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The Russell Brunson Show
The Hidden Lesson Inside A Message to Garcia: Why Winners Don’t Wait for Instructions | #Success - Ep. 80
00:14:14
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Russell Brunson
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Home Depot Announcer
This is the Russell Brunson Show.
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Russell Brunson
You've probably heard Tony Robbins say this before. Like, if you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats. Right? Most people don't decide. Most people dabble. I'm going to try a little. I'll see. I'm going to see if this works. I'm going to try a little bit, but then if it's not working, they quickly slip back. I'll. Never mind. Like, it's good. I can't do that. Right. Whereas deciding is cutting off all other options. Like when you cut off all their options, there's nothing else you can do besides go forward.
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Guest or Co-host
Right?
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Russell Brunson
Right. It's burning the ship so you can take the island. What's up, everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to my vault. So excited to have you guys here. And today I've got a book that is a legend. It's been printed over a million times and a lot of you guys have never even heard of it. I hadn't heard of it until a couple years ago. It's called the Message to Garcia. And this is one of the first editions from 1899. And this one is really cool because it's also signed by Mr. Elbert Hubbard. Not to be confused with L. Ron Hubbard. Everyone thinks this is a Scientology guy. It is not. Elbert Hubbard was one of the original people in the New Thought movement. In fact, he was the guy who owned the printing presses for most of the people that were writing books back then. He had a community called the Roy Crafters, and they would print books and magazines for all of the authors back in the day. And so Elbert Hubbard was kind of the guy who ran that community. He printed tons of books and magazines, but this, by far is the most famous thing that he published. And it's only a couple pages long, and it's called the Message to Garcia. This one's really cool because it has a leather cover, and again, it's only a dozen pages or so. The entire book. I paid $300 for this copy of Message to Garcia, the signed copy. The coolest thing about this book is, again, there's a really short analogy at the very beginning that's kind of the core of the entire thing. The story inside this book is that there was a guy who's a US army officer named Rohan, and the president of the United States at the time said, I need you to get a message to this lieutenant who's in the mountains and the hills of Cuba during a war, right? And he gives them this message, like, you need to go deliver it to this guy. And then Rowan leaves, and he goes and he figures out how to get to Cuba, how to get to the mountains, how to. How to navigate through everything, how to get through the war zones, the rivers, the mountains and everything, and figures out how to come and deliver the message directly to Garcia. And. And the premise of this book is the fact that he didn't go and ask a ton of questions like, what's the address? How do I get there? What's the best route? Like is like, who's going to pay for me to get? He doesn't ask any of those questions. He's given a task, which is give this message to Garcia. He goes out there, and despite the complexity and the hardness of the task, he figured out a way to get it done. And so the message from this is, like, is really for people to understand that, like, when you're given a task, it's like, how do you break through whatever barrier? Like, most people, they go on a journey, they get a task, they get something they're trying to do, right? And as soon as they hit an obstacle, they stop. As soon as they get past, it gets a little bit harder, they stop, or they can't figure out the answer, so they stop, right? And the whole point of this book is, like, this guy Rohan, he didn't do anything. He figured out a way to get it done, to get the message to Garcia. And so then afterwards, Elbert Hubbard Writes this. This article about what he saw about this story, and it gets published, and then people start seeing it, and they start wanting to share it. So these big corporations and big companies, they saw this story and, like, they wanted their staff and employees to understand, like, this is. This is how the mindset we have to. Have to be successful. We have to figure out, like, how do you give them? Like, if you're given a task, like, give a message to Garcia, you just figure it out at all costs. Like, you don't have to, like, whatever it takes, just go and get that task figured out. And so we had these big corporations and companies all around the world who started asking, like, can I. Can we republish this? And so, again, it got printed over a million times in different languages all around the world to give people the understanding that, like, when you have a task, you have to figure out a way to get it done. We start thinking about people that are successful in any areas of life. Right? I think about this. When I was in sports and athletics as a kid, I was a wrestler growing up, and a lot of times, like, you set a goal or you set something. I wanted to be a state champ, and then I want to be an All American. I had these different goals, and it's. It's one of the things, like, there's not a playbook. Like, here's all the 12 steps to go and do the thing, right? It's, like, for you to get that task to be able to accomplish the goal, like, you have to be willing to do anything. Like, breakthrough walls if it needs it, if needs to happen, right? Business was the same thing where I was like, I want. You know, my very first goal is I want to make a million dollars in a year. Like, that became the goal again. There wasn't at the time, like, a blueprint, like, follow these 12 steps to do it. It was like, all right, I got to figure this out through thick and thin. And, you know, when I was doing it the first time in college, like, I didn't have. There weren't. There weren't coaches and mentors and coaching programs and software. Like, I, like, was trying to figure, like, okay, I remember wanting to sell something on the Internet. I'm like, well, how do I get something on the Internet? And I didn't know that. And there wasn't chatgpt to ask. There was, you know, and so, like, I was figuring things out. Eventually I figured out, okay, you have to have a server to put something on the Internet. And I bought a domain because I think first I bought a domain. I'm like, have a domain. Like, where's my website? There's no website. Like, okay, we have a domain. Now you got to figure out, like, how to figure out the domain points to a server. So you had to get a server and then from there. So how do I get a website on the thing? It's like, well, there's different software, like, Front Page and Dreamweavers. I download Front Page and then from. And like, there's so many steps. And there was no path. There was no plan. There was no nothing other than, like, I've just got to smash through all to get it. Like, my equivalent of, like, getting a message to Garcia was like, I have to sell something on the Internet. And there were so. It was so difficult to do that. And then Again, this is 20 years ago. This is before, even after we figured out how to get a website online. Then it was like, how do I sell something? How do I get traffic? There's no Facebook. There's no MySpace. Right? I see people nowadays, and it blows my mind because we've made the process so simple. Like, if you have a clickfunnels account, you click a couple buttons and your site's live, you can take orders, you go to Instagram and you make a reel, and you get traffic coming. Like, it's so simple nowadays, yet most people just stop. I think it's coming back to, like, this concept of the message to Garcia. Like, if somebody gives you a task, like, you've got to go to the mountains of Cuba in the middle of a civil war, and you got to take this message across enemy lines to the deepest part of the jungle and deliver it. And Rohan didn't ask a single question. He said, yes, sir, I will go. And he figured out a way to get it done. I think if more people embrace that mindset instead of like, well, I don't know how to do this. I'm stuck. I'm confused. And they just hit. Hit a wall, hit a wall, and they just stop, right? One of my friends, Satema Gali, he said something at one of our events one time. He's like, if you want to be successful in life, you have to stop stopping. He's like, people just stop. He's like, you have to stop stopping. Like, if you want to be successful, you have to keep moving forward. I think that's what people miss, especially nowadays. Like, any hurdle, any hurdle you have, you can get figured out. With ChatGPT and with AI and with, like, it's so simple nowadays, yet more people are lazier and more people stop. And so I think if we come back and start adopting this message or this concept of how do you carry a message of rc? You just do it. You figure out a way and you apply that to anything in life. It could be your relationships, could be your business, could be your sport. Like, whatever it is you're trying to accomplish in life, when you adopt that mindset, that's how you win. The best mental framework that I think through when I do this is. You've probably heard Tony Robbins say this before. Like the quote of, like, if you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.
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Guest or Co-host
If you want to take the island and you're the head of the army and you want to take the island, the most powerful way to take the island is burn the boats. Because if there's no way to go back, it's amazing what happens when it's a must to do something versus a should. That's what makes human beings succeed.
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Russell Brunson
That concept, I think it came from World War II when they were storming Normandy, right? And they're supposed to be going on these beaches or whatever, and. And it's like they leave the boats behind, you're going to start going and freak out and go back. And it's like, if you want to be successful and take that and you have to burn the boat, so there's no turning back. Myron golden spoke at a Funnel Hacking Live event one time. He came on stage for 20 or 30 minutes. He talked about this concept of deciding. And I wish Myron's here to explain it. He does it better than me. But one thing I remember, so powerful from his presentation was the word decide means to cut. Like, literally to cut in half.
- [08:27]
Guest or Co-host
When you decide. It means de is from the Latin root of or from side means to cut. You commit suicide. That means you cut off, sue your life, right? An incision. You cut inside yourself, right? You. You get cut inside. Well, when you decide, you cut yourself off from any other possibility. So to decide literally means to sever. It means to cut.
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Russell Brunson
It's. And so most people don't decide. Most people dabble. I'm gonna try a little. I'll see what I'm gonna see. If this works, I'm gonna try a little bit and. But then if it's not gonna work, then they slip. They quickly slip back. Oh, never mind. Like, it's good. I can't do that, right? Whereas deciding is cutting off all other options. Like when you cut off all Their options. There's nothing else you can do besides go forward, right? It's burning the ship so you can take the island. If somebody wants to do something like this, like, actually get the message to Garcia, whatever your version of that is, is coming back, say, okay, if I'm going to do that, like, I have to decide. I have to cut off all of their options. And most people aren't willing to do that. Most people are always dabbling. Like, I remember when my wife and I got married in our marriage, right? And we saw so many people around us, we loved. We were getting divorces. And it's. And there's. Obviously, there's so many situations. And I'm not saying this is perfect or that you know, anything other than that. One of the things we said after we got married, we have to make sure that we. We have no options. Like, this marriage is going to work. There's no other options. And so literally, during our first month or so of marriage, we made a rule. We said, we can never say the D word. Like, we can't joke about it. We can't talk about. Like, that is. That is like. Because as soon as you. As soon as you do. As soon as you start joking, as soon as it's an option on the table, then it's really easy to go back, right? As soon as you're like, oh, I can't figure out, get my message to Garcia, I'm just gonna go, like, I'll just go back. It'll be easier. As soon as that's an option. You're not gonna take the islands. Cause you're not burning the boats, right? And so we were like, we were burning the boats. And what. That's been powerful. Now we've married for, man, almost 25 years. There's so many times, like, marriage is not easy. It is difficult. It is hard. Like it is. There's ups and downs all the time. But there was never. There was never an outlet. There was never an option. It was like, we are going to solve this. We're going to figure this out. We're going to have the conversation because there's not. There's not an out. Like, this is how it's going to work, right? When we got in business, in different parts of my business, different phases of the business, same things. Like, we've had business failures a lot. And when the business failure happens, it's not like, oh, we're all right.
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Guest or Co-host
We're out.
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Russell Brunson
It's like, no, like, we will figure this out. One of my friends was up here. Some of you guys know McCall Jones and Catherine Jones. Lish. They told me the other day, they said that behind my back, they call me the cockroach. And I was like, what? They said, yeah, in a nuclear war or nuclear bomb hits, everything dies except the cockroaches. Cockroaches figure out how to live through. Like, they're the only things that survive everything. And they're like, russell, we've seen your ups and downs over the last decade. Like, you just keep coming back. Like, you're like a cockroach that cannot be killed. I think it comes back to this. Like, I have a goal. I have a mission. It's bigger than me, and I'm not stopping. I've. I've cut off all their options, and I'm pursuing it with all my heart and my mind. And I think most people don't do that. Most people just dabble, and they give themselves an out, and they give themselves so many different outs. It's like, stop giving yourselves out. If you really want to accomplish something, you've got to burn the boats. If you want to take the island, if you want to take the message to Garcia, you got to figure it out, because no one's going to give you the answer to everything you need, right? It's your job to go out there and, like, you've got a mission. Like, figure out how to get through the mountains and get that message to Garcia. When I first started my book collecting journey, some of you guys may have seen the documentary Bibliomania. If you did, I actually purchased this entire collection. A guy who was collecting Napoleon Hill books and documents for over 20 years and actually went and purchased this entire collection from him. And when I was there, he was showing me. It was not just Napoleon Hill stuff. It was all these other books that he had from different authors and stuff. And I'm not gonna lie. Like, I didn't. I'd never heard of Elbert Hubbard. I didn't know who that guy was. In fact, I thought it was the Scientology guy at the time. Like, when I first heard the name, and I was like, oh. And he's like, this is the Elbert Hubbard. Like, you know about the message of Garcia, right? And I didn't want to act dumb because I thought everybody had heard of it before. And I was like. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Message, Garcia. And I remember, like, I took a picture of the book, and that night I was like, googling, like, what is the message, Garcia? I'd never heard of it. Before, and I read the story, and again, it's. It's such a short, fast read. I actually. I found it online, and I read it really quick, and I got it. I was like, oh. I was like, that's why this is so cool. And I started reading the story about the marketing and, like, the fact that it, you know, over. Over a million times, it had been printed in, like, I think, like, 20 or 30 different languages, because when people like employers and bosses and coaches and athletes, when people saw that this message, it was so time. And this is back 1899, so this is before the turn of the century. It reminds me a lot of, like, Jocko's message of, like, extreme ownership, how corporations and armies, everyone took that message. Like, everyone takes extreme ownership. It was the same thing back then in 1899, with. With this message of. The message of Garcia. It's just like, look, when you have a task, you got to figure out how to get it. There's. And it was such a. Such a powerful thing. So I read about it there and then I've actually got about a dozen different versions of this book now. I've got first editions, later editions, ones that are in bigger books and smaller books and pamphlet versions, and there's so many cool ones out that I found. This is my favorite one, though, because I love the leather case. And just the way that it's packaged and the fact that it's signed by Elbert is pretty cool, too. All right, if you want to read the message, Garcia, I wasn't giving you my notes, but the book is so simple. You can read it in, like, 15 minutes, the entire thing. So we. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a link down to our copy of the message to Garcia in the comments down below. Click on that, go over there, and you can get a free copy, and that way you can read it and you can get inspired. I would recommend reading this and then tell it to your kids, tell it to your staff, tell it to people that you have stewardship over. Have them read as well, and you can get this mindset for all of them of if you can help them to get the mindset from this book, the message of Garcia, it'll help them to produce more and help your company grow your family get more done, and it'll be pretty powerful. So that's in the comments down below. Other than that, thank you guys for hanging out today, and we'll see you guys on the next video. I, Sam.