or better. He grows in glory by contribution, by helping us to achieve our full potential. So it’s kind of this really cool thing.
So back to this, so through that process of becoming who you’re supposed to be through the personal development, the growth and going through the tools and all these things, at the end you become something and have the ability to start contributing and helping and serving other people. And when you start contributing, the first thing that starts coming back to you, because it’s the way this world judges monetary value is money, you start making money. At first it’s exciting and then it gets really exciting and then one day you wake up and you realize that it doesn’t matter. A lot of people, they start this journey because they think that when I have money I’ll be happy. How many of you guys have thought that? If I just had money, if I had security, then I’d be happy. And the weirdest thing happens when you get money and financial security, you find how it does not bring happiness. So I hate to ruin the surprise for you guys. It doesn’t. It brings temporary pleasure, kind of like eating ice cream. It’s like, “Oh that was good, that was really good.” And fifteen minutes later you are like, ”What was I thinking? That was not worth what I feel like now.” That’s how money is, its temporary pleasure.
So we mistake that sometimes for happiness, but it doesn’t. It leaves you empty just like that ice cream, you’re empty. Maybe you’re kind of full, but you feel empty inside and you’re like, “Man, I could have not eaten that and felt really good, but I didn’t.” That’s kind of how money, you’ll find out, money isn’t the best………it’s not the best servant. It’s like Ice cream.
So they get money and after you get money you realize, “Well, I’m still not truly happy.” Then, and this is the key, then you start focusing more on the contribution and you start trying to make the changes inward in yourself. Because you realize true happiness doesn’t come through wealth, it comes through serving other people, it comes through the actual things I need to change about my life. It has to do with cutting out addictions, with serving people, all these weird religious things we learn about in church. I’ll leave that one there. But it’s interesting.
But the problem is that most people never get to fixing themselves and the internal struggles and problems they have and really get out there and contribute because they are so stressed out about the financial problems. I remember growing up, and I don’t remember where in school I learned this, I think its like the Mazlov hierarchy needs or something like that. That’s like 8th grade coming back, so I could be completely off, but I think that’s what it was. And in that there’s the need for hunger, and until that need is met, you can’t do anything else. When you get your hunger met, then you’re like okay I need love. When love’s met, then you need shelter, whatever those things are. There’s all these hierarchy of needs, and the problem is….it’s almost like this is. The real needs are internal problems we have with ourselves that we need to fix, change, grow and develop, but it’s hard to get to that higher need. It’s hard to really care about where you’re living if you’re hungry. As far as Mazlov’s hierarchy.
So I feel like, my mission, if we call it that. The reason why it doesn’t matter is because I’m trying to get people to a state where they get through these needs so they can get to a spot where they can focus on their own personal growth and the contribution to help other people. And so if we can get you financially secure and in a place where you’re in a spot of abundance, or whatever you want to call it, now you’ve got the ability to really focus on the inward things that you need to work on in yourself, first off. And second off, really start focusing more on the growth and contribution.
So that was cool, like when I saw it today I sketched it out and I had this little thing in my notes with the circles of trigger and fears over tools, over security, over to inward change and then back to growth and contribution. For me, that validated the fact that what I’m doing is important beyond just I’m helping people make money. Because like I said, in the end that doesn’t matter.
So for you, I hope you kind of think about that for yourself. The people that you’re serving, and I know that you guys are serving them all at different capacities. Some of you guys are helping save people’s marriages. Some of you guys are helping people with their physical bodies, their health and nutrition. Some of you guys are helping by creating products and services. All of our businesses are here to serve people. That’s why we develop them, that’s why they’re here. So I hope that just thinking through this for your own business, your own life it helps you to kind of think through that and figure out how can I serve people at a higher level? How can I focus on the things that I know are holding me back? I know what holds me back. I know what my pet issues are. The little things that I know, man if I could get rid of these 3 or 4 things I could serve more people, I could feel better about myself. I could be a better dad, a better father, a better husband. I know what those things are and I think you probably do too, deep down.
So let’s focus on building the business. You can get your footings underneath you. You can have that stability and you can focus on other things because I don’t want you miss those. I don’t want you to miss out on what life can be because you’re stressing out so much about the financial side of it. The tools are there, the keys are there. We share, everyday on this podcast, we share through Facebook Live, through training, through podcasts, through blogging. We’re giving and sharing as much as we can. We also do it through our training programs, through our coaching, through our software, through our mastermind groups and wherever you’re able to plug in. Plug in and take what you can from that and apply it.
Right now, we just recently opened up the Inner Circle, we had a couple spots open up. A bunch of people messaged me, “I can’t afford it, I’m never going to be successful now because I can’t get into your inner circle.” I’m like no, plug in where you’re at. We have stuff at all levels. I’m not holding things back. The reason why my book name is Dot Com Secrets is because I’m the worst secret keeper on planet earth. People always ask me, “Russell, can you keep a secret?” I’m like, “No!” I’m like the worst secret keeper ever. You tell me anything, I’m sharing with the world. I wrote a book called Dot Com Secrets that told everything I ever knew. I am the worst secret keeper ever. But if you’re okay with that, to share with me, I’m going to try to help, and see if whatever you shared with me will help other people. I’m horrible at secrets.
I’m not holding back on you guys. There’s nothing that I’m giving that I’m like, “Not going to tell them this piece, they gotta upgrade to get that.” Every level that you plug into, I’m giving you everything. I’m giving you my all. So understand that. If you can’t afford a coaching program yet, then go get the books. If you can’t afford the books yet, get on the podcast, it’s free. If you don’t have a phone to listen to a podcast, go to the library and listen to it. Whatever you need to do, but plug in at whatever level you can and if I’m doing my job right and I’m doing my best, we can ascend you up to the next level. To where you can then afford the next thing to help get you to the next level and keep moving up. And it’s not so much that we want or need more money, but it’s level commitment that comes with that, that helps hold you accountable to actually implementing and following through. Some of these fears and these pains that when you’ve got some money on the line it makes it a lot easier to break through and actually achieve those things that you want in life.
So that’s why those things are there. Plug in wherever you can, and we’re going to continue to give and serve and hopefully get you to where you want to be so you can become who you want to be. And if I can do that for at least one of you guys in this podcast, this business, then everything we’re doing is worth it. So I appreciate you guys listening in. For those that are on the MP3 player, I hope you enjoyed this. Go back now to marketinginyourcar.com and make sure you’re subscribed so you can listen to all future episodes. For those of you guys who are on iTunes right now or whatever, listening to this. Make sure you get the MP3 player so you can go back and have an immersed weak and pound through the first 257 episodes and geek out with us. And hopefully we can help serve you guys as much as we can. With that said, I appreciate you all. Thank you so much for everything, and I will talk to you guys all again soon.