Should You Write A Book?

Welcome to Marketing in Your Car, the podcast for funnel hackers everywhere. You're now part of a small group of underground entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world through the products and the services that we believe in. But because we don't rely on venture capitalists, we don't have financial safety nets. So we have to do things differently. We have to do things smarter. We do that through an art and a science we call funnel hacking. This podcast will give you a glimpse at the daily life of a funnel hacker. So let's get started. Hey everyone, this is Russell again. I hope you guys are doing awesome today. So, I apologize, I have not been here for you guys the last 3 days. I've been here in spirit. Hopefully you had a chance to listen to the last 3 episodes. I've got some of you guys freaking out in the Facebook group about the last 3 episodes. Like, I cannot believe that you actually gave this. In fact, if you guys aren't in the Facebook group yet, if you go to projectclickfunnels.com, it'll redirect you to the Facebook group. But we've got 40,000 funnel hackers like you hanging out there talking about stuff all day long. ClickFunnels.com and come join us. But some of you guys are freaking out and they're being like, dude, I can't believe Russell shared that. So, those of you guys who are paying attention, I'm trying to drop gold bombs all the time and hopefully the last 3 days has been inspiring for you. If that did anything for you, you're gonna love the Expert Secrets book 'cause it's going, it's taking that and going into a lot of depth and it's so exciting. So, anyway, I wanted to let you guys know that I'm pretty much done with the book. What? Oh, it's been every night. So Monday night I was up 'til 4:30 and then I had I had to get up at 7. And then Tuesday night, I was up till I think about 3. And that night I remember Dylan Jones, who's, we're racing, he's trying to, I'm trying to get the book done, he's trying to get the survey element done, which I think is done, I think it's going live today. Which is amazing, but we've been racing and I told him, I was like, I have this weird feeling, I've been drinking a lot of caffeine so I can stay awake, but like I have this thing where like I'm wide awake but I feel like I don't have a soul because like my body's asleep but my eyes are, my brain and my eyes are awake and it's like this weird like zombie feeling. Anyway, I told them that about 2:30 on Tuesday night. And about 3 o'clock I was like, I hit a wall, I gotta be done. So that was the end of that. And then Wednesday was the next day. Anyway, each night I'm getting like 3 to 4 hours of sleep. So Wednesday started again and Wednesday, like, luckily I had the day pretty much open so I worked on the book all day and then came home at night and I think I got done about, all the days are blurring together, I think it was about 2:30. I went to bed on Wednesday and I pretty much got it for the most part done and then yesterday I had a bunch of stuff happening and today's Friday and I've got two things, Funnel Fridays which is starting in 15 minutes. If you're not watching Funnel Fridays, go to funnelfridays.com, we archive all of them there but again I'm dropping these little gold bombs and gold nuggets for you guys at different places and if you're not watching, you're missing out on some cool stuff. So each week we build a funnel. So we're building one in 15 minutes from now which is gonna be cool. And then I got Decade in a Day. So those who join my inner circle, when they first come in we do a thing called Decade in a Day which is basically I spend an hour with you on the phone and we like look at your model and figure out what we need to do and we point you in the right direction. So I've got 5 or 6 of those today in a row. We let everyone who's in kinda listen in, so you listen and you can hear what everybody else is saying, which is kinda fun. So that's what's happening today. So today is a full day too, so I've got probably, I would say about 2 hours left on the book, just to put all the final images in. I've got 2 new chapters I added in that are just mini chapters, they're like 2 pages, just to show how this stuff works in different types of funnels. So I gotta write those as well. And then at that point, I have my editor do one last run, and then my goal is Monday to submit it I sent it to the publisher. So mine has been to the publisher and then I'm done, I can't touch it, I'm not allowed to ever touch it again, which is stressing me out. And then I got to go record the audiobook version which will be happening in a couple weeks. And then Monday we've got our certification event, so we got certified people coming out Monday. So I'll be speaking at that and then Monday we're actually moving to the new office. It's crazy, the next 30 days is insane. I have 3 events in the next 30 days. So basically Monday we move into the office plus certification events Monday, Tuesday. And then I got Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to plan for the FATH event which then we have our FATH event, which FATH is F-H-A-T, stands for Funnel Hackathon. So this is a new event we're gonna be rolling out hopefully if it goes well, but we're taking about 40 of my Inner Circle members through that. So that's happening on next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Then on Thursday, Friday, we have a 100K meeting, but I have to miss it 'cause I just can't get it all done. So I'm missing the 100K meeting, and then we'll be filming during those days, filming the book launch videos and also the fat event videos to launch those two projects. And then I got a week where I'm trying to do all my presentations for Funnel Hacking Live, and then after that we go to Funnel Hacking Live. Ah! It's crazy, and then I have like a break for a couple weeks, and then we launch the book, so. It's insane. If I survive the next 30 days, it's gonna be pretty amazing. And that's like, it's funny 'cause I have people like, oh, I wrote a book, or oh, I had a guy the other day I was talking to who was like, I have a presentation in March I'm preparing for. I'm like, a presentation? I was like, in the next 30 days I have one, probably 17 or 18 presentations that I haven't started on yet that I have to get done in the next 30 days, plus writing a book, plus moving offices, plus there's a lot of other stuff happening behind the scenes as well. Like next week we're launching, Obviously we launched the podcast funnel last week, which was cool, which brought a lot of you guys to our podcast. Next week we're launching Funnel Graffiti, the week after that we're launching the Funnel Manifesto, and we have all these cool things that we're rolling out. It's just, there's so many fun things happening, ah, I love it! Love ClickFunnels, it makes it so fun and cool to do cool stuff. So, anyway, all those things are happening, and yeah, so, yeah, anyway, on top of that, you know, trying to be a scoutmaster, and a parent and a husband and everything else. It's crazy but it's like so fun. I'm having the time of my life. This is, ah, anyway, I love it. So, alright, today I wanna share one thing 'cause people keep asking me about like a book. Like, Russell, should I write a book? Should I not write a book? So what I wanna share with you guys is just my thoughts on that because this is now book number 2 and I've written other, I mean, this is my second published book, right? We have got 108 Split Tests which is an awesome book. We've got Funnel Stacking which is an awesome book we've done but like, this is the second like real book. For me it's been stressful. I mean like the DotCom Secrets book took me almost a year and a half to write and the Expert Secrets book turned into that as well. I thought it was gonna be faster. I was like, I'll prepare better this time, but no, it still took almost 18 months from beginning to end. And it's funny, like my accountant was, which I finally have a good accountant, like it's awesome having someone who like is awesome. So he's going through all our stuff and numbers and end of the year he sent us like reports and it was funny 'cause you look at like the book funnel, it's like we sold almost, I think we were almost 100,000 copies of the DotCom Secrets book last year. Or maybe since we started, I don't know, whatever it is, but you look at that, it's like, how much money do we make on those funnels? And it's not a lot, like, it's kinda like almost, if you look at it like that was my business, was the book, you'd be like, oh, wow, you made, I mean, I think we netted maybe $100 grand from book sales last year, which, you know, depending on who you are, may be good or bad, but we sold a lot of books, right? It's like, I average like a dollar a book, which is like horrible, right? But you look at that and like what, Like, what was the, like from looking at, was that profitable? It's like, no, it probably wasn't. But then you look at, because of that book, what was created? And it was like, it became the guidebook and the playbook for people to understand funnels, which then got people into ClickFunnels, which got people building, which got people into certification, which got people to our live events, which, so it became this tool for so many other things. And the Expert Secrets book is, I think the same thing. Like, my goal is to sell 100,000 copies during the launch month, but then I wanna sell a million copies. In fact, I'm launching a blog documenting how we sold a million copies of this book, 'cause I wanna like show the process and share it with everybody. So the question is, is writing a book worth it? So, couple things. First off, I'd say at first it's not. But there's a transition point. In fact, I still remember when I actually wrote the book, I decided to write the book. I've always wanted to. In fact, the reason I bought the domain name DotComSecrets originally was because I wanted to write a book called that. So that was like 10 years ago. But I didn't write a book for 10 years. And I feel like you have to earn a book. Some people write a book really quick and I don't think it's the right timing. But for me, I was sitting at a Carl's Jr. with Chad Woolner, my buddy, And we were watching our kids play in the playground and he said to me, he said, you know the difference between you and Brendon Burchard and Tony Robbins? He's like, there's only one thing that I really notice. He's like, I feel like your content is as good if not better. I feel like, you know, all these things. But he's like, the one thing that they have that you don't have is a book, man. That's it. And I was like, huh. I was like, that's weird, 'cause I don't feel like, anyway, there's some weird perception about a book, whatever that is, right? So that night I went and I was like, I don't know how you are, I have to financially commit if I'm gonna do something, so I'm out there and I was like, I need to find someone to help me write this book. So I found a whole bunch of people, I interviewed a bunch, and I sent a whole bunch of money the next day to somebody to be the person, it was Julia Easton, Julie Easton who helps me write the book. So I gave her a whole bunch of money and then she became, now I had like, it was like, hey, I paid someone and this has to happen, and she was writing every single day, okay, what's next, what's next? And a year and a half later, we had a book, right? But it was just like one of those things. And so like people ask me, should I write a book? Should I not write a book? And, and when all's said and done, I think that you should. I don't think it should be the first thing you do, but it's one of— it's something you should do because it is— it's dramatically transformed our positioning, our business, our brand. And so I do think it's worth doing. But not a first, but there's a time. So I would say for all you guys, I would do what I did 10 years before I wrote my book. It's like, I'm gonna write a book. And just declare, like, I'm gonna write a book. And this is what the title's gonna be. I don't know what it's gonna be yet. 'Cause as soon as I had that, like, I knew the book, I knew, like, it's weird 'cause like my mind started doing stuff that became the book later, right? Like, I had to become something to write the book, right? We had to have like the stories and the stuff. And so like, I don't know if subconsciously after we declared like, I'm gonna write a book, in fact I even paid Morgan James who did our publishing, like I paid him, for the book 10 years ago. You could ask him, like every time I saw him for the next year, he's like, so when's the book coming? I'm like, ah, it's coming soon. But I paid it 10 years prior. I paid the bill for the book. So when the book came out, he's like, I never thought you were actually gonna write this. But I was like, but I had like put it out there. I paid the money to start it. And then like I was doing life and like, but because it made me create the book, it made me create the stuff to have that. And I think that, that it should be a goal for all of you guys to write a book because I think it's important. I think that if I was you, I'd make sure you write a good book. I've seen friends write books that were like, they do those things where you just bust out a book in a weekend and then it became a bad book and it didn't help them, it actually hurt them a lot of times. In fact, I had a guy who I respected a lot and then I read his book and I lost all respect for him because I was like, that book made me think that you have no idea what you're talking about. So I think it's worth writing a good book. So I say if I was you guys, depending where you're at in your path, I'd say I'm gonna write a book and just make that thing and even buy a domain name, get the e-cover design, whatever, just like, okay, I have a book now, like I'm an author, I'm writing a book, tell people that, like I'm writing a book. What's it about? Like I don't know yet, but I'm writing it. Like just to kind of put it out there and then start becoming who you gotta become to write the book. Like you have to earn the book, like go out there and like if you're writing a book on weight loss, whatever, like okay, go get 100 clients and help them lose a lot of weight so you can like understand intimately the process so that when you do write the book, you'll have a different perspective. You know, like when I had the idea for DotCom Secrets, I had like 4 little, funnels and the internet marketing niche and the potato gun niche and a couple little things, but I wasn't worthy of writing that book yet, but because I did, I started coaching people and started learning and I started launching my own and we did supplement funnels and weight loss funnels and all these things and from that learning and education, I learned all this stuff and then I was able to write this book. But if I didn't have that, this thing out there, who knows if I'd ever written it. And yeah, and now, the Expert Secrets book's out there and it's been written and now it's like the next piece and it's, I look at what we're trying to do with our company and our mission and how we're trying to affect people. This book is the thing, if I do it right, if I execute correctly, which I hope I will, is gonna expand our market and bring us out to the masses and get this mainstream. And that's why I felt called to write this book. And I'm so proud of it. I said on Snapchat the other day, I was like, I almost, after writing this book, I almost hate the DotCom Secrets book. It was an amazing book, I'm proud of it, but compared to what's been created here like this is, ugh, I'm so excited for people to have this and I think it's gonna change people and it's gonna cause movements and it's gonna be awesome. And with that said, I got Funnel Fridays in 7 minutes, I gotta get in here and get started. So that's my thoughts on writing a book. It's worth the journey and when you're ready for it, you'll know and then it'll become a transforming piece in your positioning, your brand, and in you as a person. So that's what I got. Alright guys, I'm outta here. Have a great day, talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody. Thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at our funnel hacking project. You can also watch the Funnel Hacker online reality show and watch us build and launch funnels live at www.funnelhacker.tv. If you'd like to come hang out with your fellow funnel hackers, come join our Facebook group at www.projectclickfunnels.com. Oh yeah, and don't forget, you can get a free MP3 player with the first 257 episodes episodes preloaded at marketinginyourcar.com. Join us next time, and remember, you're just one funnel away from your dreams.