Mitch Russo

Mitch Russo’s public life began onstage as the lead guitarist for the rock band Absolutely Free. But the real work began after the amplifiers went silent.

Mitch co-founded Timeslips Corp., which grew into the world’s largest time-tracking software company before being acquired by Sage PLC. He later partnered with Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes to build Business Breakthroughs International into a company with annual revenue approaching 30 million.

After Holmes’ death, Mitch experienced a quiet but decisive shift. What followed was a decade-long evolution that produced six business books, a new software platform, and a growing realization that success alone was no longer enough.

That realization led him to an unexpected place: magical fiction.

His debut novel, Sacred Crossroads, emerged from a period of profound transition, an in-between space where old identities dissolved and certainty vanished. The story reflects that threshold moment when nothing makes sense anymore, and something entirely new begins to form.

Today, Mitch continues to write, speak, and build software platforms for coaches and entrepreneurs. His nonfiction works, including Power Tribes, Coach Elevation, and Sacred Profits, blend practical strategy with lived experience.

An award-winning photographer, Mitch’s landscape work has appeared in JETGALA Magazine and earned first prize in the Sierra Club’s Image of the Year competition. When he’s not writing, he’s often chasing the northern lights in Iceland or disappearing into the wild with a camera, still curious, still exploring, still crossing thresholds.
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Sacred Crossroads centers on moments that whisper rather than shout. What made you want to write a novel about the quiet thresholds we often overlook?
I didn't want to write a novel, I was compelled to. After an intense immersion into plant medicine in the jungles of Costa Rica, something profound happened. I was free. Finally free of the constant chatter of thoughts and unwanted emotions. But there was a consequence. I felt as if I had merged into the universal light of life. Now, in this moment when my mind was clear of distraction, I realized that I no longer wanted anything to do with my past life focused on making money. But the problem - I didn't know what to do. I was stuck in an "in-between" place, somewhere I call The Void. And it was scary, filled with uncertainty, making me wish I had not arrived here. Yet, something called me forward into the silence, into a place of deep contemplation and quiet. I journaled, I walked the beach, I stared at the ocean for hours. I stepped into the uncertainty hoping the path would appear, and it did.

A voice emerged inside me, not a speaking voice but a presence that felt like a deeper, wiser version of me. And I listened, I journaled, I asked questions. What emerged was the core framework of the book you hold in your hands; Sacred Crossroads. Six weeks later, I fully embraced my new life living in the creative wave that came through. I read what I wrote, I reread, rewrote, adjusted to help me to express what I truly felt and with that a message, a story, a cast of characters to bring my message to life and say what I had felt in a way to enable others to take their own first step, when everything seems too scary to even start. That's the quiet threshold I had to cross and the whisper that invites you to take that first step.

Noble’s journey begins when certainty fades, not when disaster strikes. Why do you think those subtle moments are often the most transformative?
Noble Manning's life was built on certainty, because certainty is comfortable… until it isn’t true anymore. When certainty fades, we’re left with ourselves, without scripts, without guarantees. That’s where choice becomes real. Disaster forces change from the outside. Loss of certainty invites change from within. Noble isn’t pushed; he’s unsettled. And that discomfort: that quiet disorientation, is often the doorway to something far more honest than what we’ve been clinging to.

The book feels spiritual without preaching. How did you balance honoring mystery while keeping the story emotionally grounded and human?
By resisting the urge to explain. Mystery doesn’t need instructions, it needs space to unfold and invite the reader into a world by self identifying with the people who they begin to care for. Am I Noble? Am I Elizabeth? Maybe I am a little bit of all of them. And so are you. I trusted the characters’ emotional truth more than any spiritual framework. Grief, longing, love, confusion: those are universal experiences. When they’re treated honestly, something sacred naturally emerges. I didn’t want to tell readers what to believe. I wanted to sit beside them and say, I don’t have this figured out either… but l'm here, walk with me, we'll get there together.

Time and memory seem almost alive in the novel. What do they represent for you in the context of awakening and choice?
They represent the way the past never really stays in the past. Memory isn’t static, it’s a living current that shapes how we see the present and imagine the future. When the emotion is discharged from experience, it becomes wisdom. Awakening, for me, isn’t about escaping time; it’s about seeing how we’re in conversation with it. Every choice we make is layered with memory, inherited stories, and moments we thought were gone. Sacred Crossroads asks what happens when we become conscious of what most don't see, and choose anyway.

Rather than giving answers, the story rearranges questions. What question do you hope readers sit with after they finish the book?
What truth have I been quietly avoiding because it would require me to change?
Not in a dramatic way. In a gentle, personal way. The kind of truth that doesn’t accuse, but waits patiently until we’re ready to meet it.

What is just beyond the threshold that scares me?
The fear asks: "Will you be safe?" But courage tells you: "I can handle it, grow from it and evolve into a better version of me"

If Sacred Crossroads is truly about choice, what does choosing “truth over comfort” mean to you personally?
I was stuck in a role. I was the company founder, the business expert, the teacher and leader. that was comfortable. I knew my role, I earned my reputation. But that wasn't my truth when I emerged from the Jungle. And I had to let go of 40 years of identity that protected me but no longer fit.

It means risking uncertainty instead of settling for familiar narratives that keep me safe, but small. Choosing truth over comfort isn’t heroic. It’s often lonely. But it’s also deeply life affirming. And once you’ve tasted that kind of honesty, comfort without truth starts to feel like another kind of ache.

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Website: https://sacredcrossroadsbook.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitchrussotravels/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BreakthroughResults/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchrusso

Purchase the book here: 
https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Crossroads-Path-Appears-First-ebook/dp/B0GGK5N2RN