A few cool stories that will hopefully re-align what you define as what you actually earn.
On today’s episode Russell talks about doing what you said you were going to do instead of trying to lie, cheat, and trick your way into money. Here are some of the other insightful things Russell talks about in this episode:
So listen here to find out why integrity is more important than money.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Tonight we’re going to be hanging out and talking a little bit about the fact that nobody owes you anything and you should just be grateful for the opportunity.
Alright, I’m going to share with you guys some stuff tonight that I don’t normally share. Probably, I haven’t decided if I want to share normally or not. Anyway, I’m going to go into that here in a minute.
But I wanted to share one idea that’s completely not related to marketing, maybe it is. Who knows? Right now I am eating this, I don’t know if you can see this. If you guys are sitting here, I’m in my kitchen. This is my dinner. I share this because right now I’m on this, “How to get ripped before Funnel Hacking Live” diet with Bart Miller. It’s been funny, he’s got me working out, doing all sorts of stuff, but also had me eating a very specific way.
And I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to stick with it. In fact, the first day Dave and I, Dave’s doing it with me, we both went over to the grocery store and bought stuff and it was like $50 for that one day just to eat stuff. We just bought packs of chicken breasts and broccoli and it was horrible.
And the second day, I brought turkey from Thanksgiving, you know a little bit ago. And then Dave ran out of time to buy food, so he literally had his son go and buy him packs of deli meat. So he sits there all day eating packs of deli meat. And by day two we were like, we will never actually do this, because this is too hard to actually live this way. Which I’m sure is why a lot of people don’t lose weight and probably other things in your life you don’t do because it’s too hard to consistently do it.
So we went online and found someone here in Boise who cooks meals. So we gave her all the macros, micros, all that kind of stuff of what it needs to be and then everyday she literally makes us three meals, drops them off in the morning all perfectly cooked, fine tuned, healthy with exactly the carbs, macros, micros, fats, proteins, everything that is perfect to actually what it’s supposed to be.
So that’s what I’m eating now. This is my third meal today and it’s nice not to think and just grab it and eat. So I recommend it for any of you guys. And it’s not that expensive. We’re paying $300 a week for this, which if I was to go out one meal a week, that’s way more than three hundred bucks. This is three meals a day and plus it keeps me, all I’m allowed per mouth is what she puts into the boxes, that’s it. So just a thought. Find someone to cook your meals for you and do other things that are keeping you from getting the goals you want.
Alright, I digress. What I wanted to share with you guys today, or tonight, is pretty important I think. So it, I was going to share one thing, but there’s stories I can’t tell. So there’s been, honestly three or four situations in the last two weeks that have been insane. It’s been probably some of the hardest two weeks of my life, when it relates to the negative sides of business.
So for me, it’s been funny because I’ve been trying to block it and defend it because I need to keep moving forward and the negativity of stuff can keep me or you or anybody from moving forward. So I don’t want to share those specific stories, but the way that people dealt with them was really, I don’t think right. So I’m going to leave it at that. I’m not going to go deeper into it.
But what I do want to share, I want to share something that actually…I want to share this not to brag, that’s not the point, but to show I practice what I preach. I don’t just talk about this stuff, but I actually believe it, because I think that’s important. So that’s the only reason I’m sharing this story and hopefully it will help some of you guys to think about how you deal with stuff in the future. Hopefully it will help at least somebody out there.
Some of you guys know that a couple of years ago there was a company that got launched called Pruvit. And I was part of the original team that helped launch that and I was the dude who wrote the script for the animated video. I had my animators animate the whole thing and that became the campfire video for that company and in exchange for me doing that initial stuff we negotiated some equity in the company. The equity right now, looking at where the company’s blown up in the last three or four years, is worth insane amounts of money. Well over 8 figures, probably closer to…..well, it’s insanely a lot.
I negotiated that ahead of time, and then I was going to do a bunch of other things for the company, and just for some reason some of the things didn’t work because it was hard within the company. Network marketing companies software makes it hard to do some of the funnels and things I was planning on helping with. So that was kind of hard and then Clickfunnels was taking off at the same time, so I was focusing there.
When all was said and done at the end of the day, I didn’t do what I thought I was going. But what I did have was this really cool fancy thing called a contract that I had signed that said I owned x% of the company. The situation with the multiple people this week, it was not this same situation, it was something kind of like that. Where people didn’t pull their load and then they’re demanding this justice. It was unjust because they didn’t do anything.
It makes me so angry and frustrated. So I was thinking about that with myself and I was like, I’m in the same situation here. Based on what I negotiated three years ago, I own x% of this company. And while that’s awesome and it’s worth insane amounts of money, if I’m completely honest with myself, it is not fair. Not to me, it’s not fair to them. And if I was in their situation, I know in my mind that I would be annoyed by me all the time. The very thought of me, “Russell got this thing, and he did this little thing upfront and then we haven’t heard from him in the last three years, doing his own thing, running his own direction.”
And instead of being like, “Hahahaha, I got the contract, you owe me.” I actually actively reached out to them and said, “Hey, I don’t feel like I deserve this.” And Brian who is the owner of the company of course is like, “No, no you totally deserve it.” And I’m like, “I don’t and I’m okay with that. I thought I was going to be doing this, this and this for this movement and I didn’t. I wasn’t able to. Some things were because of technical things didn’t connect on the funnel side, some of it was because I didn’t have time. And I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. It’s not fair to you and I want someday when you sell this thing for you to be mad at me or angry at me when you have to give me this huge check because I didn’t deserve it, and I didn’t earn it and I don’t want it.”
He’s like, “Well this is kind of weird. What do you want?” and I was like, “For what I did, I think this is what would make sense.” And it’s literally like me giving back 8 figures worth of cash and just being like, “Here you go.” And taking something way less. Because that’s what I actually earned, and that’s what I deserve. I think he was kind of confused, then he said okay and now we’re making the transition, the shift away and I’m signing away my equity in exchange for something way less, because that’s what I actually earned, and what I actually deserve.
So that’s what I want you guys to start thinking about and doing. In a situation with a business partner or a friend or an employer, whatever it is, get what you actually deserve. Don’t get more. There’s this weird thing inside where people think they deserve everything. It’s ridiculous, it’s insane. I wouldn’t have believed some of these things if they didn’t happen to me over the last two weeks. But it’s insane what people feel like they deserve, even though they don’t deserve. Because of something, they feel like they….it’s so infuriating to me.
I remember I had a chance to hear this guy speak a little while ago name Nido Qubein, if you guys never heard of him, he is probably the best speaker I ever heard. I heard him probably seven or eight, longer, probably ten years ago now, at a Dan Kennedy event. And I think he’s like the CEO or something of Wonder Bread and a bunch of other things. He’s an entrepreneur and he actually came over to the country with like $20 in his pocket and built this huge empire. He’s an awesome dude.
In this speech, I’m totally going to slaughter because it’s a decade ago that I heard it, I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember the feeling I got and the message. But he talked about how he basically got a job as the, I don’t know what they call them in college, he was in charge of this college. The college had been struggling and he came in to turn it around.
And he came in the first week, he worked really hard for the first week and then when he came in they handed him a paycheck. He said, “What’s this for?” and they said, “This is your paycheck.” And he said, “Well, I haven’t done anything yet.” And they’re like, “Well, you get paid every two weeks, that’s how it works.” So they gave him the check and he sat at his desk and said, “I did not earn that.”
And he kept working and working. Two weeks later they came in to give him the next paycheck and he’s like, “What is this for?” and they’re like, “That’s your paycheck.” And he’s like, “I didn’t earn that.” He put it down. He kept trying to, his job, his role was to transform the university and he couldn’t do it, he kept trying and it took him a while because it’s a big thing to do. And eventually, I can’t remember, a year or two years later, whatever it was, he transformed this university and had this big impact.
At the time I guess somebody came in his office and he had this stack, five or six inches tall of these envelopes and somebody said, “What’s that big stack?” He said, “Those are the paychecks they keep giving me, but I haven’t earned them yet so I’m not going to…they’re not mine.”
I remember hearing that and just being like, that’s the right attitude. I don’t know, as opposed to the other situations, where you try to slip your way in and if you don’t get what you want you try to sue somebody. Or you try to get a contract signed, you try to sneak in, or you stop doing what you committed to do. Or whatever that thing is. It’s insane to me.
And like I said, it’s happened four times in the last six weeks. Dang. That people have done that. Where they feel like they deserve something, so they’re threatening to sue. Or they feel like they deserve something because they have a contract, they didn’t actually do what they committed to do, all these things. It’s just so frustrating to me. That’s not how I want to be remembered.
I want to be remembered as a person who actually got what I earned, and I showed up and did what I said I was going to do and if I didn’t do what I said I was going to do, I didn’t take what I contractually signed to because the contract said, because I know inside my heart that I broke the contract. I didn’t do what I said I was going to do.
I’m not someone who wants to come in and try to get what’s not mine through threats. It’s just ridiculous. I want to be the kind of person who someday I can tell my kids, I can tell my grandkids, hopefully someday a thousand years from now, someone’s going to watch this podcast. Someone in my posterity and be like, “Wow, great, great, great, great grandpa Brunson was a man of integrity. He actually did what he said he was going to do. When he didn’t earn something, he didn’t contractually trick somebody. ‘well, they got a contract so it kind of sucks.”
No, I freaking gave it back to them because I didn’t earn it. And I took what I did earn. I hope that rings true to some of you guys. If it does it will be worth the rant for tonight. So I hope it does. And if you haven’t heard Nido Qubein speak, I’m going to try to find…I bought a bunch of his stuff back in the day, I wonder if I could find that presentation where he talked about that. Because it was so impactful for me just to hear that and realize that’s how we should be working.
Just because the rest of the world shows up to work, falls asleep and gets a check every two weeks. Us, the people who are producers, who are moving forward, that’s not how we should look at things. We shouldn’t be okay with that when our team is doing that. We shouldn’t be okay when people around us are doing that. We need to earn what we earn and go out there and do the thing. That’s the goal.
And if you do work your butt off and you do, do the thing, you do earn the money. Be proud of it. Don’t hide and be embarrassed, you actually worked your butt off and you deserve it. But don’t do it the other way around. Where you trick, cheat, scam, lie, whatever it takes to get what you think is yours because it’s not yours. You don’t actually deserve it. You should just be grateful for the opportunity.
So that’s where I’m leaving this one. I’m grateful for the opportunity Pruvit gave me, excited……it’s funny, I should be so sick to my stomach about this, but I have no issues. I’m so excited to be giving back this equity in exchange for something that’s really cool, that’s a good fit. It’s good and I feel good about it, and I’m going to sleep really, really good tonight because of that. That’s what really matters.
So hopefully that helps somebody. Hopefully my great, great, great grandkids are watching this and they straighten up when you hear it, because it’s important. That’s what I got. Thanks guys for listening, appreciate you all. Have an amazing day, bye.