Expert Secrets by Russel Brunson: Summary and Notes
One sentence summary: Russel Brunson’s Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson completely changes the art and the science of starting a business from scratch.
One Paragraph summary: In Expert Secrets Russell Brunson inspires aspiring business owners to believe in their dreams and presents a step-by-step process they can follow to become rich and fulfilled at the same time. Anyone can start from where they are and successfully build a financially rewarding and world-changing business by reading Expert Secrets .
Favorite quote from the author:
Main takeaways from Expert Secrets by Russel
One of the greatest lessons Russell wants readers to learn is that teaching others how to do things is more profitable than doing it yourself. He puts it this way:
“Contribution is the key to continued growth.”
Based on this premise, here are some of the stand out points captured in his book:
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Create Your True Fans
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Have a clear future based cause
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Don’t fix what’s working. Instead, replace it with something better
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Create a new niche
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Figure out the one thing that will make the audience believe in what you have to offer
Lesson 1: Create Your True Fans
Russell has studied many of the world’s most significant moments or cult followings and found these three common characteristics about them:
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A charismatic leader or an attractive character
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A future based focus on causes greater than the leader
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An offer of new opportunity to the audience
Some people may feel like they’re not naturally charismatic because they’re reserved, shy, or introverted. Russell advises readers to be very conversant with the topics they desire to be experts at so that they deliver their knowledge with confidence. Such people ought to take comfort in the knowledge that many more successful thought leaders have had to battle internal voices of inadequacy to deliver their message to the world.
A factor Russell wants readers to note is that one doesn’t have to be certified to be qualified. It is more important to solve problems and adequately generate results than it is to have credentials. Customers pay for results, not the leader’s certification.Therefore, it is, vital for the leader to focus more on how to create solutions that give undeniable results when applied.
A key part of the process of creating true fans is identifying your niche market. Markets are generally centered around health, wealth, or relationships. These 3 major markets have submarkets under them. For example, relationships could have submarkets like dating advice, marriage advice, and parenting tips. Once the submarket is identified, you can create a niche and offer products on that niche.
Here are questions you can ask yourself to determine whether the existing market can support your new venture
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Would people in my submarket be interested in the opportunity that my niche presents?
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Would you consider people in this market irrationally passionate?
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Is your target audience willing and able to spend money on the information you offer?
To become an attractive leader, here are some rules to consider following:
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Live a life that your audience wishes they could live
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Become absolutely certain
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Find the sweet spot between making money and presenting crazy ideas
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Be persuasive to your audience by encouraging their dreams, justifying their failures, allaying their fears, confirming their suspicions, and throwing rocks at their enemies
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Show A LOT of care
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Let them receive value from their relationship with you
Lesson 2:Have a clear future based cause
Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to their present, while faith in the future renders us perceptive to change.”- Eric Hoffer
Future-based causes help leaders show their audience what their future could be and why they need to take a chance on investing in themselves. Here are some principles that can guide you in your process of creating a good cause:
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Identify what the audience can place their hope and faith in
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Help the audience break their ‘4-minute mile’ which is an ambitious goal that the audience considers difficult to accomplish but exciting enough to be worth the attempt
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Let the audience identify themselves with your cause
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Create your Title of Liberty in the form of a mini-manifesto or a manifesto
Lesson 3: Don’t fix what’s not working. Instead, replace it with something better
Fixing what is not working is giving improvement offers. Improvement offers don’t work because:
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Improvement is hard
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Many people have desire, but not many have ambition
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Improvement triggers memories of poor decisions from the past
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Selling improvement commodities are difficult to price as it competes with similar existing commodities
Audiences desire new opportunities to increase their status (intelligence, style, beauty, wealth, etc.). Their greatest fear in taking a chance on a new opportunity is the fear of failure, which results in them feeling stupid.
On the other hand, people desire new opportunities because:
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Their discovery of the new opportunity you offer gives them the opportunity to be among the first to share it with others, which increases their status
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New opportunities do not require that audiences connect with previous pain. The opportunity is perceived as a new beginning
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The audience perceives a new opportunity as a new dream to move toward
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A new opportunity could represent greener pastures for the audience
The new opportunity you create is the audience’s vehicle to change.
Lesson 4: Create a new niche
Creating a new niche is different from picking a niche. Picking an existing niche only creates improvement commodities. It is in creating new niches that new opportunities emerge.
The following are steps to take to design the ‘vehicle’ to drive your audience’s change:
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Offer services for free to generate early results
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Offer a 6-week masterclass teaching audiences about your new opportunity
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Create a sexy title in the format of How to (what they desire most) without (what they fear the most)
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Use the 5 Curiosity Hooks: Little Known, Big Differences, Well Known, Little Understood, Crystal Ball Theory, Revisiting the Fundamentals, and This Changes Everything
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Give the people what they want by asking them what they want
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Deliver the free masterclass
Lesson 5: Figure out the one thing that will make the audience believe entirely in what you offer
According to Brunson, belief in the product and the leader is the key to making sales. The leader needs to show the audience that they can confidently trust their product to bring desired results.
It helps when the leader shares their story of how the new opportunity impacted their lives and inspired them to share the opportunity with others. This makes the leader relatable to the audience. Share as many ah-ha moments as you can. Be the best storyteller you can be by:
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Building rapport with the hero (a victim, in jeopardy, likable, funny, or powerful)
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Present the desire to attain something bigger or something more (to win, to escape, to retrieve, or to stop)
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Show the journey of achievement
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Show the journey of transformation
Here are some storytelling tips that are sure to captivate your audience:
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Share the character’s backstory and the events that caused them to leave where they are to set off on the journey to achieve their desires
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The desire transforms into a very clear and specific goal. At this point, expose the hero’s true motivation
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Present opportunities where the hero could have turned back didn’t, and chose never to look back
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Narrate a setback that the hero faces that makes his goals look impossible to achieve until a small glimmer of hope appears that requires the hero to take one last shot at achieving his goal: an all-or-nothing situation
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Narrate how the hero faces the biggest obstacle he has ever come across on his journey and has to determine within himself to succeed even if everything around him points to failure as the only probable result
When the leader narrates his personal story in this fashion, the audience emotionally connects to him. The leader’s true fans will be hooked to the story and will always consume any product he offers.
Wrap Up
There is so much to take note of from this book. Readers can learn how to identify their passions and create their unique niche around their passion, as well as build their true fans and add value to them.
Expert Secrets by Russel Brunson is the book you want to read when you want to find your way in business and life. It has the same depth as Expert Secrets
another book by him that I found to be mesmerizing.Who Would I recommend the Book To?
I recommend this book to someone who desires to build a business not just for money but also for meaning i.e for the greater good of his chosen demographic.
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