Focusing on Strategy, Mindset, and the Best Ways to Scale Your Business with Russ Ruffino

Russ Ruffino is the Founder and CEO of Clients on Demand, a company that provides small business owners and entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to scale their potential. Through Clients on Demand, Russ helps people gain more leads, more cash flow, and more free time. Russ and his team have also helped coaches, business professionals, and thought leaders build six-figure monthly businesses from the ground up.

Russ has successfully scaled his business from 1.4 million dollars to over 10 million. As a creative thinker, visualizer, and self-starter, he has created a model for promoting online courses and transformational programs for other entrepreneurs.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Russ Ruffino talks about Clients on Demand — and how the company is continuing to grow
How has the Clients on Demand business model changed over time?
The three elements for transformation: world-class strategy, strategic support, and mindset support
Russ describes his former job positions and the pivotal moment that led him to start his business
How to achieve your personal or professional goals (hint: you have to take risks)
Tips for balancing your evolving interests with your company’s services
Focusing on feedback, efficiency, and the best ideas for your company
What is Russ’ secret to constant success?
Tips on creating a future without limits
How to get in touch with Russ — and book a free call with Clients on Demand

In this episode…

Being an entrepreneur takes patience, determination, and the courage to operate outside of your comfort zone. However, all entrepreneurs and self-starters face moments of fear and failure. So, how do you push past the feelings of uncertainty to develop your business? What steps can you take to scale your business and consistently achieve your goals?

As a successful entrepreneur who has scaled his business to over 10 million dollars (with only 31 employees), Russ Ruffino knows exactly how to overcome the challenges of starting a company. According to Russ, growing your business is like a chess game: you take small, strategic steps to eventually craft a decisive win. By focusing on those small improvements, you’ll be able to evolve both personally and professionally while reaping the rewards of constant growth.

In this episode of The Michael Simmons Show, host Michael Simmons talks with Russ Ruffino, Founder and CEO of Clients on Demand, about the steps you can take to grow and scale your company. Russ discusses how to best serve your clients, tips for combining strategy and mindset to get results, and his secret to constant success. In addition to this, Russ shares how you can book a free call with Clients on Demand. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by my company, Seminal.

We help you create blockbuster content that rises above the noise, changes the world, and builds your business.

To learn about creating blockbuster content, read my article: Blockbuster: The #1 Mental Model For Writers Who Want To Create High-Quality, Viral Content

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to The Michael Simmons Show where we help you create blockbuster content that changes the world and builds your business. We dive deep into the habits and hacks of today’s top thought leaders. Now, here’s the show.

Michael Simmons 0:15

Today, I present to you my friend, and also a former client, Russ Ruffino. So I first met Russ about five years ago, where he wants some help creating online content. At the time, he had 1.4 million or so right? yearly revenue, those successful business making over $100,000 a month. But he was talking about, I remember that he wants to scale it to $10 million. So to go from 1.4 to 10 million. And he had a lot of confidence. But I was like, okay, like, that’s a really big jump. Well, believe it or not, he hit that. And he’s even grown much bigger, since that. He’s an example of someone who’s number one, a really big thinker, and visualizer, but actually makes it happen. He’s figured out a model that for creating, promoting online courses, and also creating programs that are really transformational, that I think is going to be a model that many people are already modeling and using, and many more people will use it as well. using it for ourselves. And being learning from him is how we got the confidence to launch our full year transformational writing program. So I owe a lot to Russ. And without further ado, I give you Russ Ruffino, though, welcome to the podcast. Russ. Thanks, man. It’s great to be here. So excited to have you here. And just multiple levels. I think this field of thought leadership is really fascinating. And it’s growing tremendously quickly. And you’ve really built one of the premier thought leadership, coaching transformation companies in the world, how large, is Clients on Demand?

Russ Ruffino 2:12

So Clients on Demand is doing between one and $1.5 million a month in revenue. We have a 31 I want to save people on the team. Everyone is virtual. So the whole company, everybody, everybody works remotely. And yeah, so so we’re you know, we’re we’re on a nice growth trajectory, we’re growing. And it’s it’s been especially great this year, because you know, this is the year 2020. It’s a year that, you know, a lot of businesses really struggled but because our business is completely virtual. I think that the whole COVID pandemic really did not hit us nearly as hard as it hit so many other businesses. So we’re very blessed in that way.

Michael Simmons 2:52

If I can do math, or correctly around the $15 million range, and what’s your goal for next year, that

Russ Ruffino 2:59

our goal is to get to 100. I think next year, we can probably get to 50. Maybe maybe beyond that. We had a couple sort of bottlenecks, let’s say right, so we can get into that if we if we want to talk about scaling and stuff later. But there’s always these bottlenecks that are that are there that are keeping your business stuck at whatever level it’s at, whether you’re trying to get to $100,000 a year or a million dollars a year or $10 million a year, there’s certain roadblocks roadblocks, that you have got to sort of dissolve in order to in order to move things forward. So we just in the past, like couple months, were able to really identify what those were and solve them. And I’m kind of watching them dissolve right before my very eyes. So we’re really excited about what’s gonna happen next year.

Michael Simmons 3:41

That’s awesome. Yeah, you know, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of internet marketers very successful one. I feel like a lot of people who break through there in the million to 5 million and stuff get to the five to 10 million. There’s really very few that that get beyond that. Yeah. How many people because you how many people you know, who’ve reached beyond that to like five or six, maybe, like literally a handful? Yeah, in the world. And there’s maybe Agora Financial, who’s more at the highest than maybe revenue-wise, not necessarily impact wise. But you’ve managed to build a very successful business, but also one where the quality gets better and better. And it’s based off of transformation over information. And my question for you is you have a very non traditional background. And what why do you think you’re one of those people that reached the, that higher level is higher tiers and gonna go keep going higher and higher? For most people who are smart, who are great marketers or great coaches? They just don’t reach that level?

Russ Ruffino 4:43

That’s a really great question, actually.

Um, you know, so

there’s a few things I think that because in this industry, the money can come so fast. And because in this industry, sometimes it can feel like you’re not really doing anything, right like So remember, I remember when I first started making some a little bit of money online some affiliate commissions, right? I was always so blown away that I could be watching TV or walking through the park or you know, love doing whatever and my phone would go off budding and I get an email, I just made 100 bucks. Like that feeling right? There is so surreal, you know that you kind of feel like, I didn’t do anything. And I just, I just made some money, you know. So I think that so many people are operating from a place of scarcity, where they just want to make some money. They’re like, they’re so focused on sales, and they’re so focused on getting money in the door, that they never really stop and think about, okay, well, what kind of experience Am I gonna provide for the people that actually buy this thing from me? You know, what kind of support Am I going to give them. And so from the very beginning, even back in the days, when we were doing low ticket stuff, before we got into like more high ticket, you know, transformational coaching, I just always felt tremendous pressure to do a fantastic job for my clients. And so, if you can sort of chart my career in internet marketing, every single decision that I’ve ever made, from pricing to marketing strategy to everything has really just been built around what’s going to get the best outcomes for my client. And I think it’s just a very different jumping off point, you know, because most people start out thinking, How am I? What’s gonna make me the most money? Right? Yeah, so you know, and then I think there’s a lot of people too, that are that are very, like, you know, significance driven, they want to be on stage, they want the limelight, they want the bajillion followers, they want people to smash that like button and get those likes, and all that other stuff. And, you know, it’s like, it’s like, that’s fine. But you are, if that is your, your your core driver, you are going to make a completely different set of decisions. And if making money is your core driver, you’re gonna make a completely different set of decisions. But if serving the client is your core driver, I think that’s gonna put you on a totally different path. And I think that’s been a big part of it is this from day one, our priority has always been what’s going to get the best outcomes for our clients. And to me, everything else is secondary.

Michael Simmons 6:54

Right? And I can really see that. So the choices you made, you’re one of the pioneers to really go the high ticket offer. Yeah, which is, you know, what you need to do to really offer people the coaching and support they need to transform, right? Like you’ve just kept on adding more and more support over time. And I think one thing that’s really interesting is this online curriculum and content where it is, I think we’re finally getting to a place where it’s realized that giving people the content, and then doing it self serve, maybe the most motivated people can use that most people, there’s mindset challenges and things like that. So I was curious, how has your model of what it takes for someone to actually transform and get a result? How has that changed? And what does it look like now? Yeah, so

Russ Ruffino 7:47

once you So the thing is, once you make that your top priority, you figure out pretty quickly what works and what doesn’t? Because it’s like, okay, are my clients getting results? Yes, or no, if they’re not, Alright, we got to change something. Um, so the first big discovery was the impact of premium pricing. So when I was doing when I first started out, we were doing what everybody else does, we’re selling, you know, $27 ebooks, or maybe a $97, or one nine, or 190 $7 video course or something like that. And you know, all those things sold well. And they were always really well received, you know, people would hit me up and say, Russell, that video, of course, it was awesome, great. And then I’d say, okay, dude, awesome. You liked it? What would you do with it? So Oh, yeah, well, you know, I got a bunch of other courses to get through first, and then I’ll get around to taking action on that one. And they just like, heard that over and over and over again. Now, like, Look, from a from a purely, you know, capitalist perspective, it’s, you know, there’s an argument where you could say, well, you know, hey, I wrote a book, they bought the book, they read the book. That’s it, who cares if they took action or not. And you know, they’re happy, I’m happy, they got what they paid for, and it’s all good. But I really wanted to get people that outcome. I really wanted to get people the outcome I’ve always seen from the beginning, if you’re a coach, if you’re a consultant, if people are coming to you to advance their life in some way, it’s not enough to just say, Hey, you know, here’s, here’s instructions on how to do it, and I go figure this out, you want to make sure they actually get that outcome. And so that was the decision that I made. And, and I decided to sort of re-engineer everything I was doing around that. So whereas before, I might do a launch of let’s say, you know, $47, or something, or whatever, and sell 1000 copies of it. I said, Well, what if we flip this on its head and charge the premium price 3,000 6,000 8,000 $10,000 for what we did, and just work with a handful of people every month, you know, how would that change the dynamic. And what happened was people came in at those premium prices, they were ultra motivated, because they invested at a premium price. Like they did everything I told them to do. I could give them a true VIP experience because now I was only only had to work like 5 10 people a month at least in the beginning. And I could really go to bat for them and make sure they were taking action. And I could really give them the support that they needed. And you know when you have 1000 customers or like you see these people Do these big launches where they they get like 7000 customers at once those people aren’t getting getting good support. There’s no way it’s physically impossible. How can you do that? You can’t coach I you know that many people. So with us, we, we figured out a framework where Yes, we can teach people how to do it, we can also hold their hand along the way and support them each and every step. And the moment we started doing that, it’s like, that was the game-changer in the business, the revenue for the business went through the roof. Our client results went through the roof, I had a lot more freedom again, because we were working with fewer clients. And I was just happier. It was just it was like, that’s what you want. You know, for me, I always wanted to build a business that gave me three things income, freedom, and impact. So can I make the money I want to make? Can I kind of have the freedom to enjoy that money? But am I really making a difference in people’s lives. And it wasn’t until we made that switch from like a low ticket thing to like, like high ticket transformational coaching, that all really kind of came together in a beautiful way. And it still is, as we continue to grow.

Michael Simmons 10:59

Yeah, it’s actually really counterintuitive. If you haven’t done that, on multiple levels, number one, if you’re doing high ticket, no high touch, too many people they would think well, that’s not as much freedom as having a self serve thing where people buy a course and go through it. How have you been able to have $15 million company? 31 employees? That’s like 500,000 in revenue per employee? What? How is that possible? How do you think about that?

Russ Ruffino 11:34

I don’t know. We just do it. So yeah, it seems like it’s going to be easier, but it is not. And that was what really blew my mind. Right. So there was a couple sort of, you know, sayings or, or, you know, little pearls of wisdom or whatever that got thrown around when I was first starting out, right. And one of those things was, you know, man, it’s just as easy to make a $10,000 sales or just to make a $20 sale. And I was like, there’s no way that that’s true. But it kind of is true. And then the other thing that people would say is that, you know, if people are investing with you at a premium price, they’re going to be super high maintenance, they’re gonna be super fussy. You know, you know how successful people are, they’re kind of a pain in the butt, all that stuff. And what I found is that the opposite is true. When I would sell somebody a $27 ebook, they would think that they owned me, and they would email me 20 times a day with questions and all this other stuff, then you multiply that times 1,000 2,000 3,000 customers, and it just, it’s, it’s, it’s insane. Whereas when I would work with fewer people, and they would come in at a premium price, they were the coolest people in the world. They were there. They were not dabblers. They were absolutely committed to getting doing the work, absolutely committed to getting the outcome. And they did. I told them what to do. They did it, and they got the outcome. And to me, that was just like, Oh, you know, it’s like, that’s like what you want, you know, you want to be making an impact in people’s lives, you want to be making a difference in people’s lives, because to me, it’s like, Look, man, I don’t really care how much money I make. You know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re making $500,000 a month, versus making a million dollars a month, like your lifestyle is not really gonna change all that much. But what you get hooked on what you get addicted to is the impact. They’re making the lives of your clients, where there’s businesses that are thriving, multimillion-dollar businesses today, were the people were on the verge of bankruptcy when I first met them, and that is ultimately what gets you out of bed in the morning. You know, that’s what feels so good. That’s really what you get hooked on. And I think in a way, that’s a really healthy thing. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s certainly better than, you know, just being hooked on more and more and more and more money, more money, more money, or like, or, like, you know, more followers, more followers more likes more likes, you

Michael Simmons 13:38

know, so, yeah, it really is true. They I think with life, they can program. These vanity metrics. Yeah. So, on the transformation side, what do you think is required for transformation? There’s more that people need. They don’t realize or that most thought leaders think they don’t realize going into that. Yeah.

Russ Ruffino 14:02

So there really is three things. And this is this is what we’ve found. So obviously, you need a world-class strategy. Right? So the content itself, if you want to call it content, let’s just say the the solution, the formula, the information piece, right? That information has got to be world-class, it’s got to be good enough. So that if somebody follows it step by step that will actually solve the problem. Now, right there, that eliminates, like, 95% of the different programs and things that are out there. Because either it’s just a grab bag of information, or it’s like a bunch of unproven ideas, or it’s just, you know, kind of thrown together where they just throw a bunch of information at you. And it’s not step by step. Most of the information that’s out there is not very good. And I think, you know, you read 10 books on any given topic, and that becomes really obvious really fast, or like, they’ll be like one guy out of the 10 that really knows what he’s talking about. So right there, you’ve got to have world-class. A World-Class solution to the problem, okay. But that’s not enough because like we talked about just giving people the answer, and then and then setting them free to go to go figure it out is that’s not going to get the job done, you know, maybe if the person is very smart and very motivated, and really has their stuff together, but that’s one client in 200, or one client and 1,000,

you know, so

the information has to be world-class, the next thing that has to be world-class is you have to give world-class strategic support. So for example, in our program, we teach people how to how to market their high ticket programs the way that we market ours. And so in order to do that, we have to teach them how to do a great webinar, we have to teach them how to do Facebook ads. But but but we also have to go the extra mile, and give them all the support that they need around that. So for example, my team works with our clients to write a Facebook ad, that’s brilliant. My team works with our clients to write a webinar, that’s brilliant, my Facebook, people are telling them exactly who to target and exactly how to set up their account exactly what the bidding strategy is every piece of it. And that’s, that’s something that requires hand-holding, because the truth is, the way that a relationship coach or dating coach is going to market their business is probably very different in the details than the way like a fitness coach or a business coach is going to market their business. And someone has to come in and bridge that gap and show them how to do it. Right.

Michael Simmons 16:22

Yeah, so you’re really one on one support or advice customized to their situation. And you say handholding or you’re writing a Facebook ad or doing a webinar. What do you mean by that?

Russ Ruffino 16:34

What I mean is that they select, let’s say, somebody comes to work with us who’s a chiropractor, okay, we’ve had a lot of chiropractor clients, and they’re great at cracking backs, they’re great at snapping necks, you know, whatever, whatever they do, but they don’t know anything about marketing. So it’s like, Okay, great, I can show you our step-by-step format for making a webinar, right, and I can explain it to you in great, great detail, make it as easy as I possibly can. But at the end of the day, you don’t have 10 20 years of copywriting and marketing experience under your belt. And so even if that information is fantastic, the job that you’re going to do is probably not as good as the job that someone who does have that experience is going to do. So the way that we bridge that gap is I show you how to do it, you do it, you submit it to my team, and we rewrite it together until it’s absolutely perfect. So you get to sort of borrow not just our strategy, but borrow our skill set as well. So when you teach people information, it’s great because that information is probably going to be the same like for 80% of your clients or, you know, you’re going to cover 80% of the same stuff with every single client. That’s the stuff you want to put in your videos and stuff. So you have to say that stuff over and over again. But there’s that 20% that needs to be individually custom-tailored for each and every client. That’s the part where you need to provide that live support. It doesn’t have to be one on one, you can do it in a group call, like we do zoom calls. And on the zoom calls, we have like breakout rooms where we have like a copy room where if you need help with your copy, you can go here to the Facebook room, if you need help with your Facebook stuff, you go here and so on. So that you can do it in a leveraged way. So you still have your freedom. But by adding that extra dimension of support the results your clients get, it’s going to be night and day better than if you were just giving them the information and sending them on their way. But there’s actually a third piece that goes into two so you got your world-class information. You need world-class strategic support. But I believe you also need world-class mindset support. And this is something I resisted for a really long time because Look, man, I’m not a mindset coach. I’m, you know, I’m a strategist, you know, business strategist. And so I figured, man, look, I give people the best strategy in the world, I hold their hand and coach them every step of the way to implement it, do this, then do this, you know, rewrite their webinars, whatever it takes, I thought that that would be enough. And what we found as we and that’s originally how Clients on Demand, our program was built. But what we found as we went as we went on, is that what really got in people’s way, wasn’t that they didn’t know how to do they couldn’t do the strategy. It was fear. It was fear. It was self-doubt. It was overwhelm it was self-sabotage. You know, even things like oh, Russ, I just had my first $100,000 month, and I’m freaking out. I’m like, Wait, what? What are you freaking out about? You just made $100,000 in one month. But that was more money than anybody who had ever lived in their family at any point throughout all of human history had ever made. And so they hit that Like comfort zone, and just would freak. So what I did was I hired some of the best mindset and performance coaches in the world to come and be on my team. And that was like the second game-changer. Because now you know if you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you’re terrified and you’re in fear, and you’re overwhelmed, you’re never gonna be able to execute it properly. And if you’re, if you’re if you’re if you want results, you have to be operating outside your comfort zone, because if those results were in your comfort zone, you’d have those results already. So there’s stuff that you need to do that you’ve never done before that freaks you out that you’re afraid of that you’re in resistance or whatever. And somebody’s got to be there to coach you through that piece. So if you have those three components, if you have great a great solution, a world-class strategic support and world-class mindset support, then you can have a program that’s really transformational. And that can really command a five 8 10 or $15,000 price on the front end.

Michael Simmons 20:21

Yeah, yeah, I really, really seen this in a writing course. Yeah, is we help people write blockbuster articles online. And I’ve been writing for a while. So for me, it’s it’s kind of like you take it and you put it online, I really realize that there’s so many challenges that come your way. And what I also noticed is that people make up when we when people go into your they see makeup, and I reply on things, a makeup, kind of very logical, mincing things to them. And there’s always a next thing. No, so at some point in our course, we’re like, Okay, if we keep on trying to answer each one logically, no, there’s gonna be a new thing. Yes. Think about what it takes to help somebody go through the emotional challenge of basic fear and their mind. Yeah, giving them reasons why the fear is why they stopped doing this, giving them the

Russ Ruffino 21:14

mindset coaching really is its own skill. So my Managing Director, Jayne Jewell is also our head mindset coach, in my opinion, she is the best mindset performance coach on the freakin planet. I mean, she’s, she’s unreal. And it’s an art, getting people to really understand what’s truly going on. Because Look, man, I can give people advice, right? I can listen to somebody, and I can try to change their perspective on things. But the stuff that the mindset coaches do in our program, I mean, to me, it’s like magic, you know? Because how often do you have a conversation with someone I’m, like, really think about this for a minute, how often you have a conversation with someone where you actually convince them of something. You’re talking to somebody that voted for Trump, you’re talking to somebody that voted for Biden, you’re talking to somebody that is, you know, religion, a and you’re religion B? And, like, are you ever gonna change a person’s mind? No, like, literally never happens? Like never happens, you know, but they have a way of taking someone’s deeply rooted belief. I’m not good enough. Why would anybody buy anything from me, I’m a failure. I’m, I’m, I’m an imposter. I don’t deserve this. You know, God, who doesn’t want me to have money, you know, all of these, like, toxic stories that people have been carrying around, since they were like, five, they have a way of bringing that stuff to the surface, and giving the client the power to really look at it and just decide, hey, man, this isn’t serving me anymore. Let me let this go. And let’s come up with a new, more empowering story and a new and more empowering identity and plug into that. And I really think that’s the stuff. You know, if you if you read the reviews that people write of Clients on Demand, like, yeah, they’re talking about, yeah, I made more money, and I got more clients, and I’m charging higher prices. And also, they’re awesome stuff. But you also have this whole other level where people are like, I am a different, stronger, happier person today than I was eight weeks ago, because there was all this stuff that I was resisting, and now I’m not resisting it anymore. And I’ve let this stuff go. And I’m just happier and stronger, more confident, all that other stuff. Now, we don’t advertise any of that, right? Like, you’re not gonna hear me talk about that stuff. In our webinars. It’s kind of like this surprise, when people get into the program, they just want to learn how to you know, how to get better clients, how to charge more prices, and all that stuff. But then they realize that there’s a real transformation that you have to go through. And I know because I went through it, you know, if you had talked to me, in 2014, you’d be talking to you know, it’s still me, same mannerisms, same sense of humor, same everything. But I’m a radically different, stronger, more confident entrepreneur today, at 15 million a year than I was at, you know, two million a year, or wherever we were at back then.

Michael Simmons 23:58

Yeah, yeah, I think you’re while we first working together, I think you’re at 1.5 million. Yeah. Yeah. And so so so I

Russ Ruffino 24:04

think about how many challenges I have had to overcome. And every time you have to overcome a challenge, and every time you have to have a difficult conversation, every time you have to fire somebody every time you have to tell somebody, no, I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re fit to work together. You know, you get stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger, and you can handle more and more and more and more and more. And that is how your business grows and expands because you grow and expand as a person. So people are like Russ, you know, if I want to advance spiritually, what should I do? You know, should I go go sit in a cave and meditate? I’m like, no, go go start a business, because it’s gonna force you to evolve as a person

Michael Simmons 24:41

very, very quickly. Business. Marriage, marriage, kids, yeah totally. So yeah, the way I almost look at it now is you’re selling an outcome. Yeah. But then, really what you’re selling in a way is mindset shift. There’s everything you talked about, but feels like a large like for, for knowing you five years ago and then now, mindset, depth is a really big part of it. You feel like at that level you’re almost selling. That’s what you’re selling that personal transformation.

Russ Ruffino 25:16

Well, the thing is, you know, that’s what we provide. By but it’s not what we sell. Because most people, it’s not my mindset, dude, I got this, okay, I just show I just I look, man, I just need to know how to do Facebook ads, okay? It’s not my mindset, there’s nothing in my mindset, I swear to God, I’m awesome. I’m super cool. I’m super happy. Can you tell? I’m super positive? You know? Like, it’s not, you know, most people don’t understand that. That’s what it is. And so, you know, so there’s that right. And then the second thing is that most of the people that are offering that are offering it because they don’t have a strategy. And so they’re saying, No, no, no, no, you don’t need to worry about Facebook ads, because your mindsets screwed up. So it’s like, it’s like, it’s like this double-edged sword where like, the mindset coaches out there don’t have a strategy. And when you ask them for a strategy, they’re gonna be like, No, no, no, you don’t, don’t worry about that. Just focus on your mindset. Well, that’s not enough, man. You know, if you want to do Facebook ads, someone’s going to show you how to do freakin Facebook ads, I’m going to show you how to advertise how to market yourself how to generate leads, that strategic piece is super, super important. That is the piece that everybody thinks that they need, and they do need it. But they’re not aware that there’s this whole other component that runs under it. And so what happens is people come into Clients on Demand, they’re super excited, they begin to learn the strategy, they’re full of enthusiasm. And then they realize that the stuff that you need to do is outside your comfort zone. Right? If you’ve never charged $6,000 or $8,000, or $10,000, before, you’re gonna have to say to somebody, yes, that will be $6,000, please, you know, like, and that’s terrifying for people. So when people experience that fear, then we come in with the mindset work, and then it’s like, oh, man, that’s the thing that I was missing. But you don’t, most people don’t realize they’re missing it until they’re walking through the fire. And they go to, they think to themselves, I don’t know if I can do this. And that’s when we swoop in and come in with this incredible support. Whereas if I, if I went to everybody and said, Hey, man, yeah, come sign up for my program, we’ll give you all this mindset support, like 90% of people are like, dude, mindset is not the problem. So

Michael Simmons 27:14

it’s fascinating. I wonder why people don’t realize that just day-to-day life just feels like a huge blind spot in the education system that people don’t realize. As consumers, they don’t realize they need mindset.

Russ Ruffino 27:26

It drives me It drives me crazy. Cuz because you see people live the same year, over and over and over again, you see people have the same bad relationship over and over and over again. And it’s the rare person that realizes that. They’re the problem, you know, like, like, eventually, you have to come to the conclusion that you’re the problem, okay? Like, I mean, if you’ve, if you’ve had 20 relationships, and every relationship, you know, every girlfriend you’ve ever had screamed at you and stormed out the door. You got to say,

maybe it’s me, you know,

So I think I think it’s tough for people to have that realization because it’s hard. You know, it’s hard to take responsibility for your own stuff. One of the things I say to my clients is that until you take responsibility for your own life, you are useless. You know, and I’m not saying that no one has ever victimized you, you know, because people do awful things to other people. And everybody has had situations where a parent or a friend or a mentor or someone, let them down in his colossal way, and you’re filled with hurt, and resentment, and all this other stuff. That’s the human condition, we all go through that. But at some point, you have to say, Look, man, this is my life, and no one’s going to live it for me. And I it’s my responsibility to create my own destiny, regardless of who’s standing in my way, regardless of who doesn’t believe in me, regardless of who cheated on me or beat me up or whatever, it doesn’t matter at because it doesn’t change. None of that stuff changes the fact that this is my life, and I gotta live it. So at some point, you have to let go of those. Those sweet, comforting, you know, excuses and blame and just say, look, I got to take responsibility for my life. You know, if I want this, it’s my job to make it happen. No one else is going to do it for me, not the government, not my parents, not my family. Nobody, I have to do it.

Michael Simmons 29:24

So not like you went to an Ivy League school and then was like, be shot off right away the first 10 years of your career. Were weren’t taking off, though. What do you How did you kind of do that for yourself? Was there a series of moments Did you get coaching fail to realize that the results you were creating weren’t what you wanted, and then to really do the work? Think bigger?

Russ Ruffino 29:49

Yeah, that’s exactly what happens. So

I, my background was in acting and I think That

being an actor and doing it at a high level, right, I mean, and I and I, you know, I mean, I didn’t have like a lot of success in my career, but like, as far as the training I was having and all that stuff, it was at a very high level. Like a lot of the people that I worked with and grew up with are really pretty famous right now. Um, so so just being an actor, you just become very aware of your own psychology and the impact of your beliefs and your emotional triggers. And, and sort of like where those buttons are, you know, if you have to cry in a scene, you have to know what is that trigger for you that you can think about? That’s going to produce that response in you, right? So just as an actor, you know, you’re you’re aware of, of emotionally What, what, what’s going on with you and psychologically, and I was a bartender from age 21, to age 31. And, you know, it’s funny, because the entire time I was bartending, I was doing whatever, mindset work, I knew how to do at that time, like I would do, you know, affirmations, or gratitude or affirmative prayer or whatever, you know, different things I was doing back then. But here’s the thing, man, I would say to myself, you know, I’m a millionaire, I’m a millionaire, I’m successful, I’m successful. But anybody can do that. Most people won’t even do that. Right. But anybody can set goals and do affirmations. Right. But I think what really gets people is that it’s not enough to just do those affirmations. It’s not enough to just do that work. You can’t tell yourself, thank you. Thank you, thank you that I’m a multimillionaire for 15 minutes out of the day, and then spend the other 23 hours and 45 minutes living in a way that completely contradicts that. And that’s what I was doing. You know, I started my online business, I was making an extra couple 100 bucks a week, which was kind of cool. And extra, maybe six

Michael Simmons 31:45

What year was this around?

Russ Ruffino 31:47

This was around 2010.

Michael Simmons 31:50

I think you’re at this point, you’re like, 30

Russ Ruffino 31:54

Yeah, yeah, that was the thing. It was right after I turned 30, because I turned 30. And I was like, Oh, my God, I got to do something with my life. Right? My 30th birthday, I was sitting in the lobby bar of the Palazzo hotel with my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, just crying into my drink, like a fool because I because my life sucked so much. And I thought I was gonna be so much more successful by the time I was 30. And I was like, I gotta do something about this. So I did some research into into into doing an online business. And all I wanted to do at that point was get out from behind the bar. I was like, I can’t pour another drink. I just can’t, you know, I still want to do acting, I still want to, you know, what, Rudel, you know, you’re going to lead acting like you have a big aspiration. And your peers, some of the people become some famous actors, actors, that must have been, well, it was very, very, very, very tough. Because they were more talented than me in some things. But they weren’t more talented than me and everything. And I and they would even say that, like, you know, I might not have been the best singer or dancer. But when it came to just like straight acting, I was really great at that part. But But yes, it was very tough. And that’s part of why like, when I turned 30, I was like, something has to give here. I’m not going to be a 40-year-old bartender waiter, you know, trying to make it trying to make it work. And in the beginning, Michael, I just wanted to make an extra 100 bucks a day. I was like, if I could figure out how to make $100 a day, dude, I wouldn’t have to bartend anymore. And that’s like $3,000 a month. Why would I even do that much money if I didn’t have to work anymore. That was like my thing. And so I just kind of just started trying different stuff online. And I started trying, you know, affiliate marketing or like selling ebooks or this or that or the other thing, but going back to what I was talking about before, I kind of had the wheels turning right where I was making an extra 100 bucks, 200 bucks a week, right? Not nearly enough where I could actually quit my job. And one day, I thought to myself, you know what, man? What am I doing here? Sitting here every day saying, I’m a millionaire. I’m a millionaire. Thank you that I’m so successful. Thank you that I’m so successful. What am I doing? corner, my bartending job every day. If I were really a millionaire, but I still be bartending, no. So what would happen if I actually put my money where my mouth was, and jumped off the cliff and quit my bartending job, even though I’m not making enough money online to support myself? And somehow intuitively, I just knew that that’s what I needed to do. And so I took that risk, and I quit my job and I figured, what the hell man if it if it goes south, I could borrow money, somehow, someway stay alive, and then get another bartending job. But if it goes, right, this could change the rest of my life. And I remember on my last day, actually, I don’t think I’ve talked about this before. My last day I walk out of the bar, really happy and excited and elated. And I get in my car to turn on the radio and just randomly that song “Ribbon in the Sky” by Stevie Wonder was playing and there’s this amazing part where he goes, you know, we can’t lose if God’s on our side. I find strength there in the tears we’ve cried or something like that. And when I turned it on, it was right at that part. And I remember just like sitting in my car like crying and like sobbing with joy, that I finally gotten out from behind the bar. And I felt alive for the first time in my life, because whatever was gonna happen to me, was my doing it was my destiny at that point. You know, when I was a bartender, I really I was just very aware that I could get fired at any minute. I didn’t think I was gonna get fired but like a lot of people around me got fired and for no for apparently no reason. So it was just like my fate, my futures in someone else’s hands, my managers a bad day fires me, it’s over. For the first time. If I was going to succeed, or if I was going to fail, it was on me. And I felt that in a really powerful way. So I went to bed that night, ecstatic, excited, filled with enthusiasm. I woke up the next morning in absolute moral terror of just like, what have I done, but But what was crazy was that fear and adrenaline. I’ve never worked harder in my life, I’ve never been more focused in my life. 6 am, I’m at Starbucks, because I didn’t even have good internet, where I live, I’m at Starbucks on my laptop, like, like, furiously, trying to do stuff to build this business. And, you know, man, it worked. And then that like long story short, that first year, I made $250,000, which was, I don’t think I had ever made more than 20 grand, maybe 22 grand a year as a bartender and 10 years. In my first year online. It was I did $250,000. And but my point is that it’s not enough to think positive, it’s not enough to do the gratitude and do the affirmations. Because at some point, you’re going to be faced with a situation where you have to take that leap of faith.

And if you don’t take it,

it’s like the universe, God, whatever says, Oh, you know, Michael was doing all his affirmations. But he didn’t really mean it. Because if he really meant it, he would have jumped.

Michael Simmons 36:53

Yeah. So, you know, you’ve had to do this over and over. I remember when we were working together, you’re at a million. Yeah. And you’re saying you’re gonna do $10 million? next year? You said it very confidently. Like, I was like, Okay, I mean, acting? Normally, I, you’re at 1.5, you’re like, Okay, let me go to 2 million or something like that. Yeah. And then now you’re talking about going to 50 million, and then over 100 million size company? What leaps of faith? Are you looking at? for yourself that got to that level? You have to you have to think differently? How do you think about that right now? Yeah, so

Russ Ruffino 37:29

it’s like, so for example, one of the, you know, we started out in the conversation, I think I mentioned something about roadblocks, that you have to, you know, dissolve, right. So one of our roadblocks in our business is, you know, has always been lead flow. So we advertise on Facebook. And our audience is a little different. You know, we work with coaches, consultants, experts, authors, thought leaders, and the number of those people is not infinite. It’s not like if I worked with, you know, single woman who want to find the love of their life, you know, there’s hundreds of millions of those. But the entire coaching industry, or consulting industry is probably what, four or 5 million people, you know, right now. And so based on that your audience size is only so big, you can only reach so many people with your advertising, and therefore, you can only get so many leads. So we figured out a way to overcome that Roadblock, where now we can get probably eight to time eight to 10 times as many leads as we could before, and I’m really excited about that. But I’m gonna have to spend $400,000 a month on ads to scale it to the level that I want, you know, if we’re doing $50 million a year, I would anticipate that I’ll probably be spending spending, spending a million dollars a month on advertising. So that is what I’m talking about. Like, you know, that’s, that’s, but that’s what it takes, you know, it, it’s that same fear. I mean, when I launched my first Facebook ads campaign $20 a day on Facebook, that was a lot of money to me back then. You know what I mean? But you have to take the risk, you have to take the leap of faith. That is why not very many people are cut out to own their own business. It’s not because they’re not smart. It’s because they cannot deal with risk.

Michael Simmons 39:08

You know what I mean? Yeah, when you’re thinking about that leap of faith, is it often financial for people? What are the different types of those like, okay, you need to make an investment, or you need to keep I

Russ Ruffino 39:18

mean, it’s any anything in your anything in your life, you’re in a relationship, right? That is absolutely awful, and you’re not happy, but you stay. Right? And you can sit there and do all the affirmations and gratitude and whatever that you want. Thank you for my amazing relationship. But if that relationship isn’t changing, and you know, it’s not right, you have to make a leap of faith and trust that, okay, if I if I if I get out of this relationship, I will end up with someone better, right. I mean, this isn’t just something that happens in business. It happens in everything that we do. You try out for the football team, you try out for the basketball team, you know, you’ve got that thing you’ve always wanted to do, and you’re dreaming of it and you’re thinking about it, but you’ve got to pull the trigger and go for it. And that’s what I to me, for me that was quitting my job, but it’s an You know that I’m not telling everyone out there to go quit their job because everyone’s destiny in life and priorities and goals are different. But there is something in your life right now that you are terrified of doing. And that is the thing, usually that you most need to do. And until you step up and do that thing, things aren’t going to change.

Michael Simmons 40:19

Yeah, you mentioned even raising your price. That’s, that’s an example that doesn’t cost a lot of money. But to go to someone, and to say, hey, my program is $10,000, when you’re not used to charging that much, it’s really hard requires that we have so counterintuitive, that requires a leap of faith.

Russ Ruffino 40:35

When I made that shift, I had to I looking back, I probably didn’t need to do it this way, right. But I had like, all my low ticket stuff was still going, still selling. And I decided, you know what, man, the low ticket thing is fine. But I want to really get people results, I want to just focus totally on premium price stuff. So I shut off all my low ticket stuff. Before I had any idea, how did you do the high ticket stuff. So that so there was a good like, and this would have been, I think like mid 2013, I think there was like a good three months there where I made almost nothing. Because I shut off everything I was selling before. And I took that leap of faith to move into the higher ticket thing. I had no idea how to do it, I’d figure out how to do it. And then once I figured it out, like it just clicked kicked in. And that was amazing. But yeah, man, there was a good three months there. I was like, you know, like really running up credit cards. And like, you might have American Express calling and going like, Hey, can I raise my limit a little bit? Because, you know, but that’s, that’s what it takes. And that’s what that’s what people are so

Michael Simmons 41:36

you know, afraid to do. But you have to do that. Yeah, we have that in our business. We have our learning virtual course and our mental model course. And our Seminal course. And when you said that, I was like, Man, what would it be like down lower ticket courses, but those are bringing in money and go to this other program? That’s that takes a lot of the onus? Yeah,

Russ Ruffino 42:00

it takes guts. But it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s well rewarded. And the thing is to I just want to be clear, I’m not telling everybody to just like leap before they look, you know, you know, do what’s called inversion thinking,

right? So

take a second and ask yourself, what’s the worst-case scenario? So most of the time when we’re thinking about making a big move, maybe we see the upside, we see how it could benefit us. But the idea of doing it, it just terrifies us. It’s like, it’s like an immediate reaction. You know, like, like, if I was like, Michael, here’s your raise your price to $10,000. You’ve never done that before your instant reactions be like, Oh, God, I don’t know if I can do that. Okay. Most of us leave it there. And we just sit in that fear and we allow that fear to paralyze us. But what I suggest you do is actually think it through. What is the worst-case scenario? You say, hey, that’ll be $10,000, please, and someone says no. Okay. That’s not that bad. Most of the time, the worst-case scenario is really not that bad. If you think it through. And then when you think it through, you can say to yourself, okay, well, if the worst-case scenario does happen, how can I How can I overcome it, and then you come up with a backup plan. And then you find a lot of these situations in life where you realize the upside is huge. And the downside isn’t that big, like, so again, with my with with quitting bartending, right. The upside was potentially massive, because I just had this feeling that I could build a really great business if I did. But the downside was, okay, if the worst-case scenario happens, and I’m an idiot, and I can’t do any of this stuff I think I can do, how would I survive? Well, I could borrow money from, you know, my credit cards, I could borrow money from my family or whatever, stay afloat, go get another bartending job. And I’ll be alright. So that so you think about you’re like, oh, that actually wouldn’t be that bad. But this is potentially awesome. And this isn’t really that bad. So let’s go for it.

Michael Simmons 43:50

You know, I’m gonna bring us I’m gonna loop us back there. Earlier in the conversation, we took a detour from something. Sure. And we went really deep into it. But I asked the question of, there’s a lot of other very smart driven internet marketers and coaches. So the first thing we talked about was that they really, you really focused on the customer first thought about really significant money. customer first. What are the other thing is I there’s a lot of very smart internet marketers doing things and, you know, do provide good program, not? Of course, there’s partner marketers who have bad program. Yeah. What do you think that’s your part as well?

Russ Ruffino 44:31

You’re kind of asking me to brag. Um,

so, um, I

think there’s so many ways this can go wrong. I mean, I see. You know, Napoleon Hill in the, if I remember correctly, like in the original mail order course, that eventually became like Think and Grow Rich or something like that. It was like reasons businesses fail. There was like, 100 of them. I’m like, like, the list of businesses was crazy. There’s so many many ways you can screw this up, man. I mean, you know, some people are not good with the details. And some people are not good at running a team. Some people aren’t good at hiring people. Some people aren’t good at inspiring people and leading people. Some people are just touchy, you know, some people allow the fear to paralyze them like, you know,

you.

There’s so as you scale your business, there’s so many skills that go beyond what you’re familiar with, you know, going back to the chiropractor, like I mentioned before, that guy knows how to rent an office, he knows how to crack backs. And you know, and that kind of thing, isn’t anything about Facebook ads, you know, and then, and then if he is going to build an online program, he doesn’t know anything about like WordPress, he doesn’t know anything about like hiring a graphic designer, he doesn’t know anything about that stuff. You know, and he can get, he can get scared, he can get overwhelmed, he can get pulled off the path to the left or to the right. He can, he can just make bad business decisions. We see that a lot with people where, you know, let’s say you spent $100 on Facebook ads, and you talk to two, three people, and you enrolled somebody at $5,000. I’ve literally you just spent 100 $100 to make $5,000. I’ve literally had people in that exact situation go Oh, well, no, I don’t want to spend any more money on Facebook ads, because I want to take care of this one person first. It’s like, you just gave Mark Zuckerberg 100 bucks, and he gave you back $5,000? Wouldn’t you want to do that again and again and again and again and serve more people and grow. So it’s like, there’s, it’s like that fear, I think is really what causes people to make terrible decisions. And then there’s just certain things in your personality that you have to compensate for, you know, I’m not a detail person, right, I can kind of adapt and get into the details if I really have to, but it’s not like my natural thing. I’m like a big picture guy. So I gotta surround myself with people that are gonna mind the details. And if I don’t, I’m gonna pay the price. So you, you just have to be hyper-aware of what you’re good at and what you’re bad at. and understand that if there’s a bunch of stuff that you’re bad at, it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but you got to find a way to make up for those shortcomings. Someone else in your company has to be the one that’s doing that thing. And I think that just gets it’s just hard. It’s just hard. This is

Michael Simmons 47:07

me bragging a little bit for you. Because looking for the outside in. You know, I heard another online course graders day that a pattern that people fall into is they have their niche, let’s say they fix people’s trees, people about fixing trees. But in order to be successful at that they have to become really good at marketing. The next niche they go into is marketing because they’re spending two years in funnels. They have all the money. And the next thing they go into is health, basically, because that’s all about like, how can I live a better life? And now that I have the money? So the niches up here free?

Russ Ruffino 47:44

No, I’m just staying really still. Wow, that was listening to you. I’m just kind of like, No, I’m still here.

Michael Simmons 47:51

That’s impressive. Yeah, those acting skills going back, yes. But uh, so the business follows them. And I sense that within myself, like, I’ve constantly my interests are changing. I like to focus on things that reflect me that, and you’ve been very focused on the past seven years, that you started the high ticket program, focusing the same customers, same problem, and you have different products, but they all are gonna have different levels of stock. Clients on Demand, Then there’s Lion’s pride, right? Alliance? All the same thing? What keeps you there? Part of me, my mind isn’t my mindset thing would be afraid of though, what if my interests evolve, or there’d be this other thing? There’s a huge opportunity over there. Let me jump on to that. Yeah, very focused.

Russ Ruffino 48:45

That’s a great, so I guess, one of the people that first got me into high ticket or that, you know, people are always doing high ticket but I, you know, the first the first kind of the first person I ever heard say, you can, you can sell a coaching program for $10,000 was somebody that is a brilliant marketer, just brilliant. But over the years, I’ve, I’ve watched him jump from one business model to the next, where, you know, he was doing like, he wanted to do one on one coaching and mentoring. And his, his thing was like, you could, you could sign up with him as a one on one mentoring client, and you would get to email him, and you would get to do a, I think it was like a 20 minute Skype call with him every other week. And you can ask him, you know, whatever you wanted, and that was like a few $1,000 a month or something like that. So he built that up to the point where you had like, 50 people in there, right? And so he’s making four or $500,000 a month with that or something like that. And our product 250 300,000 a month, and he ran it for two, three months, and then got bored and just shut it down was like I’m not doing this anymore, and shut it down and got rid of all his clients and then and then he had to look for a new business model. You know what I mean? So I saw this guy do this. And other people do this over and over and over and over again, where it’s like, it’s like, they were like a, you know, a dog chasing an ambulance. Like, you don’t know what you wouldn’t do that if you actually caught it? Well, they would catch it and can you know, and have this business that was thriving and successful, and then they would get bored or move on to another idea or whatever, and just drop it. And I was always just like, was like, what, you know, if you if you, if you if you have something that’s working, why wouldn’t you continue to work that thing. And then look, it’s one thing, if you’re just absolutely miserable, doing what you’re doing that of course, you shouldn’t keep doing it. But you know, it was more than that. It was this sort of, like, entrepreneurial add. And, and I watched that, and I saw that, and I was like, that’s not going to happen to me. I don’t want to be such a big stick in the mud, that I’m not innovating. And I’m not looking for ways to do things better and looking for ways to build a better mousetrap. But I’m not going to be one of those people that just jumps from one business to the next to the next to the next cuz I can’t sit still. Especially because I love what I’m doing, Michael like, I really love what I’m doing. I mean, I was, you know, we got a playground out there behind the house. And, you know, I’m sitting up pushing my son on the swing. And I looked at my wife and I was like, this is the best time of my life. I was like, I don’t I don’t look back to like, oh, in high school when I when I you know, caught the past that won the big game that was like my pee. You know, I was like, right now, this moment is the best time of my life. I am so freakin happy right now. And yeah, there’s stuff we want to do, you know, you maybe you want to get in better shape. Or maybe you want to, you know, scale your business $200 million dollars or whatever. But like, right now, I am so happy doing what I’m doing. And that also keeps you on the path because you’re like, I just love this, like,

Michael Simmons 51:40

you know, loving it. And maybe it’s personality types. Just because for me, I like the person I type or I’m like, I’m prone to the dining object or some either shiny object and it’s not shiny to them. It just feels like extra work that you are do you have? Did you have to discipline yourself?

Russ Ruffino 51:56

I did. I did. Yeah. And honestly, my team was it was a big part of it. You know, especially in the first few years of the business, I would come to my team with like, some radical crazy idea of something that I wanted to do. And they would say, Okay, look, well, let’s like let’s say I wanted to launch a whole new thing, right? Which means building a whole new funnel a whole new ad campaign, hiring people to staff at doing all this stuff, right? And we would run the numbers and say, Look, okay, if this works, you know, here’s the potential payoff financially. Here’s the investment of time and energy. Okay, so now we figured that out, then we would say, Okay, look, is there another way, we can generate that same amount of revenue with a hell of a lot less work. And there always was, it was always like, if let’s say our sales team is enrolling people at a rate of 25%. If we just got them to 26%, it would make all the money that that other big crazy project would make. So what’s a better use of our time, working with spending some time mentoring our sales guys to boost their conversion by 1%, which is easy, or launching a whole new thing. And it just, we just always would just come back to that, that we have this existing business, it’s thriving. And if we’re willing to put in our put in the work and get our hands dirty, and just go deep into the processes and procedures and trying to improve every little thing. And that’s really what scaling is about, you know, there’s certain things you can do that it’s going to make a quantum leap forward in your business, we just discovered some of those things now, but but most of it is just making tiny little improvements at each thing that just get better and better and better and better. But they add up to something huge. It’s like a it’s like a chess game, where like, if you watch chess players who are playing at the highest level, it’s not like some guy screws up and loses his queen. Like that just doesn’t happen at that level. You know, it’s it’s making those tiny, little positional advantages again, and again, and again, by the end of the game, they coalesce into something huge, that’s decisive. And, and I just was always very aware of that. And I asked my team, guys, if you see me like going off on some crazy ass tangent or whatever, just bring me back to like, the core. The core is the core of what we’re doing. You know,

Michael Simmons 54:02

I heard you know, when I was at NYU, we had the founder of Princeton Review, speak. Oh, yeah. I used to work for Princeton Review when I was in high school. What’s that?

Russ Ruffino 54:12

I worked for Princeton Review. Like, right when right? Yeah, right. When I got out of high school, yeah, it’s funny.

Michael Simmons 54:16

And he was basically saying, you know, they’re taking the company public. He had, he was like, he needed like, yeah, I had two people who he told were no people to him that did say no to his ideas. And he was like, that wasn’t enough. I needed more like seven or eight people. Because when if you’re an entrepreneur, you can be really stubborn. emotionally. You’re like they said, No, let me plow through it. though. You maybe intellectually understand it, but emotionally, you’re just in love with this idea. How did you discipline? Even if people are saying it really has to be you had to discipline that emotional part of your site? Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t

Russ Ruffino 55:02

I don’t have any ego invested in that. And it’s a weird thing to say, because I know it’s not true, I’m sure that I do. But if someone comes to me with a better way to do things, I’m never going to shoot that down just because this is the way we’ve always done it. You know, I built this sales funnel. And this is how we do our sales funnels. And so that’s the way we’re going to do it until the end of time. I’m just not built that way. If you can show me a way to build a better mousetrap, I’m going to do it and then I’m going to teach my clients how to do it, and then they’re going to make more money and everybody wins. So I’m, I’m very open to people’s feedback. And if you if you read the Principles by Ray Dalio, which is like one of my favorite books, I mean, that’s the recurring theme through that whole book is that you’re going to be wrong, most of the time, your ideas are going to suck most of the time. And if you’re running a business, you should always be aware of that, you know, not that you shouldn’t have faith, if you really feel like something is the right move, of course, you should. And you got to take those leaps of faith, like I said, you should always be open to the fact that you are wrong. And many of those ideas are just bad ideas. You know, it looks good. But you take a second you think about it, you do the math, you do the numbers, and you realize this is like the longest possible path to get to where I want to go. That’s another obsession that I have is I’m always obsessed with finding the fastest, most efficient way to get to where I want to go. I’m very clear on what our outcome is. And it’s like, how can I get there in as few steps as possible? And that is like a meta-program that’s just always running in the back of my mind, how can I do this? With minimal expenditure of energy, I’m not one of those people that believes in like the whole rise and grind thing. If I believed in the rise and grind thing, I would still be doing live webinars, instead of automating my webinars, which makes us more money and saves me hundreds of hours. You know what I’m saying?

Michael Simmons 56:57

Yeah, well, I’ve really seen that in you. And it sounds obvious, why wouldn’t everyone want to do the most efficient thing? And the one thing that I lost my train of thought, is just constantly going back to simplicity. I noticed, I think, I think sometimes the mindset makes it more complicated than we feel I was just talking. I was doing a coaching call right before this. And I was like, his path to getting where he wanted was still convoluted. But it was just because he was afraid of the direct path. There was something he was afraid of. Yeah, it’s been too, though.

Russ Ruffino 57:30

I know. And I think that’s, I think that’s critical. And it’s, I’m glad you’re asking me about this stuff, because this is stuff that I don’t really think about, it’s just like, kind of the way that I operate. But I am obsessed with simplicity, how can we do this in as few steps as possible? And I really think Michael, like, I’m just lazy dude. Like, like, so many of the innovations that that that became Clients on Demand was just laziness. Like, people were like, you know, when I was first starting out, people were like, start a blog, start a YouTube channel, make, you know, post four videos a day and make tons of videos, and then eventually you build an audience and a following, and then eventually, those people will hire you intended. And in two years, you could be making, you know, $5,000 a month.

I was like,

I don’t want to do any of that shit. You know what I mean? Like, and so anytime I had that reaction of like, that sounds like really not fun. I would think to myself, well, there must be a better way to do this. There must be a more efficient way to do this and nine times out of 10 I would find it but I feel like if I was like, you know, I always look at guys like Jocko Willink. You know what I mean? Like Jocko Willink is all about hard work.

Michael Simmons 58:31

You know, Goggin,

Russ Ruffino 58:32

or David Goggins? Right, like, if I was David Goggins, I wouldn’t have had any of these innovations. Because I would have just said, a young man, I’m gonna make those, I’m gonna make those. They’re telling me to do four YouTube videos a day, I’m gonna do 20 YouTube videos a day, I spend eight hours a day making YouTube videos and grind it out. Well, it’s like, it’s no good climbing the ladder, if the ladder is leaning against the wrong tree, it’s no good climbing the ladder, if there’s an elevator right around the corner that you can take instead, you know, so in a way, I feel like, I’ve always been been very envious of those people that have that like insane work ethic and discipline, where they can do stuff that they genuinely do not enjoy, over and over and over and over and over again, to get what they want. To me. I’ve always been like, you know, there’s, if I don’t enjoy this, there’s a reason why if I don’t enjoy this, it’s because this is inefficient and stupid. So let me find a better way to do it. And, and that’s the way that I’ve kind of come up with any little innovation that I’ve ever come up with in the course of running this company to make things more efficient. And that’s how I think we were able to scale so fast, you know?

Michael Simmons 59:32

Yeah, wow. I’m processing it because it’s like, I get it. But then simplicity is one of those things that I get intellectually. Between two choices, parts, like go have one for me, actually, just having this conversation with my friend, Cal Newport. We went to high school together, we start our first business together. And we were talking about how beginning i would have all these ideas naturally resistant to them. Yeah. And now look at him. He just focused He’s been very focused on a few things. Yeah, like after seeing a path of decades, like, Okay, wow, this approach is really powerful. But it’s also hard to get the leverage on myself or the clarity. That Yeah. And like, for example, let’s say you really enjoy doing this. I’ve heard that entrepreneur, sometimes the part of the company that grows the slowest, is the part that they’re the best at and how do you think about possibly when stuff that you want to do? I just realized that

Russ Ruffino 1:00:37

every everything that I just realized that you can be a genius at something, but you’re not the only genius at something, you know, and there may be there may be things that you never, you know, you never give up. But that list should be really, really, really, really, really short. You know, if Steve Jobs thought that way, like, imagine if Steve Jobs was like, No, no, no, only I only I can build a computer, he would have been still working out of his garage, like, she wouldn’t have Apple, you know. So like, you have to, you have to humble yourself. And I think I think that’s an ego thing I really do. where, you know, for a long time, I said to myself, nobody can coach our clients on how to do a great webinar, but me, I’m the webinar guy, that’s my thing. But that’s not true. I got coaches now that do a better job than me coaching our clients on their webinars, you know, and, and you just, you just realize that if you want your company to grow, you have to get the hell out of the way. Um, you know, a pretty useful model I came across one time, I think, I think it’s, it’s been all over the place, I don’t know who to give credit to. But it basically looks at your businesses, it’s like triangle with like, four levels, right. And at the bottom level, you’re the operator. So right, like, like, it’s a pool cleaning business, you’re the guy out there, you’re the guy cleaning pools, then you become the manager, well, now you’re you go and hire a couple more pool cleaning guys, and you’re managing those people, right? Then you become the CEO, where you hire some more managers and your five or six pool cleaning teams, and about 15 20 people working for you. And you’re managing those guys cleaning the pool, you’re not cleaning the pool anymore, you’re managing them, you’re managing the managers. And then at the highest level, which is like the president of the company, you’re looking at the entire company itself as a product that can be bought or sold or traded. Right. And, and, and moving through those levels of abstraction, where you are less and less connected to the day-to-day tasks of the business, you’re not squeezing the lemons, you don’t I’m saying is weird and very hard for a lot of people. And it entails a whole new level, like I said before, of risk, and a whole new level of discomfort and a whole new level of self-doubt. And everybody’s got that number man, where you know, you’re going to make that money, and you’re gonna freak out. Because it’s just too much money. Everybody has that number. I don’t know where mine is. But I haven’t hit it yet. But I’ve seen it happen to a lot of other people. And I think the reason I haven’t hit it yet is because, you know, when I was in my 20s I was thinking I was gonna be like an Avenger, a movie star or something like that. So that’s what I’m kind of comparing my life to, you know, like, that’s where the bar is said is like Brad Pitt’s life. So as long as my life isn’t, is somewhere under not quite that cool, I’m comfortable. But for a lot of people that barometer is set a lot lower man like $50,000 a year $100,000 a year, you know, first person, your family to make a six-figure income, you know that that that resistance is real. And you worry what the people around you are going to say you worry about what your relatives are gonna say you worried what’s gonna happen when people ask, are people gonna ask you to borrow money now, you know, that fear can come out of nowhere. And it’s like, you have to be able to deal with it.

Michael Simmons 1:03:28

Right? Those on the one hand is the leap of faith, the unknown. On the other hand, there’s the barometer that’s coming off of your thermostat of what you have that for when you go beyond that starts feeling comfortable.

Russ Ruffino 1:03:42

The fear can come out of nowhere, that that self-doubt that self-sabotage can come out of nowhere. Like in a you know, like, I don’t believe in like a literal devil, okay, but like, if there is a devil, it’s that, like, I can’t, I’m not worthy enough. I’m not whatever. And it’s like, it can come at you from all kinds of different directions. Um, you know, what would my what would my, I don’t even know, just, I mean, like, like, like, so many different kinds of unworthiness that we see. And we see it come up with our clients where they just they don’t feel worthy of the success. And we have to get them to step into that higher identity where they understand Dude, you’re making the world a better place one client at a time. And so of course, you deserve all the success in the world. You know, you just got to believe it, you know,

Michael Simmons 1:04:23

or you’re making the success, something, it’s not going to be that get to x, y, z number, whatever it is a million or a million or this number of employees to help run the company. Not worth it, or I’ve seen that well.

Russ Ruffino 1:04:38

Yeah, I know. And I see that’s a great one. That’s a great one too, is this belief that you can’t see, I always tell my clients, you can have it just the way you want it. And I really and truly believe that you can have it just the way you want it. You want to set up your company a certain way you can do it that way. You want to set up a company where you know my old boss Okay, so my old boss Rick Caruso is I think the second richest real estate developer in, in Southern California, he owned the restaurant that I was bartending for like years and years. He takes I think he takes an entire, he takes all of August off,

just,

you know, guy’s worth, I think $4 billion, just August, I’m out, I’m on my yacht, forget it. That’s a choice that he has made. And he’s found a way to make it work. So so if you’re willing to solve problems, you can set it up just the way that you want it. But yeah, that’s a big one, Michael, where people go, you know, it’s that fear of success? Well, what if? What if, what are people gonna say about me, you know, or someone wrote a nasty comment on one of my Facebook ads, or, you know, somebody wrote an article about me, that was mean, or someone you know, did this or someone did that, like, you know, those things are gonna happen. And you, you have to deal with it, you know, because if you don’t, if you’re gonna let that limit you, then that’s your limit. That’s as far as you’re gonna go. So it’s a constant. The work on that stuff is constant and never-ending and it has to be a part of your daily routine. daily routine?

Michael Simmons 1:06:04

That’s one can’t talk about it. You’ve always been distant that I know. Yep. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Russ Ruffino 1:06:09

Yeah, of course. Sure. Yeah. Um, so I believe that when you focus totally on victory, God basically forces you to succeed. If you countenance no other possibility, and you keep your eyes set directly on the prize, it’s like everything you take action in accordance with that, just like we were talking about before, there’s a leap of faith, you take the leap of faith, that there’s something you gotta do you freakin do it, you have to have a difficult conversation, you have it, you know, you do the things you act in accordance with that vision of who you are, and who you want to be. If you do that, success becomes essentially inevitable. And so my daily routine is, and this is this is the secret man. And if I if I, if I had five minutes, like, let’s I was gonna die in five minutes, I had five minutes to teach my kids something, this is what it would be. The secret is be grateful in advance for the things that you want. So if you have a goal, it’s one thing to say to set that goal. And that’s powerful, right? But what’s 10 times more powerful is to allow yourself to mentally imagine yourself having that thing right now, and being thankful for it in advance. And that is what I do every single day. Thank you. Thank you, thank you for this beautiful house. You know, and I don’t have a house, I’m living in a crappy apartment. Okay, but I’m sitting there every day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for my beautiful house. And I can see it in my mind. And I’m not seeing it as some distant faraway goal. I’m there in the house right now. I’m walking through it, feeling the joy, feeling the gratitude, feeling all this stuff. That’s the secret. Okay. Everything I’ve ever gotten and everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done that. First. you’re grateful in advance for what you want it, it just works. And I don’t know why I think it’s because you know, you’re kind of playing a trick on your subconscious or your subconscious. If you’re feeling the gratitude, your subconscious is like I already have this. And then you open your eyes and you don’t have it. And your subconscious is like, wait, I got to resolve this immediately. I have to bring this into your life. So I’ve done this with every awesome car I’ve ever bought in every house I’ve ever lived in my team members. Thank you, thank you, thank you for my amazing social media director. Okay, I don’t know what this person is gonna look like or whatever. But it always it’s always there. And then you just once you do that, you have to act in accordance with that thing. Like what would you do? If you already were that person? What would you do if you already had that thing? Would you quit your job? Would you get out of that relationship? What would you do? And you have to do it. You know, this house I’m living in now. It wasn’t the house that we wanted to buy. So we were living in Laguna Beach. And this house is in Lake Arrowhead and California about an hour and a half east of Los Angeles at about 6000 feet of beautiful forest. And my my wife and I have been coming up here for a really long time. You know, staying at the hotel staying here, but we just we loved it up here. And we’d always like kind of fantasize about what it would be like if we had a house up here. And so what I want to tell you is that when you do that process, not only do you get what you want, but nine times out of 10 you get something even better than you could possibly imagine. So I believe that God’s will for our life is just beyond our wildest imagination. So we had a house all picked out I was super excited about it was like 4500 square feet would have been perfect, you know, to have me there, you know, like four bedrooms, right? So would have been great to me, my kids, maybe my brother and my dad and my family for Christmas, you know, would have been cool to come up and have a white Christmas in the snow and everything. Our realtor takes us to a 19,000 square foot house. That’s a million dollars more than what we wanted to spend. And we walk into the house and I just get that feeling As the house and it’s like this little like warm kind of happy kind of scared kind of freaked out kind of adrenaline ish kind of a feeling. And Sarah, Sarah looks at me and she goes off.

She’s like, I know that look. And

I’m like, dude, we have to we this is we have to try to get this house because this house, it’s like it went from Okay, we can come up here with like my, you know, a couple family members at Christmas to like, we can literally host 20 people here like we did at Thanksgiving, and everyone has a bedroom and all the bedrooms, that stone fire, there’s like nine bedrooms, like we can really do some cool stuff here. And I just knew intuitively that this was the house is more than I wanted to spend. It was a lot of other things. But I was like, if I don’t act on this, I’m basically saying that all those affirmations that I did, I didn’t really mean it. This is the house. And so we got it, and it worked out great. And now we’re here that has happened with this house, with every house with every car, with every goal that you set for yourself. It’s a leap, but you make it and it turns out better than what you want, you know, the car that I got was better than the one that I went there to get the house that I got is better than the one that I want her to get. And, and you’re just so richly rewarded for that kind of faith that it’s a it’s magical. I mean, it’s like it’s like it’s like you’re Neo and you’re hacking into the matrix and you’re just making things happen. It’s it’s, it’s a crazy thing.

Michael Simmons 1:11:22

Yeah, it truly is, you know, there’s so many different fascinating ways that the mind works. I was reading a study about how athletes, if you do in the practice, but then if you’re actually visualizing yourself practicing and doing that actually, like your mind actually encodes that your skill level resets though, it really is always like hokey on the one hand, that like you create things in your mind and a half then people make fun of this secret. And but it is, through your mind is incredibly powerful, you have more power than you can imagine. But if you act in accordance with it and take these massive actions with it. For you, on a daily level, what does that look like? It’s like a 20 minute shower. Then afterwards you get out in journal Okay, what would I do if I already had that thing? Um,

Russ Ruffino 1:12:18

yeah, I do it in the shower. So So why the shower, right? It’s the only place that in my house that I’m not going to get bothered, right? Like, I’m, I hear my kids out in the hallway, right now I’m sitting, that’s why pause for a second cuz I was like, are they gonna come banging on my door, you know, it’s like, even in my office, I’m not safe. Okay? The shower is the one place where no one’s gonna bother me, I can go in there. And you know, like, the water is falling, and it’s relaxing anyway, and I just sit there. And I start out by being grateful for what I have. Now. You know, you start that’s where you start. Because you can always find something in your life to be thankful for. And in the beginning, when you’re, when you’re thanking God for something you don’t have, it’s gonna feel kind of weird. So to sort of bridge that gap, you start with what you what you really are thankful for, you know, thank you for the amazing pancakes I had this morning, oh, man, those were so good. You know, it can be something stupid, then you begin to incorporate the stuff that you want, and you know what you want, and you’re thankful for it in advance. And then as you’re being thankful for it, you should you should visualize it, you should you should watch a mental movie of something that would happen, if you really had that thing. Maybe you’re calling your dad and going Dad, you know, I just you know, had my first $20,000 month in my business, or we would tell your wife or whatever you would you would take a trip to Bora Bora or Tahiti. And you think about that, and you visualize it, and you savor it like it’s happening right now. And you let yourself feel all the joy and wonder and gratitude that you would feel if it were happening now. And then and then as you do that

you reach a point where you don’t want it anymore. Because you convinced yourself that you already have it.

Yours and you kind of reach this place of divine and I call it divine indifference. We kind of don’t care anymore. You know. And what that does, Michael is not only does it bring those things into your life, but remember how we talked about before that, that sometimes you can have amazing success and it freaks you out. This is a great safeguard against that. Because by the time I drove my Bentley, I had already driven it in my mind 100 times. So when I sat down in it, I was like, oh, man, this is the car. This is my car. And I had to I had to get it. You know, and it’s like, it’s like, that’s how I think about it. Now there’s one new Bentley, it’s in my garage right now. I don’t think about it. It’s just my car. I don’t care if my son took that car and my son, my old my old Bentley, right? My kid took a rock and drew on it. He decided to draw on the side of my car. scratch the hell out of it. Oh, yeah. And somebody came out I saw and I was like, What the hell is that? And Sarah was like, oh, Russell was drawing on your car with a rock. I was like, oh, okay, but you don’t care because it’s just a car. It’s a car that you brought into your life through the power of your thought and your action. And when you understand that you have the power to do that. You don’t really give a shit about any of this stuff. You know, it’s Like, once you have the recipe for gold, you don’t have to hoard piles of it. Because you can make more on every line.

Michael Simmons 1:15:06

It’s interesting because, you know, I think with traditional goal setting, you focus, read the goal outline every day. It can create a feeling of scarcity. I like the neediness. I call it the neediness paradox that dives. Like let’s say, you really want to build a relationship with someone or you really want to date with someone you want to do much you can almost repel the person because they can feel the neediness. Yeah, where this product as you’re talking about, it creates gratitude is experiencing, it creates a certain non-attachment. Interesting, the subtle shift, but I you can

Russ Ruffino 1:15:41

and that’s a great example. Because you can really see this, like in the world of dating and relationships, right? So like, even if you’re not an entrepreneur, it’s like, oh, man, like you, you, you. So here’s the thing, you have to know what you want, you have to be grateful for and in advance, you have to act as if you already have it. And you have to never, ever settle. Never settle for less. When you’re in a situation with someone where you’ve been visualizing, like, Oh, you know, this amazing person in your life or whatever. And then you’re on that date. And you’re kind of just like, yeah, they’re, they’re, you know, they’re attractive, they’re pretty cool, they’re smart, you know, I could end up hooking up with this person. And then before you know it, you’re hooking up all the time, and then before you know it, you’re in a relationship is not really what you want. And you’re sure this isn’t right. It’s like, don’t do that. Like, if the person is not the right person, you know, then then cool, but but don’t, you know, you just have to not care. It’s like, I know that, that the person that I want is going to come into my life, so I’m not going to settle for anything less. And this is why, you know, you bring up the secret. The first part of this is the easy part. And that’s the part they emphasize in the secret, right? The first part of just making a vision board or, or whatever, that’s the fun stuff. I mean, anyone can do that. And it feels good when you do it, right. But it’s this other stuff I’m talking about, like making those tough decisions as if you already have that thing that’s tough, and not settling for anything less than what you actually want. That’s even more tough. So that’s the part that separates the the the women from the little girls, that’s the part that separates the men from the boys is your ability to do that. It’s that bold action. It’s uh, you know, Caesar crossing the Rubicon. It’s, it’s Alexander the Great going to see the Oracle at Delphi to say, Hey, I’m thinking about going on this, this big campaign of conquest. And the Oracle says she’s busy and she can’t see him. So he runs in there and drags her out by her hair. And it’s like, tell me if this is gonna work or not. And she goes, my Lord, you’re invincible. And then he’s like, that’s all he needed to hear. And then he goes, You know what I mean? Like, like, there’s this kind of element of bold insanity. That that it’s, it’s, it’s irrational, and it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense that Elon Musk can say, Hey, I’m going to start a company, we’re going to send rockets into space, and we’re gonna land them back on the earth, even though NASA has never done that once. That’s nuts. You know, but he, he was like, This is what I’m gonna do. And he did it. You know what I mean? Like, like that, that that actually taking the action is the part that just that just kills people. Um, you know, my favorite poem is, is “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot. And one of the things he says in that poem is, is between the whole poem is about like, you’re you’re you’re in the afterworld. And there’s these these like horrible like stuffed, hollow men, like scarecrows that are just empty inside and they’re they’re there. They’re like rotting inside because they never did the stuff that they wanted to do with their lives. They went with the flow, they said what they were what everybody wanted them to say they did what everybody wanted them to do. And so they’re hollow and they’re empty. And in the end it towards the end of the poem, he says, between the motion and the act, falls, the shadow between the creation and the conception, all is the shadow. And that what that means is that before, like you have this idea, and the moment you have this idea, that’s a big idea. The Shadow comes crashing down that shadow of fear. And it can paralyze you and stop you between emotion and the act, falls, the shadow. And it’s like are what are you going to do when that happens? Are you going to stay inside your comfort zone? Or are you going to step through it? And what’s really haunting about this poem, Michael is the poem is like a very vivid picture of what happens when you don’t do it when you allow the shadow to fall. And that’s that, in the last lines of the poem is he says, this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Michael Simmons 1:19:23

I’ve heard that last line before but right at the beginning it puts it that’s what it’s right.

Russ Ruffino 1:19:27

That’s what it’s because yeah, I read the poems I’ve heard that but now I knew what it meant. Because we saying is that the way the world ends, the way the world falls apart, is not because you took some giant bold action. It’s because you did nothing when you knew you should have done something. Now think that’s the part that people don’t that’s the reason why you can watch something like the secret and people make fun of it because nobody ever got anywhere because nobody ever freaking did anything.

Michael Simmons 1:19:54

so fascinating. The miners they as you’re talking, I just had those that moment where Different areas, it could be like, dude, I am picking fall. Like, it’s like, it’s weird because it’s hidden from you. I feel like I am setting goals and things like that. As you’re talking, I’m like, it just came their emotion. I could feel it, though. It’s just interesting how that data passed down. Because you don’t, something invisible almost stopping you. One question I was gonna ask you about is related to this, the first step is, know what you want. That’s actually a really hard thing, because there’s this idea of, you know, mimetic desire that so many of our desires come from people or the cultures we’re around. Uh huh. Now, you’ve had, you’ve already gotten a lot of the material things that most people could want, and no having a 40,000 square foot house that have it.

Russ Ruffino 1:20:48

Yeah, that would be too big. I was like, what, what

are you gonna do?

I get lost, I’ll try to try to find the kitchen and I’ll starve to death. And they’ll find a little skeleton of me. Because I couldn’t get I couldn’t find the kitchen. I couldn’t get a sandwich.

Michael Simmons 1:20:57

Yeah, I got lost. Yeah. So how do you think about that now, think about what really matters, that what’s worth putting the time every day and visualizing at

Russ Ruffino 1:21:07

will, it just becomes about playing the game. And that’s the weirdest thing for me, is that once you’re making a certain amount of money, you know, like, if I if I if my company was doing $100 million a year, my lifestyle really wouldn’t change all that much. You know, maybe I could I could buy a plane or buy a boat or something, you know, but it’s like, you can rent those things now. So why would you? Why would you need to buy one, it’s like, Who cares? You know. So my lifestyle itself really wouldn’t change. So it’s not about that, though. It’s about it becomes about playing the game at the highest level, like, we have a business that is changing people’s lives every single day. And our clients will be the first one to tell you, you know, my clients tell me all the time, Russ, you’ve saved my life. Russ, you saved my marriage. And we don’t have a health coaching program, or we don’t have a relationship coaching program. But when we showed some of those calls, I yeah, thing that I actually

Michael Simmons 1:21:59

we worked together when I had an agency helping with content. And then we actually, I learned so much from doing that and applied and got results that I then signed up for another of your high ticket programs. Yeah, amazing benefit from it. But on the calls. I mean, you really hear like

Russ Ruffino 1:22:16

The celebrations are nuts,

Michael Simmons 1:22:18

and like, crying like I mean, I could have been transformative.

Russ Ruffino 1:22:24

Yeah. And it’s like, and it’s, it’s like, Okay, fine. So that’s what we’re doing. Right? That’s the impact that we’re making. We’re having fun making it. Who am I to say, we’re gonna stop here? You know, like, Who the hell am I to say, well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get to 15 million a year, and then we’re going to, then we’re going to call it you know what I mean? It’s like, it’s like, I wouldn’t be me. If I just, if I said that. I’m like, Look, if we can push 200 million, let’s push 200 million. And if we get to a point where we’re doing 100 million a year, and I feel like it’s gotten too difficult for us to maintain the quality, or that quality isn’t going up and up, then maybe that’s the point where I’ll say, Okay, this is about as big as this thing can get. But at that point, we haven’t hit that yet. And I’m, you know, I’m 41 I’m young, I’m healthy. I have a five-year-old, a three-year-old, a one-year-old and one on the way. So my kids are so small, I’m not going anywhere. You know,

I can’t do

this. I got three now and three boys. And then we have a girl on the way.

Michael Simmons 1:23:25

Okay, awesome.

Russ Ruffino 1:23:27

So but my point is, like, when you have kids that small, like you’re not going anywhere, dude, I mean, let’s be honest. So I’m like, Alright, look, I might as well just put my head down and work. And if it ever turns into a thing where I get sick of it, or I don’t enjoy it any more than whatever, I’ll you know, I’ll figure out what to do then. But I’m having I’m having the time of my life doing this. This is what we’re meant to do. There’s a there’s a, there’s a role that only you can fill. there’s a there’s a mission that only you can fulfil, um, you know, if you think about Aristotle, Aristotle has this whole idea about like the, the divine idea of something or like the idea of something where basically, like, let’s say, you’d never seen a perfect triangle, you could still have an idea in your mind of what a perfect triangle looks like, if you never saw a perfect circle, you could have an idea in your mind of what the perfect circle looks like. And when you have an idea what a perfect circle looks like, you can judge every other circle according to like how close it is to that idea in your head. I think that God has a divine idea of Michael’s life, of Russ’s life. And when you open yourself up to that, and you’re grateful for that in advance, you allow more and more of that into your life. And I really feel like nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too good to last. Nothing is too wonderful to happen. If we open ourselves up to this, it’s just it’s right there. You know when you’re when you’re when I became a dad, it was like, I love these kids so much, that I just I want the best for them of everything. And I feel like that’s how God feels about us, but times times a billion, where that conception or idea of your life is so far beyond anything you could possibly imagine. And so like whether you believe in God or not, that’s just the way that I conceptualize it, you can certainly accept that there’s this idea of the best life you could possibly be living. And that’s what you want to pursue. Because if you’re not going to pursue that, what the hell are we doing here?

Michael Simmons 1:25:21

Yeah, it’s really interesting to you’re mentioning, we can end on this is, you know, there’s this really fascinating researcher named Daniel P. Brown, he was at Harvard. And so a lot of one of the big things down is also as a therapist, that’s nice people have attachment disorders. Yeah, many people do growing up. And one of the exercises that works best, actually, the number one intervention, is you go back to the moments where you felt unloved, as a child. And you imagine your ideal parents treating you as you want as you wish you could have been treated. And so just creating that idea transforms people. So you do that for 10 minutes, 40 times or something. And there are people’s attachment styles, actually, yeah. When you were talking about God there, what do you believe in? Even God or not, or however you believe in it? By having that, that idea of wanting better for you that you can even imagine? Wow, that’s, that’s amazing.

Russ Ruffino 1:26:20

It’s, it’s an amazing thing. I mean, that, that, just just stepping into the belief that, that you were meant for more and that you deserve more, and then that God and everything in the universe wants you to have more and be more, if you’re willing to accept that is just such a, like, radical shift for most people. But I think that’s the way of success. You know, even if you look at somebody that doesn’t, you know, I don’t know what Elon Musk’s spiritual beliefs are right. But at some point in his thinking, he must have gone. Yeah, I’m gonna, you know, start this space company is probably not gonna work out, but Screw it, I’ll give it a shot. And I think I can maybe, you know, well, I’ll give it a shot. It’s worth doing. You know, just, that’s insane. You have to have that, like that belief that that transcends the circumstances that you were born in, that you were meant for more and that you deserve more. And, and yes, there’s responsibility that goes along with that you want to do a good job for people and take care of people and make the world a better place. But But you have to accept that you know, that you have a destiny, and you have to do what it takes to get there.

Michael Simmons 1:27:23

Finally, rough working people, they want to learn more about you, your you and your program. Are you on different channels, where should they do that.

Russ Ruffino 1:27:31

So the simplest thing they could do is just book a call with our team, the link to do that as clientsondemand.com/talk. And we’ll get on the phone for about 45 minutes. And you can tell us everything that’s going on in your business where you are stuck where you want to be. And we’ll put our heads together and come up with a really great game plan to get you where you want to be. So that’s totally free. It’s clientsondemand.com/talk to book that appointment. That’s the best way to get started with us. If you want to check out some of our webinars and some of the other trainings that we’ve done, you can just go to clientsondemand.com And there’s a bunch of resources there that you can check out too.

Michael Simmons 1:28:02

And for people who want to know what Clients on Demand is just so they can learn whether Yeah, or whether it’s right for them. You just give a quick overview.

Russ Ruffino 1:28:10

Sure. Yeah, so so what we do in our programs is we we teach our clients, how to attract their ideal clients at the price that they want 5000 8000 $10,000 or more. And we teach a full marketing system that allows people to take someone from clicking on an ad to becoming a client at 5000 or 8000, or $10,000, within like 24 hours, even if they’ve never heard of you. So it’s a really, really powerful marketing system. You don’t have to have a lot of followers. You don’t have to have any followers. You don’t even have to have a website, honestly, you just have to have the skill. So you have to have like expertise, you have to be able to solve a major life or business challenge. And if you can do that, we’ll show you the same system that we use to scale our business to $15 million a year. It’s the same system and we’ll show you how to do it step by step and like I said before, with all the hand-holding and coaching and everything else that goes with it, you can actually get the result.

Michael Simmons 1:29:01

Beautiful Russ, thank you so much.

Russ Ruffino 1:29:03

You got it, man. It’s my pleasure.

This is great.

Outro 1:29:09

Thanks for listening to The Michael Simmons Show. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. If you found value. In today’s episode, we would greatly appreciate a five-star rating on your favorite podcast player

Tags: Clients on Demand, Michael Simmons, Russ Ruffino, The Michael Simmons Show

-	I teach people to learn HOW to learn
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