Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - I'M A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING AUTHOR!

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

Oh my gosh! We finally did it! Thank you so much for supporting me! On this episode Russell talks about the ups and downs of achieving his goal of becoming a New York Times Bestselling author. Here are some of the amazing things to listen for in this episode: Find out why Russell's other 2 books didn't make the list, even though he sold enough copies. And find out what it took for Traffic Secrets to finally become a New York Times Bestseller. So listen here to see why Russell is so excited to have reached such a huge milestone. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/334-i-m-a-new-york-times-best-selling-author Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Metrolinx and Crosslinx are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And today I've got an exciting announcement. You guys want to hear it? All right. As of today, I'm officially a New York Times bestseller. So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't

cheat and take on venture capital, we're spending money from our own pockets. How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. Oh my gosh. Okay, so I just wanted to celebrate with you guys.

This is one of those really weird moments where, you know when you set a goal, it's really weird because I've had a big goal set my whole life, right? And most goals, it's like, I have a goal. I want to be a state champion wrestler, right? You go out there and you do it and you do it and you kill yourself and then you find out real quick if you got it or you didn't get it, right? Either you win or you lose, but it's final and there's this finality of it, right? With business, I want to make a million bucks. And you go and you do it, you either do it or you don't. But there's finality, there's something there.

I've never understood, not that I haven't understood, but I never competed in any sports where you had judges that judged you, right? Where they look at you and like, oh, you got an eight, you got an 8.9, you got a 10. I always did sports where it's like, you either win or you lose. You know, and there's no, no one's judging you. You just do the thing and you succeed or you don't. And it's interesting though, because I was in this competition, this invisible competition, I don't know what to call it, where I had this goal.

My goal, as a lot of you guys probably know or have guessed, was to someday hit the New York Times bestselling list. And it's funny, because before I wrote the Dotcom Secrets book, I started writing it. I was like, okay, if I'm going to do this book, I don't know, I'm someone who always wants to win, right? So it's like, what's the goal? The goal is to sell a lot of books,

but the way you win is if you become a New York Times bestseller, like that's like, uh, you know, in Olympics, you know, for an athlete, the, the, the best thing you can win is a gold medal for an author. The best thing you can do is get on the New York times bestseller list. And so I was like, okay, well, how does it work? And I found out like, Hey, you know, obviously it's how many books did you sell? But there's other things like they also want to make sure there's a lot of publicity and PR and all sorts of stuff around it. So we kind of figured out what it would take. I think at the time when the.com seekers book out out, most of the books that were on the list were selling, I think it was like 10,000 copies a week or something like that.

So in my head, I was like, if I can get more than 10,000 copies, it means I'm going to be on the list. It's going to be amazing. And so that became the goal. And so we created this huge product launch and huge everything. And we did the launch to sell 10,000 copies in a week. And we ended up selling, I can't remember. It's been six years now. I think it was 20 or 30,000 copies that week.

And, um, we used a funnel obviously, but then we pushed sales through Amazon, other channels and stuff. And I was like, okay. And we did a bunch of PR and podcast interviews and all these things to try to make as much noise as possible. And I was like, okay, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And we waited.

And the first week it didn't happen. The second week it didn't happen. Third week. And it was just, it was one of those things where it's like, I won. Like my hand should have got raised. Like I, I sold enough, right? I passed the, I have more books sold than the person's number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Why am I not there? And for some reason I wasn't. And you can't just call and be like, Hey, why didn't you give me the list? It was just one of those things where there's however the process works. There's judges, there's people. They, they, they pick who's on the list and who's not and there's other criteria obviously than just books being sold um and for whatever reason i didn't get on the list i remember being so upset and like frustrated and depressed and just like oh my god i think i didn't win like what was the point of

writing this thing then luckily the book did well and people loved it and um it helped a lot of people so i'm very proud of it second book came out expert secrets and it was close enough. I was like, I don't, I don't want to, like, I don't really want to, um, to really try for it. In fact, I remember when my publisher, they're like, well, um, you know, if you want to hit New York times, you have to do a traditional publishing thing, which means you have to do like a year out. There's all these different rules, you know? And I was like, I don't, I just want to sell the book. So we, I think it called crashing the boards or something. So basically I finished the book and like two months later we started selling it, uh, which made it so that I pretty much couldn't get on the New York times list because you know, all the sales were coming

in and the New York times, the book publisher or whatever, the distribution people didn't know, you know, that the book was even coming out and we ended up selling like 70,000 copies. I think of that book the first month, which, you know, outsold all of the books on the New York Times list. But because, you know, no one, anyway, because of the process, obviously I didn't get the list. I didn't even care. And so the Traffic Seekers book came out. I'm not going to lie. I was like secretly like that'd be cool to be on the list, but I'm not going to think about it.

And Dave Woodward was one who's like, like, we have to, you have to do this. Like you earned it. You've sold more books than all these other people who are on the list. You should, you should try for it. You should work for it. And, and, um, and so we kind of went back and said like, what does it take? What does it look like to do that? And, um, and it was hard. Like I did, um, I think over a hundred radio interviews because it's not just like how many books do you sell? It's like, like, you know, this is traditional publishing list. They want to see like, like we're on the radio, we're on TV, where you, you know, authors who sell books, like these are the things that they do. And so I had to

be in all the spots. So I had to do TV interviews. We did hundreds of TV interviews. I did podcasts. I did Facebook lives. I did so much stuff, so much work that went into it. You know, we sold books on Amazon. I sold books through our funnel. We sold books through bookstores, like everything we could and anything we could to try to get the list. And, um, and it's funny. And then during that time is when COVID hit and it's crazy because when COVID hit Amazon stopped shipping. So when we had all these books, we're supposed to be shipping out during a week that it's supposed to happen. Amazon stopped shipping books because they weren't essential items. And so like the, the, the couple of weeks I was like, we're definitely gonna hit the list. We didn't because Amazon didn't ship the list, didn't ship the books. They didn't count towards the,

whatever the algorithm is, however it works and nothing happened and nothing happened. And, um, and so we tried man for two or three months, just trying everything we could. And, and then, uh, like, uh, two weeks ago we kind of just gave up like, you know what, let's stop focusing on this. Let's stop driving traffic to all these other places. And it's just folks on the funnel. Cause then, you know, we're making money there.

And so we shifted back to that. And then what's crazy is, um, today I woke up and I got a text from some friends and some other people with a picture of my book on the New York times bestseller list. And I was not expecting that. And we started freaking out. And so I've been freaking out all day. I don't even know what to do with myself. It's like one of these goals that were like so elusive that I had given up on. I didn't think it was even possible anymore. And then it just happened. And, um, anyway, I just want to share with you because it's a big, big milestone in my life and in my career. And it's something that I'm really, really proud of. And, um, and, uh, finally I can say that I'm a New York times bestselling author, which is pretty cool.

Um, but more important is the fact that, um, you know, the books are out there. So, um, anyway, I just want to share with you guys, cause I know a lot of times we go after goals and we don't hit them. And for me, I've launched two books, sold half a million copies of books without ever getting rewarded with a thing. Yet we still did it because, you know, the product, the things you're putting out there, even if, you know, you're not being judged correctly or the way you think you should be by the outside judge, you're still doing it for a more important reason, which is changing the lives of the people that you're putting those things out for. And so, but it also feels good to be, to be recognized. So I'm grateful, grateful for everyone on my team who helped to be part of that, did the hard work,

who helped us get on the list. And, um, yeah, I'm really proud. So anyway, thank you guys all again for reading the traffic seekers book. If you haven't read it yet, go get a copy of traffic seekers.com or you can go to Amazon. We have an ebook, a Kindle version there. We also have the, um, the audio audible book. It's on audible now with me actually reading it. You can get the audible version. It's everywhere. Um, if you haven't read it yet, go and get it. And I want to thank you guys for being subscribers and listeners and followers and fans and all this stuff. And just super grateful for you guys. Um, and you know, it's funny, I've been talking about this, this industry, this business for man, 18 years now. And for the first eight or nine years, no one seemed to care, but I was just so passionate. I wanted been talking about this industry, this business for, man, 18 years now. And for the first eight or nine years,

no one seemed to care, but I was just so passionate. I wanted to talk about it and share it. And it's so rewarding now that 18 years later that you care enough to listen to these episodes, to buy the books, to listen to things. It just, it means the world to me. And hopefully it's inspiration for you for whatever topic you're excited by,

that even if immediately you don't get the success you want or the people listening or following, if to keep doing it and keep doing it and keep having passion, keep believing in what you've got. Eventually, um, eventually your message will get out there and you'll be able to touch the hearts and lives of the people you've been called to serve. So hope that helps. Thank you guys again. I appreciate you. And I'm a New York Times bestselling author. This is so crazy. Um, so I celebrate with you. Thank you again. And I'll talk to you soon. Bye everybody. Hey everybody, this is Russell again. So I want to celebrate with you. Thank you again. And I'll talk to you soon. Bye, everybody. Hey, everybody.

This is Russell again. And really quick, I wanted to invite you to join arguably the best thing that we've ever put out inside the ClickFunnels community. And it is a challenge we call the One Funnel Away Challenge. You know, everyone in their business, in their life, they're one funnel away from something. Some of you guys are one funnel away from quitting your job. Some of you guys are one funnel away from getting your job. Some of you guys are one funnel away from getting more impact. Some of you guys are a funnel away

from growing your company to the next level. And so we created this challenge to help you to create and launch your first or your next funnel. No matter where you are in your business, this challenge is gonna help you to help you understand the strategy, help you understand the tactics,

help you understand all the things you need to be successful with your funnel. So what I recommend you do right now is stop everything, pause this audio, go online and go to one funnel away.com. That's one funnel away.com and join the next challenge. There's a challenge starting in the next few days. So go get started right now. One funnel away.com.