Results From The Jujitsu Tournament

Short message from Russell on his drive home from the tournament. And how, what he learned this weekend, relates to your business.

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Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I welcome you to the Marketing in Your Car podcast. As you can tell right now, my voice is almost gone. Hopefully I will make it for the next four or five minutes to share with you my weekend.

Basically, I am guessing there are a lot of people listening for the very first time. I just finished my Jiu Jitsu tournament and everyone is asking me. I thought, “Instead of telling them the answer, I am going to make them all go to the podcast and listen to hear what happened.” That is the game plan here; I am going to tell you what is happening.

If you are a first-time listener, welcome. You are going to love it. Every day I do a five or six-minute podcast as I am driving to the office. I share a couple of cool marketing tips. I want to welcome you as you start listening. Please listen to some of the backup episodes. Usually we talk a lot more about marketing, conversions, and sales and fun stuff.

I want to welcome you. I had a very fun tournament. The last time I competed in Jiu Jitsu was a year and a half ago. I do not consider myself a Jiu Jitsu guy; I am still a wrestler who is trying to learn Jiu Jitsu.

It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of cool stuff. I won a couple of matches and lost a couple of matches. It is fun to get back out there and try to kill yourself.

I have a couple of lessons I learned this weekend that are valuable from a marketing standpoint, as well. First, I am still kind of learning all the rules. In my first match I went out there against this dude with a long beard.

Just to put this in perspective, I still cannot grow a beard. This dude had a six-inch long beard. We started rolling and I almost took him out at the beginning. I did not quite get it and he put me in his guard, so we had no points. It was zero to zero. Then, literally, he locked his guard so tight that I could not get out of it, so the match ended zero to zero.

I assumed, as a wrestler, that we would go into overtime and I would have a chance to take him down again. I did not think he was that good. However, the match ended and he got the win and I was super confused. I found out the rules afterwards and that he basically won.

The first lesson I learned was that when you go into any situation, you have to understand the rules. I wish I had understood because I would have done a lot of things differently. I would have scrambled better and tried to open him up more. I thought we were tied, so I thought, “You know what? I am just going to hang out here until we can break and go into overtime.” Apparently, they do not do that in Jiu Jitsu.

I think that many times in business people just do not know the rules either. You get into something and you are scared to do stuff. You think, “Should I do this or that?” You do not realize where your boundaries are. Marketing is one of those things where you have to understand your boundaries because you have to push them. You have to be a bit aggressive in order to get people’s attention. It is interesting. You are competing against so many other people. It is kind of funny. In my first eight or nine years in business I never looked at it as a competition.

In January, I had a chance to go to an event and hear Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank” speak, and it was interesting. He was talking. He’s the bald guy on Shark Tank who’s just always angry and that kind of stuff, but he was talking [coughs] – excuse me – and he was talking about how business is like a war. He was like, “You have to go out there and find out who your competitors are. Your job is really to go out there and figure out how you can beat them.”

I’ve never looked at business that way. I thought it was always just like, “Oh, everyone’s happy. Let’s all get along,” and we’ve done well with that, but if you want to dominate your space and become the number one person, you’ve got to look at it more like a war, or like a wrestling match, or jiu jitsu, or whatever, where you’ve got to beat them. You’ve got to figure out the strategic things behind it, and part of it is understanding the rules – what you can and can’t do, and then after you know that, go and push it. Push the envelope hard to beat them.

Then the next is, because this is give and take, it’s just like a wrestling match or a jiu jitsu match. You’re going back and forth. I think more of us need to get more aggressive in our businesses a little bit and realize that we’re competing with other people. Find out who your competition is now, and how you dominate, how you beat those guys. Just something to think about.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last little while, especially as we’re getting close to launching Click Funnels. We’re going head to head against some big companies. One of our biggest competitors just got $5 million in VC funding, so they’re starting out with a bunch of cash and people and a team and an existing customer base, and we’re coming head to head against them. I don’t think they’re going to know what hit them. We’re going to attack and it’s going to be fun. We’re going to try to take their customer base very, very quickly. It’s war. It’s going to be fun.

Then some of the other software products we’re going to be competing with are big companies – companies like Infusionsoft. It’s a war that I’m ready for, and a war that I’m going to win, and I’m excited for it. Think about that with your business. Think about how you can be more aggressive, who you’re competing against, and how you can beat them.

Now a lot of times, there’re rooms for partnerships and friends and that kind of thing. At the same time, you’ve got to look at this as a sport. Business really is a sport.

Back to the jiu jitsu tournament. I lost that first match, and I won my next two matches. One guy, I came in for a headlock, and I choked him out on his feet. He literally went completely out, like passed out. He started attacking. I attacked once, and he was gone, and so I feel kind of bad. He just sat on the mat for four or five minutes afterwards trying to come to. That was kind of fun, and then the guy that I lost my first match to, he lost, so I had a chance to go against him again, and this time we wrestled. I wrestled a lot better, and then he caught me in this weird funky arm bar thing that I had to tap, which is no fun, by the way. Tapping’s the worst thing in the world. And then I went to some other divisions. I went to this “absolute” thing, and I had to wrestle some big huge dudes who were way bigger than me, but anyway, I had a fun time. I’m glad to be back. My voice is shot. I’m almost home. I’m going to go take a bath and then pass out for three or four days and then get back to work, so it should be fun.

Anyway, for all of you guys out there who are thinking about living your dreams. You’re nervous. You’re scared. Hopefully, you’ll get some inspiration that me as a 34-year-old dude that hasn’t really competed in ten or twelve years, just went up against a bunch of young guys who trained a lot more than me and just went head to head. I hope that gives you some inspiration to really just – don’t be afraid of things. Just go out there and do it. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You get tapped out. You lose some money. Whatever the worst case scenario is, it’s really not that bad. It’s more about the journey and the fun and having some joy in it.

That’s it for today, everyone. I am home. I’m going to go pass out. Thanks for listening, and if this is your first time, please tune in. We’ll share a lot more cool marketing and sales stuff, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. Thanks, everybody, and we’ll talk to you next week.