In this post, I want to share with you a very inspiring story about focus, consistency, and improvement.
This is the story of a guy named Russell Brunson. You may or may not have heard of him. If you are doing internet marketing, then you will know who he is. If you are not, it is alright too. Just read on.
I learned about this story from one of Russell Brunson’s book, Expert Secrets. A book I strongly suggest anyone who wants to become an expert in their industry to read.
The Story of Focus
“Internet marketers like you are so smart and so dumb at the same time.” That was what MaryEllen Tribby told Russell Brunson when she first met him. MaryEllen is a successful entrepreneur who has taken a lot of companies doing well and quickly scale them to much higher profitability. And one of her most amazing successes was with Weiss Research where she took the company from $11 million to $67 million in just 12 months.
Russell was shocked when MaryEllen told him that. He then asked her what she means.
MaryEllen told Russell that running an internet marketing business is like running a Broadway show.
“You hire the best playwrights in the world. You hire the best actors. You practice for months, then you open the show in downtown Boise, Idaho (where Russell lives). You open the show to a sold-out crowd and they give you a standing ovation. That night after the show is done, you pull everything down and start writing your next play to open next month in the same auditorium in Boise.” Said MaryEllen.
Of course, being intrigued, Russell asked her what she would do instead. Here’s MaryEllen’s answer…
“I take companies like yours that have an awesome show in Boise – I take them on the road. I take that show to Chicago, to New York, to L.A., and I keep running it until it stops making money.”
From that point on, Russell Brunson realized that he got it wrong. He needed to learn how to take his show on the road.
In other words, Russell needs to focus on his business and continue to sell the same thing to a different crowd.
At that time, Russell Brunson was selling ClickFunnels through a live webinar training. And after the conversation with MaryEllen, he decided that he would focus on going live and do the presentation to sell ClickFunnels every week for the next 12 months.
Russell Brunson understands that he has a great business model and a great product. And he shouldn’t switch from one product to the next.
Instead, he should take MaryEllen’s advice by continuously selling the product to different audiences until it stops making money.
That is the story of focus. And that is how Russell Brunson, the co-founder of ClickFunnels, built his company from launch to making $100 million in just 3 short years, and he did it without any funding.
The Story of Consistency and Improvement
Now that Russell Brunson understands he needed to focus on selling ClickFunnels to the rest of the world. He shouldn’t switch to another opportunity or develop new products, yet.
And he already had a set of presentation that works. Every time he did the presentation, whether it is a live webinar or on stage, he managed to make a ton of sales.
And Russell also knew that if he wanted to sell to the rest of the world, he couldn’t just focus on internet marketers, he has to find ways to convince other business owners to use ClickFunnels.
So, he tweaked his presentation by adding a few more slides showing different funnels and giving examples of how other industries can leverage his software.
In his next presentation, he sold about $30k from the presentation he had just improved. Not a bad result, but Russell knew he could do better.
This is an excerpt from his book, Expert Secrets…
“I was supposed to give the same presentation to another group of entrepreneurs a few hours later, so I decided to look at all the questions that people had asked during the earlier presentation. I downloaded their questions and comments and read through them.
Quickly, I was able to see four or five places in the presentation when I could tell people were really confused by what I was saying, or the offer wasn’t clear, so I went back to my slides and added in new things to make sure people’s questions were answered before they asked them.
A few hours later, I delivered this revised presentation to a smaller group of 500 entrepreneurs, and this time we sold $120k live! I repeated this same process 60-plus times over the next 12 months – doing a live webinar, exporting questions, and adjusting the presentation.”
This is how Russell improved his presentation and his skills on stage. He wasn’t born as a champion speaker. But he learned through it.
If you were to ask Russell what would he do if he had to start all over again, here’s what he said, “I would create a presentation, and then I would deliver the same presentation live every week for a year, until I had it perfected.”
How about you?
No matter what you want to accomplish in life, you have to learn how to improve your skills and upgrade your ability to perform better.
- If you are a teacher, you have to upgrade your teaching skills to become better so that your students can score better grades.
- If you are a blogger, you have to learn how to write better articles that engage with your readers and so people will want to share your amazing work.
- If you are a fitness coach, you have to improve your training routine and constantly upgrade your work so that you can help your fellow trainees to gain better results faster.
Here’s what Russell wrote in his book:
“I now have this presentation memorized. I could recite it in my sleep. I can tell you with almost 100 percent accuracy how much money I’ll make on a webinar based on how many people show up. The close rate stays the same, because it’s the same presentation. This is the reason I knew that I could do more than $3 million at the 10X event. I knew how many people were in the room, I know my conversion rates, and so there were no doubts.”
Most people hate to repeat their work.
If they are selling on the internet, they all are looking for shortcuts or systems to automate their work.
For example, if you go live on Facebook to sell a product, most people will have the idea that they don’t want to repeat the live process over and over again.
They will then deliver a live presentation, and then recorded it and replay it to the rest of their audiences.
If you do this way, you will never learn, and you will never improve.
This is why Russell Brunson suggests everyone who wants to improve their skills train every day.
If you do a video training or presentation, do it live every week. This is how you get to improve your skills and become an expert in your industry.
Focus on Just One Thing
Regardless of what you do, you need to focus if you want to get good at it. Choose only one goal and focus on it.
As a blogger, I have seen many people started a blog, do it for a few days and weeks, and then abandon their blogs.
The moment they put in the hard work and are not getting the results they expected, they lose hope and quit.
Never let this happen to you.
Success is not going to come to you immediately. You have to have the determination to work on it until you succeed.
No matter whether it is to build a successful blog, to lose weight, or to write the book you have always wanted.
You have to focus on it until you achieve it.
Be Consistent with Improvement
Next, you need to improve and be consistent.
You see, you can be consistent and do it every day for a year, but if you are not improving, even after a year, you will still be where you are.
The key is to combine improvement and consistency.
Do you know why some people work for over 10 years, but they don’t seem to get ahead? Well, it is because they lack the improvement factor.
If you don’t improve, you can’t make progress. And if you don’t progress forward, you will be stuck where you are.
Hence, it is not just about working on it consistently, you want to deliberately practice your craft for improvement.
Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, shared a great example in her book.
Angela said she was jogging and running every day for almost 10 years. And she certainly has achieved the 10,000 Hours Rule to become extraordinary. But she didn’t.
The reason for that is because she did it as a hobby. She jogs and runs every day to maintain her fitness and to keep her physical health.
There is no improvement.
But if you look at athletes like Usain Bolt who also runs every day, you will notice the difference.
Professional athletes deliberately train for improvement. They do strength training, they measure their heartbeat rate, blood pressure, they have coaches, they track the food they put into their mouths, etc.
This is why professional athletes are improving every day while the rest who just run casually every day didn’t.
If you want to achieve your goals and become the best in your industry, you need to commit to constant-and-never-ending-improvement, or what Tony Robbins called “CANI”.
Every day, you have to work on improving your skills.
Just like how Russell Brunson perfected his script and his presentation skills. He purposefully goes live and delivers his presentation every week.
He learned from questions and objections he received from his audiences. He then tweaked and improved his slides.
As a result, he becomes better and better every day.
Until a year later, when he has delivered over 60-plus live webinars, he decided to automate the process.
But even so, Russell still does live presentations a couple of times a month.
Commit to Become the Best
Are you willing to do the work for at least a year? Are you willing to put in the work and pursue your goals every day?
- If you are a blogger, you should blog every day and find your voice through your writings.
- If you want to become an influencer on Facebook or Instagram, publish and go live every day until so good that people can’t ignore you.
- If you want to build a successful YouTube channel, then record a video and upload it every day until you gain traction and build up your community.
If you want to become the best and the expert in your industry, you have to commit to it.
You can’t do it in a half-hearted attempt.
So, are you willing to put in the work and do it every day for at least a year?