I recorded this podcast after getting off a call with Rachel and I asked her my #1 question… On this episode Russell talks about a call he had with Rachel Hollis and asking her how she sold 4.3 million copies of her book without paid ads. Here are some other awesome things to look for in today’s episode:

-- Find out the difference between a war time and peace time general.

-- Find out how Dean Graziosi changed his ads and products to go better with the world we’re experiencing now.

-- And find out Rachel Hollis’ strategy for selling so many books.

So listen here to find out the answers to those questions and how you can take advantage of the times we’re living.

“Over the decade before I wrote the book, I was listening to my audience and I knew the questions they kept asking me over and over and over again. So I wrote the book answering those questions.” She’s like, “There are 20 questions I got the most, so I had 20 chapters and each chapter is addressing a question with my story about how I figured it out and how I got through it and all that kind of stuff.”

-- ClickFunnels: Everything you need to start market, sell, and deliver your products and services online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)

-- DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels."

​-- Expert Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Converting Your Online Visitors Into Lifelong Customers."

-- ​Traffic Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Filling Your Websites And Funnels With Your Dream Customers.

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m excited to talk to you guys today, I hope you’re excited to hear from me today. If not, just skip to the next episode. But anyway, I’m going to be talking today about a question I just asked Rachel Hollis. I asked her how in the world have you sold, I said a million copies of her book, but she told me it was 4.3 million or something crazy like that. So if you want to hear the answer of how she did it, you’re going to find out in this episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast.

Alright everybody, I hope you guys are surviving quarantine. I didn’t shave today, so I’ve got a little bit of a beard growing out. I was doing Facebook lives every day for like 3 ½ weeks, and then I just stopped. I’ve been getting back into work and working through a whole bunch of stuff. Anyway, it’s been fun. This week’s been really cool for me.

I did a juice fast, I’ve not eaten in 5 days, but on top of that, I’ve been focusing on re-doing all of our stuff and shifting our whole company around. In fact, this is kind of interesting, I was talking to, I had a call with Rachel Hollis and we were talking about a bunch of stuff, in fact, I’m going ot share something from that call here in a minute. But one of the things she talked about, she’s like, “Have you read the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve read the Hard Thing About Hard Things, come on now. That’s a good book.

Anyway, she said one of things, and I totally forgot about this, she said one of the things that the author talked about in there was that there’s a difference between a peace time general and war time general. And then she started talking about some of the stuff she was doing, I was like, “We literally did the same thing.” And it was interesting, I was like, “Oh my gosh.” we’re accepting this new time, this new area for us to be leaders for our teams and for our people and for our families. It’s like there’s differences in a peace time general and a war time general.

So if you understand that, the war time general is not like, “Okay, let’s have committees and discuss.” No, it’s like “this is what has to happen and we’re doing. You’re going to listen and we’re going to go.” Anyway, it was kind of interesting, so it made me feel validated in some of the stuff I’m doing and some of the things that I’m moving. I’m moving a lot of cheese around in the company right now. In fact, I don’t know if you read the book Who Moved My Cheese, but someone said, “Here at Clickfunnels, its cheese wheels.” So they’re just rolling all the time, so it’s always constantly moving.

But we made some big shifts and some big changes. So it was kind of cool the war time generals versus peace time generals. But anyway, I digress, I was talking to Rachel, super honored, I sent her and her husband a copy of the Secrets Trilogy box set and they actually started reading it during quarantine. She read the Dotcom Secrets and Expert, she’s in Traffic Secrets right now. So anyway, so we jumped on a call and kind of brainstormed and she asked me a couple of questions and I asked her a couple of questions. And the number one question I asked is, “how in the world did you sell a million copies of your book without any paid ads?”

And she kind of laughed and she said, “It’s actually 4.3 million so far.” That’s just one of the books, she’s got two books. And I was kind of just joking because I was like, I don’t think I could replicate what she did, it’s insane. But then she came back and she said something really cool and I was just like, “Oh my gosh.” It was really cool.

She said, “Over the decade before I wrote the book, I was listening to my audience and I knew the questions they kept asking me over and over and over again. So I wrote the book answering those questions.” She’s like, “There are 20 questions I got the most, so I had 20 chapters and each chapter is addressing a question with my story about how I figured it out and how I got through it and all that kind of stuff.”

I was like, “That’s pretty cool.” And she’s like, “Right now though, I just finished my 3rd book and it’s supposed to go live, but I told my publisher to stop, I’m going to do this thing called crashing the…” I can’t remember what she called it. Crashing the pressing or something. She’s like, “You know what that is?” I’m like, “No.” She’s like, “It’s where, you know when a celebrity dies and you know 3 weeks later a book comes out on their life, that’s what crashing the….” Anyway, whatever it’s called where it basically comes out real quick, they write a book very timely and then launch it as quick as possible to kind of piggy back off of current events.

And she said right now, she’s like, “What my audience needs is not my third book I wrote. They need this other book that I haven’t written yet.” So she’s like, “I’m writing a book, I’ve got a month to write this entire book, we’re going to crash the presses and it’s going to be coming out while we’re all in quarantine.” And she talked about how it was just like, it was interesting because she was like, “I know that my women are not thinking about what the topic of book number three was. They’re talking about this. So if I gave them book number three, they wouldn’t pay attention, it wouldn’t sell that well, it’s not what’s top of their mind. This is what’s top of their mind.

And I was thinking about that, and I remember I was talking to Dean Graziosi, we do a, me and Dean do a call every week to just kind of brain dump. And I show him all the cool stuff we’re doing, he shows us the cool stuff he’s doing. And one of the biggest things, all his ads are working the best right now literally are starting talking about the economy. Grab people where they’re at, “I know you’re freaking out about the economy. I know you’re stressed out, but…” and then it wraps into whatever the thing is. So his ads are doing the best.

He also went back to his auto webinars selling Mind Mint, or selling excuse me, The KBB Mastermind.com thing. And it’s interesting because they do this whole, the actual webinar, it was him and Tony and me and Jenna and stuff. But then the webinar starts and as soon as Tony and Dean introduce themselves, it stops like, errr, it pulls out and Dean’s like, ‘Hey, really quick before I get into this, this was recorded on this date, we’re coming back right now, ever since we recorded this everything shifted and changed and things are chaos in the economy.” So he bridges that gap, meets them where they’re at, and then drives back into the webinar afterwards. And that dramatically increased their conversion rate.

So it’s just interesting. So my question for you is like, looking through that lens, again as like, and this is not just for quarantine times, but for any times, what is the thing that is number one concern or fear on my audiences mind right now? And then how do you enter the conversation that’s already happening inside their mind, and then you tie it back to your product, or make a product around that.

Anyway, I know we know these things, and I think about them, but I think a lot of times I think about how you capitalize on the moment, it’s not that. It’s more entering the conversation inside someone’s mind. You know if, it’s crazy because that’s what Rachel attributes selling 4 and a half million copies of her book to. She literally was the number one, there’s only one author, Michelle Obama is the only person that outsold her last year on the New York Times list, which is crazy.

But it all came back to that, it came back to really getting deep inside their mind and knowing exactly what they’re looking for. So anyway, I’m curious for you guys, do you know what your customers are freaking out about? And do you know how to communicate that and grab their attention because of that and then transform that into a way that your product gets them out of that pain, or moves them towards the pleasure they’re looking for.

Anyway, that was my big insight, a couple of insights from there. Hopefully you get out a couple things. Number one. the difference between a peace time general and a war time general. If you want to go deeper in that, go read the hard thing about hard things, by Ben Horrowitz, I think is his name. So that’s number one.

Number two is if you want a bestseller or a bestselling ad campaign or high converting webinar it’s entering the conversation that’s happening right now, addressing it, and then showing how your product, your service, your thing either moves that person closer towards pleasure, or more away from pain. Anyway, fascinating day.

Anyway, it’s Friday, I’m going to finish my juice fast today. And then tomorrow I get to eat some food, what? It’s been 5 days. I am down 7 pounds this morning though, so I feel good. I was up 8 to start, so hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be back to scratch where I’m back to my fighting weight before the quarantine 19 or whatever hit. Anyway I appreciate you guys all, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you learned anything cool, please take a snapshot of it and tag me on Facebook or Instagram, share it with your friends, family or other people. And with that said, I appreciate you all, thanks so much and I’ll talk to you all soon.