This goes against all logic, but it’s the only way to actually do it.
On this episode Russell talks about procrastinating getting presentations for Funnel Hacking Live done and why procrastination works for him. He also talks about why he sells stuff before it’s even been created.
Here are some of the other exciting things in this episode:
So listen below to find out why procrastination works so well for Russell.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Guess what? Today, I’m actually in my car, which is kind of awesome because there’s been less of that lately.
I’m backing out right now and I’m driving the Corvette that is the one we showed everyone when we launched the dream car contest. I’m about a week or two away til I get rid of this thing. Getting rid of the Corvette, and my Lexus is now smashed because I backed into it with my other car. Yes, I’m a genius.
I’m going to be finally getting my dream car. It’s funny, I’ve been, my whole life my dream car’s been a Jeep. Ever since I was a little kid I always wanted a Jeep, but for some reason I never had one. I’ve had a Ferrari, I’ve had a Corvette, all those things. But I don’t even like those cars, I’ve always wanted a Jeep. So all the guys at the office are making fun of me, “Dude, you realize Jeeps aren’t that expensive right?” I’m like, “yeah.” They’re like, “Why don’t you get one?” I’m like, “Because I have a Corvette now.” And they’re like, “Well, get rid of it.” I’m like, “I guess I could. Why don’t I just do that?”
So I’m getting a Jeep. I’m down grading in the eyes of some people, but I’m upgrading in my eyes, which is all that really matters when all is said and done. So I’m pretty excited for that.
But I’m heading to the office right now. Yesterday was planning out all the presentations, the offers, getting order forms, process flows, speaker lineup, all that kind of stuff was yesterday. Today is working on presentations. I got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to get all my presentations done. And then after that I’m heading to the event. So it’s like do or die.
But I want to talk about, because I know some people have voiced concern that my presentations aren’t done and the event is happening. So I want to talk to you guys. I did a podcast a year ago called the Fine Art of Procrastination, which is worth listening to. So this probably part two of that. It just kind of a understanding that most people, we spend so much time planning stuff. And there’s some law, I think its, I can’t remember, Fredo’s law, one of those dudes. But there’s a law that basically however much time you have to get something done, you will fill that time completely up. It always happens.
So if I were to start planning these things six months ago and started working on presentations I would still be not getting it done until right now anyway. So in my philosophy, just why not just get them done right now and it’s better? The other thing, I don’t know about you guys when you do presentations, I’ve had presentations, where I’ve created presentations and I’ve done the presentations a bunch of times and it worked, and then I don’t do it for six months and I come back and do it and even though I’ve done the presentation and I know it, for some reason my mind can’t remember the process and some of the stories, all that kind of stuff gets messed up.
Where if I’m doing the presentations right before it actually happens, then I have better recall and clarity of what I was I doing and why I was doing it and how all the pieces fit together and all that kind of fun stuff. In fact, the FHAT event we did last week, I was up until 1:00 the night before doing my presentations. I was all nervous and all those things, but what’s nice, I’d gone through it so many times, I knew the process and what I was trying to cover, when and why and how they all fit together. So when I gave it, it was all top of mind. If I was to give the FHAT event today, I would struggle because it’s been a week since I did it. I would be like, “Oh wait, why did I do that in that order?” It would probably be hard.
So that’s another reason why I like to wait til the end. Because it gives me the ability to have it top of my mind. What I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and the order and structure and all those things. Anyway, that’s kind of what’s happening today.
So I’m giving you guys all permission, those of you guys who procrastinate. But it comes back to is having a firm, hard deadline. I don’t know about you guys, but if I don’t have the deadline of this is when this has to happen or else it’s never going to happen. If I don’t have those deadlines then nothing ever happens. So that’s why I always schedule things like, “Okay FHAT event happens this day, Funnel Hacking Live starts this day. Product launch is this day. Roll out of MP3 players is this day.” So I set these hard deadlines and that way my, I don’t know, my mind does not have the ability to keep pushing deadline further and further away.
Because it’s like, if we don’t make this one then we miss the next one and the next one. In fact, in our office I went and bought this huge calendar. It takes up an entire wall for the whole year. And what we’d be doing is basically blocking out almost every single week and in most cases every day of every single week for the next twelve months. Everything is so tightly fitted in there it’s like, okay here’s all the stuff that’s happening and there’s no room for deviation.
It’s like, okay this is when things are happening and if I miss something then it throws the rest of the year off. So we have to get things done. That’s kind of how I function. Is setting hard deadlines that are immovable and then reverse engineering to get that done. Like, when do I need to start the core tasks, and then starting those just in time.
I remember I took a class in college, it was a project management class. But I did really bad on it, but the teacher was awesome. I remember it was my senior year, last semester. I was either failing or I was close to failing, but probably closer on the failing side, and I was not going to graduate if I didn’t pass this annoying class. My teacher was super cool, he came up to me after class. He’s like, “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “So what are you doing? What’s your…what are your plans after you graduate?” I was like, “Oh well, I already launched this business, selling stuff online. I already have two employees, just going to keep growing that.” And he’s like, “So you don’t really need this engineering stuff right?” I’m like, “Not even a little bit.” He’s like, “Cool, how about this? I’ll give you a C.” I’m like, “Are you serious?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Dude, I love you. Thank you.”
And so he gave me a C, and it was the greatest gift that someone could have ever given me. I don’t remember the teacher’s name or anything, but if I ever see him again I’ll be like, “Dude, thank you for that C.” Anyway, I did learn something from that class, which is why I deserve that C, because I have retention to this day.
In that class he talked about, probably a lot of stuff, the only thing I remember was the concept of just in time production. Where people get things done just in time. I guess that doesn’t really warrant me getting a C, I don’t really know what that means other than in my mind it means I’m going to get things done just in time. I’m not going to try to have things done a month or a week or six months early, because if I do I’m going to stress about it, it’s not going to be right, I’m going to keep pushing it, and I’ll waste so much time.
For me if I can press those timelines I get ten times as much stuff done and sometimes things aren’t perfect when I roll them out, but that’s okay because I have time to perfect them over time. But I do not have time to over time to launch it, get it out the door. Because then it’ll just never actually get done.
For those of you guys who get stuck in that, what do they call it, analysis paralysis, in that mode of trying to make things perfect before you roll it out. What I highly recommend doing for you is finding a business partner who just likes to sell stuff. There’s something magic about sales people.
Like me, for example, not that I’m that cool but I love to sell stuff. And I want to sell stuff fast, before it’s even ready. In fact, Steven Larsen yesterday was like, “Dude, you sell all this stuff before you ever create it.” I was like, “Yes.” And he’s like, “How do you…why do you do that?” I was like, “well, first off, if I sell it and nobody buys it, I don’t want to create it. And second off, by me selling it, I say things about what it’s going to be and I then hold myself accountable to that when I create the products I have to fulfill on these different promises.”
A lot of people create the product first. I remember when I first learned copywriting, they told me that before I create the product, write the sales letter. Otherwise, you’re going to be like, “Oh my product doesn’t do that or that.” And your sales letter gets worse and worse. Instead write the sales letter first and write all the promises you want and say how do I make my product fulfill these promises.
And that’s a better way to sell. The other way around is backwards and doesn’t really work. The key is going up there and selling. So find a good sales person and go and take it. I’ve got, by far, the most amazing partners on planet earth with Clickfunnels. And we’ve joked about this before. If it wasn’t for me, I want to sell this, they would probably still be programming it because there’s so much they want to do. But I’m like, no we gotta sell it.
So I’m selling and they’re developing. So we sold it and the first version of Clickfunnels, guess what? It wasn’t that good. But it got better. The next version wasn’t quite as good, but it got better and better. IT’s continual progression, but the progression is much easier to do when you got cash in the bank from you selling the thing. So that’s kind of the moral of today’s story I think.
In this situation, if you’re that person, find somebody who can just go and sell for you. I was talking to Dean Graziosi yesterday and he was doing an infomercial, so he filmed the infomercial, got a book that had the cover on it, with blank pages inside. Did the whole infomercial, showing the book. And he launched the infomercial and saw what the numbers were. The numbers came back really good, and he said, cool the numbers are good. Now I’m going to go back and actually write the book. So he sent the next six months writing the book.
And then the infomercial knew worked, so he went and tweaked it. This time he brought Larry King on the infomercial, launched it there, it did good but the book still wasn’t finished. He tested it, refunded everyone who bought. He just wanted to see the numbers and now he’s getting ready to finalize it. And what’s cool, this is cool and a huge honor for me. He did the first version with Larry King, test it, worked good. Then a month or two months later I was out at the 100k meeting, and if you guys listen to episodes 300-302 I shared my presentation from the 100k meeting. We talked about epiphany bridges, belief and story and all that really cool stuff.
And Dean, it’s his event so he was there. He was like, this is awesome. So he messaged me yesterday, “Hey just so you know, after your thing I had some big aha’s that I forgot about. Things I used to do in my old shows that I didn’t do. I actually hired Larry King, flew him back out here and we re-filmed the intro.” I’m like, ‘’Really, can I see it?”
So he sent me the link yesterday to the infomercial. So I was watching it and at minute 2:20 he actually said the word, epiphany. And I stood up, clapped my hands. Not only is he using epiphany bridge, he actually used the word epiphany. I was freaking out and so excited, it was insane.
And then I asked him, “Hey man, when in your schedule can we block out to do my infomercial for my book?” and he was like, “Hey, we could do it blah.” And gave me a date, which is insane and way sooner than I thought.
So I may have an Expert Secrets infomercial in my near future. I’m so excited. So we’ll see. I’ll keep you guys in the loop as that goes forward. But how cool would that be. With that said, I’m going to go inside and get some power point presentations done. Appreciate you all; see most of you all at Funnel Hacking Live. And remember you guys, you’re just one funnel away. Thanks everybody.