Your Secret Framework

The process I use to write books, create courses, teach seminars, and to grow Clickfunnels.

On this episode Russell takes a break from his family vacation on Lake Powell to talk about why having a framework is so important. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in today’s episode:

What a framework is and how it can help you teach a concept in just an hour or even a three day event. How having a framework can help you figure out what it is you are teaching or selling. And why a framework is how Clickfunnels beats its competitors.

So listen here to find out how Russell uses frameworks in his business.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. This episode I am streaming to you from my family vacation as I am walking around the beach here at Lake Powell.

Hello everybody, welcome back. Alright, I hope you guys are all having a great summer time right now. I’m sure it’s summer if you’re listening live, and if you’re listening on replay it could be the middle of winter for you right now, but just imagine being on a beach in 100 degree weather, boating, jet skiing, tubing, water skiing, knee boarding, all the stuff. That’s what’s happening here and we’re having a good time with the family.

But for any of you guys who know me, you also know that I struggle at vacations, because my mind is going crazy wanting to move forward and have momentum and a vacation is literally the opposite of momentum. It’s like, let’s stop everything and just sit and be. And it’s good for me, it’s good for everybody, but it is definitely hard for most entrepreneurial minds. So if you are struggling on vacation, maybe you’re listening to this during your vacation. I see you, I understand you, I get it.

Anyway, I’m enjoying my family, they are the coolest. My kids are fun ages. We’ve got teenagers who I want to beat up some days, I’ve got little kids who I love, and I got little, little kids who just won’t sleep. So you know, you get a little bit of all those things. But they’re so cool. And it’s just fun to be able to have summer with them. I don’t think I have too many more before my twin boys are gone, then it starts, they all start leaving again. It’s crazy to think about.

Anyway, but I’m here and I’m trying to focus on the family. Between the breaks I’m reading books, I’m reading Dave Gogin’s book right now, which is so good if you want a book to pump you up about life and about everything. I’m also writing the traffic secrets book right now, which is fun as well. And as I’m writing the traffic secrets book I’m kind of noticing something cool. And I wanted, that’s what I wanted to jump on an share with you right now.

It’s something that I don’t know if I, like no one ever sat down and taught me this, but I kind of picked up along the way and started doing it and people would start pointing it out to me and I was like, “Oh, that’s fascinating.” So instead of you guys trying to figure it out, I’m just going to give you a short cut and tell you what people point out to me, that’s really cool.

So as I’m writing the traffic secrets book, if you look at how I do it, each chapter I sit down and I’m like, I don’t call it this but in my head I’m thinking, what’s the framework from this chapter? For me, it’s the doodle, what’s the doodle that explains this whole chapter? So I sit down and I look at this paper and I keep thinking until I sit there until I can doodle out an image that’s like, this is the concept I want to illustrate during this chapter.

So I doodle out this image and then I sit down and I write the chapter. What I’m doing is I’m creating the framework for that chapter. And the same thing with the Dotcom Secrets book. People loved that book and I didn’t think, it wasn’t a conscious thought at the time, but I was doodling out these images and then explaining the doodles. And that’s kind of what the whole Dotcom Secrets book was.

Expert Secrets was, I was taking this framework, which was my perfect webinar, and obviously I did a lot more than that, I talked about a lot of other things in the book. But half the book is basically the perfect webinar framework and me going through it. Me going through it slide by slide by slide and explaining the whole concept.

It’s funny, probably two years ago I was at a little small mastermind group with Brendan Burchard and he was teaching this concept called the seven day launch, which he actually taught at funnel hacking live this year. So for those of you guys who were there, you had a chance to see this. But he stood up and he drew this diagram, and then he started teaching from it. And I remember as he was teaching, he would talk about something for a while then come back to the diagram and talk about the next step of it. He’d kind of go back and forth, back and forth.

And people kept asking questions and I think somebody apologized and said, “Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to throw you off.” And he’s like, “No, no, no. You all know this, as a teacher your framework is your savior. Your framework, you always come back to the framework. I have this framework and I can teach it in 5 minutes. I can use the framework and teach it in 3 hours. I have the framework that is the whole thing.”

I remember when he said that I was like, “Oh my gosh, how cool is that?” Because I could do the same thing with my perfect webinar framework. I could sit down and I could explain it in 5 minutes to somebody or I could do a three day event teaching it. Because how deep and detailed stories you want to go and reinforce parts of the framework. But the framework is the same, it doesn’t deviate, doesn’t change.

I’m working right now also on this event I’m doing for the families inside of Two Comma Club X coaching program and it’s called the Unlock the Secrets Event. And that’s what I’m doing right now, building out the framework for each session. Like this session this is the framework I’m going to teach, I’m going to explain. So I build out the framework and then I come back and I’m going to teach those pieces of it. Anyway, it’s fun and it makes it easier to teach.

Framework for me, usually my doodles, you guys have all seen those before if you follow me at all. But other people it’s different things, but there’s some kind of framework that guides your teaching. So it’s interesting, if someone asked me, “Hey do you want to come speak at this event?” I’m like, “What do you want a talk on?” and they’re like, “This topic.” And I think, okay. I’ll sit down and on the flight over I’ll doodle out the framework of how I would explain that topic and then I come and I’m like, “Here’s the framework.” And I stand in front and I could teach it for an hour, I could teach it for three hours. I could do the whole event for three days if I needed to because you know, the framework is your savior. You could keep coming back to that thing, you could get stuck or whatever, you’re just plugging in stories or examples and case studies into that framework.

So anyway, that’s kind of the concept. The reason why I wanted to share that with you guys today is because I know a lot of you guys, especially those who are in the info business, you’re trying to figure out how to teach your stuff. And I think a lot of times we learn, we say a bunch of things and we’re trying to teach it back, and we’re like, ‘This is hard.” We’re trying to create a course or write a book or whatever, and it’s difficult.

So what I would recommend doing is you gotta create a framework. So sit down and say Module one, or chapter one, or day one, or event session one, or whatever it is. What’s the concept I want to teach? And trying to like, again, it doesn’t have to be a doodle like mine but some kind of sketch or mind map or something. Like here’s the framework of this session. And that becomes the framework and then all you’r edoing is you go back and teach that. And then as you’re looking at it, you’re like, “Okay, do I have a story for this session of the framework? Do I have a story for this? Do I have an example for this?” and you start plugging in those details and that’s how you build this full, beautiful, amazing tapestry that becomes whatever it is you’re teaching.

So that’s the first thing. Second thing I’d say is after you create this framework, and typically my frameworks aren’t like, ‘Here’s Russell off the top of his head.” I’ve studied you know a thousand people and from there, you know, I talk about a perfect webinar, I try to give credit for everything I’ve learned. I learned this piece from so and so, and this piece and this piece…. And from that I’ve created this framework that’s my framework that I use. I’m going to give you the framework and I’m going to call it something and I call this framework the perfect webinar. Now I give it a name and now it’s mine.

So for you, the same thing. As you’re becoming a creator, and again, I never steal anything from anybody else, that’s bad. Especially if you’re, what do they say? If you’re quoting source, you’re stealing, but if you quote a bunch of sources, it’s called research. So it’s like that. Take all your life experiences from all the people you learned stuff from and combine that into your own framework, your own system, your own thing you can teach people, give it a name, (This is my perfect webinar, this is my whatever), you give it the name and now it becomes your own.

And then I would say, always give credit where credit is due. I try to always give credit to everybody I learned each of the pieces from. And that will go a lot longer than you will ever imagine. So make sure you do that as well.

So anyway, that’s kind of what I wanted to share with you guys, that concept. Because it’s making, it makes all the content creation I do easy and simple and possible. It makes it easy for people to remember and recall and be like, ‘Oh yeah, here’s the framework.” And they can recall the stories and imagery and concepts you taught very, very fast and very rapidly. Whereas if you step up and just start teaching it from an outline, it gets really hard for people to recall, to remember, to retain, to use because there’s no framework.

So all of your teaching, all of your coaching, all of your stuff should be built off that exact framework. And you’re maybe thinking, “Russell, I’m selling physical products. I don’t have a framework.” I would say, then you should make one. People buying physical products, they want a result. So I would come back and say, “What’s the result they’re looking for, and what’s the framework.” My product is a piece of that framework. Clickfunnels is a piece of the framework for the result you guys are trying to get. You guys are trying to make more money, have more impact, so the actual product I sell, which is Clickfunnels is a piece of that framework. But there’s all these ancillary things around it that make the experience more full and it gives me something to teach and to talk and to train and to coach on, which now makes our company flourish.

It always makes me laugh when people are like, “Well, this won’t work for my type of business, Russell, because I’m a blah.” I always smile because literally 5 years ago everyone told me, “This won’t work for a software business.” And then we proved it and they’re like, “Well, it works for software, but no other business.” I’m like, are you kidding me? Part of me wants to create an ecommerce company or a food company, or become a chiropractor or something just so I can prove this literally works with every model, everything, you just have to think outside of the box.

So anyway, whatever it is you are doing, look at it, plug it in, create your framework and remember what you do is probably a piece of that framework, all the stuff around it is what makes you special. So it will make people drive past 30 other chiropractors to get to you. Or you know, fly past 14 other financial planners to fly to your city to work with you because you have a full framework, not just the one thing.

It’s the reason people use Clickfunnels versus any of our competitors. Because we have a piece, but we have the whole framework around it that gives you the education, the training, the systems that make everything else possible.

Anyway, that’s all I got for today. I hope you guys are having a great vacation, great summer. I’m going to head back and have lunch with my kids and then try to focus on being present as a father. And I appreciate you guys letting me have this little release because I need that. I need to think and create and produce and publish and put out so I can get back to being a normal human once again. So my entrepreneurial mind has been stimulated. Thank you for the conversation. I appreciate you all, have an amazing day and I’ll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.