[GE] Building A Digital Business - The Russell Brunson Way

[GordonShumway]

Hi Theo1

Thank you for the comment and reps. I appreciate it.

You and I have talked a number of times over the past. Helped each other out with shares and such, so have big respect for you.

You wrote:

(10-31-2021 02:38 AM)Theo1 Wrote:  P.S.- If anyone really enjoys and benefits from the Expert Secrets book (and who won't really), and want to go into the topics further he actually walks a group through much of the book with exercises live in the 2 Comma Club video course, which is HIGHLY recommended- ;^)

I have that and you are right that it is a good product, but I wanted to keep this share lighter and right on point. For this reason I keep the weight down to just PDF files.

In my (old) head, I was thinking that having the words written down and the images that Russell uses in each of the chapters is a great learning tool. When something jumps off the page at you, you can highlight it, and copy it into your notes. Also easy to screen cap those pics and stick them in your notes also.

I have a HUGE Google Drive account that I use only for my notes. Broken down by Author, then sub-folders for each product. Inside the folder is a Google Doc with my notes including page number of the thing that I found of value.

I rate each product on my own 1 to 10 scale and write a quick overview about my feelings about it.

I have been doing that for a long time and have a ton of notes that make it quick and easy for me when I want to review something I read/viewed a while ago.

I find the process of reading/watching it, thinking about it, taking my notes and writing them down, then doing a quick review when I am done with the product, helps to lock the more important parts in to my brain.

As a kid, I asked "Why" a lot. I had to understand "Why" things were the way they were. "Why" people did the things they did.

I had no social grace and it got me in to a lot of trouble as a kid as I would ask these questions on a broad range of topics and would often confront people that where much my senior.

I consider myself as just an average guy that has been so fortunate to have a passion for certain things, combined with a burning desire to learn more about them, hooked into a execution based mindset.

I have made more mistakes than most, but I have never let that slow me down. In fact I have always just seen it as feedback.

"Crap! That didn't work, better not do that again"...

And have the ability to laugh at myself. That has kept me sane as I have made some huge blunders...

But because I never, ever, give up on things that are important to me, today I am comfortable financially.

And what I do I never really think about as work. I love what I do so much that it is a form of entertainment for my active mind...

I had a bad customer when I was about 28. I am talking the customer from hell... And when I finally ended that relationship, I decided right then that I would NEVER do that again.

It was a hard lesson. Yes, sometimes as you grow you are going to experience a lot of pain. You will need to do things that you don't want to do. Push yourself in ways you may not want to go at the time.... But that does not mean that you need to keep the "Blowholes" in your life that are holding you back.

NEVER LET ANYONE HOLD YOU DOWN!

And this brings me back to the main topic.

We are right now at the Golden Age of information access. Yes, it may get even better in the future. But we have such great access (and here at BBHF it is even better) and I wanted people to have the chance and maybe a little bit of direction on how to break free and build your own thing.

It is my deep belief that if you really dig in, read the books I shared above, and then move forward with Focused Action, you can be financially free fairly quickly.

Cheers,

G.S.

[GordonShumway]

Hi Scrap

You are SOOOOOOOOOO Right.

(10-31-2021 11:05 AM)Scrap Wrote:  I love this! It's simple. I have read about many "methods" for creating targets and managing time even down to managing your lower level time for the next however many minutes. The problem I find is that each method has an overhead to make the method work. My takeaway is to:

• Make the method no more complex than it needs to be
• Don't follow the system blindly, take the things that work for you and leave the rest
  

My favourite saying is KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

GordonShumway Wrote:So what we did was have a 3 Year squishy target we wanted, then we firmed things up for what we thought was a smart target 1 Year out... Then we would lock in what we were going to be doing over the next 90 days. So at the end of each quarter, we would catch our breath, measure how we had done, then set our goals for the next 90 days.

Some productivity systems make you less productive. They are so much work to keep updated that it is like that old school Business Plan they asked you to write. You know, the 30 pages document you struggle with for months and when it is done you shove it in your desk and never look at it again...

We needed something that was quick, easy, clear, that kept the entire team on track and let ever person in the boat know what direction we were rowing in...

When we started our Quarter (90 days) reviews and then did a brief presentation to everyone in our company (what are target were, how we did against them, what our next 90 day focus was), it changed everything.

Nothing was written in stone and we were always looking for new ideas on how to make any process better. We rewarded people in the company that found a problem and then the person that found the solution (hopefully the same person, but often the solution comes from a fresh set of eyes).

Over time we slimmed it down, made it quick, had daily stand up meetings to keep everyone focused AND let others know what you were working on.

And EVERYTHING was measured against our 90 day targets.

But the main reason we did so well over the years was we always put our people first and our customers right behind them. Meaning we would do what ever we could to deliver excellent results for the customer as long as we didn't do "damage" to our people.

We kept asking:

"How can we do this better?"
"What takes the most amount of time, but delivers the least amount of results?"
"What things can we automate so we can free our people from boring, repetitive tasks?"

No matter the size of your company, when you keep asking this over time and make things easy and simple, your company will grow

Cheers,

G.S.

[BlackTopHat]

More absolute gold! I admit to the dump and jump, I get bored easily when things aren't hooping at a good pace. And I'm older than you by a few years. Thanks for keeping it real, GS.

[discomix]

keep it coming mates, I just love the valuable conversation in this thread.A dumb question though, how to bookmark a thread?

[Theo1]

Hey Gordon,

BIG RESPECT for you as well of course, and all you do here for everybody! I knew I was pushing it a little by mentioning the 2 Comma Club video course, because I know you intended to keep things focused and i didn't want to really veer anybody off in a different direction from the books, and I am a big proponent of people staying focused on one task/course of study- Plus, for me at least, I prefer pdfs/written word more than anything else really because I can get through the information quicker in general, rather than "padded" and "fluffed" up 25 video courses that nobody really gets through- And yes, we can always speed up the playback on our GOM Player or whatever, however I don't know about you, but I get a headache pretty quickly listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks for more than 5 minutes- Not really an effective, or comfortable way to learn, for me at least-

Thanks also for giving all of us some of the invaluable, nitty gritty details about your past businesses and experience! I always love to hear some "war stories-" I also have some good ones back when I was selling belly to belly in addition to the biz stories, there's always some treasure in those as well- That's one thing that I think is missing from so many "courses" out there anyway- So many people are quick to give people, er ahem, I mean SELL them, the "recipe," daresay the "theory," but what is really most valuable is more of the "fireside chats" when people can get them from the true players/producers in any industry- To hear the stories of what "really" happens in the outside, REAL world of commerce, when theory finally crashes into the wall of concrete reality-

Great stuff Gordon! Thanks again!

[GordonShumway]

Hi Theo1

Once again, Thank You for the insightful comment.

Like you, I much prefer PDF/Reading vs Video. Video is fantastic when you need to show somebody exactly how to do something... But for me, I learn information much better from reading it.

I have a huge library of stuff and have been taking notes on what I have been learning for many years now. Over that time I have learned what works best for me.

If I get a new book I think may be worthwhile spending time on, what I do is read the TOC, then quickly Read each chapter title, the first paragraph of the chapter and then the bolded items in the chapter.

I find this gives me a quick sense of the level of information within, the authors style, and if a specific chapter will be more valuable to me than others.

Once I have done the above, I go back to the chapters that held the most promise for me, areas I wanted to learn more from... So I snap to that chapter, and read the first sentence in each paragraph to again skim the chapter quickly and see how deep the well is for the topic point.

At this point I have a decent feel for the information and either move on to a different project OR if I like what I have been reading, I read the entire chapter or specific sections that were on a topic point I am interested in.

As you know, once you build up your core knowledge, often those foundational parts are repeated over and over by different authors. What I like to do is fill in the little gaps I have and pick up different ways to utilise the knowledge/skill I have or just acquired.

Originally why I shared the 5 books was to give a solid foundation to those folks that do not have the common language/understanding of core digital marketing concepts.

For me, I like the way Russell explains things and his micro diagrams server as a good memory trigger.

What I have done is screen cap those images, keep them in a file, and review them when I am working on a project as it sort of acts like a checklist for me.

I love checklists and use them all the time as this way I can remove that clutter from my head and concentrate on doing the task and not worrying that I may have missed a step.

I keep the checklist for the type of task I am working on handy. Then I step through it working on each step as I make my way down it. I also keep a Notepad file open (I use the free Notepad++ as I can have multiple tabs open at the same time) in case while I am working an idea pops in to my head about something I may use later in the process or on a different project.

Now, what you said about "War Stories By The Camp Fire".... You are so right. Once you have a common language/understanding of the core concepts, nothing is more valuable then getting the inside information from someone that has done it.

For me, the best stories are about how they did it wrong, got burned, figured out how to overcome it, then were able to turn that early failure into success. Those have real value and teach you not just what to do, but also what not to do.

I personally have failed a hell of a lot more than I have had success. But that is the key to success. Being willing to fail, get knocked over, standing back up and saying "CRAP, that didn't work, so what is next?", and pushing forward with another attempt while learning from your mistakes.

We seem to forget that this is exactly how we learned to walk. Everyone falls on their face many times while learning, but I bet most of the people you know today are able to walk... We were not embarrassed about failing back then, we were stubborn as hell and just kept trying it over and over.

I think that is one of the advantageous you have as you grow older. I am almost 59 and I just don't care anymore about what others think of me. The way I look at it is there are a a few billion people on the planet. No matter what I do, some will like me, some won't care, and some will think I am a blowhole...

I am diplomatic, not offensive, and respect all people, cultures, races, genders, and other peoples values.

If you don't like me or my product... Cool. Maybe some of the others in the pool of humanity will.

The bottom line is that many people I work with tend to slow down and stop completely as they are worried about what others will think of them. If you can develop the "Screw It, I'll Do It" no matter how many people will laugh at me attitude, then you have just raised the bar on your chances of success.

This does not mean that you should go around being a Blowhole (although that does work for some folks), but accept the fact that you can not please everyone and you just need to get on with it.

That was a hard lesson for me. When I ran our digital agency, we took on a lot of stuff that looking back we should not have done. I made those bad choices because I thought it would help keep our clients happy... It cost me, but worse, it cost my people... Lesson learned the hard way of course, but learned.

Again, age helps as now if something does not smell right to me in the early stages, I just drop it fast and move on.

Cheers,

G.S.

[tomwheelskirt]

(11-02-2021 02:00 PM)GordonShumway Wrote:  I personally have failed a hell of a lot more than I have had success. But that is the key to success. Being willing to fail, get knocked over, standing back up and saying "CRAP, that didn't work, so what is next?", and pushing forward with another attempt while learning from your mistakes.

.....

We seem to forget that this is exactly how we learned to walk. Everyone falls on their face many times while learning, but I bet most of the people you know today are able to walk... We were not embarrassed about failing back then, we were stubborn as hell and just kept trying it over and over.

......

The bottom line is that many people I work with tend to slow down and stop completely as they are worried about what others will think of them. If you can develop the "Screw It, I'll Do It" no matter how many people will laugh at me attitude, then you have just raised the bar on your chances of success.

You are so spot on!!

As Dan Kennedy points out in many of his programs and courses, one of the CORE traits of highly successful people is IMMUNITY TO CRITICISM!

I took the liberty of quoting the 3 paragraphs above. For everyone reading this, I urge you to not only copy-paste those onto a document that you read and re-read every day... I would really, really, REALLY try and internalize them, understand them and most importantly LIVE the message it contains.

I have had the privilege of talking with him privately lately and I have nothing but praise for him. Also, it is a rare privilege to have people with such experience willingly sharing it with others, so please don't take it lightly (or for granted).

[GordonShumway]

Hi tomwheelskirt

Thanks for the comment and shout-out....

I was reading those quotes you highlighted and thought... "Those are pretty good. That guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about"... LOL, How is that for an active ego boost!

It is always good to get feedback from those that you are sharing with. I very much appreciate your comments and sincerely hope you and others get some value from what I have been talking about in this thread.

I know a lot of people are feeling down right now as COVID has been kicking the snot out of the world. The rolling lock downs, being getting ill, many people dying. It is a bad time and I feel like it has changed the world permanently.

One of the reasons I love digital marketing so much is that I can do it from anyplace. I can make a living while being safe by staying home. I can also help others to stay afloat or build a new revenue source.

Running a business is one of the hardest things I have accomplished in my life. It may suck, but it is a lot easier to go out, get a job, and work for someone else. That can be a steady life that is a bit more predictable.

(Un)fortunately that was never going to work well for me. I like to do my own thing and calling the shots. Sure, many times I shot myself, but it was the only way I could be sane (some would say I am not, but hey...).

Being an Entrepreneur, stepping out on your own, wearing all those different hats, eating the risks, suffering the loses and rejoicing in the triumphs is not for everyone. Be warned that it is addictive. The freedom you get, the risks you take is hard to give up. Even thinking about going back to the commute and 9 to 5 will be super hard.

For those that are reading this know this. It Is HARD Running Your Own Business. It is NOT for everyone. If you don't have a burning desire inside yourself to do it, if you are not absolutely determined to build something, then I suggest your don't start...

Why? Because even you are awesome, are super determined, the odds are against you... The failure rate of new businesses is HIGH.... You have got to have in yourself the desire to do this and even when the big guy kicks sand in your face and stomps on your lunch, you got to get up and keep moving.

This is why I love working with Entrepreneurs. While I never say it to their faces, we are one crazy bunch of dreamers. If I like what they are doing, I try to bring my 30 plus years of experience to the table and save them some angst as they fight to stay alive and grow.

Nothing in the world changes or gets better without Entrepreneurs.

If you are reading this and are one of them, I Salute You!

Cheers,

G.S.

[aminoacid]

The "split test" book has absolutely no value.

The results observed on his tests can't be used to guess the best choice in other cases. What is true for a given case could be wrong for another one.


Thank you for the share, though. And for the comments and discussion, always appreciated.

I can't participate, because my level in english is not good enough, but I always appreciate reading comments, advices and points of view.

I especially like what you, GordonShumway, have to say.

[GordonShumway]

Hi aminoacid

You said:

(11-03-2021 04:20 AM)aminoacid Wrote:  The "split test" book has absolutely no value.

The results observed on his tests can't be used to guess the best choice in other cases. What is true for a given case could be wrong for another one.

I respectfully disagree with you on that.

Sure, you can NOT expect to get the same results as Russell got when he did his test. That is not what I use the book for. For me it is an idea generator for things that I may want to try and test myself to see if they work in my niche with my audience at this time.

People change, what works changes, so for me the important take away is that he offers you a long list of ideas that he has tried. This helps me a lot to quickly open the book, look at all the different ways to do things, then try different things to see how well the perform for me.

Everything in marketing comes down to testing ideas and seeing what works... Then over time seeing if you can increase your conversion rates at each step of your funnel. Even a small increase of 1% at a specific step in your funnel can make a huge difference in the cash you put in your pocket. So have these samples to look at, get ideas from is Pure Gold to me.

I am sorry you see no value in that.

Cheers,

G.S.