# 10 Years Ago In Fiji… - Link: https://jarvislegacy.com/podcast/10-years-ago-in-fiji/ - Published: 2019-09-18T08:00:00-07:00 - Author: anchorwave ![Jarvis](https://jarvislegacy.com/wp-content/plugins/seriously-simple-podcasting/ assets/images/no-album-art.png "Jarvis") Jarvis 10 Years Ago In Fiji... ![Loading](https://jarvislegacy.com/wp-content/plugins/seriously-simple-podcasting/ assets/css/images/player/images/icon-loader.svg) 00:00 / RSS Feed Share Link Embed [Download file](https://jarvislegacy.com/podcast-download/3637/10-years-ago-in-fiji?ref=download) | [Play in new window](https://jarvislegacy.com/podcast-download/3637/10-years-ago-in-fiji?ref=new_window) My surprising transformation from my last trip to Fiji to this trip… On this special episode recorded in the Namale Resort in Fiji, Russell reflects on the last time he was there, and how different his life is than he had expected. Here are some of the cool things you will hear about on today’s episode: * Where Russell’s business was when he first went to the Namale Resort ten years ago. * What he thought he’d be doing in ten years, and how it’s different from how it actually is. * And why Russell and Tony Robbins both believe people overestimate what they are capable of doing in a year, and underestimate what they are capable of doing in a decade. So listen here to find out how Russell’s expectations from ten years ago differ from his reality now. —Transcript— Bula everyone, this is Russell Brunson, I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I am messaging you guys from the beautiful Namale resort in Fiji and I got something really cool I want to share with you guys. Alright everybody, so I am in Namale, like I said, which is actually Tony Robbins’ private resort here in Fiji that he bought like 30 years ago, and over the last 30 years has been developing it into what it is now. And we just got done with a big huge mastermind meeting for everybody who was part of the Mastermind.com launch. And it was the top ten affiliates that got to come here, so we had so much fun with some amazing people. It was obviously Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi, then you have Jenna Kutcher who is the number one affiliate, Lewis Howes, Brian Delaney, Nick Unsworth, I’m going to forget everyone’s names right now, now that I’m on the spot. Anyway, some amazing marketers in a whole bunch of different industries, and it’s been really fun this last week, masterminding and hanging out with them. And now we are actually packed up and about to head out. And as we’re getting ready to leave I was just thinking about a lot of things. Some of you guys know, if you’ve been following me on Instagram or Facebook or anything, I actually had a chance to come here ten years ago, in fact it’s almost ten years ago to the day, it’s crazy. And when we got here this time was kind of special, we got here and the car drove up and when you come to Namale, there’s all these amazing Fijians that come and greet you and sing to you, and Tony was there, it was kind of cool. Tony’s there singing and giving us all hugs and everything as we got here, which was really special. Then they started taking us to our rooms, they said, “Hey Collette and Russell, you guys are in the Bula House.” And we’re like, “What? We were in the Bula house ten years ago, which is crazy.” But we got to have a chance to come here with our kids and I’ll kind of tell you that story a little bit more in a minute. But we got the Bula house and as we’re walking through it was so cool because we’re like, “Oh my gosh, I remember being here a decade ago.” And I remember there was this spot in the floor, I was like, ‘That’s where I was the very first time that I emailed Dylan Jones,” who was one of the original founders of Clickfunnels. I’m like, “I emailed him there the very first time and asked him if he wanted to do some design work for me, and he said yes. And we communicated while I was sitting in that spot right there, which was ten years ago.” Anyway, it’s kind of crazy. So as Collette and I were leaving, getting ready to leave today we were walking around the resort and kind of looking at stuff and talking about the last ten years. And it’s crazy because, if you’ve ever been to a Tony event, he says this a lot. He says, “Most of us, as humans, will overestimate what we can do in a year, but will underestimate what we can get done in a decade.” And I was talking to Collette, I said, “Think about this, ten years ago we were here, I was on top of the world.” I thought I knew everything, I thought I was, you know, I don’t know, I was definitely not the same Russell I am now. I was more impressed with myself, I would definitely say. And I remember being here and speaking and you know, I’m, what am I 39 right now, so I would have been 29 years old. So I’m a 29 year old kid at Fiji speaking at Tony Robbins’ business mastery, and I’m just thinking I’m on top of ht world. And what’s crazy, after we were there, we were here in summer ten years ago, and then we went to Date With Destiny in December of that year, my wife and I. At the time we had about 100 employees and business was doing okay, not great, but we were making a lot of sales but the revenue was really, really small, looking back now. And then in January of that year, January 19th or something, is when all of our merchant accounts got shut down. And it was the first time that I had ever had a real legitimate struggle, and everything got shut down. And it ended up taking us almost three years to recover from that. So that was ten years ago, so the next three, so seven years ago. It took us that many years to recover from this thing where I owed the IRS so much money, I had all these debts and back taxes and all this….it was crazy. I’m not going to go deep into that story, some of you guys have heard me tell it before. But it was a really dark, scary time. I went from 100 employees down to 20, down to like 5, and just trying to figure out how in the world I’d keep the doors open. How do I keep paying the bills? How do we survive? And it’s crazy, in a matter of six months from being here in Fiji, six months later I lost almost everything. And then, again, it took like three years to get out of the hole, get back on top, have some success. And in that journey of those three years is where I had a chance to meet Todd Dickerson, who is the cofounder of Clickfunnels. I had a chance to meet him and start working with him, and again, some of you guys have heard this story before, I’m not going to go too deep into it, just because of time. But you know, he started working with us back when I had no money to even pay him. And he started working for free, he worked for free for an entire year. That was 7 years ago, maybe 8 years or whatever that was, 7 or 8 years ago. And then a little bit after that is when we had the idea for Clickfunnels. So we spent a year building Clickfunnels. That was, so six years ago we had the idea for Clickfunnels. Then 5 years ago Clickfunnels launched, and the last 5 years have been insane, as you’ve probably seen. In fact, our 5 years Clickfunnels birthday is a week from today, actually, from the day I’m recording this. So in one week it’ll be our 5 year birthday. So in the last 5 years we’ve just been running like crazy. And it’s just crazy as I think about this, because I’m back now in Fiji at the same spot and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, last time I was here I thought I had everything figured out, and little did I know that six months later my whole world would get flipped upside down, my business had crashed, I lose everything. I lose friends, I lose teammates, I lose everything I’d built to that point that I thought was so impressive and so special, was gone. And then the rebuild happened. And it’s crazy because as I was walking with Collette today on the beach talking about it, I started thinking, I told her, “Isn’t that interesting that it comes back to Tony Robbins’ quote. We always overestimate what we think we can get done in a year.” I thought that a year from being in Fiji, I remember sitting in the event and teaching my session and listening to everybody else’s, I’m like, oh my gosh I’m going to go from, I think I was at about 8 or 9 million dollars a year at that point, I’m going from 8 million to 80 to 100, and I had these visions of what I was going to do. I thought in the next year or two I was going to be at this number, and I wasn’t. In fact, it was the opposite, the whole thing crashed, and I lost almost everything. And then it kept working, kept working, kept learning, kept growing, kept failing, kept failing, kept trying, kept failing, kept failing, kept failing, then had a little success, then a little success, then a little success and they built up on each other. The first one built onto the second, the second to the third, and now over a ten year window, which literally, almost ten years to the day, a ten year window, I never would have guessed in a million years we’d have a company that we should do over 150 million dollars in sales this year, our evaluation is pretty close to a billion dollars right now. I never would have fathomed that was possible. So I underestimated what I thought was possible in a decade and now I’m here a decade later looking at it. So I wanted to share that for a couple of reasons. Number one, is just for myself to remember. I could go back home and in six months from now I could lose everything. I could lose Clickfunnels again, I’ve got to be okay with that because I have no idea what the Lord, or what God, or whatever you want to call it, has in store for you. What are the lessons you need to learn for you to become who you need to become. There’s no way I could have become who I am today had I not had these struggles and these trials. So it’s kind of reminding myself of that. Number two is helping me and hopefully all of you guys realize that we’re trying to like get this business to start, I gotta have a success, I need to make sure it’s making money right away. And we’re always pushing, pushing, pushing trying to make it happen today. Just keep moving forward and keep doing your thing, but realize that all of us, what we think is possible in a year is probably not going to be possible, but what we think is possible in a decade, we can do so much more of that. But it comes back down to planning these consistently, moving it forward, doing something, trying, moving forward, doing something, trying, moving forward, and that consistency is what gives you the ability so in ten years from now, everything has changed. So that hopefully gives you guys some faith and some hope for those who are struggling right now, who have been working hard towards the goal in your six month, or year or two years in, you’re not hitting where you want to be. It’s okay. You’re probably overestimating what’s possible in a year, but you’re underestimating what’s possible in a decade. So keep moving forward. You’ve got to put ten years into this. Ten years in this business, into whatever it is you’re pursuing, whatever it is you’re going for, and in a decade from now you’ll be shocked at what’s possible. So I just thought it was kind of cool because I’m here, literally staying in the same place, literally at the same resort, same place, all these things ten years later, to have this rare chance to look backwards and be like, “Oh my gosh, he was right.” And here we are now on the other side of a decade and it’s pretty amazing. So I’m excited. I’m excited for myself, I’m excited for you, I’m excited for what’s going to happen over the next ten years of my life and my business, what’s going to happen over the next ten years of your life. How many people’s lives can you affect, can you change in the next decade, if you just keep pursuing what you’re pursuing with the intensity you are right now, and not slowing down, not giving up. If you knew that, if you knew that oh my gosh, it’s not going to pay off this year, but in a decade it’s going to pay off a million times more than I ever thought was possible, if you knew that and you believed that, what would you do differently? How would act differently, how would you plan, how would you prepare, how would you move forward, what would you learn, what would you focus on if you were looking at a bigger picture ten year glimpse as opposed to a one year glimpse? So that’s kind of the reminder for me and also for you.I hope this helps and I hope that someday you guys have a chance to be sitting in Fiji here with me and we can talk about it and be like, “Oh my gosh Russell, you’re right. I listened to that podcast episode 5 years ago, 8 years ago, and I was struggling, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had been trying this business and trying this thing, and nothing was working, and now here I am a decade later, and oh my gosh, you’re right. I persevered past the year mark, then the three year mark, and the five year mark, and we got it.” It’s crazy, if I would have looked back even 5 years ago, 5 years ago Clickfunnels hadn’t launched yet. If I look back 5 years ago and talked to that Russell and been like, “Remember 5 years ago when you were in Fiji, are you close to where you thought you were going to be?” And I would have been like, “I was making way more money 5 years ago. I was having way more success. I was on top of the world. I thought I had everything figured out, and now 5 years later I’ve not gotten back to where I was at. What’s wrong with me? What am I missing?” But I was laying the foundation for something bigger and greater, and I didn’t even know it at the time. A lot of things you don’t understand and see until you look backwards. But anyway, I hope that gives you guys some belief in what’s possible as well. With that said, we are going to be jumping on a plane. We’ve got a little flight back to the main island in Fiji, then an 11 hour flight back to the states. And then we’ll get home and see our little kids, which I am so excited for. And then we get back to it. The Traffic Secrets book was submitted last week, so I got the edits back from the publisher today. So it means I gotta kind of go through it one last time before it’s done, and it out of my hands. We’re also this weekend going to be doing a live reading of Traffic Secrets, which I am really excited for, because when I edited the Dotcom Secrets and the Expert Secrets books, before I sent the final one in I recorded the audio book. And when I recorded the audio book I found a bunch of mistakes that I didn’t notice when I was just reading it over and over again. So I was like, I don’t have time to record an audio book, so we’re doing a live recording, and anybody who’s got a ticket to Funnel Hacking Live has an opportunity to kind of come to that and listen in. That’s happening Thursday and Friday. So that means if you haven’t got your tickets yet to Funnel Hacking Live, now is the time, go to FunnelHackingLive.com. Also, just kind of an exciting thing, we’ve got some really fun plans, my brain’s been spinning on some changes to this podcast, to a bunch of other cool things that will be coming out here in the very near future, so I look forward to sharing those things with you as well. But I wanted to thank you guys right now for being faithful subscribers, and we’re going to keep rewarding you with more amazing, cool stuff coming up here in the very near future. So with that said, thanks you guys for listening, I appreciate you all. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a snapshot of it on your phone, go to Instagram or Facebook, tag me on it, and use #marketingsecrets, that way I’ll be able to see what your thoughts and your comments are on this episode. Also, if you’re not subscribed now, go to iTunes, you can open the Apple Podcast app on your phone, if you’re using Apple, click on subscribe. Make sure you’re subscribed to the show, that way you get all the notifications when the new shows come out. And with that said, I appreciate you guys and I will talk to you all soon. Bye everybody.