Should I Write A Book?... (Huge Announcement)
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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---Transcript---
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 p…