# Why I’m “Pausing” The Inner Circle (Part 1 of 2)

- Link: https://jarvislegacy.com/podcast/why-im-pausing-the-inner-circle-part-1-of-2/
- Published: 2019-10-14T08:00:00-07:00
- Author: anchorwave

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Why I'm "Pausing" The Inner Circle (Part 1 of 2)

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I made an announcement last Friday about why I’m pausing the Inner Circle. This 
episode will explain why…

On this episode Russell talks about the history of his inner circle group in the
wake of deciding to pause it for a season. Here are some of the awesome things you
will hear on this episode:

 * How Russell got started with Mastermind groups and what lead to him starting 
   his own.
 * Hear about the evolution of the inner circle group from it’s beginnings as the
   Ignite program.
 * And see where the inner circle group is now, just as Russell decides to take 
   a pause from it.

So listen here to find out how the inner circle began six years ago, and be sure
to listen to the next episode to find out why Russell will be pausing it for a little
while.

—Transcript—

Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson and I welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets
podcast. I’ve got a special episode for you today. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little
nervous to do this one. But there’s been a bunch of questions I’ve been getting 
over the last 24 hours, and this is probably the best format for me to kind of talk
about it. So I’m going to be talking during today’s episode about why I am pausing
my inner circle.

Alright everybody, so yes, that is the news. As you’ve probably seen in the Clickfunnels
community there’s been a lot of changes and announcements happening. On the Clickfunnels
five year birthday, we did some big announcements talking about how we’re simplifying
the software, getting rid of some of the features, and just focusing on being the
category king of sales funnels. We then talked about how we launched Funnel Flix
which is a training platform for people in funnels, and it basically has all the
courses we used to sell for anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to a couple thousand
bucks for free, for anyone who’s at the $297 a month level of Clickfunnels. And 
since then we’ve had thousands of people upgrade to that level, which is really,
really cool. So now we’re able to do more training. That was the first big announcement.

And there’s another big announcement happening at Funnel Hacking Live, which you
guys are going to freak out about. If you don’t have your tickets yet, go to FunnelHackingLive.
com and get them. And then on my 40th birthday there’s another big announcement.
So those are three big things happening, but there’s a lot of little announcements
happening as well. And one of them I made last Friday, and it was more silent because
it wasn’t to everybody, it was just to a small group in our market.

A lot of you guys know I’ve had an inner circle coaching program now for over six
years, since before Clickfunnels launched. And it’s funny, I shared this with inner
circle group, we had a group here on Monday and Tuesday, and today’s Wednesday. 
And I kind of took today off and spent time with Norah, went to the pumpkin patch
with her. Then tomorrow, Thursday and Friday I have my last inner circle meeting.
And honestly, it’s been so far I’m only halfway through the week, but it’s been 
one of the most emotional weeks of my life.

So I kind of want to just talk about that, because I know a lot of people who listen
to this podcast specifically, this has been a thing that they’ve been striving for.“
I want to be in your inner circle. I want to get there. This is my plan, someday
I wanted to do it.” And I just wanted to tell you the story behind it, and then 
from there talk about why I’m pausing it for a while. And hopefully it’ll be good
for you and inspire you and help you to make some decisions that are tough as well.
So that’s kind of the game plan.

I’m going to go back in time a little bit. So when this whole thing started for 
me, I had joined a mastermind group, it was Bill Glazer’s mastermind group, Bill
Glazer and Dan Kennedy, way back, over ten years ago now. And I was in that group
for six years. And when Bill Glazer sold the company I kind of dropped out and I
was like, “I need another mastermind group.” And I had tried to launch my own group
a couple of times with varied success. I had it once and I had like 5 or 6 people
sign up, and then I did it for a year or two and it was kind of hard, and I cancelled
it.

Anyway, while we were building Clickfunnels and I was writing the Dotcom Secrets
book, both the things were happening at the same time, I started having this, I 
don’t even know what the word is, this desire, this need for a mastermind group.
And I tried to join a couple other people’s and just never got what I needed out
of them. And finally I kind of felt the pull, which I’m sure you guys have felt 
that pull, that calling, whatever you want to call it, that need of just like, “
I feel like I should start a group”

And I remember looking at a bunch of people who had groups online and that were 
doing really well, and I was like, “That would be so cool.” And they were charging
$25,000 for these things. And I was just like, there’s no way that’s going to be
possible, but I want to try. So I went out there and I tried to launch this thing.
And at first I launched a program that was $10,000, it was called our Ignite program,
and we started selling that and it was doing well, and it grew to the point where
it was too big.

And I was like, I want to do an inner circle. I want to have my own group that I
work even closer with. So we launched a $25,000 inner circle program. And at first
nobody would sign up for it. I kept trying thing after thing, and nobody, like people
would sign up for the $10,000 thing, but nobody would sign up for $25,000. I was
just like, other people are selling things for that much, why can’t I? What’s wrong
with me? And you know, again, we’re building Clickfunnels at the time, I’m writing
the Dotcom Secrets book, and I remember finally, we sold one.

And the crazy thing to me, the person that bought it paid $25,000 and then they 
never showed up to any of the meetings, to any of the things. The first person who
signed up never, never asked for a refund either, just never, we couldn’t get this
person to ever contact us, it was the weirdest thing. We got one person to sign 
up, they won’t even show up. I don’t, it doesn’t make any sense to me.

And then we sold another one and another, and we started selling a few, and it wasn’t
a ton, I think we had 5 or 6 probably at the first meeting. So I had my Ignite event
which had maybe 100 people that came to that. And then we did the Inner Circle right
afterwards that had like 5 or 6 people in it. And it was the first little mastermind
group, and it was so awesome.

In fact, I want to take a step back. I shared this yesterday with the inner circle
members, but it was funny because this whole thing, the writing the Dotcom Secrets
book and the building of Clickfunnels and stuff, came on the backside of a big business
failure where I had to fire 80 people and I didn’t like the business I was in, and
if you’ve read the Dotcom Secrets book, the intro section I talk about how I woke
up one day and I didn’t love my customers and I said, I wished I would have had 
a boss, so that person could fire me, because I didn’t want to go in.

And about that time I heard Evan Pagan talk about how you need to build out a customer
avatar and I thought it was the cheesiest advice ever. But I was like, alright fine.
I’m going to do this customer avatar exercise, and I talk about it in the Dotcom
Secrets book. So I sat down and said, “Who, what’s my dream customer look like?”
At first I thought from a male, a man standpoint. So I gave it a name, I’m going
to call him Mike. What are some things about Mike? He’s successful, he used to be
an athlete, and I kind of list all these different things that my dream customer
would have.

And I took that to Google images and I typed in Mike, and I set up all the phrases,
and a whole bunch of pictures popped up and I picked a dude who looked like someone
who I’d want to hang out with, who I thought would be cool. And I took that picture
and printed it out and taped it on my wall. And I was like, I don’t want to just
serve men. I want to serve women as well, I think women are amazing and a lot of
times have more power to change and impact than men, not all the time, but a lot
of times. So I was just like, man if I could help serve women as well.

And prior to that, the reason why that was a big deal to me at the time is prior
to that, when I was doing coaching and stuff like that, I never had very many women
who came into our groups, a few but it was just definitely more male dominant. And
I was like, I want to work with women too, they’re so amazing and I’ve seen the 
impact that successful women can have on people. And I was like, I want that as 
well. So I wrote out a customer avatar on the female side and I called her Julie,
and I listed all these different names and I went to Google images and I found a
picture that was like my dream Julie. And I printed that out and printed it on my
wall.

And I had these two pictures and they became my, that was my dream. I want to build
a mastermind and those two people are there and I can hang out with them. So that’s
when this whole journey started. We started getting some people in and had the group
and it was 5 or 6 people at this first mastermind group, and it was the beginning.
And we kept pushing it, and kept pushing it. And eventually we got to 8 and to 10
people, and it slowly grew and I would do meetings two or three times a year with
them. It was some of the most rewarding work I ever had a chance to do in these 
mastermind groups.

And then I started talking about it. In fact, if you’ve been listening to this podcast
for the last 5 or 6 years, I started talking about inner circle members, because
I was closest with them. As they would have successes I would talk about it on the
podcast. And the more I talked about the inner circle members, the more people who
would say, “I want to be in the inner circle.” And then we started getting more 
traction and more growth and more people started coming into it, to the point where
we had a full group of like 18 people, which in my mind my max said 18 people. And
I was like, oh my gosh this is crazy.

And then we did, I think we did Funnel Hacking Live about that time and we signed
up like 10 more people. And then we had like 30 and I was like, I can’t do 30, I
think I tried once to do 30 in a group and it was like really, really hard. So I’m
like, I’m going to break it into two groups. Then we had two groups of 15 or something
like that. And then one day, I had this idea. I was like, what would it look like
if I made this perfect? We could have, if I did 4 groups of 25, that’d be 100 people.
I could facilitate that, it wouldn’t crush too much of my time, I’d be able to still
spend time doing CLickfunnels and everything else I’m doing.

So I said, I can handle 100 people in this inner circle and I’d be maxed out at 
that point. So then, I think I did a podcast about it. I’m sure I sent some emails
out and I said, again, we had maybe 35 people at the time. And I said, “Just so 
you know, we’re capping at 100 people. When we hit 100 I’m shutting it down.” Again,
I didn’t think that was ever going to happen. And within like 2 months we hit 100
people. And it was crazy and intense and insane.

And we’d do these events where basically people would come and it’s 2 days times
4 groups. 2, 4, 6, 8 days over 2 to 3 weeks, and it was basically a month of my 
life 2 to 3 times a year was focused on inner circle members. Then I did these things
called Decade in a day where they jump on a call on Friday and I spend Fridays consulting
with different people in the group. And it was just, again, so fulfilling, so rewarding
and gave me a chance to have my hands on 100 people’s businesses at a time in all
sorts of industries. It really for me was the training ground, it was the thing 
that gave me the ability to understand what works in this business, and what’s different.
Like what are the intricacies and the differences between an info business versus
a supplement business versus a local business. I had this rare, unique opportunity
for many years to work with so many companies and see, and be on the front lines
and be able to talk through voxer’s with all these entrepreneurs and to figure things
out, and it was amazing.

So again, we hit the 100 people and then we capped it down, and for like a year 
no one could come in. And we started getting the normal trips that would happen 
and after a year we were down to like 70 or, I don’t know how many people were in
there. I was like, we need to kind of re- get it back up to 100.

So we did a campaign, got it back to 100 and then I had this idea, I said, you know
what I don’t want to keep filling this up with new people. I want to make this where
it’s like, this is the group of people I’m going to work with, and I just wanted
to every single year come back to the same group of people and together, collectively
as a whole, I want us all growing together. How are we going to do that when we 
have people coming and going and things like that? It’s really, really difficult.

So we did a campaign with everybody and I said, “We’re starting a program, we’re
calling this Inner Circle for Life now. We’re changing the name, it’s called Inner
Circle for Life, and when you’re in, you’re in. And if you leave, that’s fine, you
can leave, but if you leave you can never come back in.” Because a lot of people
said, “I’m going to leave, I’ll come back next year, I’m just going to take a year
off.” I was like, I hated that.

So we made it inner circle for life where you’re in, you’re in, and if you’re out,
we’re still friends but you can never come back in. And what happened next was insane,
nobody, for the most part, nobody left. And inner circle was closed for the next
2 ½ years or so. And that brought me to where I’m at now.

You know what, I’m going to share that on the next episode. I’m going to drag this
story on, because usually my episodes are 10 minutes long, and we’re already 12 
minutes and I want to share the rest of the story on the next one. So there’s the
build up of where inner circle’s come from in the last 6 years and why we did it,
and how we did it, and some of the amazing things, and some of the experiences. 
So that’s it for this episode.

On the next episode I’m going to talk to you about the transitions in my personal
life, and family and everything, and why I’m pausing inner circle for now. I’m not
pausing it forever, not indefinitely, but for a season I’m going to be pausing it,
and I’ll tell you more about that on the next episode here at the Marketing Secrets
show. Thanks again everybody, and I will see you on the next episode.