Recently I was asked by Rachel Pedersen what my favorite books are and why. So I wanted to share three that I’m loving right now. On this episode, Russell gives you his top 3 book recommendations and explains why they are so important to him during the phase of life that he’s in right now. ---Transcript--- What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I'm going to drop on you some of my favorite books that I'm reading right now. Hey, everybody hope you guys are doing awesome. So we're getting closer and closer to Halloween, depending when you're listening to this. Halloween was my favorite holiday for basically my entire life. I went trick-or-treating until I was 21 years old. And those who are like, "Wait Russell, weren't you on a mission when you were at 19 and 20? And the answer is yes, and yes, I dressed up as a Mormon missionary going door-to-door, because I already had the costume on. I got free candy. It was awesome. Oh, it was the good old days. Anyway, I love trick-or-treating. I love Halloween, love everything. In fact, when my kids were born, I was like, "This is the greatest thing in the world. Halloween was amazing before, it's even more amazing now." And went trick-or-treating every single year until about three years ago. Three years ago was when I bought my Batman suit. We launched Expert Secrets, our affiliate prize was to give away these Batman and Iron Man suits. I got my own custom-fitted, it was so cool. And I was so excited because that Halloween I was going to be Batman, legit Batman. And I was going to put on the suit and I was just so excited for it. And I remember it was a long day at the office, I got home as quick as I could, and I was trying to… oh, and the kids had wrestling practice. We got wrestling practice and come back. And kids gets home and I'm getting them all ready, giving them dinner, because I have to race back to the office to get the Batman suit on, which is an hour long project to get that suit on. I'm so excited. Feeding the kids, about to race back to the office and all of a sudden doorbell rings. And I go to the door and it's one of Ellie's friends. And friend's like, "Hey, is Ellie here?" I'm like, "Yeah, but what are you doing here?" She's like, "I'm coming to go trick-or-treating with Ellie." I was like, "What?" I'm like "I trick-or-treat with my kids." Ellie runs over, "Oh, bye Dad, I’m heading out.” I'm like, "No, you can't." And Collette is like, "Why not?" Because this is my holiday, you can't take my daughter trick-or-treating. And Ellie took off with her friends, she was gone. And a few minutes later the boys got calls from their friends and they're like, "We're going, we're going trick-or-treating." And they took off. And I remember, I wasn't ready for it. I don't know, it's like the kids leaving home, only worse. I wasn't ready for it. And I remember they were all gone and it was Aiden and Norah. Norah was tiny at the time, she was maybe two at the time. And so I didn't get my Batman suit on. We go out to the car and got Norah's suit and everything and put her in the car seat. By the time we got in the car she passed out and she was out cold. And so it was Aiden, me and Collette. So we drove to this neighborhood. Aiden got out with Collette, started trick-or-treating, and I passed out in the car. And that was the saddest day of my life. I miss Halloween. Anyway, I come to grips with it now. My kids are awesome. They can have friends. It was just, I wasn't ready for it. You know what I mean? You're planning your kids are going to leave the house someday, and then all of a sudden they just leave, without any preparation. Anyway, so Halloween was my favorite holiday until that year. And now my favorite holiday is 4th of July, because I spend more money on 4th of July than any sane human. And so because of that, everybody comes to me. And I'm doing that to compensate for Halloween being stolen from me by kids. Anyway, that's how I really feel. I'm just joking. Anyway, that's a true story. So 4th of July is my new favorite holiday, but it always was Halloween. And so as Halloween gets closer, I still get excited. I'm not going to lie, I love the leaves falling and the seasons changing and pumpkins and candy and just all the things. So anyway, one of our family traditions is every year for Halloween we go to Albion, Idaho, where there's this old college campus. It's in early 1900s, there was a thriving college here. In 19, I don't know, 1920 or something, it went out of business. So it's been vacant for 100 years. And a couple of years back, this family bought it and they renovate the whole thing and turn it into, one of the dorms they turned into a bed and breakfast. And then the rest of it, they turned to haunted houses. There's a zombie house, a clown house, and it's these old creepy buildings from the early 1900s. And anyway, it's insane. So we go every year. This year we took two of our friends, Rachel Peterson and her husband, Paul, and they came with us, which was really, really fun. So anyway, on the trip down, Rachel asked me, says, "What are your favorite books you're reading right now?" Everyone time someone asks me that question about books, I always freeze, because there's so many. I'm obsessed with books. I have more books than anybody I know. And I buy them every day and tons more. And I don't read most of the books, I listen to most with audio. But I buy the physical book too, because I like having physical books. Anyway, all sorts of turmoil. I sat there like a deer in headlights thinking. I kept thinking and thinking and I realized right now ... And it's tough, because you know how it is, different seasons of your life there's different books and all those kinds of things. So anyway, I'm in a season of my life I'm actually really excited for. I'm preparing, not really, I'm mentally thinking about my next book. I think I told you guys before, my next book. I bought the domain bootstrap.com. So the book's going to be called Bootstrapped, and it's going to be the ClickFunnels story, how we did it. It's going to be different, because all my other books have been how-to books, right? How to get traffic, how to build a funnel, how to write copy, things like that. But this book's not going to be how-to, this is the story of it. And so I've been obsessed, listening to books about companies and people telling their story about how they built the company. And so I've been listening to a lot of those lately just to understand how to write that way and how to tell stories that way that's different, right? It's different than how I've typically done things. So for me to be able to write this book, I'd have to change my skillset. And this hopefully is a side lesson for everyone. A lot of times when we have to do the thing we want to do, we have to learn something completely different, right? A lot of you guys, if you were a business before and you come into our world, you're like, "Oh my gosh, business is different online." We have to change how we think. And so for me it's the same way. For me to write this next book, I have to learn how to write differently. And I understand that and respect that. I'm paying attention to it, I'm trying to learn it. So anyway, so I've been listening to a lot of books about companies, about their stories, because I want to hear how people tell their stories. And so my three books I want to recommend to you today are all books about people with companies. And they're good for a couple reasons. Number one, they're fascinating books. Number two, they're really good storytellers. The way they tell their story was fascinating, where I was sucked into the book and I couldn't stop. In fact, two of these books I've listened to twice, and one I will probably listen to again. I just finished it yesterday, so that's why I haven't listened to it twice yet. That's rare for me. I don't normally read things twice, because I have so many books coming in. But two of the three books I have already listened to twice, which is a testament of how good of a story that they actually are. So with that said, in no particular order, I'll give you my three books. Number one book. And this one I'm nervous to tell you guys about, because it's the dark side of entrepreneurship, okay? A lot of times you hear stories about, "Oh, here's how so-and-so built their company." And it's this positive thing and there's ups and downs and trials and tribulations. But for the most part it's a positive experience, right? This is actually a book about a website called The Silk Road, which is a website that's on the dark web that sold illegal drugs. And so it's the negative side of entrepreneurship, but it's one of the best stories ever. So the book is called American Kingpin, okay? American Kingpin. And the premise of it is there was this kid, think he's 22, 23 year-old kid, he's libertarian and he felt that people should, if they want to do drugs, they should be able to do drugs. If they want to do it themselves they should be able to do it, right? And so he talks about that a little bit, and then he had this idea for a website where it's the type of site where people can come and buy and sell drugs on the dark web and he'd take a commission of every single sale that happened, right? And so that was this idea. Now the problem is that he didn't know how to code and it was illegal to make what he's trying to make, so he couldn't go hire coders on Script-Lance or oDesk like we would, it's illegal. So he had to teach himself coding. Then he started building the site. And it's crazy. I don't want to ruin the story, but it is amazing. He basically ends up building this empire. And he had every government agency coming trying to take him down, from DEA, FDA, FTC, all of them were trying to come and get him and none of them could figure out who he was. And so the story is just so fascinating
