Should You Write A Book?

After finishing book #2, these are my thoughts on weather or not you should actually write a book.

On this episode Russell talks about finally completing his Expert Secrets book as he’s about to send it off to the publisher. He also gives some advice on whether or not others who have asked him, should write a book as well.

Here is some of the gold you will hear in this episode:

• Why Russell bought a domain name and paid a publisher 10 years prior to actually writing a book.
• What some things Russell thinks you need to do in order to write a book.
• And why taking the time to make sure that you wrote a good book is so important.

So listen below to hear Russell’s advice and find out why it’s worth it to write a book.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell again. I hope you guys are doing awesome today. So I apologize that I have not been here for you guys the last three 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. They’re like, “I cannot believe you actually gave this.” In fact, if you guys aren’t on 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, talking about stuff all day long. So go to projectclickfunnels.com and come join us.

But some of you guys are freaking out there like, “Dude, I can’t believe Russell shared that.” So for those of you guys who are paying attention, I’m trying to drop gold bombs all the time. Hopefully the last 3 days have been inspiring for you. If that did anything for you, you’re going to love the Expert Secrets book. Because it’s taking that and going into a lot of depth and it’s so exciting.

Anyway, I wanted to let you guys know that I’m pretty much done with the book. What? It’s been every night, so Monday night I was up til 4:30 and then I had to get up at 7, and then Tuesday night I was up til I think about 3, and that night I remember Dylan Jones, we’re racing, I’m trying to get the book done and he’s trying to get the survey element done, which I think it’s done. I think he’s going live today, which is amazing. But we’ve been racing and I told him, “I have this weird feeling, I’ve been drinking a lot of caffeine so I can stay awake. I have this thing where I’m wide awake, but I feel like I don’t have a soul, because I think my body is a asleep, but my brain and my eyes are awake. It’s this weird zombie feeling.”

Anyway, I told him that at 2:30 Tuesday night, and at 3 o’clock I hit a wall. So I had to be done after that. And then Wednesday was the next day. Each night I’m getting 3 to 4 hours of sleep, so Wednesday started, luckily I had the day pretty much open so I worked on the book all day, and came home at night and I think I done about, all the days are blending together, I think it was about 2:30 when I went to bed on Wednesday. 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 2 of these Funnel Fridays which is starting in 15 minutes. If you’re not watching Funnel Fridays go to funnelfriday.com we archive them there, but again, I’m dropping these little gold bombs, gold nuggets for you guys in different places, and if you’re not watching you’re missing out on cool stuff.

Each week we build a funnel. We’re building one in 15 minutes from now, which is cool. And then I’ve 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. Basically I spend an hour with you on the phone and we look at your model, figure out what you need to do and 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 it, listen in. So they listen and hear what everyone else is saying, which is kind of fun.

So that’s what’s happening. So today is a full day too. I’ve got probably, I  would say 2 hours left on the book just ot put all the final images in and I’ve got two new chapters I added that are just mini chapters. They’re two pages just to show how this stuff works in different funnels, so I have to write those as well. Then at that point, I have my editor do one last run and my goal is Monday to submit it to the publisher. So Monday I submit it to the publisher, then I’m done. I can’t touch it. I’m not allowed to ever touch it again, which is stressing me out.

Then I have to record the audiobook version, which will be happening in a couple of weeks. And then Monday we have our certification event. So we have Certified people coming out Monday. So I’ll be speaking at that. And Monday we’re actually moving to the new office. It’s crazy. The next thirty days are insane. I have three events in the next thirty days.

So Monday we move in the office, plus certification, that’s Monday, Tuesday. Then I got Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to plan for the FHAT event, which then we have our FHAT event. Which FHAT is F H A T which stands for Funnel Hack A Thon. So this is a new event we’re going to rolling out, and hopefully it goes well. But we’re taking 30 of our inner circle members through that. So that’s happening the next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Then Thursday and Friday I’m supposed to have the 100k meeting, but I’m going to have to miss it because I can’t get it all done.

So I’m missing the 100k meeting, during those two days we’ll be filming the book launch video’s and also the FHAT event videos, to launch those two projects. Then I’ve got a week where I’m trying to do all my presentations for Funnel Hacking Live, and after that we go to Funnel Hacking Live. It’s crazy. And then I have a break for a couple of weeks, then we launch the book. So It’s insane. If I survive the next thirty days it’s going to be pretty amazing.

It’s funny because I have people that are like, “Oh, I wrote a book.” I had a guy I was talking to the other day and he’s 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 17 or 18 presentations that I haven’t started on yet.” I have to get that done in the next 30 days, plus I’m writing a book, plus moving offices, plus there’s a lot of other stuff happening behind the scenes of well.

Next week, we’re launching, obviously we launched the podcast funnel last week, which was cool and brought a lot of you guys to our podcast. Next week we’re launching Funnel Graffiti, the week after that we’re launching Funnel Manifesto, and we have all these cool things we’re rolling out. There’s so many fun things happening, I love it. I love Clickfunnels, it makes it so fun and cool to do cool stuff.

Anyway, all those things are happening. On top of that trying to be a scout master and a parent and husband and everything else. It’s crazy, but it’s so fun. I’m having the time of my life. This is, I love it.

Alright, today I wanted to share one thing, because people keep asking me about the book. “Russell, should I write a book? Should I not write a book?” So what I wanted to share with you guys is my thoughts on that because this is now book number two. I’ve written others, I mean this is my second published book. We’ve got 108 Split tests, which is an awesome book. We’ve got Funnel Stacking, which is an awesome book we’ve done. But this is the second real book. And for me it’s been stressful. The Dotcom Secrets book took me a year and a half to write. And Expert Secrets book turned into that as well, I thought it was gonna be faster. I was like, I will prepare better this time. But no, it still took almost 18 months from beginning to end.

It’s funny, my accountant was, which I finally have a good accountant. It’s awesome to have someone who’s awesome. So he’s going through all our stuff and numbers and the end of the year he sent us this report and it’s funny because if you look at the book funnel, we’ve sold almost 100 thousand copies of the Dotcom Secrets book last year. Or maybe since it started, I don’t know, whatever it is.

But you look at that and it’s like how much money we make on those funnels. And it’s not a lot. If you look at it, if that was my business was the book, you’d be like, “Oh, wow you made….” I think we netted maybe 100 grand from book sales last year, which depending on who you are could be good or bad. But we sold a lot of books. I averaged a dollar a book, which is horrible. But you look at that, and what was the, from looking at it, was that profitable? No it probably wasn’t. But if you look at it like because of that book, what was created? It became the guidebook, the playbook for people to understand funnels, which got people into Clickfunnels, which got people building, which got people into the certification, which got people to go to live events. It became this tool for so many other things.

And the Expert Secrets book is the same thing. My goal is to sell 100 thousand copies during the launch month. I want to sell a million copies. In fact, I’m launching a blog documenting how we sold a million copies of this book because I want to show the process and share with everybody. So the question is, is writing a book worth it?

A couple of 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, or decided to write the book, I’d always wanted to. In fact, the reason I bought the domain name Dotcomsecrets originally was because I wanted to buy a book called that. So that was 10 years ago. But I didn’t write a book for 10 years. I think 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. We were watching our kids play in a playground and he said to me, “Do you know the difference between you and Brendan Burchard and Tony Robins? There’s only one thing that I really noticed. I feel like your content is as good, if not better. I feel like all these things, the one thing that they have that you don’t have is a book. That’s it.” And I was like, huh. That’s weird because I don’t feel like, there’s some weird perception about a book, whatever that is.

So that night I was like, I don’t know how you are, but I financially commit if I’m going to do something. So I went out there and I was like, I need to find someone to help me with this book.  So I found a whole bunch of people and I interviewed a bunch, and spent a whole bunch of money the next day for somebody to be the person. It was Julie Easton, who’s my…..helps me write the book. So I gave her a whole bunch of the money and she became….Now I had, I paid someone, this has to happen. And she was writing every single day. It was like “What’s next? What’s next?” and a year and a half later we had a book.

But it was just one of those things. So people always ask me, “Should I write a book? Should I not write a book?” And when all is said and done, I think that you should. I don’t think it should, it shouldn’t be the first thing you do. But it’s something you should do because it is dramatically transformed our positioning, our business, our brand. So I do think it’s worth doing, but not at first, but there’s a time.

So I would say to all you guys to do what I did. 10 years before I wrote my book, “I’m going to write a book.” Just declare, “I’m going to write a book. And this is what the title’s going to be and I don’t know what it’s going to be yet.” Because as soon as I had this, I knew the book, I knew….it’s weird because my mind started doing stuff that became the book later.  I had to become something to write the book. We had to have stories and stuff. I don’t know if subconsciously I declared, “I’m going to write a book.” In fact, I even paid Morgan James who did our publishing; I paid him for the book 10 years ago. You could ask him. Every time I saw him for the next year he was like, “So when’s the book coming?” I was like, “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 was li,,e “I never thought you were actually going to write this.” But I had put it out there. I paid money to start it, and then I was doing life but because of that it made me create the book. It made me create the stuff to have that I think that it should be the goal for all you guys to write a book.  Because I think it’s important. I think if I was you guys, I would make sure you write a good book. I’ve had some friends write books that were like, they did this thing where they busted out a book in a weekend and 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 you have no idea what you’re talking about.” So I think it’s worth writing a good book. So I’d say if I was you guys, depending on where you’re at in your path say, “I’m going to write a book.” Just make that a thing and even buy a domain name, get the e-cover designed. Be like, “I have a book now, I’m an author. I’m writing a book.” Tell people that, “I’m writing a book.” “What’s it about?” “I don’t know yet, but I’m writing it.” Just to kind of put it out there. And then start becoming who you gotta become to write the book. You have to earn the book.

Go out there and if you’re writing a book on weight loss, go get a hundred clients and help them lose a lot of weight so you can understand intimately the process so you when you do write the book, you will a different perspective. When I had the idea for Dotcom Secrets, I had like 4 funnels in the internet marketing niche and the potato gun niche and a couple little things, but I didn’t, I wasn’t worthy of writing that book yet. But because I did that, I started coaching people and started learning and I started to launch my own.

We did supplement funnels and weight loss funnels and from that learning and education I learned all the 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 would have ever written it. And now, the Expert Secrets book is out there and it’s been written out and it’s the next piece. What we’re trying to do with our company and our mission and how we’re trying to effect people, it is a book, it is the thing if I do it right, if I execute it correctly, which I hope I will, it’s going to expand our market and bring us out to the masses and get this main stream. That’s why I feel called to write this book and I’m so proud of it.

I said on Snapchat the other day, “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….I’m so excited for people to have this. It’s going to change people and it’s going to cause movements and it’s going to be awesome.

With that said, I’ve got Funnel Fridays in 7 minutes. I’ve got to get in here and get started. 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 will become a transforming piece in your positioning and in your brand and in you as person. That’s what I got for you. Alright guys, I’m out of here. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.