Top Rules For Avoiding Business Failure (My Biggest Mistake)

Hey, this is Russell Brunson. For all you guys who
are just tuning in, Right now we are doing a show. We’re answering your
number one questions About growing companies,
building funnels, Driving traffic, making money And a whole bunch
of other fun stuff. Today’s question is
about business failure. What are your ’Top Rules’
for avoiding business failure And what was your
biggest mistake? I got so many big
mistakes I could share. But the top rules for
avoiding business failure, I would say, if you
look at a business, For some reason, I don’t
know if it’s just me but, I think most people
that get into business, They think it’s like
this weird thing, right? We go to business school, and
we go to all these things. I remember taking
business classes And they taught me all
sorts of weird stuff That didn’t make any
sense to me, right. Like, supply chain
management and, Just, anyway I can’t even
remember most of my schooling, If I’m completely honest,
yet I built a huge company Because most of those things
don’t actually matter. You start thinking about like, What actually
matters in business? The number one thing,
and most people Aren’t going to tell you this. The number one thing
really is relationships. I wish that in my
business class, They would’ve had a
class that just said this ”Russell this is the
deal, people do business With people they like,
so you should become Someone, first off,
that people like

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And, second off,
find other people And be really really
nice to them, ’kay?” And this is tough sometimes
’cause a lot of times, You’ll get into business,
you’ll be working with people And you have somebody
who will treat you so bad And you look at them
and you wanna do, What I wanna do
sometimes and just like, Pound their face and destroy
them ’cause you’re so angry. But, what you have to
understand is that, No matter how somebody treats
you in a business relationship You always have to keep,
no matter what happens, You have to keep a
good relationship. I’m gonna share a story,
I’m not gonna share names Because I don’t
want to do that but, There was somebody when we were
first launching Clickfunnels Who was a close
friend and a partner. We’d done a bunch of
partnership projects in the past And when Clickfunnels came,
we were about to launch it, He actually stepped back
and came back to me like, The day before we launched it, ”hey sorry, I decided, instead
of being a partner with you And helping you sell
this, I’m actually Gonna be a competitor of yours And I’m really really sorry.” And I remember
being so frustrated And angry and upset and
I wanted to just like, Fly to his home and like,
you know, rip his arms off And whatever, I don’t know,
I was not happy at all. And instead I was
like, you know what, I need to maintain
this relationship ’cause I have no idea what
could happen in the future, He’s been a good
friend up to this point And maybe, you know, whatever, I’m just gonna bite my tongue

And so I just wrote
back, said ”no worries, Totally understand and
good luck in the future And hopefully we’ll work
on something later.” And I just stepped back,
and I’m so grateful I did Because about a month
and a half later, He came, said ”you know
what? That thing fell through And I apologize, I should
have thought through this And I was just
being short-sighted, I got excited about the
opportunity, whatever.” He said ”will you forgive me?” And I was like
”yeah, totally cool”, He’s like ”sweet”
and he came back And for about two years he
was our number one affiliate, Inside of Clickfunnels. And I’m so grateful I didn’t
burn that relationship. So, have relationships and,
no matter what happens. I dropped my red
one, but I need it Because we’re about
to build a fire. Do not, there’s my log,
and there’s the fire. Sorry, I wish I was
better at drawing. But do not burn
the relationships, Keep them alive, no matter what Because you never
know when that person Could be useful to you and when You could be useful
to them as well. So that’s the top
rules, understanding That the relationship
is the key. Number two, focus on your list. Build your list, build
your list, build your list. I remember when I got
started 15 years ago, For those who’ve been around
that long, you may remember, In fact, my first mentors
name was Mark Joyner And Mark is amazing. And I remember he would
always tell me, like,

”Russell, you gotta
build a list.” And I was like
”why?” And he’s like, ”you gotta focus
on building a list, That’s the key to
making money online.” And, so I started
building my list And first I had, you know, a
hundred people join my list And then a thousand
and then five thousand, It was growing really slowly. And then, about that time
is when AdSense came out, This is 15 years ago. And if some of you
guys remember AdSense, It was like, you could make
these garbage websites, Throw up these little
Google ads on it And Google would rank these
sites really really high And if someone clicked
on it, you’d get paid. I had friends making half
a million dollars a month By just making garbage
sites and I’m like, This looks way easier, I
don’t have to do anything, I just gotta make
garbage and I get paid. And Mark was like ”no, focus.” He’s like ”that’s
gonna go away,” He’s like ”they
always do,” like, ”just focus on
building your list, Focus on building your list,
focus on building your list.” I’m like, ”but there’s so
much money right there.” He’s like ”no, focus.” And so
I focused on building my list And I’m so grateful I did. One of my friends told me that, The metric and this metric
doesn’t hold true all the time, But for the worst case scenario, You should average… $1… Per… Month,

Per name on an email
address on your list, ’kay? So for example, when I had
500 people on my email list, I was averaging
about $500 a month. When I had a thousand
people on my list, I was averaging a
thousand a month. When I got to 10,000 on
my list, 10,000 a month. When I got to 100,000, I was
averaging 100,000 a month. And a million, a
million a month. Like, it synced pretty close. Now the better you are at
this, at building relationships With your list, the
more that’ll go up. Some people I know make five,
six, seven, eight, ten dollars Per month, per name on
the email address list. So it can go up and
down but that’s like, The worst case scenario, right? So I was focusing on
building this list, I got to 500, then a
thousand, then 10,000 And then about that time
is when AdSense crashed. And friends I had making a
half a million dollars a month Went out of business
overnight and they were done. And luckily for me,
I had this list, I had this asset and I was
able to keep emailing this list And keep growing it, right? And this list got
bigger and bigger. Twice my business, I
almost went bankrupt. Two times. And I say almost
because both times, I should have been
bankrupt by any, like, I did some stupid things,
we made some bad mistakes, The market shifted,
all sorts of reasons And excuses but
looking at a paper, I should’ve went
bankrupt both times And both times I didn’t
because of my list. My list came through,
saved my butt when like,

Everything was crashing around And I had no more money. Everything was falling
around, I was like, ”how do I keep the doors open?” I was like, ”I need to make a
really good offer for my list” And I thought about what
could I create for them? And I created an offer,
I emailed my list out And money came back in. So focusing on the
list is number two. And then number three… Is… No… Shiny… Objects. Which kinda ties back
into this list right here. Go back to the
fundamentals, kay? There’s always new
stuff popping up. I remember when Amazon first
hit a couple years ago, It was like ”oh
everything’s on Amazon.” And people went to
Amazon, it was awesome, Then guess what happened? Amazon started slapping
you and kicking you out. And then, it was like
”oh E-commerce here,” And then ”oh Adsense” and
like people have been jumping, As like as I’ve been doing
this game for 15 plus years, People have been
jumping everywhere. The only thing that’s
been consistent, Through the ups and the
downs, are the fundamentals. What are the fundamentals? If you read the
Dotcom Secrets book, These are the fundamentals. Here is how you build a funnel, Here’s how you attract
customers into your funnel, Here’s how you communicate
with those funnels,

With those people,
here’s how you do, like, This is the fundamentals
of how you build And grow a company, kay? So focus on the fundamentals, Don’t get distracted by
the new shiny object, Focus on the fundamentals. What kind of product
am I creating? How am I selling that product? How am I getting
people to show up? That’s all fundamentals. If you look at, like,
if I simplify this down, To like the easiest
thing possible, This is all business is, right? Number one, creating
a product or an offer, So here’s like, here’s
the thing I’m selling And make sure it’s awesome. Then, I gotta figure out
some way to actually sell That product, so what’s
the sales message? And then I gotta figure
out how to get people, Over here, to come and
see the sales message. Get people, come see
the sales message And then I make them
a really good offer And they give me money, that’s
the fundamentals of business. Kay? That is a funnel. And so, those are the
fundamentals, like, If I was you guys,
I would focus on Nothing but the fundamentals
of how do I build a funnel? How do I grow my list? Like, how do I do this, over
and over and over again? Because things are gonna shift. Mark Zuckerberg someday,
as nice as he is right now, Tomorrow he’s gonna kick
a bunch of us out, right? Same things gonna happen
on YouTube, on Facebook, On Instagram, like, the
platforms are gonna change

But the fundamentals don’t. So focus on the fundamentals
and that is the biggest thing To make sure you
don’t have failures And so you can avoid
all the big mistakes That me, and a lot of the
people I’ve been watching, Over the last decade
and a half, have had, When they’ve tried
to play this game. Thank you so much for watching, Every single week we publish
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so you don’t miss any of them And I will see you
on the next video.