Oh my gosh! We finally did it! Thank you so much for supporting me! On this episode Russell talks about the ups and downs of achieving his goal of becoming a New York Times Bestselling author. Here are some of the amazing things to listen for in this episode:

-- Find out why Russell’s other 2 books didn’t make the list, even though he sold enough copies.

-- And find out what it took for Traffic Secrets to finally become a New York Times Bestseller.

So listen here to see why Russell is so excited to have reached such a huge milestone.

And we waited and the first week it didn’t happen, second week it didn’t happen, third week… and it was just, it was one of those things where it’s like, ‘I won, my hand should have got raised. I sold enough, I passed the…I have more books sold than the person who’s number one on the New York Times Bestsellers list, why am I not there.” and for some reason I wasn’t. And you can’t just call them and be like, “Hey, why didn’t you give me the list.’ It’s just one of those things where there’s, however the process works, there’s judges, there’s people they pick who are on the list, who is not, and there’s other criteria obviously than just books being sold. And for whatever reason I didn’t get on the list.

-- 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, I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast, and today I’ve got an exciting announcement. Do you guys want to hear it? Alright, as of today I’m officially a New York Times Best Seller.

Oh my gosh, I just wanted to celebrate with you guys. This is one of those really weird moments because, you know when you set a goal, it’s really weird. I’ve been a big goal setter my whole life. And most goals it’s like, I have a goal, I want to be a state champion wrestler. You go out there and you do it, and you do it, and you kill yourself, and you find out real quickly if you got it or you didn’t get it. Either you win or you lose, but its final and there’s this finality to it.

With business it’s like, I want to make a million bucks. And you go and you do it, and you either do it or you don’t, but there’s finality, there’s something there. I’ve never understood, not that I haven’t understood, but I never competed in any sports where you had judges that judged you. Where they look at you and they go, “You got an 8, or you got an 8.9. You got a 10.” I’ve always done sports where you either win or you lose. You know, and no one’s judging you. You just do the thing and you succeed or you don’t.

And it’s interesting though because I was in this competition, this invisible competition, I don’t know what to call it, where I had this goal. My goal, as a lot you guys probably know or have guessed, was to someday hit the New York Times Bestsellers list. And it’s funny because before I wrote the Dotcom Secrets book, because I started writing it, if I’m going to do this book, I don’t know, I’m somebody who always wants to win, right. So it’s like, what’s the goal? The goal is to sell a lot of books, but the way you win is if you become a New York Times Bestseller. That’s, you know, in Olympics, for an athlete, the best thing you can win is a gold medal, if you’re an author the best thing you can do is get on the New York Times Bestsellers list.

So I was like, okay, how does it work? And I found out, obviously it’s how many books did you sell? But there’s other things, they also want to make sure there’s a lot of publicity and PR and all sorts of stuff around it. So we kind of figured out what it would take. I think at the time with the Dotcom Secrets book out, most of the books that were on the list were selling, I think it was like 10,000 copies a week or something like that. So in my head I was like, ‘If I can get more than 10,000 copies, it means I’m going to be on the list. It’s going to be amazing.”

So that became the goal, so we created this huge product launch and this huge everything and we did the launch to sell 10,000 copies in a week. And we ended up selling, I can’t remember, it’s been six years now. I think it was 20 or 30,000 copies that week, and we used a funnel obviously, but then we pushed sales through Amazon and other channels and stuff. And it was like, okay. And we did a bunch of PR and podcast interviews and all these things to try to make as much noise as possible. And I was like, “Okay, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen.”

And we waited and the first week it didn’t happen, second week it didn’t happen, third week… and it was just, it was one of those things where it’s like, ‘I won, my hand should have got raised. I sold enough, I passed the…I have more books sold than the person who’s number one on the New York Times Bestsellers list, why am I not there.” and for some reason I wasn’t. And you can’t just call them and be like, “Hey, why didn’t you give me the list.’ It’s just one of those things where there’s, however the process works, there’s judges, there’s people they pick who are on the list, who is not, and there’s other criteria obviously than just books being sold. And for whatever reason I didn’t get on the list.

And I remember being so upset and frustrated and depressed and just like, “I didn’t win. What was the point of writing this thing?” Then luckily the book did well and people loved it and it helped a lot of people, so I’m very proud of it. The second book came out, Expert Secrets and it was close enough that I was like, ‘I don’t really want to really try for it.”

And in fact, I remember my publisher, they’re like, ‘Well, you know if you want to hit the New York Times, you have to do traditional publishing things, which means you have to do it a year out, there’s all these different rules.” And you know, I was like, “I don’t… I just want to sell the book.” So we, I think we called it crashing the boards or something. So basically, I finished the book and two months later we started selling it, which made so I pretty much couldn’t get on the New York Times list, because all the sales were coming in and the New York Times or the book publisher, or whatever, the distribution people didn’t know the book was even coming out. And we ended up selling 70,000 copies of that book the first month, which you know, outsold all of the books on the New York Times list, but because no one, anyway, because of the process obviously I didn’t get the list and I didn’t even care.

So the Traffic Secrets book came out, I’m not going to lie I secretly, like that would be cool to be on the list, but I’m not going to think about it. And Dave Woodward was the one who was like, ‘You have to do this. You earned it. You sold more books than all these other people who are on the list. You should try for it, you should work for it.” So we kind of went back and said, “What does take? What does it look like to do that?” And it was hard.

I did, I think over 100 radio interviews. Because it’s not just “how many books did you sell.” It’s like, there’s a traditional publishing list, they want to see, “Were you on the radio? Were you on TV? Were you, authors that sell books, these are the things that they do.” So I had to be in all those spots. I had to do TV interviews, we did hundreds of TV interviews. I did podcasts, I did Facebook Lives, I did so much stuff, so much work went into it. We sold books on Amazon, we sold books through our funnel, we sold books through bookstores, anything we could to try to get the list.

And it’s funny, during that time is when covid hit. And it’s crazy because when Covid hit, Amazon stopped shipping. So when we had all these books that were supposed to be shipping out, during the week it was supposed to happen, Amazon stopped shipping books because they wanted essential items. So like a couple of weeks I was like, ‘We’re definitely going to hit the list.” We didn’t because Amazon didn’t ship the books, they didn’t count towards the whatever the algorithm is, however it works. Nothing happened and nothing happened.

So we tried, man, for 2 or 3 months, just trying everything we could. Then 2 weeks ago, we kind of just gave up and we’re like, ‘You know what, let’s stop focusing on this. Let’s stop driving traffic to all these other places, let’s just focus on the funnel because then we know we’re making money there.” So we shifted back to that.

And then what’s crazy is, today I woke up and I got some texts from some friends and some other people with a picture of my book on the New York Times bestseller list, and I was not expecting that. And we started freaking out. So I’ve been freaking out all day. I don’t know what to do with myself. It was one of these goals that’s so elusive that I had given up on, that I didn’t even think it was possible anymore, then it just happened.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you because it’s a big milestone in my life and in my career and it’s something that I’m really, really proud of. And finally I can say that I’m a New York Times Bestselling author, which is pretty cool. But more important is the fact that the books are out there, so anyway, I just want to share with you guys because I know a lot of times we go after goals and we don’t hit them and for me, I’ve launched two books, sold half a million copies of those books, without ever getting rewarded with the thing yet. But we still did it because you know, the product, the things you’re putting out there, even if you know you’re not being judged correctly, or the way you think you should be by the outside judges, you’re still doing it for a more important reason, which is changing the lives of the people that you’re putting those things out for. But it also feels great to be recognized.

So I’m grateful, grateful for everyone on my team who helped to be part of that, do the hard work, helped us get on the list. So yeah, I’m really proud. So anyway, thank you guys all again for reading the Traffic Secrets book. If you haven’t read it yet, go get a copy at Trafficsecrets.com or you can go to Amazon, we have an ebook, or Kindle version there. We also have the audio, audible book, it’s on Audible now with me actually reading it. You can get the audible version, it’s everywhere. If you haven’t read it yet, go and get it. And I want to thank you guys for being subscribers and listeners and followers, and fans and all that stuff. I’m super grateful for you guys.

It’s funny, I’ve been talking about this industry and this business for 18 years now, and for the first 8 or 9 years no one seemed to care, but I was just so passionate, I wanted to talk about it, share it. And it’s so rewarding now that 18 years later, that you care enough to listen to these episodes, to buy the books, to listen to things, it just, it means the world to me. And hopefully it’s inspirational for you, for whatever topic you’re excited by, that even if immediately you don’t get the success you want, or the people listening or following, to keep doing it and keep doing it. And keep having passion and keep believing in what you’ve got. Eventually your message will get out there and you’ll be able to touch the hearts and the lives of the people you’ve been called to serve.

So I hope that helps. Thank you guys again. I appreciate you and I’m a New York Times Bestselling author. This is so crazy! I just want to celebrate with you, thank you again, and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.