This Is Where You Find Out If You Really Believe Your Message Is True

What happens when the opposition starts trying to keep you from sharing your message with the world.
On today’s episode Russell talks about his response to a Buzzfeed article defacing Tony Robbins and how it started a couple of weeks of the internet being extra mean to him, and how he dealt with everything. Here are some of the crazy things in this episode:
Find out why Russell had to come to Tony Robbin’s defense on Facebook.
Hear how Russell claps back at someone who attacked his business model.
And see why really believing your own message can help you get through the noise of people who try to tear you down online.
So listen here to to some of Russell’s insightful and helpful tips to keep beating your drum even when the opposition grows really loud.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I am super excited to have you guys here today. This episode is for those of you guys who have the haters or the people who are talking trash about you as you try to share your message. And if you haven’t had it yet, the more aggressive you are, and the more you care about what you say, and the louder you put it out there, the louder the noise will come back. So this episode I want to entitle the phase where you find out if you really believe your message is true.
Alright everybody, so I’m excited for this episode. This is one that comes on the back of two weeks of the internet being really, really mean. It’s funny because I’ve been doing this now for almost 15 years, and I’ve got a pretty thick skin and I don’t let too much bother me, because I believe so much in my message and I believe what I’m doing, what I’m saying so I don’t really care about the naysayers. In fact, typically my mental response when I see people talking trash is, “Man, their life must be miserable.” That’s the only reason why they could be angry about this thing that I’m trying to share and put out there, and that helps me get through most of it.
But the last two weeks have been interesting. I told my team three or four times, “Man, the internet is mean this week.” And it actually started prior to me, it started initially with Tony Robbins. A lot of you guys know Tony has been big inside of the Clickfunnels community, spoken at two Funnel Hacking Live events, we just did the Mastermind.com launch with him, and a bunch of other things. He’s someone I have so much love and respect for.
Two weeks ago Buzzfeed, aka, the garbage of the internet, it’s literally the National Enquirer of the internet, but worse, wrote a smear article about him, not based on facts or reality. In fact, all the people that they misquoted are coming out and putting out videos like, “I never said that. That’s the exact opposite of what I said.” It’s just ridiculous.
Anyway, the posted this huge thing, and you know because Buzzfeed is big, they got a lot of traction with it. But they’re looking at click bait, trying to get people to click on buttons and read. Anyway, it was frustrating for someone like Tony, for me to see a friend like Tony have to go through that. And I posted a big thing on my Facebook wall that kind of told my opinion. In fact, maybe I should read that really quick, just so you guys get my opinion because I’m sure some of you guys have wondered, what was my feedback, someone who actually knows Tony on a personal level, what the actual feedback was.
So I’m pulling it up right now, and I will read it to you if I’m able to find it. Alright, it said:
“I’ve had a ton of my friends the past 48 hours message me asking my opinion about the Buzzfeed article about Tony Robbins. So I thought I’d post my thoughts here for everyone to see. First off, Buzzfeed is trash. They are the National Enquirer of the internet. If you understand their business model then you know they will do anything, including trying to destroy people’s lives for a click. If you’ve read one of my favorite books, “Trust me, I’m lying.” By Ryan Holiday, you know how easily online media is manipulated. And yes, you really should read this book, especially if you’re a marketer, and even more so if you want to understand how you’re being marketed to in the media.”
Then I linked to Amazon to the Trust Me, I’m Lying book, which you guys should all read, it’s so good.
“Second, Tony’s done more to change people’s lives than almost anyone who’s ever lived on this earth. I’ve had the chance to be friends with him now for over a decade. I’ve seen him onstage, I’ve seen him in private and I know his heart. He changed my life, saved my marriage, and is someone I consider not just a mentor, but a friend. You can read his response to the article here. Note, I highly recommend only reading his response, not the garbage they posted.”
So if you go to Medium.com Tony posted a letter, an article, it’s called An Open Letter to Buzzfeed Editors.
“Third, I saw an Instagram today from Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad that was one of the most powerful testimonies about Tony and this situation. Please spend the ten minutes to watch this full video too.”
If you go to Instagram, Tim Ballard posted this whole thing about how, he’s like, “Literally for a living, we research and try to find sex, people having, you know sex crimes and then we prosecute them. We’ve been working with Tony to fight this.” Anyway, it was really, really good.
“I’ll end with something I heard Tony say the first time I saw him speak. He said, ‘There are two ways to build the largest building in town. Number one, actually build the largest building, or number two, try to knock down all the buildings around you to make you look taller.’ Buzzfeed’s attempts to try to knock down the lives of people who’ve served the most isn’t going to make them the tallest building. For them, and for anyone else reading, get back to work on yourself and do the work of trying to build the best version of yourself.”
So that was my post. And then it feels like the internet was like, “Alright Russell, if you’re going to defend him, we’re going to try and tear you down as well.” For the most part everyone posted really good comments, which was awesome. But it’s just interesting because, yeah, anyway.
So after that though, it’s been funny. Again, I get positives and negatives all the time and it doesn’t typically bother me. But I had one that was posted by someone I thought was a friend and a peer and someone I’ve sent a lot of business to and it was just kind of crazy. And he posted this big post basically saying that the messaging I share about being one funnel away is misleading to people, because they all think that they just have to throw up a thing. Whatever, it’s just kind of talking trash.
And honestly, I feel that he was taking cheap shots at me to be able to sell more people into his agency which is super annoying. But whatever, people can’t actually drive traffic themselves, then it’s a good tactic.
It’s funny, back in the day the way that the people who weren’t able to provide value on their own would get leads, they would go and rank in Google for like Russell Brunson scam, and then everyone would type my name in, it would say scam, and they’d click on it and be like, “Russell’s not actually a scam, but you should by my product instead.” It’s like the lowest form of marketing. It’s like when you have no creativity then that’s what you do. And that’s what this guy kind of did.
Anyway, because all the posts he’s ever posted this one’s got the most attention because all my funnel hackers who know him came in and were like defending me, which was awesome. So I appreciate that. But it was just annoying because it was someone who I thought was, again, I thought he was a peer and a friend. Anyway, I’m not gonna, anyway, whatever.
But basically he was attacking me and my message and saying that he didn’t think it was good for the marketplace and I shouldn’t be able to talk about those things. So he kind of put that out there which is super annoying. And everyone is in there defending me and people are fighting. Some people are saying, yeah, they don’t like my message or whatever. And then I just posted my, I made one response and I left it there. So I’m going to read you my response because it comes back to what I want the point of this podcast to be. I said:
“My message has never been, ‘your first funnel is going to be successful.’ It’s consistently for years that you’re just one funnel away, that you don’t know which one it is, that you need to keep building and trying until you find it. Personally it took me 21 funnels before I made my first 7 figure funnel. It took me 6 funnels before the clickfunnels one hit and blew up. I’ll keep beating this drum as long as I have a voice because I believe the message is true. And the 3.5 billion dollars our customers have processed in the last 4 years helps me to prove that it is. The only thing that keeps (I can’t even read my own writing) the only thing that keep them back are belief and the skills. I’m killing myself to give them both. I’m grateful for the role we play in people’s successful campaigns, ‘blah’ (I won’t say his name), I just wish you wouldn’t throw rocks at people who are trying to develop their future dream clients.”
So basically my message to him was like, ‘look I believe this message is true so I’m going to keep on beating that drum as long as I have a voice because I know it’s true.”
And it’s funny, this week also Stephen Larsen messaged me privately and was just like, ‘Hey man, the internet’s been really mean this week.” I’m like, ‘I know.” And he was talking about some places he’s getting beat up at, and he said, it was funny because he said, “I’m going to title this one, Phase two: Noise.” I said, “No you need to title this one Phase Two: Do I really Believe My Message.”
Because this is what happens, I’m just going to share this with all you guys because if you haven’t had it happen yet, you will. You get excited about this thing, you want to become an expert, you want to put your opinions and your voice and your thing out there. You come out and you start sharing and what happens immediately is you get a little bit of kick back, usually your friends and your family are like, “Why is he sharing this? Why is she sharing this?” And there’s that weirdness right there. And a lot of people don’t make it past that, they just give up and go back to their real world.
But for those of you guys who have persevered past that, you got past the friends and family and people you love tearing you down, you got your message out there and started seeing some success. You got the chance to affect somebody and you changed their life and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.” And then you get that high from that and you’re like, “I want to do it again. I want to do it again.” And you start trying to help, you start trying to grow, and what will inevitably always happen as you make more noise, as you increase your visibility and having more and more success, the opposition will come harder at you.
And what Stephen’s going through now, he’s a year and a half into his business and he’s making as much noise as possible and it’s been so much fun watching him. But when you’re making that much noise the opposition will start coming harder. And the second phase which he’s going through right now is where you really find out how much you believe in your message. Because as the external noise, the people who are fighting your message get louder and louder and louder, you have to turn back to yourself and say, “Do I really believe this? Is this really what I want to dedicate my life to? Is it really worth doing? Do I really want to keep beating this drum?”
And a lot of people, at that point, the noise is too loud and they step away. So many people I know who could’ve and should’ve been great leaders and could’ve changed so many people’s lives stopped because they heard the opposition, and it got so loud they couldn’t handle it.
So what I want to share with you guys, that I hope helps you because I had a chance to go through this a lot in the last 15 years doing this, and sometimes it’s louder than others, but it’s always loud and it’s always a lot, it’s just you, you have to really believe in your message. And if you don’t, it’s going to be easy to step back. But if you look at yourself and say, “Look, is what I’m saying, do I believe this? Is it truth? Is it the thing?” and if it is, then you’ve got to commit and you’ve got to double and triple down and say “I’m going to turn off the noise. I’m gonna block the people. I’m gonna unfriend them, unsubscribe from them. I’m gonna set up gate keepers and support people and boundaries to make sure that I’m protected at all costs. But when things slip through and I see them, I need to believe so much in my message that it doesn’t matter.”
My message back to this guy, again, was “I’m going to keep beating this drum as long as I have a voice because I believe the message is true.” That’s my message for you guys. If you really believe in your message you have to keep beating that drum and keep beating it because the opposition will not stop. And the only way to drown out the noise of the people attacking you is to beat that drum louder and louder and louder, to the point that they get so loud that you can’t hear them.
And for me, that’s the most point that I’m at right now. I keep beating it and I believe in it, and I keep doing it, and it’s making more noise and I’m going to keep on doing it, and hopefully that gives you guys some courage as well. The bigger you get, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get less people taking shots at you, you’re going to get more. But if you’re beating the drum loud enough it’s not going to matter, they’ll bounce off you and you’ll be able to keep going.
So for those of you guys who are going through that phase right now where you know what’s coming in the very near future, now is the time to really double down on your message and look at it and believe it. And if you’re wavering like, is this really the right message? Should I be doing this? Do I need to change it? Go out there and serve more people, help more people.
Like I told him, the 3.5 billion dollars our customers have processed showed me this is true. And I walk up and down the bathroom hallway and the kitchen in my office here and I see all the Two Comma Club awards and Two Comma Club X awards, I know that my message is true because I know, I’ve seen it work over and over and over again. And my absolute belief in it is what gives me the ability to continue to beat my drum, and continue to beat it because I care about the people I’m serving and I care about their success. So the same thing has got to be true for you.
So my goal for you is to take that same mindset right now and just drill it into yourself because the opposition will come, I promise you that. And if it doesn’t, it means that you’re not…it’ll come, I promise you that. As you start having success it will come. So just be prepared for it. When it comes celebrate it, don’t be upset by it, because that will just pull you down and make you not want to keep beating your drum. Just shift focus back to the people you’re serving and keep on beating your drum.
So that’s what I got for you guys today. I’m grateful for all of you guys who listen. I hope that this gives you some inspiration, gives you whatever you need to keep moving forward, because your message matters, and what you do is important. Not just important to you and your family, to your income, it’s important to the people you’ve been called to serve. So don’t stop, keep beating your drum, keep going out there and doing your thing. I’m on your side. I’m sitting here next to you beating your drum with you because I care about you and I respect you and I’m grateful for you, and I’m grateful for the contribution you’re making in the world.
So keep doing it, don’t stop. Keep beating that drum. With that said, I appreciate you and I will talk to guys all again soon. Bye everybody.