Two cool ways to help you read faster, and actually remember and implement the things that you learned.

I was at this mastermind recently and I was talking to a good friend of mine, Alex Hormozi (who used ClickFunnels to help grow his GymLaunch business from Zero to over $50 Million in just a few years), and he said… “Russell, I don’t read a lot of books. I read a few books multiple times.” And I thought that was so profound. (He’s read my book “Expert Secrets” 9 times). So for retention, Alex reads just a few books many times.

It gets better! I recently discovered something where you can read books quickly AND retain way more information. And I mean WAAAY more!

I’ve taken a few speed reading courses in my life and nothing seemed to work. But this technique I stumbled upon is AMAZING! And it’s so simple…

So check out this episode if you want to become a super speed reader AND comprehend more of what you read!

It's read one book a lot of times, okay? Again, Alex said as soon as he gets to the end of the book, he flips it over and it starts over. So that was cool. The other side of this, this is not how I gave to Alex, actually when I was reading the Traffic Secrets books, there were a couple of books I needed to read out of research because I was like, "I know there's something in here I want to make sure I understand before I finish writing these books, but I didn't know how to get the stuff in my brain fast enough." You know what I mean? I was like, "I can't sit down and read these books and take forever." And so instead what we did is I sat down and took the book and I don't know if you've tried to speed read before. I've taken a lot of speed reading courses and I can read pretty fast.

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What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. So excited to be with you guys today. In fact, right now I'm actually on the location at a secret film shoot. Well, I guess it's a secret now, won't be secret after the video goes live. Hopefully billions and millions of people see it, but we filmed some really cool ads today and had a quick break and thought I would jump on and say hey to you guys. Last week I was actually up in a mastermind group up in Northern Idaho at Priest Lake with a bunch of cool guys. And I had two big epiphanies, two takeaways, two cool things I want to share with you guys about reading.

The first is so that you can actually read more. So if you want to get more books done, you got a whole bunch of books you want to get through or you just got that one book you're stuck on, you can't figure how to get through it. This will help you to be able to read faster and the second one is to help you actually retain more. That way, the things you're reading, you're actually able to use them and implement them as opposed to just reading just to hear stuff and keep moving on like most people do.

So those are the two things we're talking about when we get back from the theme song. All right, so like I said, I was up this mastermind group up in Northern Idaho, a bunch of really cool people there. But one of my favorite people hanging out with is Alex Hormozi. And I had so much fun with him up there and I'm not going to lie. Part of the reason why I wanted to tell you this is because it inflated my own ego, so I am going to take that because it feels good.

So I was talking to him and we were talking about books and stuff like that. And he looked at me and he told me, he's like, "Russell, first off, I understand that the new hardbound versions of Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets are a million times better than the originals." I was like, "Thanks, man. I appreciate that." He's like, "No. No. Really. I don't think you understand how many times I've read these books." He's like, "I don't read a lot of books because of that what I do is that I start it and I read it and I read it slowly and when I get to the end, I flip it over and I start over again." He's like, "I read Expert Secrets." I think he said like nine or 10 times since it came out, which is crazy. He said Dotcom Secrets probably five or six times and Traffic Secrets, same thing, like five or six times.

And he said, "Most people they try to read a lot of books. He said, "What I do is I try to read one book a lot of times," and I thought that was so profound. I think there's this thought or this belief in society especially in the entrepreneurial world that you have to read a book a week and stay on top of and have all this information inside your brain, but I don't think that's true. In fact, I remember Steven Larson funnel hacking live two years ago. We talked about that. I said, "You hear all the time that CEO reads a book a week." He said, "The problem is that none of us are CEOs right now. We're entrepreneurs. Our job is not to try to learn this broad, vast knowledge about lots of things. It's figure out this one thing, like how do I get this business into orbit right? That's the only thing we should be focusing on."

And I remember Steven talking about that said, "Look, we're not CEOs at this point." He's like, "Russell's maybe a CEO, but not even there yet. We're entrepreneurs. There's a difference. We should not be reading a book a week." And then when Alex said this, he said, "I don't read a lot of books. I read a book a lot of times." That was like this big takeaway. I think for so many of us, we try to read a lot of books. I think that if we start shifting our thoughts like Alex's, you'd have more success, and to put in perspective, Alex is probably one of if not the fastest growing companies on the Click Funnels platform right now. It's insane how much they've done, how big they've grown.

And it comes from reading one book lot of times. And then I asked him, "So what's your favorite book of all three?" And he's like, "Well, what's your favorite book?" I told him, "I think my favorite, I think is Dotcom Secrets." That was my foundational to the funnel world. He told me he's like, "My favorite is definitely Expert Secrets by far," as his favorite. And I ran a poll on Instagram and asked him, it was crazy because most people liked Expert Secrets the most, but Expert Secrets is one that sells the least of the three books, which is interesting. Dotcom Secrets, well, I think Traffic Secrets would probably end up selling the most because it's the most general. Dotcom Secrets is probably number two and Expert Secrets is the hardest to sell, but that's his favorite.

And most people who respond to the survey say that Expert Secrets was their favorite. Another thing I want to kind of re-stress this, he said that the new updated versions are way better. Dotcom Secrets is laid out better. It's more thought through. Expert Secrets moved to a whole new level of frameworks and it's a lot more in depth. So anyway, if you don't have the new updated hardbound versions, this is my challenge to you to go get the new ones. They are that much better. They're a lot better things. Trust me on that. If you don't have all three, if you go to secretstrilogy.com, you can get the entire box that you can just pay for it once and get the whole box shipped out to you. So secretstrilogy.com. Anyway, so that's the first thing. If you want to retain more stuff, the key is not to read a lot of books.

It's read one book a lot of times, okay? Again, Alex said as soon as he gets to the end of the book, he flips it over and it starts over. So that was cool. The other side of this, this is not how I gave to Alex, actually when I was reading the Traffic Secrets books, there were a couple of books I needed to read out of research because I was like, "I know there's something in here I want to make sure I understand before I finish writing these books, but I didn't know how to get the stuff in my brain fast enough." You know what I mean? I was like, "I can't sit down and read these books and take forever." And so instead what we did is I sat down and took the book and I don't know if you've tried to speed read before. I've taken a lot of speed reading courses and I can read pretty fast.

So I was trying to speed read the book. I'm like, "I'm not going to finish this book." It's hard to keep pace when speed reading. So I got the audio book. I put it like 4X speed, but then I couldn't keep up with it because it's like going so fast. And I had this idea. I was like, "What if I did them both at the same time? What if I have the book, by listening to the audio version on like 4X speed and then reading along my hands," it was crazy. When I did that, I'm able to... first off, you can read way faster if someone's reading it to you, right? So I can cruise through it, like with my hand in the book. But the second thing is like, if something in the audio goes too fast, I see the words as well as your brain picks it up more.

And so I can retain and I can understand so much at 4X speed when I'm listening and reading it same time. A couple of these books I was trying to get done in during my research phase, I read the entire book in less than 90 minutes, which is crazy. Normally it would take me, I'm not a fast reader, so it probably take me a day, day and a half, to get a book like that done and a little over an hour it was done. In my head, I understood it and comprehended it and had it at a deep level because I saw it as well as hearing it like dual modalities. Right? And so for me, I understand there's something like I need to get this in my brain or I have to get through a lot of heavy reading. I get the audio and the text and I do it together.

In fact, some years I've been geeking out Atlas Shrugged, which is like a 1600 page book. And the first, I don't know, two or 300 pages is kind of heavy to get through. I knew I wanted to get through it so I could get to the good stuff. That's exactly what I did. I was on my vacation on the house. I had my big old fat book, I had my audio book, cranked up to 4X speed and I was reading it with inside the book as I was listening to it. And it got me through the hard part of the book, to get me deep into the part where I was like enjoying it and loving it and I just listened to the book at normal... well like 2 and a half speed the rest of the book after I got past the first two or 300 pages.

And so this is the trick. I told her. I told Hormozi that and then he... I told him I had my favorite book right now. It's called American Kingpin. If you guys haven't read it yet, it's so good. It's my gift to you right now to go read that book. I told him about that book and it's a big book and he jumped on the plane and then he downloaded the Kindle version of the book and then the Audible version. And on his flight home, he got through the entire book, which is a huge book that took me like two or three weeks to get through. And he messaged me, he's like, "I finished American Kingpin. That was amazing." I'm like, "You finished? I saw you like 12 hours ago." He was like, "Yep, it's done. I never get through books fast."

And he's the one that I told you earlier just flips over and keeps reading. And the fact that he was able to get that entire book in his brain that fast was pretty cool. So anyway, I thought those were two really cool reading hacks. Number one is instead of reading a lot of books, read one book a lot of times. And number two, listen to the audio while you read it and then you can go a lot faster. You can increase it to double speed, 3X speed, 4X speed and still remember and retain and understand it. And that way as you're going through it, you can really get more information to your brain. So I hope those two reading hacks help. I hope you get more done. I hope you get more ideas in your head, help you get through some books and help you really master the things inside the books you need to understand and actually learn.

So that's all I got for you guys for today. I'm going to go down and finish this video shoot. We got some funny scenes coming up with Mentos and Funnels and Coke and a bunch of other cool stuff. So you have to wait to see the video. It's going to be amazing. All right. Appreciate you all. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a screenshot here on your screen and then tag me on it @RussellBrunson on Instagram and use #marketingsecrets. And tell me what book you're either reading more than once and or the book you listen to with audio literacy with the book you guys are reading. And if for some reason you don't have the box set yet, go to secretstrilogy.com, get my box set, get the audio books there as well as well, and then you can go in and listen and read at the same time. All right, thanks you guys. Appreciate you all and I'll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.