The Procrastination Killing, Sub-Zero Fireball

The most ninja thing I learned at this week’s mastermind group.

On today’s episode Russell gives a quick history of how his Inner Circle came to be. He also talks about some cool things he’s learned at this week’s Inner Circle groups.

Here are some fun things to look forward to in this episode:

• Hear how Russell’s first attempt at having a mastermind group worked (and didn’t work).
• How when his mastermind groups started growing he was able to set a limit, and easily fill it.
• And how this week’s Inner Circle taught him how to be like Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat.

So listen below to find out more about how Russell’s Inner Circle came to be and how to channel your own Sub-Zero.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Hey everyone, I gotta keep making the intro more and more cheesy every single day because that’s the best way to do it. Anywho, I hope you guys are doing awesome, I’m heading into day number 4 of the mastermind meetings. It has been amazing, to say the least.

Let me kind of give you a background on the Inner Circle. It’s kind of cool actually. I launched the Inner Circle, probably 3 years ago and I had a mastermind group in the past but the first time it was 7 or 8 years ago. I launched a mastermind group; I think I sold 2 people into it. I was like, “Crap, if they show up there’s only going to be 2 people and it’s going be dumb.” So I invited a bunch of my friends and stuff and tried to make a full group. It was always okay, but I don’t know. It just wasn’t’ amazing. So we ran it for 2 or 3 years and finally I was like, let’s stop running it. So we turned it off and didn’t run it for a long time.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago we decided to launch coaching again. It’s funny how your mindset shifts. We had sold coaching at 5 so this time I was like we’re going to sell it at 8. So we sold it at 8.  And then I was like, now we’re going to do it at 10 and we bumped it to 10. Then I was like we’re going to do it at 12 and we bumped it to 12. But it wasn’t really a mastermind group, it was more this other thing.

Then I met this guy who had sold a $25K mastermind group. He said he was signing up 2 people a week. I was like, I don’t know if that’s even possible. It seemed like too far, too foreign to even be a possibility. But I was like, let’s just add that as a thing and maybe we’ll sell one or two. So we did and then right away we sold one. I was like, “Crap, now we gotta fulfill on it and we gotta sell more.” So we started slowly selling it. I think at our first mastermind group we had 8 people at it. And that was kind of cool. I was like, alright. And then by the second one we had about 20 people at it. And I was like, “Dang this is getting big.” I remember Bill Glazier’s mastermind group I grew up in, he only allowed 18 people in the group. So with 20 we had a full group and we were giving everyone an hour in their sessions. And then it kept growing and growing. Soon we got to the point where we had 35 people in the group. I was like, Dang. So we shrunk it down to where everyone had 30 minutes. It actually ended up being better because people spent a lot less time talking about nothing and a lot more time focused. So I was like, “Okay, cool. We’ll keep it at 35, keep it there.”

And then the next meeting we had 45. So we shifted to 3 days and it hit 3 days and it was too much, everyone was fried. I was like, “What do we do.” Finally I was like, “I’m going to break this into 2 groups. We’ll have 2 groups of 20ish.” So we broke into 2 groups, by the time the 2 groups showed up, they both had 30 people in it. We were at 60 people in the group. I’m like, “Oh crap.” So we had 2 groups. 1 one day, and 1 the other day. We had a crossover day, so we had dinner together and it was really fun. We’re like, cool we’ll keep 2 groups and we’ll be fine. Then the next time we had 2 groups and both groups had about 40 in it. And I was like, “We can’t facilitate 40 in a group, it loses the experience.”

Excuse me, my throat is dry from a lot of talking. Anyway, I was looking at it, we’re almost 80 people. I can’t believe we have 80 people at our $25K a year program. It didn’t make any sense to me. And this comes back to one of the big things we had over the last 3 days so far. When is enough, enough? So I said, “You know what,” and actually I had years ago, Dan Kennedy asked me, “What’s your number?” I’m like, “What do you mean?” he’s like, “What’s your number? When are you going to be happy?” and I’m like, “I don’t know, a billion.” And he’s like, “All you entrepreneurs, especially the young ones, you just want money, so you just work and work and work. You don’t have a number so you just keep working til forever. You gotta have a number otherwise you are going to burn yourself out. And you will find out that this business you created because you wanted freedom and a lifestyle will rob you of that.” And I was like, “Crap.”

So a few months ago, I was looking at Inner Circle and I was like, “What’s my number?” At that time I also said, “From now on we shut down our lower end program.” Which was a $10-12K a year. I said “You know what, we’ll just close that down.” Which was crazy because it was almost a $2 million dollar a year business and I just turned it off. It’s not worth the effort anymore. So I turned it off, which was really scary.  Then the only option became $25K which is why so many kept joining it. So a couple of months ago I said, “What’s my number?” We’re at 80, I’m going to have 100. And when there’s 100 we’re going to shut it down.” And so I said that was the number and within two weeks we got to 100, which was crazy.

So that became my number. I said, “Look, that’ll be it. A $2.5 million a year business for me coaching and that’s it. We’re not scaling, we’re not growing. It is what it is.” And I said, “With 100 people, how do we do this?” And I looked at some of the other groups out there. One of my friends groups, they run a similar thing and they grew the same thing, about 100 people. They have 100 people all come to one meeting. So I went to that meeting and I didn’t like it. I felt like I didn’t get anything out of it at all. So I was like, I don’t want to make mine big like that. The format that I get the most value out of is the one with 20 to 25 people in the group and everyone got to share. So I said how about this, we’re going to break it into 4 groups of 25 and that’s what we’re going to do. And we will lock it out. So that’s what we did, we capped it out at 100 people, 4 groups of 25. And that is now the Inner Circle.

So we had 25 people here Monday and Tuesday. 25 people here Wednesday and Thursday. And then next month we got 2 more groups that will come through and that’ll all 100 people. So that’s kind of how we shifted our Inner Circle and it’s really cool. It’s nice because these groups don’t have 30 or 40 people, we’ve got 25, so it gives us where we have more time and less stress. It’s really cool, just perfect right now. The only thing that’s lame is it’s hard because all these people want to join the Inner Circle and they can’t, which is a good problem to have.

So I told these guys, “Look, this is how it works. Your seat is here and you’re locked in forever. The only way someone else can get in is if one of you guys leave.” So we have these guys from Ukraine, and one of them, Vlad was like, “I just thought of a good business opportunity for me.” And I was like, “What’s the business opportunity?” he’s like, “No more seats are available. I will sell my seat for $50K. I will come as the partner and they will come as the person. I will get just as much value at this thing as everybody else.” I was like, “I guess that’s brilliant.” It made me kind of smile. It’s really fun.

We’re having a great time, and that’s what’s been happening. So the first…..I wish I could drive with my notebook out, because there have been so many transformational shifts even for myself and I think for everybody else in the group. It’s just been really, really cool. I’m trying to think how deep should I go? And I’m kind of late too because I’ve been dragging my feet a little bit. Not going to lie, I’m a little bit tired. So a couple of the….let’s see. How much do you guys want to know? I should just do a session where we sit down and I share the top 20 things we got from mastermind. One of the cool ones, I’m curious if any of you are…..it’s hard to explain this without being able to visually show it. How many of your prospects struggle with procrastination when you’re trying to get them to buy from you? So there’s my question for you. I want you to think about it. I’m guessing that most of them do right? It’s the reason why urgency and scarcity are such big driving points.

If you look, I’ve done a couple of podcasts on this topic. It’s a big thing. Urgency and scarcity is what gets people to buy. In fact, Justin and Tara Williams are in our group, they’re awesome. He was telling me, “We pretty much figured out that the only thing that gets people to buy is urgency and scarcity. So once a month we launch something and then take it away so we can have urgency and scarcity.” It’s pretty awesome.  But I was like, “Why does it take urgency and scarcity?” It’s because of procrastination, they procrastinate.

So Darrin Stevens, who’s a ninja, a real world ninja. He’s not actually a fighting ninja, but marketing, sales, MLP, hypnosis ninja dude. The guy’s amazing. But what he’s amazing at is so interesting. He runs events and they’ll make $2.5 million over a weekend at an event, which sounds amazing. But when you look at it, his events will have 70 people in the room, which makes it freaking amazing. He’ll close 80%, 90% of the room with a $30K offer. And the events are free for people to come to it. It’s not a buyer event. People come, put the 80 people in the room and he pulls out $2.5 million, it’s insane. I don’t know how he does it. But he was talking about it and showing us a lot of things they do, all about rapport building. It takes them 3 days at an event to get enough rapport to be able to close people at $30K. So they talked a lot about how you build report.

His wife Jackie talked about universals and truisms. Universals are things that are universally true like for example, come into the room and trying to get people to say yes subconsciously, over and over. Similar to trial closes I teach, but it’s this subconscious thing. Universals like, “How many of you guys in the room are business owners?” 90% of the room raises their hands. “How many of you guys here, work for business owners.” So now everyone’s said yes, because that got everyone. They’re universal. “How many of you guys in the room are men? How many of you guys are women?” Boom, you just got everyone to say yes, because everyone is a man or woman. Little things that seem dumb, but they’re training the subconscious mind to say yes. That’s universals and truisms are things that are like, “Hey it’s a beautiful sunny day out here in Boise, Idaho.” And people are like, “Yes, it is a beautiful sunny day here in Idaho.” It’s something that’s true in the moment. So it’s like, “Hey, we’re so happy that all of you made it here today.” Did all of them make it there today, yes they did. So that’s a truism.

Anyway, they’re using all these universals and truisms to build rapport. They’re using breathing techniques, they’re using all these things to try to build rapport with these people, which is cool. And then this one was the ninja one for me. He talked about procrastination. He’s like, “People procrastinate. The reason why…” He draws a picture of a pirate ship on the board and said, “Here’s a pirate ship, who runs the pirate ship? It’s the captain, right? Who actually takes care of the ship? It’s the crew. You’ve got the captain and the crew. Who’s in charge? Obviously the captain’s in charge. The captain is like your subconscious mind. It’s moving things but then the crew is your subconscious mind that’s actually doing all the stuff to make it all happen. What happens when the crew does not like what the captain is doing? It causes a mutiny. That’s what happens.  Consciously you’re selling somebody something that subconsciously it’s something out of alignment, so your subconscious has this mutiny which causes procrastination. So how do you get people to not procrastinate?”

He did this technique and I wish I could show it to you, but he did it all with his hand. What he does is he starts speaking to the different parts of the subconscious mind. So you have the right hand, I’ll hold up my hand, “On one hand you guys are really excited and motivated and you really want to be par t of this, but on the other hand,” he holds up the left hand, “On the other hand you’re freaking out. You’re unsure, you’re insecure, you’ve struggled in the past. Blah blah blah.” So he’s holding up both hands like the right brain and the left brain or whatever. Like two different conversations.

Oh crap, I just cut somebody off. Sorry dude. I’m such a bad driver. This is why you shouldn’t be podcasting and driving. It’s as bad or worse than drinking and driving. Good thing we’re in Boise, Idaho which means this guy probably doesn’t have a gun, if we were in California I would be scared for my life, not going to lie.

Anyway, so now he’s got two hands up. He’s got one hand he’s got you really want to do this, the other hands like, you’re confused and nervous, and those are the two parts. Conscious and subconscious, the two things that cause someone to procrastinate. It’s these two internal conflicts. So he does this left hand, right hand, and says, “These two things can come together.” And he brings his hands together. So subconsciously he’s brought the conscious and subconscious mind together and pushes it out. Similar to, have you guys ever played Mortal Kombat? Sub-Zero shoots out the blue fire ball? It’s kind of like that. Right hand, left hand brings them together, clasps his fingers together and then pushes it out like a fireball to the audience. So he’s taking the two parts of the brain, brings them together and then pushes them out to the people. It does that over and over again throughout the event. Every time they’re talking about something, he’s looking like, “What are the two conflicting parts of the mind that are keeping this from saying yes?”

So it’s like, On the one hand, you probably think it’d be awesome to have Clickfunnels. You’re excited, you think this’ll be easy. But on the other hand you’re thinking I don’t have time, I’m not a techie person, but if we can bring these two things together and then he pushes them out, and help you guys to see the value of this. Then it becomes a no-brainer. Boom, he’s just taking this internal conflict that causes procrastination, he’s brought those two pieces together and pushed them back on the audience and now those conflicts are gone. How ninja is that? How freaking amazing and cool is that?

It’s been funny because for the last 3 days now everybody’s been doing fireballs at each other during their presentations and stuff, it’s amazing.  For me, this is ninja. I’m totally using it on my stage presentations from now on when I speak and everything else. But where else can I use this? So I’m trying to figure out how to do it with my slides. I’m going to add in my slides something like, add a picture of me with my right hand out, a picture with my left hand out, a picture of me putting them together, and a picture of me pushing it out. And I’ll push through these slides as I teach the concept. On the one hand you’re probably excited, on the other hand you’re probably stressing out, but if we put these things together it’ll help you! Boom. Then you will be successful, and you will join and life will become good.

Anyway, that was a cool one. I hope it makes sense when I’m explaining it. But watch the marketing I do in the future, you will see me using this in Periscopes, in videos, in hangouts, in webinars. Because it’s the most ninja, amazing, cool thing I’ve learned in a long, long time. So I’m going crazy, I’m excited. That was just one tiny, itsy bitsy, teeny little nugget we got in the Inner Circle, and it’s been 3 days of a waterfall of things like that.

Anyway, I am almost to the hotel now, I’m excited. I’m going to go in there and do some subconscious procrastination killing, Sub-Zero fireballs at people, and I think you guys should too. That’s what I got for today you guys. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day. If you want to get on the waiting list to be in the Inner Circle and one of these guys are crazy enough to not re-up, that’s the only way to get in right now. Just go to Russellbrunson.com, apply there and that’s it. Alright guys, I will talk to you all again very, very soon. Bye everybody.