Lead Or Gold

How to trick your mind to get crap done.

---Transcript---

Good morning, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car”.

Hi, everyone. Today is an exciting day. It’s a Monday, and we are about to launch Click Funnels. This week is our execution week, which is kind of fun. Now, luckily for me, my wife and kids went out of town this week. They’ve gone camping for the next three days, which basically means I get to pull all-nighters for three nights in a row, launch this thing, and then pass out for two weeks straight, unless there’re issues. Then it means I’ve got to not pass out for a week straight [laughs], but I’m fired up and excited.

I wanted this podcast just to talk about the process of actually getting a project or a product, whatever you want to call it, out of the door. I know that it’s something that all of us go through, and it’s funny. Todd and I were talking about this as we’ve been getting all of this stuff done. It’s kind of like, I think it’s Pareto’s Law, where no matter how much time you have left before the launch date, things will always fill up all of the available time to get things done. That’s what I’m feeling like right now. Literally, the launch date was two months ago, and then one month ago, and then this week, it’s happening, win, lose, or draw, and we still have so much stuff that’s got to be done [laughs], but it’s at the point now where we’re going to make it happen, and we’re put it out there. We’ll do whatever it takes and kill ourselves and get it done, and then we’ll back fill it, and fix any issues we see along the way.

I think one of the things that keeps most people from ever getting their projects out there, and I’m guessing most of you have got at least one, if not ten or twenty projects [laughs] that are mostly done, but they’re not finished yet. They’re not pushed out the door. People, a lot of times, ask me, “Russell, how do you get so much stuff done. How do you get so many things out the door?” I think part of it is because of the philosophy we started using five or six – I don’t know, maybe longer – seven or eight years ago.

It started when I heard a tape that was called “The Scuttlebutt Tape” from Gary Halbert and – it wasn’t John Carlton – Gary Halbert and Michael Fortin were talking about copywriting stuff, and one of the things that Halbert talked about was this concept called “Lead or Gold”. It was interesting to me because he talked about, and again, I don’t know if the story’s true or not, but the illustration of what he shared was powerful for me. He said that down in Mexico that when the mafia warlords wanted to change laws, they would go to the government and say, “Hey, you need to change this law.” The government would be like, “No. We’re not going to do that for you. That’s crazy.” [laughs] So what they would do then is the mafia would go and break in to people’s houses late at night – the government officials. They would wake them up out of their sleep, and they would come up to them, and they would have a gun and a bag of gold, and they would say, “We need you to change this law tonight, and you’ve got two options – lead or gold. Which one do you want? Do you want a bullet to the head, or would you like some cash?” Very quickly, somehow, laws were able to be changed. When the options are lead or gold, it’s pretty easy to get things done [laughs].

I started thinking of that in my business. How many times do we have projects where we’re like, “Oh, we’re going to launch this week. Oh, okay, next week,” and six years later, nothing’s ever happened. We started setting these deadlines, and we called them “lead or gold deadlines”, where it’s like, “We’re launching Tuesday at noon. Win, lose, or draw, it’s happening, and we’ve got two options – either lead or gold, and we’ve got to make this happen.”

When you give yourself those two options, and those two options only, it’s amazing what kind of stuff you can get done. It’s amazing how you can get people to stay late, and you can stay late, and you can work harder, and you can do whatever it takes. You’ll get that project done. So for us and all of our coaching groups who have been here for the last five or six years, I always talk about this, and I say, “Look, when you guys get home from this event, or home from whatever it is that you’ve learned about something, you have to go and set lead or gold deadlines for each step of the process.” You say, “Look, for me, first I’ve got to get the sales stuff done, okay? So my deadline is next Tuesday at three – lead or gold. There’s nothing that can move that date. I will die if it doesn’t happen,” and you just make sure it happens.

Then the next one – “We’re going to have this part done by this day, and you set that lead or gold deadline, and then you hit it, and you keep doing those things. For most of you guys who aren’t getting the things done that you want, it’s because you’re too soft on yourselves. You let yourselves off the hook, like, “Oh well, we ran out of time. We’ll do it tomorrow,” and when you do that, it keeps getting pushed forever, because of Pareto’s law where as much time as you give it, things will always fill up the expanse of that time, no matter what it is, and so I promise you guys, if you want your project tomorrow or a month from now, either way, you’re going to be up until three or four  or five o’clock in the morning the night before cramming to get it done, and so why not pick the date that’s earliest and get you more money?

That’s what we’re doing. I’m going in to the office now. We’ve got two and a half days away from launch time, and we picked our deadline, and we are going to hit it, and no matter what happens, we will make it work, and I’m excited. I’m fired up. It’s going to be an awesome day today. I hope you guys have a good day as well. Set some lead or gold deadlines, and we will see you guys again on the next episode. Thanks, everyone.