"Outwitting The Devil" with Josh Forti - Part 3 of 3

Here is the exciting final part of this special three episode series! On this episode, Russell and Josh talk quite a bit about the new book Russell is currently working on! The new book will be the first (of possibly many) personal development book that Russell has written. We also get to hear why Russell loves to write books and why he thinks everyone should write one. So listen in to the final part of Russell and Josh’s “Outwitting The Devil” interview.

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---Transcript---

Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. This Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the third and final episode from the Outwitting The Devil interview with Josh Forti. Hopefully you enjoyed the first two episodes. If you missed any of them, go back and listen to episode one, two and this is part three of three. In this one, Josh started asking me questions about my new books. Why I was so excited about Outwitting The Devil, by how I'm using this? Why I'm writing my fourth book and a bunch of other really cool things. So I hope you enjoy it. And you've enjoyed this interview series, please let me know, let Josh know. The best way to do that is take a picture of any of these on your phone, post them on your social media and tag me and him and let us know what you thought about the episodes. Thanks again, you guys. I appreciate you all for listening with that said, let's queue up the exciting conclusion of the Josh Forti, Russell Brunson Outwitting The Devil Podcast interview.

Josh Forti: Okay. I want to do this because we're talking about all these amazing books and I don't know, this is probably like two, three weeks ago. Maybe it's a little bit longer that. You start hinting on Instagram about this book. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh. There's another book? What could it possibly be?" And then last week I'm out here and you started telling me about it and what it is.

Russell: Showing you the deal.

Josh: It's not a marketing book. It's the next piece and it's your first ever... And I don't want to spoil it for them. I'm going to say it's like your first ever take at personal development. Talk to us about this book. When's it coming out? How did this come about and the details of that, because I'm super, super excited for it.

Russell: I think it was my only, hopefully. But I said that about Dot Com Secrets too.

Josh: I don't believe that at all. There's going to be a trilogy for... Russell you're going to be writing books till you die dude.

Russell: I don't know. Writing is so painful but this one, again, it's me coming back. We launched Traffic Secrets. The world goes chaotic and I have more time and I'm trying to just occupy my mind.

Josh: Which by the way, how perfect time. My heart was completely broken when you had to cancel the Traffic Secrets event because I was supposed to speak to there. I was like, "No." But how perfect of a timing was Traffic Secrets when-

Russell: There are pros and cons of it. It was really good from a selling book standpoint. It was really hard for making New York times bestseller list, which we actually hit, which I'm still freaked out about. It was tough because Amazon wasn't shipping books. Things weren't shipped, all sorts of chaos. They said books weren't essential and so like it was hard to hit lists because you'd sell 10,000 copies of books in a week but Amazon was waiting two, three, four weeks to ship them because it wasn't...

The way that the lists work is, how many did you sell in retail outlets? How many do you sell on USA today? All the things. And so when you have the big push, but then some books aren't being counted four or five weeks later because Amazon doesn't consider them essential. They're not sure when they can glut. Normally it takes 10,000 books or something to hit a bestseller list. We hit over 100,000 to be able to do it. It was way harder, way more stressful, but we got it. But it was easier to sell because I had more time. Anyway, a lot of pros with that. Plus it was crazy because in the beginning of the book I talked about there's a storm coming and then literally it was like, we're in the middle it. You should give this book right now...

Josh: Literally right now.

Russell: I think I'm similar to you. I think a lot of people in our community where it's just like, my mind is always spinning. I can't stop.

Josh: I cannot shut it off ever.

Russell: It's like there's got to be something I got to be thinking about. And again, it was harder me to find stuff for me to geek out on inside of marketing and business. It was just hard to find the next... I don't know. Every level you get to, it's harder to find the next level. I'm sure there's time where Michael Jordan's like, "I can't find people to push me anymore." Where do you go? And it's just like-

Josh: Yeah. Like Tom Brady in the NFL just completely dominating every team that's out there. Yeah. That's right.

Russell: Anyway. So not that I'm that level or anything.

Josh: Right. Right. Right.

Russell: For me it gets harder and harder-

Josh: Likewise.

Russell: To find things. I have to dig so hard to find the gold. And so I started just looking again at some of these things. And that's when I stumble on this book and just like, every page is gold and it's like I'm lit up again. I'm on fire. Again, I talked about earlier, for me one of my highest values is ROI. What's my return on my investment. So I'm learning these things. I'm growing myself personally, but I'm feeling empty because I'm not sharing them. So it's like, "What's the platform?" That's why I'm like, "Everyone go read this." I need to have this conversation with somebody.

So having Dave reading it, everybody can get to read it I'm trying to read so I can get this conversations. Then when you're like, "Hey, do you want to talk about a podcast?" I said, "Yes." You forged some of this stuff because it's in me and if I can't contribute, it seems like I'm wasting it. And so there was this, there was other things. And I started looking more and more. Right now I've got five kids. Three of my kids are teenagers now and teenagers have been way harder than I ever thought or expected. It's weird. Kids are really fulfilling, but man teenagers have been just... It's different for me.

I'm feeling like I have to grow to understand myself, but to also understand them. And what I envisioned my kids as teenagers are going to be what it is, has been so much different. I think for me, at times it got me depression, sadness and these things. And I was like, "I shouldn't be depressed this time in my kid's life. This is the greatest time I could be with them but I got to shift my mind." So it was me trying to do some work on myself, to fix myself. Not fix myself, but to get myself in a spot where I could enjoy the season. And then number two is how do I serve them now at this point? Because I envisioned the way I was going to serve my kids was when my dad did. Where I was like, he drove me to wrestling practice and we traveled the world, we worked out super hard because that's what I needed and I assumed that that's what my kids are going to need and it's not. That's not what they want.

They want almost the opposite of those things. I'm like, "But I have these gifts. These skills I can give you." They are like, "I don't want them." I'm like, "I can help you start a business." Like, "We don't care." I get them value money because they've always had it. It's like all these things. Every gift that I have, it's like all my unique abilities I want to give my kids, they don't want it. So I'm learning this thing of well, instead of me trying to give my kids these things that I think that were so valuable to me. It's like, I have to sit back and understand what's actually valuable to them, which is so much harder and I'm learning this process.

And so as I'm going through this lens of trying to learn these things, understand them, trying to figure them out for myself and I'm stumbling upon things like this and other things. It just got to a point where I was like, "I need to write this book first off for myself." If anyone who's done it, there's this weird thing as you start reading, you start seeing connections. You don't see any other spot. I feel like God opens up insights to you. They're just magical. Like I remember-

Josh: When you start writing.

Russell: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah 100%.

Russell: You have to get deep in a topic, you have studied all these things to figure things out. And I remember the first time I really understood this is, after I finished Traffic Secrets, I wanted to reedit DotCom and an Expert Secrets to publish the trilogy. So I went back. I remember reading those books and I was like, "Where did this stuff come from?" I was like, "This is good crap. I don't remember saying this or thinking that." I couldn't remember and-

Josh: Interesting.

Russell: It's the weirdest thing going back and fighting things. Somehow that was given to me because that was not something that I just intuitively knew. And I feel like for me, I wanted to start the book journey because I'm searching for these answers. The premise of the book is not, "I have all the answers, let me give them to you." I'm in the season where I'm going through it again and let me share through I'm learning on this journey because I'm learning some amazing things. And as I'm sharing as I'm writing them, again these insights keep popping in and it's fascinating. So I'll be doing something, I'll be doing something and I have a doodle. I'm like, "Oh my gosh." I run to Dave I'm like, "Look at this." He's like, "What am I explaining?" He's like, "I never saw it before." New to that. It showed up when I'm in this intense time. And so it's been fun as I'm writing it because these insights are coming at a speed that they don't normally come in.

Josh: And I think also-

Russell: It's really funny.

Josh: I think... Hold that train of thought. I want you to keep going on that. But I've noticed that as well, when it comes to reading books. Reading a book and then applying the book, those are two very different things. I have read Expert Secrets, Dotcom Secrets, Traffic Secrets. And I'm going through, I've not read the hardcover of Expert Secrets. I've only read the soft cover. So right now I'm going through and yes, two nights ago I started it and it's-

Russell: You started the hardcover?

Josh: Yeah. I'm going through, I'm listening to it and I'm reading it and I'm taking notes-

Russell: Get the hardcovers. They're way better than softcovers.

Josh: So I'm going through all this stuff. For the last four or five, six months, all I've been doing, I have no front end products of my own. I'm not building anything. All I'm doing is working with big campaigns on the backend. It's like full out stuff. We're doing stuff with cash phones. All these stuff is up and I'm going through and actually inboxed you. I was like, "Dude. People say they've read this book but they haven't." They've read the words, but it's totally different when you actually experience it. And you're watching where it all fits in and you start to see how it all clicks together. So that broke from the reverse angle of when you're writing it and trying to put it on in together is what you're talking about here.

Russell: Yes. It's super fascinating. So it's been fun. I'm excited. So my goal, I'm trying to get it done by summer for it to be a launch in March. So if you published traditionally, this publishing schedule is really, really long. So if you are going to read it in March, I'd have to have it done by June.

Josh: If we want to read in March of next year, you have to have it done by June this year.

Russell: Yeah.

Josh: Dang.

Russell: So that's where I'm at. So I'm also with the first section of the book and there's four sections. Back then this month I spent the section number one and then that's where I'm at.

Josh: Do we get to know what it's called? Do you have a title yet?

Russell: I do. I don't want to show a title yet because I don't want someone going and-

Josh: Oh, that's true.

Russell: "You guys all suck." And buys those domains up and they start like SEOing me and beating me and all that stuff. But it's going to be cool. It's a study of two things. So I'll give you this part. This is the subtitle. So subtitle, something Tony Robbins talks a lot about, but it's the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. These two things. How do achievers achieve? And then how do you actually get fulfilled? Because it's fascinating. I think-

Josh: Interesting.

Russell: I see my own life. I achieve something thinking that, "When I achieve this thing, I'm going to be fulfilled and happy and everything." And you achieve the thing and you're like, "I'm not happy." And you figure that achievement and fulfillment, they don't work hand in hand. It's a science of achievement, which that's why science achieves more scrutiny. It's like, "Here's a step-by-step process to get this result." I want to be state champion wrestler here's a step by step process. Boom, got it. I want to be a known American step-by-step process. Got it. I want to start a business, step-by-step. Science. It's not thinking, you just follow a process and you get it.

So for me, achievements always come easy. Anything I ever want in my life I've achieved it because there's a science. I figured out. Fulfillment's art, it's different. It's not follow these steps and you become fulfilled. The yin yang of these two things. And it's so fascinating. I've been going deeper into it and seeing the pattern appear over and over and over again, all these different things. And how do you apply it to your life? And there's so many cool things in this book that don't necessarily talk about science of achievement and fulfillment but they're all in here. The patterns in here over and over and over again. So it's pulling it from all these sources and showing it to everybody, that's what the book's going to do and then how to weave it all into aspects of your life anyway. So that's-

Josh: One of the things and I'm sure you'll talk about it, but will be the balance of those two things. Because it's early on in my very young career of being 27 years old, but it was all about achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. And there's always my mom's voice in the back of my head, it's like, "Things won't make you happy." "I know mom."

Russell: Yes they will.

Josh: Yeah. Yes they will. And then you get there. There have been moments in my life where right now in this moment I am completely fulfilled or I'm completely content and it's just like, I don't know what could make my life better. And it's not when I achieved anything, it's not when I did anything. But in that moment, whenever I take a step back and think about that moment, I have very little drive to go achieve anything more. And there's that balance of how do I stay fulfilled and content while also being driven to go achieve. Because for me and this is something I'd wrestled with and talked to Katie about it. And I'm like, "It's either one or the other. I can't be..." And she's like, "There's always another option. There's never black and white." And so balancing the two of those and understanding that. Like you said, they don't go hand in hand. They're separate things, I think it's really important and something that I'm trying to figure out and learn.

Russell: So I got frustrated about all the times I achieve something and I'm so frustrated, why do I not feel how I thought I was going to feel and leads to depression or frustration or whatever. But when you start separating these are two different things I can achieve and I want to achieve, but how do I get fulfilled in the journey or separately from it and you start anyway. It's been fascinating and learning so many cool things and it's going to be fun to start sharing with everybody. I'm going to probably start in my podcasts, start dropping more and more things then getting deeper and deeper. More of the thoughts are going be flushed out. That's the weird thing about writing a book too, is initially I'm like, "Here's what I'm going to write." I write an outline of what the book is going to be and I write chapter number one. I was like, "Now this outline makes sense. You write that one" Chapter two.

And so it's like, it's this rebuild, rebuild, rebuild. And by the time it's done, hopefully we'll find out. It'll be the perfect thing that's like, here's the frameworks you need. And for example, this whole concept here, there's a chapter that's going to be taking the frameworks from this book and this is going to be the chapter walking people through this concept of faith and fear.

This doodle is a rough draft. I just tell you I sent this to you today. I'm like, "This is not the perfect doodle. I saw it. I'm not going to post it down below yet because this is partially done." It's going to be perfect by the time the book's done. I'm still thinking through and trying to get it right. And making it a simple form where I can understand it and hopefully it makes it easy for people to apply. But anyway, it's pretty cool. I think everyone should read a book. I think everybody listening should set that as a goal because when you do, just the act of writing the book will change your board. And I think anyone will understand. And when somebody asks, "What are you doing?" You're like, "I'm writing a book."

Josh: That sounds very cool.

Russell: There's no much cooler than that.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Okay. I know you have a hard cutoff, so I want to be respectful of that here. So I want to end with one question here and that is specifically about reading books. It's interesting. I'm pretty involved in the ClickFunnels world. Those are my people as well too. And so those are the people that follow me and that I interact with and I talk to a lot and it's always interesting when I talk to people about reading versus action. And some people have this... I feel like there's weird thought that if you're a reader, you're not an action taker, which I'm like, "That's not true. That's not how that works."

But anyway, for you, if you are early on in your career, early on in you journey of building your business and your funnels and putting everything together. Do you recommend? Going back and thinking of your life, were you a big reader early on? Did you do a lot of reading or were you more action taking and looking back, would you recommend people read more, take more action? What's that balance? Because it's very easy. I know for me, I'm making time to read and then that's all I want to do. I'm like, "This is amazing." And then I'll take action. And so what's that Balance there? And what do you recommend as far as reading versus action?

Russell: It's tough because some people read just because you get fulfillment or like there's-

Josh: There's a good feeling that comes with reading.

Russell: Comes with reading.

Josh: For sure.

Russell: So-

Josh: It's a fake sense of accomplishment.

Russell: Yes. So this is my belief. I remember when I first got started, I was reading a lot, I was listening, I was going to seminars. I remember at first it always frustrated because I was learning all this stuff and I was getting it but I had nowhere to use it and I was trying to use it all. That's why I think I launched... I can't remember. A couple of funnels by measure. It was like a 106, 116 or something funnels I launched before ClickFunnels. And that's because every idea that came to me, I was like, "I have to create something." I create this and I create this. I was creating funnel and funnel and coaching program.

I joined Dan Kennedy's mastermind and they talked about, "You should have mastermind groups." So at the event I launched a mastermind group. I'm like, "You should have phone sales." We started phone sales and "You should be doing seminars." We launched a seminar. Every idea that came, I launched it. But man, I got a point where I was drowning. Because we had 8,000 things we're doing and nothing really worked. And I remember always feeling guilty because these ideas are coming to me. I'm thinking, "These are gifts from God. These are inspiration. I need to have these things." And it wasn't until... I don't remember when. But somewhere down the line, I realized that, "I don't actually have to take all these different things and do them, but I can understand them." Because I enjoy learning, understanding.

So I would take them into my mind and literally put them on a shelf. I remember there's this Dan Kennedy on how to do high ticket, air exclusive program. So when we were listening to it, there's talking about franchise and this. All of a sudden, this is amazing. So I was taking it because I enjoyed the learning of it. And then I was like, "I'm not doing this right now." I'm so stretched thin, but I enjoyed the learning. So I'm flying an airplane, listening to this audio book or whatever. If I'm going to put it over here, I'm just categorizing and I put it over here in my brain. Like, "Hey. If I ever wanted to go back and do that, I know where it's at or at least put over here."

So I started learning because I enjoyed learning but I didn't have to implement everything. And I've put things in these different spots. At the same time I had a very clear vision. This is definitive purpose. I had a vision. So I'm trying to execute on something I'm trying to do. So as I'm learning, when something came that crossed my mind I was like, "That's the next step. I could grab it and plug it in and I could use it." If it didn't. I'm like, "That's awesome. Put it right here. Someday I'm going to use that in future." And I talked to… James Friel and I talked about because he has a Trello board. He calls his shiny penny Trello board where anytime you have a great idea-

Josh: Yeah. I have one of those.

Russell: Instead of trying to implement, he puts it on his Trello boards. Keeps your ideas. I think for most entrepreneurs, every idea is like your baby, like "This is the greatest idea of all time."

Josh: Yeah. I have a Trello board called Josh's brain.

Russell: Oh awesome. This pre Trello because I remember getting a note card. I had three by five note cards and when I had the ideas, I put them in there, I put them there. And somebody I'm going to come back to this and I get ideas and put them there. I kept putting them there either in a note card or somewhere else. And it's crazy. And I fast forward. Man, I think it's 19 or 20 years, I'm doing this now. So whatever it is. Almost two decades. And it's really cool because when I coach people now and this is my inner circle so I have people in here I'm coaching and someone would appear on stage and they're stuck with a problem and they're frustrated. They're like, "I don't want to do this thing." And all of a sudden out of the back of my mind pops up this thing and it comes into my-

Josh: Exactly.

Russell: I have this thing. I'm like, "Oh my gosh. Where did that come from?" It's because I learned it. Because I read this book here, I saw this thing over here and all these things. And so I think a lot of times we have to understand that learning is fun. So enjoy it. Don't be like, "I'm not going to read because..." Reading is awesome. Read, learn, do those things, but also understand, what is your mission? Stephen Larson talked about this two funnel hiking lives ago. He called it just-in-time learning. It seems like if you are going to read the book you need... I agree with that except for this is a better pastime than watching movies.

So let's read, let's study. But having your path, this is my goal, this is where I'm going to go. If you join my coaching program, we're going to talk about what's the first funnel. That's what we focus on. Don't do anything else, just focus on that. You can learn other things, but categorize them or wait until you're ready. And then as you get pieces right. I need that, I need that and figure out the next steps. I think that's how I would do the yin yang of both of those. Because I'm the same way. I'm learning so many things or study things or I find things are awesome that I'm not going to use but someday there'll be someone I come upon that that nugget is going to be the thing that unlocks something for them and they're going to super grateful. So, anyway.

Josh: All right. Well man, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. This is so much fun. We could talk for hours, but we do have to wrap it up there. We've got a little something to get to, so thank you man. I appreciate it.

Russell: No worries. And hopefully all you guys, two things I want to say. Number one, I'd highly recommend reading this book and read through the lens of this. The first time I didn't know where I was going. So I was all over the place and just freaking out. But look at the lens of Faith and Fear of, I don't want to be a drifter. I want to be somebody spiritually, mentally, and physically free. Look at that and start looking at everything he talks about from this lens and just look at it as protections of you that will be there to get to the spot where you're learn 2% or how to keep yourself from becoming a drifter or if you are drifter shift yourself back. And looking at this, because it's this guide book of all the ways that the devil uses to shift you around. And when you're aware of it, man, it makes it so much more powerful.

Josh: And-

Russell: This is huge.

Josh: The thing that I would say we didn't have time to get to it, but I would say too is understand that it's not... If you're religious, understand that there's probably going to be some things that the devil is like, "You don't need God, you don't need me." Some of the things that are going to be in there, like Russell said, 97% is good, 3% is bad. Don't let that prevent you from understanding the value and the power that's in this book because there is so much good stuff in this. And any single time that I've ever had success at anything when I look back, it follows very closely to the principles that were taught here, so anyway.

Russell: That's awesome. And then wait until next March to buy my book.

Josh: And I will be the number one affiliate. So hopefully you all can be number two, three, four. That's cool. That's going to be super, super cool. So Russell, thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Love to do it again for The Book of Mormon or something like that and all right. All right guys, that's it.

Russell: Thanks everyone.

Josh: As always, hustle, hustle. God bless. Don't be afraid to think different because those of us who think different are going to be the ones who change the world. I love you all. See you soon.

Russell: Bye everybody.

Josh: See you.

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