Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Finding Your Message, Building a Tribe, and Changing the World

by Russell Brunson

  Now I wasn’t born with this power. I’ve spent over a decade of my life studying this stuff, learning and experimenting with it. I’ve immersed myself in it for so long that now I can just instantly see what needs to happen. To me, it seems like common sense. How can people NOT see what I see? I might dismiss that skill because it comes so easily to me. But to other people, what I have is a superpower. It’s a gift. And it’s a skill that people will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn from me. Not because I’m great, but because I’ve spent so much time mastering this one skill.

  My guess is that your superpower won’t seem like that big of a deal to you either. It will be something that comes second nature—something so simple that it couldn’t possibly be that important. If you’re an amazing cook, it’s not that big of a deal for you. But to someone who can’t cook, it’s a HUGE deal.

  Maybe you’re good at playing piano, fixing motorcycles, building chicken coops, dancing, or something else. Look at what comes easy to you and what you love to geek out on, and chances are that’s where your superpower is hiding, just waiting to be developed and shared with the world.

  “But Russell, I’m not certified. I can’t help people yet.” This is one objection I hear WAY too often. “I’m not certified. I don’t have a degree. I haven’t been to school for this. How can I possibly claim to be an expert?” I always smile when I hear these words come out of someone’s mouth because I know where I came from.

  I ask them, “Well, I’m curious. You paid me $25,000 (or $100,000) to teach you this stuff. What do you think my credentials are?”

  They think about it and usually say something like, “I don’t know. Do you have any marketing degrees?”

  I say, “Nope. I barely graduated from college, and I got a C in marketing.” I didn’t get good grades, and I don’t have any certifications to my name. But guess what? I’m REALLY GOOD at what I do. My results are my certifications.

  Tony Robbins told me that when he first started learning neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), he signed up for a six-month training course, and after just a few days, he fell in love with it. He gained skill quickly and wanted to start helping people immediately. The trainers said, “You can’t, you’re not certified yet.”

  Tony said, “Certified? I know how to help people. Let’s go help!” That night, he left his hotel room, walked across the street to the nearest restaurant, and started helping people quit smoking and assisting them with lots of other amazing things. He ended up getting kicked out of the program because he was practicing without being certified. Yet he’s gone on to transform tens of millions of people’s lives using NLP—all without any certifications.

  Your results are your certification.

  I hereby give you permission to help people. You’re ready now.

  “But Russell, what if others know more about my topic than me?” There’s a book (and a movie) called Catch Me If You Can that illustrates this point pretty well. It’s the story of a famous con artist, Frank Abagnale, a brilliant high school dropout who masqueraded as an airline pilot, a pediatrician, and a district attorney, among other things.

  There is a point in the book where he starts teaching a sociology class at Brigham Young University. He teaches the whole semester, and no one ever figures out that he’s not a real teacher. Later on when they finally do catch him, the authorities ask, “How in the world did you teach that class? You don’t know anything about advanced sociology.”

  He replied, “All I had to do was read one chapter ahead of the students.”

  That’s the key. You don’t have to be the most knowledgeable person in the world on your topic, you just have to be one chapter ahead of the people you’re helping. There will always be people in the world who are more advanced than you. That’s fine. You can learn from them, but don’t let it stop you from helping the ones who are a chapter or two behind you.

  WHO DO YOU WANT TO SERVE?

  If you’re going to start a mass movement and create a vehicle for change, the first question you have to ask yourself is “WHO do I want to serve?” The answer to that question is typically people who were just like you before you became an expert, right? As a charismatic leader, you’re going to lead people on a path you’ve walked before.

  Sometimes it can be hard to identify exactly who those people are. If you look closely, you’ll find that almost all expert businesses are based on one of three core markets: health, wealth, or relationships. So my first question for you is which of those three matches your area of expertise right now?

  Ok, now that you’ve identified which core market you fit into, we need to dig at least two levels deep to find your specific audience. Let me show you what I mean.

  Inside these three core markets are multiple submarkets. For example, inside health you could have dozens of submarkets like diet, nutrition, strength training, and weight loss. Inside the wealth market you may have finance, investing, real estate, and sales. And the same goes for the relationships market. You could have love, dating advice, marriage, and parenting. The list is practically endless in any of the three core markets. There are always new submarkets popping up.

  My next question for you is what submarket does your area of expertise fit right now? Some of you may think that you’ve found your answer. You’re a real estate expert, or a dating or weight loss coach. But the money is NOT in the submarket. The riches are in the niches. And those are one step beyond the submarket.

  Look around at the other experts in your submarket and see what they are selling. Where do you fit into the ecosystem? What can you offer people that’s different and special? The goal is to carve out a unique spot in that ecosystem where you can thrive. That’s your niche. And that niche is one of the keys to success as an expert.

  In the book Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, they talk about the fact that most markets are red oceans, full of blood because of all the sharks feeding on the same small pool of fish. The submarket is a very red ocean, which is why it can be difficult to have success there.

  If you think about how these markets have changed over time, you’ll see that the submarkets and niches developed as a reaction to those red oceans. The first person who taught health, wealth, or relationships was working in a blue ocean with no other sharks or competitors coming after their customers.

  But people quickly saw the success, so they jumped into the waters, too. Over time, the waters grew red with sharks feeding on the same customers. That’s why it became necessary for people to create their own blue oceans. That’s where the submarkets began.

  The first teachers in these submarkets experienced great success as well, until people jumped in there and bloodied the waters. The smart people looked around and figured out what they could create INSIDE of their submarket that would become a new opportunity to those customers. They created a new blue ocean once again.

  The mistake many people make today is they start looking at the niches, find one that looks good, and start building their company from there. The problem is that jumping into an existing niche is stepping into someone else’s blue ocean. And if you are the third, fourth, or fifth person in that niche, then the waters are already starting to get bloody.

  I suggest that you look at your submarket and try to create a new niche, a fresh blue ocean for yourself. Create a new opportunity for people so they’ll want to dive in. This is what I mean when I say you need to carve out your own spot in the ecosystem. If you jump into an already existing red ocean, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. But if you create a blue ocean, you will find success so much easier.

  I’m sure that this makes sense to you conceptually. But in practice, it can be a little harder to nail down just the right niche—one that matches your superpower. When we get to Secret #3 later on, I’ll show you how to identify exactly WHAT you are offering and HOW you are unique in your niche.

  For now, here are some examples to help illustrate those blue oceans.

  Cor
e market submarket niche

  Health nutrition high-fat diets

  Health weight loss weight loss for college students

  Wealth real estate flipping houses on eBay

  Wealth online business Facebook traffic for e-commerce products

  Relationships parenting dealing with teenagers

  Relationships dating how to recover after a breakup

  As you can see, you need to be a little creative to carve out your own niche, but it’s the key to success, as you’ll discover in Secret #3. What you have to offer must be different from everyone else in your market.

  As you start looking around at the other experts in your submarket, you’re going to find out who your competitors are, what they teach, and how they do so. Then you will start to see where YOU fit into this ecosystem. You want to create a message that will complement the other players in your market, NOT compete with them. If you do this correctly, all your big “competitors” will almost instantly become your best partners.

  After I’ve identified the market I want to serve, I ask myself a few questions to make sure that particular market will be able to sustain my new expert business. Before I ask these questions, I usually back out of my main niche back to the submarket. I will be pulling people from the submarket into my new niche, so these questions relate to the people in the submarket.

  Question #1: Would people in this submarket be excited about the new opportunity I’m presenting in my niche? Because you are pulling people from a submarket into your new niche, it’s important to make sure they will be excited about what you want to share. You will be creating a new opportunity for them, and it has to be something that will make them interested enough to take action.

  For example, let’s say your hot market is wealth, your submarket is real estate, and the niche you are going to carve out for yourself is teaching people how to flip houses on eBay. Would people in real estate be excited about this new niche?

  Question #2: Are the people in this market irrationally passionate? Before we ask how passionate the market is, I need to ask you a personal question. Are YOU irrationally passionate about your topic? When you hang out with friends or family members, do you always bring it up, even if no one else seems to care? If so, that’s a good sign. But are there others as irrationally passionate as you? Here are some of the things I look for to determine if my market is irrationally passionate.

  Communities: Are there online forums and message boards and social groups dedicated to this topic? How about Facebook groups and fan pages, YouTube channels, podcasts, or blogs with others geeking out on this topic you love so much?

  Vocabulary: Does the market have its own special language? In the internet marketing world, you hear words like “autoresponder”, “split testing”, and “squeeze pages”. In the health and biohacking market, they talk about “blood tests” and “ketones”. An irrationally passionate market always has its own vocabulary. Does yours?

  Events: Does this market have its own events? They might be online or offline conferences, seminars, summits, or masterminds. If events aren’t happening in your market, you might have a hard time getting people to attend webinars and training. If they are already used to attending events, you’ll have a much easier time.

  Other Experts: Does this market have its own celebrities and gurus? There must be established experts already thriving and selling information products in your market. You don’t want to be the first celebrity in a market. You want a topic or niche with its own subculture already established.

  Go through these questions as many times as you need to in order to find the best market for you. I don’t want you to waste any time, energy, or money going after the wrong niche if people in your submarkets aren’t likely to follow you.

  Question #3: Are these people WILLING and ABLE to spend money on information? Sometimes people are WILLING to spend money, but they aren’t ABLE; they are broke. Other times people have all the money in the world; they are ABLE, but NOT WILLING to part with a dime. Your submarket must be both willing and able to spend money.

  For example, I had a friend who saw huge potential in the video game market. He spent a fortune trying to launch his product in this new niche. What he found was that even though there were plenty of kids playing video games, they didn’t have credit cards. It’s hard to sell your mom on why you need to buy a course that will help you play video games better. Even though the kids he was targeting may have been willing to buy, they weren’t able to.

  But the opposite is true as well. One of my Inner Circle members, Joel Erway, started his expert business selling to engineers who had good jobs. What he found was that most of his dream clients did have money, but they were not willing to spend it on coaching. He spent almost a year trying different ways to sell his offers and had very few results. As soon as he started selling to a market that was willing and able to buy, he became an “overnight” success.

  WHO DO YOU NEED TO BECOME AS A LEADER?

  Jay Abraham once said that “People are silently begging to be led” and I believe that it’s true. So how do you become the type of leader they need? I’ve come up with a few rules you can follow to become a charismatic leader for your movement.

  Rule #1: Become an attractive character, and live the life your audience wishes they could live. In Secret #6 of my first book, DotComSecrets, I talked about a concept called the attractive character. We went deep into figuring out your backstory, character flaws, identity, story lines, and more.

  We’ll be digging into some of the elements like identity and story lines throughout this book, but I do recommend reading DotComSecrets to get a deeper understanding of the attractive character. The key is to understand that the people will follow you because you have completed the journey they are on right now, and they want the result you have already achieved. They want to become like you.

  The gap between where they see themselves and where they see you is what moves them to action and helps them make the necessary changes. So if you aren’t willing, or don’t show them, both sides—where you came from and where you are now—then they won’t take action.

  That’s why it’s so important to live the life that your audience wishes they could—because that will inspire them more than anything you could ever say. Sometimes it’s scary to become vulnerable and show your backstories as well as your life now, but it’s the key to becoming a leader that will inspire people to change.

  Rule #2: Maintain absolute certainty. It is said that in any situation, the person with the most certainty wins. I’m not talking about self-confidence. As my buddy Setema Gali says: “Self-confidence is for kids.” If you want to make an impact, you have to be certain. Certainty is what draws people to leaders, to experts.

  Gaining certainty can take time. It begins with you sharing your message often so you can find your voice and become certain in what you are teaching. The more you share your message with others, the more certain you will become. That’s why I encourage people to publish their messages and their stories daily through podcasts, Facebook, blogging, Snapchat or any other platform you prefer.

  Some of you are better writers, and blogging will become your platform. Others are better through audio or video, and will likely be using platforms like podcasts or Facebook Live. The platform is less important than the consistency of your sharing.

  Years ago, as I was trying to understand what my mission was and where I fit into my ecosystems, I set out on a journey to discover my voice. I started doing a podcast almost every day. I was publishing videos on Facebook Live and Periscope every day—even when NO ONE was listening. It’s important to understand that when you first start, you are not posting these for your audience—you’re posting them for you. Eventually people will start to follow, but initially it’s so you can discover your voice.

  Publishing daily is important because you will quickly see what topics and ideas people respond to and what they don’t. Soon you’ll become better and better at creating
and posting the things that people care about most. As you do that, your audience will grow, you will become more confident, and your message will become clear. Over time, that consistency will give you absolute certainty, and you will become your message.

  Rule #3: Don’t be boring. Your audience must be fascinated with you and what you teach. If you’re boring, they’re not going to connect with you. I’ve watched a lot of experts come and go over the past 10 years, and I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why some of them last and others don’t. The one thing I’ve noticed across the board with almost all experts who’ve had success and stayed relevant is that they are highly prolific.

  When I say prolific, some people think I’m talking about producing a lot of content. While that is true, there is another definition for prolific: someone who has abundant inventiveness. They invent new, unique ideas all the time. That’s the type of prolific I’m talking about here. To make the biggest impact on the most people, and at the same time make the most money, it’s vital that you fit your message into the sweet spot on what I call the Prolific Index.

  In the middle of the Prolific Index is the mainstream. This area contains all the ideas currently being taught to the masses in traditional mediums. For example, if you’re a weight loss expert, the mainstream advice hovers around the government recommendations for nutrition. While some of these principles may be good, I’d argue that others are flat-out lies. Even if you believe those things are true, you aren’t going to get anywhere teaching mainstream advice that people are currently getting elsewhere for free.