Show notes
One of the questions I get a lot is “should I write a book?”. I’m going to tell you what I think, and why I’m starting book #4.
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What’s up, everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets Podcast. That beep means I need to put my seatbelt on before I drive away. And I am here today to answer the question, should you write a book? Today, something that has been on my mind is this question I get asked a lot, which is, should I write a book? And it's funny because, as you guys know, I've written three books. One of them was a New York Times bestseller. Woohoo! So that's pretty exciting. But it's funny because I never was a writer. I didn't want to be a writer. I hated writing in school. Even to this day, someone asked me, two days ago actually, he said, "Russell, do you like writing books?" I was like, "No, writing books is horrible. It is the most painful process of all time." And so, no, I do not like to write books, yet I've written three, and I'm probably going to write more.
And people ask, "Well, why would you do that?" I'm like, "Well, it's the most painful process part of all the things I do." It's the hardest thing to do, but at the same time, it's also the thing that live the longest, that lives beyond yourself, that lasts, especially if you write a book that matters. I know there's a lot of people who teach how to write a book really fast, and I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about should you write a book that's going to be your legacy, the thing that people are going to remember you by? And a couple of things, I remember when I first got started, it was about 18 years ago, I remember going to events where people were selling the dream of, "You need to write a book. It's going to give you credibility," all these things.
And so I put it in my head, I want to write a book. But I didn't for almost 10 years. But I remember when I started, I was like, "I'm going to write a book. It's going to be called Dot Com Secrets, because I don't know why. I just love that name." A lot of people told me they hated it. In fact, Jeff, Walker was like, "It's the worst name of a book ever." But whatever, I still like it. So anyway, I decided I'm going to write a book. I remember there was something cool about just in my head knowing that I'm writing a book. Even though I hadn't actually written anything, I just was like, "Okay, well, what's the outline? What's the table of contents? What's it going to look like? What should I write?" I started brainstorming it. But there was something when I flipped the switch to I was writing a book that just became exciting. I don't know.
And I remember after I got done and I was like, "This is so hard. I'll never write a book again." But then when I decided I'm going to read Expert Secrets, there was something magical. I don't know. Maybe it's the romance of being an author and writing, and I don't know all that stuff, but there was something magical where I was like, "I'm writing again," and I got in that fun stage. And the same thing with Traffic Secrets, the romance. And I remember after each book, I was like, "I'll never write a book again. I'll never write a book again." But about the time that I got done the Expert Secrets book, I was hanging out with Brendan Bouchard. He's written, I don't know, a ton of books. And I remember he told me, he's like, "No, you're an author." He's like, "You just write a book every two years. That's just how it works. For the rest of your life, you should do that." And I was like, "Huh, interesting."
And it took me a while, I'm not going to lie. Almost until I decided to do Traffic Secrets. After that, I was like, "All right, I'm going to do that. That's going to be a thing where I'm going to read a book every two years for the rest of my life." And so when Traffic Secrets got to the end, I was burned out because it was a brutal one. Plus, as some of you know, after finishing Traffic Secrets, I went back and I rewrote Dotcom Secrets and I rewrote Expert Secrets. So that was a season of too many words, hundreds of thousands of words. And I was just like, "I don't know if I can keep doing it." It was hard. So I haven't written anything in, it's been over a year. Holy cow. Weird. Yeah, because basically 2020 happened. We blinked and 2020 happened, and now we're back right now it's February of 2021, and I haven't written anything. So it's been over a year. It was just crazy.
Anyway, I tell you this because I knew my next book what I want it to be, and I've told you guys on this podcast it's called Bootstrap. This is going to be the ClickFunnels story. And I'm excited. The problem is I also know, to write that book, it's going to be big and overwhelming and there's a lot that goes into it. And while I've started the process of it, I just know it's probably a two to three year project, if I'm honest with myself, because I have to learn how to write it a different style. It's not a how to book. It's like a storybook. And I want to sync it to The Hero With A Thousand Faces and all these story arcs. I interview 1000 people because I want to get everybody's perspective. I don't want to tell the story from my perspective. I want to tell it from everybody's perspective.
And so that's one that's big. Plus, I don't have an ending to the story yet. What's the ending of the story? "And then we were happy." No, it's got to be awesome. "And then we went public," or, "Then we whatever," something cool. So I'm still waiting for the ending of the story. So it was hard to write the beginning if you don't know the ending and I'm hoping the book's not going to be a tragedy. I don't think it will be, but you never know. I don't know. I don't have a full picture, so I can't write that one yet. Although, I do know that is my legacy project of like telling the ClickFunnels story and how we did it all kind of stuff. So I sit back and I know that I have a lot of friends that have written personal development books. I've never wanted to do a personal development book, but there's something that, man, for almost probably nine or 10 months now it's been in my thoughts and I keep thinking about it, keep thinking about it, keep thinking about it.
And yesterday I was like, "What if I just wrote that book first?" And then I was like, "Huh? It'd be a lot easier to write. I could get it done. We could launch it next year. It could be out in the world." But is it worth writing? I don't want to write a book just to write a book. A lot of people just write a book because, "Oh, I need a book." I want to write a book that's going to change people. That 500 years now people will reference it. That's the kind of book I want to write. So it's just like, can I make this something that's amazing, that's different, that's unique, that's not the same conversation, but it's a different conversation that'll inspire and help people for a long time? And so that's been the questions going through my head. And recently I figured out the title of it, and then I bought the domain, which was not cheap. So I bought the domain for it. And then it was, "Okay, this could be a thing."
So yesterday I reached out to somebody who I know who actually designed the very first Dot Com Secrets book covers. He's name is Rob Secades. And I was like, "Rob, I'm thinking about writing a book. Do you want to design the cover for me?" And he got all excited. I got all excited. I'm like, "Ah!" So now he's designing the cover of the book. And now officially, as soon as that conversation ended, in my head, I was like, "I'm writing a book. I haven't even told my wife about it yet." Gosh, she's going to freak out. I almost want to not tell her and then just be like, "Hey, it's done," when it's done, because she knows the pain that I go through to write a book. But that got me excited, and then I emailed our publisher and was like, "Hey, if I wrote a book on this, would you be interested?" And this morning I got emailed back and he's like, "Heck yeah, that'd be amazing." He was freaking out and, "Let's do this thing,"
And he's like, "To hit the dates you want to sell this thing by here's when we have to have the manuscript back and everything." And I was like, "Oh," and now I'm sitting in my car, out front of the office excited because officially the switch has been turned on. I'm writing my next book and I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. But I do want to tell you that there's this weird energy that comes with it. And so to come back to the question initially for you guys, which is, should you write a book? The answer is a deafening yes. You should write a book. Same questions, well, when should I start writing it? I would propose you start writing it today. You've just got to flip the switch. When you start flipping the switch, these last 24 hours, my mind has been trying to figure out, what's this book? What's it look like? What's the outline? What's unique? What's different? What's the frameworks we're going to use?
The swirling in your head, in your mind, and all these things, I'm like, "Oh, it's amazing." So if I was you, I would commit, "I'm going to write a book." And you don't have to write today, and maybe you hate writing, and that's okay. But just, "I'm going to write a book." And if you're like, "What's the title going to be?" And then I would hire someone to go create the book cover, because for me at least I can't design a site until I've got a logo. I don't know. I'm very visual that way. But I see a book cover and it's like, "Oh my gosh, I can see the tangible thing that people will be holding in their hands someday to make this real." And then your mind will start looking for the answers like, "Okay, what is this going to look like? What's page one? What's the first section? What's the second section? What's chapter one, two, three? Where do I want to take people? What's the mission of this book? What's the goal? All those things.
Maybe somebody I'll write a whole course on how to write a book because that could be a fun thing too. But for now, I just want you think about that. If you start, you'll start opening your mind to the ideas. And even if it takes you 10 years to write a book, that's okay. But now you're putting things down. I remember Matt Fury told me one time, he's like, "If you wake up every morning and you write two pages a day," he's like, "that's 700 and whatever pages a year." He's like, "That's three books a year." So even if you say, I’m just going to write one page a day. If you wrote one page a day, that’s 365. That's a big book. It gives you tons of time to take weekends off and whatever. But if you wake up and say, "Everyday, I'm going to write one page a day," if you do that consistently, within eight, nine months, you've got a book done, which is exciting. And there's something magical in the romance of just saying, "Hey, what are you up to you?" "I'm writing a book." "What? You are?"
"Yeah. I'm writing a book," which is crazy exciting. So anyway, I just want to put that out there. I do think everyone should read a book. I think one of our missions for all of us on this earth is to come down to this earth and we have an opportunity to help other people. You've heard me talk about this a lot. I believe that entrepreneurship is all of us has been called to serve a group of people. So the first part is identifying who are the people I've been called to serve, and then you find them and say, "How do I serve?" And you start looking through those things. And then I feel like one of our other role roles is, we're going through this life experience, we're learning all these things, and we're having experiences and tests and trials and problems and reading books, we're studying things, and I think part of our job is to curate your learning. It's like all the stuff you experience in this life, we should be curating those things.
And you can be curating for yourself, for your spouse, for your kids, for your kids' kids, for your grandkids, the people you've been called to serve, whatever it is. We've all been here given our own unique minds, our own brains, our own experiences, and I think so many times we go through life and experience stuff, which gives us growth, but then we never actually leave anything behind to contribute to the next set of people, the people after us who were coming, who are like, I'm on the earth now. Does anyone got a playbook for how to navigate this?" And so all the growth that you went through, all the things you learn, all the things you experience, like all this stuff, if you don't leave a playbook behind for somebody else, oh, what a tragedy. If you look at, and I'm going to talk about this in my new book, by the way, but one of my favorite principles from Tony Robbins is the six human needs.
And there's the needs of the body and the needs of the spirit, and I'm going to go deep into it right now, but there's four needs of the body and there's two needs of the spirit. And the two needs of the spirit are growth, number one, and then contribution. I think most people here on this earth get to the spot where you figure out the needs of the body and then you can move to the next tier, and now you start focusing on growth, which is your personal development. I think so many people go through that, and it's amazing. But then the most fulfilling, the last step in this process, is contribution, which is now you're leaving something behind. How do you contribute to other people? All the growth you've gone through, what's the purpose of it? And if you don't leave something behind, then so much of the things you went through is in vain, because it only affected you.
And so I want to argue that at that as much as I love the romance of writing a book, I think a bigger part is you creating this thing that gives you the ability to contribute your life's lessons back. And so I'm excited for this new book for me, because it's not that I know the answers to these questions, but it's been a question that I've been chasing for the last decade. And I think that I've gotten further to the answer than most people who have had a chance to be on this planet yet I think it's something that everyone who's been on this planet should understand. If I can give you a treasure map that gets you there faster, it'd be a disservice if I didn't. And so that's why I'm writing this next book, and I'm pumped and I'm excited. And I hope that, first off, you're excited for the book.
I'm not going to tell you the title or the name or anything. I just want you to freak out with me a little bit. Ah, freak out. But more importantly, because I think if I told you the title and all stuff it would distract from what I want you to think about, which is yourself, which is like all the growth you're going through right now, what's the contribution you're going to leave behind? And so think about that, okay, based on that, I'm going to write a book. And it may be a decade process, but I'm going to start the process so I can tell people, if they to ask me, "What are you doing?" "I'm writing a book?" "What? How cool is that?" I'm like, "What are you doing?" "Nothing." "How you feeling?" "Okay." If they're not doing anything, they're not creating anything, so it's like, most people's lives are so boring and static and just like, blah.
But we're creators, we're entrepreneurs. We're the crazy ones. We need to be creating or else we're dying. And so just that process of somebody asking, "What are you doing?" "I'm writing a book." "Really? You're writing a book? What's it about? Tell me about it." It opens up this excitement and this energy and gets your mind spinning, and there's so many cool, exciting things for you. So should you write a book? The answer is, yes. You've gone through too much to not share it with the people you love. Even if nobody reads it, maybe one person reads it, would it be worth it? Yeah. If one person can learn from the things that you experienced and that can change their life, it was totally worth you documenting the process and turning it into a manual, even if it’s for that one person. And if you follow the process I teach you guys with the free plus shipping funnels and all that kind of stuff, you can get into a lot more people's hands and hopefully help thousands or tens of thousands or millions or more. And that ripple effect will be because you decided to contribute, which is exciting.
So, all right, that's all I got. I'm out for the day. I'm going to go start outlining my new book. So excited. Appreciate you guys for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, if you're writing a book, take a snapshot on your phone of this. You just push the two phone buttons. Boom. It takes a picture. Post that picture up to Instagram or Facebook or any of the other social platforms that you chill on. And tag me and tell me that you're committed to writing a book. I'd love to see it. Appreciate you all. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to y'all soon. Bye, everybody.
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