Step #1 in the process of writing the new Traffic Secrets book. On this episode Russell talks about the process he does while writing his books. Also find out when the launch date will be for his latest book, Traffic Secrets. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear on today’s episode:

-- Why Russell started over while writing the Dotcom Secrets book.

-- Find out why doing an event after deleting the first draft of the Expert Secrets book helped him come up with a better framework.

-- And find out how he is beginning to write the Traffic Secrets book, and when you’ll be able to get your hands on a copy of it.

So listen here to find out what Russell goes through to write a book, and why you should consider buying the previous two books again when Traffic Secrets launches.

So I start the journey, and we start writing the book, and I spent a long, long, long time and I wrote the whole first draft of the book, and after I wrote it I looked at it and I was like, “I’m not proud of it.” And I told this at the Traffic Secrets event, one of the life lessons I got from my dad. I remember one time he asked me to go clean the car, and this is, I was probably about 8 or 9 years old, and I went and cleaned the car and came back, “Dad, okay it’s clean. Can you come out and look at it so I can go out and play?” and he’s like, “Well, are you proud of it?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” And he’s like, “Well, if you’re proud of it, then you’re done.”

-- 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.

Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I am pumped to be here with you guys today. I’m going to tell you guys a little bit about the event that happened last weekend.

Alright everybody, so last night we just got back from the Traffic Secrets event. Yes, you heard me right, the Traffic Secrets event. What? Which is really, really exciting. And now I’m actually heading to the dentist. I’ve got a little window. I’m definitely late for the dentist, but that’s what he gets for being a dentist. Just kidding, I like my dentist a lot, he’s a cool guy. But I gotta get my teeth drilled or something, so it’s one of those things.

But I just want to tell you guys about last weekend and why we did it and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Those who know my journey, know my story over the last few years, know that a long, long, long time ago, like ten years ago I had an idea I wanted to write a book. But I feel like you have to earn a book. It’s not something that’s just given to you, you have to earn it. So I bought the domain name dotcomsecrets.com, because I was like I want to write a book called DotCom Secrets dot com, because I’m going to teach people the secrets of the dot com thing.

Anyway, looking back now I probably would have named it something different. But that was the name, and I wanted it to be a book. And then it sat there for like a decade where it wasn’t a book, it was just in my head.

And then one day I was out to dinner with my buddy Chad Wolner, and we were at Carl’s Jr eating while we were watching our kids play on the little playground thing. And he said something very profound to me, he said, “Do you know the difference between you and Tony Robbins and Brendan Burchard?” I’m like, “No what?” and he’s like, “I feel like your content’s better, you’re helping more people, you’re doing all this cool stuff, but they seem more legitimate than you because they’ve written more books.” I was like, “What?” At first I wanted to curse him out and then next I’m like, “Crap.” If he’s thinking that, one of my close friends, what is the rest of the world thinking?

Alright, if I want to legitimize what I’m doing I need to write a book. And this is about the same time that we’re working on Clickfunnels. So these two projects are happening simultaneously, because that’s the smart way to do it, write a book and launch a software company at the exact same time.

So I start the journey, and we start writing the book, and I spent a long, long, long time and I wrote the whole first draft of the book, and after I wrote it I looked at it and I was like, “I’m not proud of it.” And I told this at the Traffic Secrets event, one of the life lessons I got from my dad. I remember one time he asked me to go clean the car, and this is, I was probably about 8 or 9 years old, and I went and cleaned the car and came back, “Dad, okay it’s clean. Can you come out and look at it so I can go out and play?” and he’s like, “Well, are you proud of it?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” And he’s like, “Well, if you’re proud of it, then you’re done.”

And I’m like, “Crap.” And I’m like, “I’m probably not proud of it.” So I went back down to the car and I started cleaning and re-cleaned the whole thing, and this time I made sure I was proud of it. I went back up and I’m like, “Okay dad, the car’s done.” And he said the same thing, “Are you proud of it.” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Okay, then you’re done.” He didn’t even come look at it.

Life lesson right there. Boom. So fast forward now, twenty years later and I’m reading the manuscript of the book that I’m about to go send to the publisher, and I was like, “I’m not proud of this.” So I decided to just get rid of it. So I got rid of the script and I thought, you know, the problem was, all the stuff was in there and I don’t know, it didn’t make sense, wasn’t in the right order. There was like this chicken and the egg concept, what comes first? They have to know this before they know this, and all these things.

So I thought the best way to do this was to actually teach a live event because then I can explain it and see it in people’s eyes, see what makes sense, and see what things are out of context and stuff. So my little coaching program at the time was called Dotcom Secrets Ignite, some of you may have been in that. I said, “Alright guys, everyone come to Boise, we are going to teach this event called Dotcom Secrets.”

And I ended up getting about a hundred people to show up to Boise and for three days I taught the concept of the book. And what’s interesting, as I was teaching it I was like, “Oh crap, you need context. This doesn’t make sense. I need to explain this.” So I taught the whole thing, and after I got done I rearranged the outline and changed everything around until it was like, oh, here’s the book. Then I started over and rewrote the book and then boom, we have Dotcom Secrets, which I’m very proud of.

So that was the first book and then I was like, “I will never write a book again.” There was so much pain associated. Of all the projects I’d ever done, that was the most amount of work and the least amount of money made from a project. Because books don’t make you a ton of money. They make you good money if you do it right, if you do it through a funnel the way we do. But it wasn’t insane.

I’m used to funnels where you launch it and they do a few million dollars out the gate. This one, you know, sold a ton of books, but it wasn’t short term, huge monetary success. But looking back at it now, five years later, it’s been huge monetary success. Because it was the indoctrination piece that got people to understand funnels, which then created the desire and the need for Clickfunnels.

Anyway, so I get the book done, and I’m never going to write a book again. And then like a year later I’m at this mastermind meeting, which is actually happening again this weekend, it’s kind of funny. It was Joe Polishes mastermind meeting and I’m going and I get invited to this dinner the night before with a couple of people. So I’m at the dinner, and sitting across from me at the dinner is this guy named Dean Graziosi, some of you guys know Dean.

I had been a fan of Dean’s for a long time, we’d met once or twice. He was the dude who was on infomercials for twenty years. I used to watch his infomercials and study him, and write the scripts out because I was a marketing nerd. And just loved what he was doing.

So I’m sitting across from him and we’re talking and having all these conversations. And in the middle of this conversation about something completely different, I had this realization that was like, “You need to write a book and it’s going to be called Expert Secrets and somehow Dean’s going to help you. I’m not sure if it’s going to be an infomercial or something. But you need to write this book.”

I’m like, oh crap. I don’t want to write a book. But I had bought that domain two or three years earlier, so I remember I went to bed that night and Dave Woodward was staying with me and I was just like, “I’m writing another book.” And he’s like, “What?” and we start talking about it and he’s freaking out, we’re freaking out. And so that started the journey.

So guess what I did? I wrote an entire copy of the book, I was so excited. That was this time of the year, right now we’re in October. So then fast forward to the next summer, so it means I had spent six months writing this book. So that summer, I think it was June or July, I was at my family reunion and I was supposed to be going through the final edits of the draft to be able to send to my publisher. So I’m reading the drafts and as I’m reading it, I’m like two or three pages in and I had the same realization, “I’m not proud of this.”

And I was like, no, I spent too much time on this. So I was like, it’s not right. And back then I was snapchatting, so I got on Snapchat Live and I said, “everyone, I’ve been writing this book for the last six or seven months, and I’m not proud of it.” So I highlighted the entire book, live on Snapchat, then deleted it and resaved the file, so it was gone, gone. It was the only copy I had. And I was like, “It’s gone.”

And everyone was freaking out. I got people messaging me like, “No, Russell. I will pay you a thousand dollars to read that manuscript.” And I’m like, “No, it’s gone forever. I’m not proud of it. I don’t want it leaking out to the interwebs and people would be like, ‘oh that’s Russell’s book.”

So I decided after that, I was like, “I need to do an event like last time.” So I called up my now, mini-inner circle at the time and said, “you guys, we’re doing an event in Boise next month. Boom, come to this event.” And I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I just knew that the event had a schedule, therefore I must figure out how to teach this concept in a really short period of time.

And at the same time I was going to Kenya, so we’re flying to Kenya. On the flight to Kenya, on the gravel roads in Kenya and on the flight home from Kenya I am reading, mapping out, studying, planning, plotting, scheming, building out the framework for this book. And if you’ve read my books you know I doodle out every concept. So I’m doodling every single concept, putting them in chronological order, trying to get it the best I can.

I land in Boise, coming home from Kenya, our flight got delayed by 36 hours, so it was a day late getting home, and my event was the next day. So I land, go to bed, wake up in the morning and I go to this event to teach the concepts again. I teach the Expert Secrets concepts over two days, and what’s fun, the same thing. I’m teaching stuff and some things make total sense to people, other things they get stuck and I have to reteach it, and redo the framework and I’m trying….

I remember one concept that I thought was going to take 10-15 minutes to explain, we ended up spending 3 hours on it in the group because we figure it out and how to make it simple and simplify it.

Anyway, when that was done, then I took the outline and retweaked it and boom, I went back to writing and I wrote the Expert Secrets book. So there’s pass number two.

So this time, and again I was like, “I will never write a book. I forgot how painful writing books are, and this was horrible. I’ll never write a book.” And literally, in the middle of the Expert Secrets launch, day two or day three, I get a message from John Reese who said, “Hey, would you be interested in buying Traffic Secrets from me?”

And I was like, oh my gosh. This could be the trilogy. I could get a hardbound trilogy box set. I was like, this would be the greatest thing in the world. Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets, and then my podcast, which you see is Marketing Secrets, and Marketing Secrets is like the daily what’s happening in the world right now, thoughts on top of the conscious mind. And the other books are like the foundational cornerstones, that are the evergreen pieces that never change.

And I was just like, “I have to buy this.” And emotionally I bought it, which means you spend a lot more money than you should. But I knew that that was book number three.

So now fast forward, we’re a year and a half past the Expert Secrets launching. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies, it’s changed a lot of people’s lives and it’s helped people’s funnels grow, which is really, really good. And now I’m sitting  here and trying to figure out this third book. And I was like, “should I start writing?”  and I’m like, “No, I must do an event first.”

So I called up all my Inner Circle and Two Comma Club X members and said, “You know what, I’m going to offer something I wasn’t doing before and we’re doing an event and it’s going to be amazing.” So the next thing we know, now we’re in….

Sorry my car is super loud, and I’m super late for the dentist.

So next thing we know, I’m in Arizona and for two day we’re teaching the Traffic Secrets book. And it was fun, it was the same concept. Monday I came in and started doodling it out, had the framework, the doodles the things. I spent Monday, Tuesday and all day Wednesday doodling, sketching, putting together a process, putting together a framework, and then Thursday morning stepped onstage and started teaching the Traffic Secrets book.

And I taught it Thursday and taught it Friday and yeah, it turned out good. And now I know what shifts and changes and things I need to move around. And now the writing process begins, but it was really, really cool.

So I wanted to share with you guys because that is my process. I know a lot of you guys are struggling, how do you teach content? How do you write books? How do you blah, blah, blah? And for me it’s all aobut like, first off I basically gotta write an outline, here’s an outline of what I’m going to create. Number two is I build the framework, for me the frameworks are these doodles. So I doodle out here’s the framework of what I’m trying to teach, the conceptual thing.

And then for me now, what I’ve found, the shortcut is get a bunch of people in a room and teach it. And if you teach it, it’s cool because people sitting in a room don’t have context. So it’s like if you explain something and they’re like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need to explain that earlier in the book or it’s not going to make sense.” So that’s kind of how I do my process.

So I’m going to do another episode in the near future about frameworks, because Steven Larsen and I were talking about, he’s like, ‘The thing you’re the best at is building out frameworks. You’re like the framework king. Everyone needs to become framework kings because when you have the framework it’s easy to teach off. But how do you actually build the framework?”

You know my process has been going back twenty, forty, fifty years in the past, learning from the best direct response marketers of all time, figuring out what the frameworks are, bringing them to modern day, and then creating frameworks now all of us can go and use in our world, in our businesses, and things like that.

So anyway, it’s just kind of interesting, so I wanted to share that with you guys and hopefully give you some ideas. For those who are stressed out, “Russell can write a book because he’s Russell.” It’s like, no Russell struggles writing books more than anybody. So what he does is this process and how it works.

Anyway, I hope that helps. With that said, you guys, I’m almost to the dentist. I’m going to bounce. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you guys are getting excited for the third book. I have to have to the publisher by May 1st, we’re also re publishing Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets. I’m going to be adding about a hundred pages to each book, and we’re republishing them as hardbound books and it’s going to come when we launch next September, I think it’s my launch date. They’re going to come in like a box set, which is the coolest thing ever. It’s like the Star Wars trilogy, only cooler. Or Lord of the Rings trilogy, but even cooler. It’s the Secrets trilogy.

Alright you guys, be sure to get prepared and excited and ready to buy this when it’s ready because you’re going to love it. It’s going to be amazing, I promise you I’m killing myself to make sure the books are great for you guys. Appreciate you all, thanks so much for everything and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.