I made an announcement last Friday about why I'm pausing the Inner Circle. This episode will explain why... On this episode Russell talks about the history of his inner circle group in the wake of deciding to pause it for a season. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear on this episode: How Russell got started with Mastermind groups and what lead to him starting his own. Hear about the evolution of the inner circle group from it's beginnings as the Ignite program. And see where the inner circle group is now, just as Russell decides to take a pause from it. So listen here to find out how the inner circle began six years ago, and be sure to listen to the next episode to find out why Russell will be pausing it for a little while. ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson and I welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I’ve got a special episode for you today. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous to do this one. But there’s been a bunch of questions I’ve been getting over the last 24 hours, and this is probably the best format for me to kind of talk about it. So I’m going to be talking during today’s episode about why I am pausing my inner circle. Alright everybody, so yes, that is the news. As you’ve probably seen in the Clickfunnels community there’s been a lot of changes and announcements happening. On the Clickfunnels five year birthday, we did some big announcements talking about how we’re simplifying the software, getting rid of some of the features, and just focusing on being the category king of sales funnels. We then talked about how we launched Funnel Flix which is a training platform for people in funnels, and it basically has all the courses we used to sell for anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to a couple thousand bucks for free, for anyone who’s at the $297 a month level of Clickfunnels. And since then we’ve had thousands of people upgrade to that level, which is really, really cool. So now we’re able to do more training. That was the first big announcement. And there’s another big announcement happening at Funnel Hacking Live, which you guys are going to freak out about. If you don’t have your tickets yet, go to FunnelHackingLive.com and get them. And then on my 40th birthday there’s another big announcement. So those are three big things happening, but there’s a lot of little announcements happening as well. And one of them I made last Friday, and it was more silent because it wasn’t to everybody, it was just to a small group in our market. A lot of you guys know I’ve had an inner circle coaching program now for over six years, since before Clickfunnels launched. And it’s funny, I shared this with inner circle group, we had a group here on Monday and Tuesday, and today’s Wednesday. And I kind of took today off and spent time with Norah, went to the pumpkin patch with her. Then tomorrow, Thursday and Friday I have my last inner circle meeting. And honestly, it’s been so far I’m only halfway through the week, but it’s been one of the most emotional weeks of my life. So I kind of want to just talk about that, because I know a lot of people who listen to this podcast specifically, this has been a thing that they’ve been striving for. “I want to be in your inner circle. I want to get there. This is my plan, someday I wanted to do it.” And I just wanted to tell you the story behind it, and then from there talk about why I’m pausing it for a while. And hopefully it’ll be good for you and inspire you and help you to make some decisions that are tough as well. So that’s kind of the game plan. I’m going to go back in time a little bit. So when this whole thing started for me, I had joined a mastermind group, it was Bill Glazer’s mastermind group, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy, way back, over ten years ago now. And I was in that group for six years. And when Bill Glazer sold the company I kind of dropped out and I was like, “I need another mastermind group.” And I had tried to launch