Discovering Laws of Success From The Book That Inspired Napoleon Hill | #Success - Ep. 69

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This is the Russell Brunson Show.

Be successful, you have to have an ego.

If you don't have an ego, it's hard to do the things you need to be successful.

Think about business.

You are stepping out into a stage right where you've got thousands of other people competing for your your audience's attention like why should they listen to you and if you struggle with that like well i don't know why should they listen to me like if you don't have yes confidence yes positive mount to but having that egotism which most people don't ever talk about but if you don't have that it's really difficult for you to create a movement to get people to move to follow where you can actually change their life be okay with the healthy egotism like having that because it's the thing that gives you the edge to actually win the battle that we call business hey this is russell welcome back to the vault.

Uh, today I've got a really cool book set.

I guarantee you've never seen before, I've never seen it, and the story about how I got it is really fascinating.

I will tell you how much I spent for it, but first, I gotta tell you a story about how I got it.

Last December, I was actually at my son's wrestling tournament in Reno, Nevada.

It was the Reno tournament of champions, and I was there, watched my son coaching him.

He did amazing.

And then that night, one of the guys I buy a lot of books from saw that I was in Reno.

He's like, I'm 45 minutes away.

Can I come see you?

I've never met him before.

We've done a lot of deals through text messaging.

And so his name's Milton, and Milton drove out.

And of course, he showed up with a car full of old books and things to sell me.

I wasn't planning on that.

So we pulled up his car and we ended up pulling, I don't know, a hundred different books and things into the lobby of the hotel.

It's a little bit awkward and he was showing me all the different things and there are a lot of cool books but this was one I was like what is this like it just it looked cool.

It was unique.

It was different.

The book set is called Alan's Working Plan comprising the 10 basic laws of success.

This is a book set that was sold through direct mail in the early 1900s.

And I just recently purchased Napoleon Hill's Law of Success, the first edition.

I I spent $1.5 million on that.

You may have seen one of the videos of me talking about it.

And so I was really excited.

And he showed me this.

He said, this right here is called the 10 Basic Laws of Success.

He's like, and this was written before Napoleon Hill wrote his Laws of Success.

He's like, it was actually evidence Napoleon Hill worked with Irving Allen, who's the author of these books.

And he's like, I think that Napoleon got a lot of his ideas from this book set.

And I was like, what in the world?

And so he told me the good story about it.

So excited.

And I asked him like, well, how much do you want for this book set?

And he's like, well, it's one of one.

There's none.

There's none other out there.

So I'm like, are you sure?

So I've got my phone and I'm searching everywhere.

And sure enough, I can't find it anywhere.

I did some research on who the person was.

And I was like, I want to personally read it just to see like what he's teaching.

Like, is this different than Polynesial?

Didn't Polynhyte borrow ideas from this guy?

And I was just curious.

And so we ended up negotiating back and forth.

And the end price tag for this book set was $30,000.

And so that's how much I spent to find out Alan's working plan.

After I got back home, I started studying Irving Allen, who is the author, Irving R.

Allen.

And I found out that he worked for a university called LaSalle Extension University which there's some of the greatest marketers ever.

Napoleon Hill was a copywriter for this university and Dan Kennedy my other mentor was also at one time a copywriter so they both worked for this company and he was one of the main guys there and he was the one of the best in the world at being efficient.

So companies would hire him to come and do efficiency to get their all their employees more efficient.

And after doing this and making these companies millions of dollars, a bunch of people like told him like, you should write a book about how to make people successful.

And that's where this whole book came from.

This is almost 10 years before Napoleon Hill wrote his laws of success.

And so just a fascinating look at like what people were thinking about and talking about back then.

So in the book, each book goes deep into one law.

So there's a lot of different ones and all of them have a lot of really cool things.

The very first law that he talks about, he calls it the opportunity is ever present that you need to see is it.

I think about nowadays, like there's so much opportunity in our world for all of us today, right?

Like with the internet and social media and stuff, there's like so much opportunity.

But this is back in 19, 19, 18, right?

I'm like, was there opportunity then?

Like, I can't imagine, it must have been so different.

I even look at like my parents when they were growing.

It didn't seem like there's hardly any opportunities.

But this guy's coming back way back then.

He's like, there's opportunity everywhere.

You just have to seize it.

He goes on and he talks about how people always say, like, you know, opportunity only knocks once.

And he's like, that's not true.

Opportunity comes every single day if you're actually looking for it, actively trying to find it.

And I thought that was interesting just to see back in that time that there were opportunities that people were having.

One of my favorite lessons, this little deeper here in the book set, ties to one of the Polynesians law of success, which is positive mental attitude.

He talks about having a positive mental attitude, but he also says that it's important to have optimism and egotism.

He said that, you know, obviously you got to be positive and you got to have, be optimistic, but he said he's like, to be successful, you have to have an ego.

If you don't have an ego, it's hard to do the things you need to be successful.

I've talked about it in other videos before and a lot of people struggle with it because our whole society teaches like don't have an ego.

Don't be selfish.

Don't be, you don't put yourself out there.

And I think this is an interesting one because if you think about the people that are really, really successful, most of them do have an ego.

They do have an edge.

And even if they're not willing to talk about it, I remember I was doing an interview with Dan Kennedy Kennedy about this, and I'm curious if you guys have the same thing, but in my own head, I have this thing where it's like, I want to be a humble person, I want to, like, for me to drive and to push forward and to like have a team and a staff, like, I have to have an ego that I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm talking about.

Like, people are looking for certainty, right?

And a lot of times, we we look at certainty and ego as like the same kind of thing, right?

But then there's like the dark side of ego where you see like the horrible things that happen where it's like people's egos come in and it crushes other people, and like, and so there's this weird yin-yang in there.

And I was asking Dan Kennedy about that, and he shared this quote from Carnegie, which has

become one of my favorite quotes.

And if you know Carnegie, at the time, Andrew Carnegie was the richest man in the world.

That's where Napoleon Hill like got his commission to go right, do all the Napoleon Hill's work.

But Carnegie was the richest man in the world.

And this is the quote Dan told me from Carnegie.

He says, no man achieves any great things in life unless in his private thoughts, he believes that he is superior to all other men.

And when I heard that, I was like, oh my gosh.

And I think that's part of like, you look at the most successful people, like most of them are humble outwardly and they treat people well.

But the ones that are most successful, they have exactly what Carnegie said here.

In their private thoughts, they believe that they're superior to all other men.

Like you have to have that kind of ego to be successful, especially in business, right?

Think about business.

You are stepping out into a stage, right?

Where you've got thousands of other people competing for your audience's attention.

Like, why should they listen to you?

And if you struggle with that, like, well, I don't know, why should they listen to me?

Like, if you don't have...

yes, confidence, yes, positive mounted, but having that egotism, which most people won't ever talk about.

But if you don't have that, it's really difficult for you to create a movement, to get people to move, to follow, where you can actually change their their life And so it's one of those laws that was fascinating that even back in 1918 He was talking about it I'm sure it was even more controversial than it is nowadays But I do think that to be really really successful in your own mind in your private thoughts You have to believe that or else it makes it very difficult to go and do the things you need to do to actually be successful So there's this like there's this dichotomy, right?

Where it's like we need to be humble, but we need to have an ego, right?

And it's it's a hard thing.

And I think at least for me, when I was an early entrepreneur,

I started doing this back when I was like 21 years old, right?

I started building a business and there was a window where I started having success.

And one of the worst things happened that happens to a lot of entrepreneurs, especially the first time they have success, is that they start believing their own bio.

They start like thinking like, wow, I'm amazing.

Look how good I am.

Like they have this thing, right?

And I think I definitely started having that where it's like everything I was doing was working.

It kept happening.

I'm like, I'm the smartest man alive, right?

I'm a genius.

And then I remember as my business started growing, I had the first big crash, right?

Where I had 100 employees, we were making a bunch of money and then everything fell apart.

And I remember at the backside of that, having the realization, I'm like, wow, like, yes, obviously I have a skill set.

I'm talented, but it's not all based on me.

Like, there's other forces.

Like, there's a quote in the scriptures where it says that God will have a humble people.

Either you can humble yourself or he will humble you.

And every time I hear that, it's like.

I do not want God to humble me.

That sounds horrible.

And so I'm like, okay, I need to be humble.

So it was funny.

At the end of that transition, my business had collapsed.

collapsed, everything had failed.

And I was like, just wrestling with this, because then my own self-confidence, my own egotism started going away.

And I was struggling even more because you need that edge also to become a driver and a producer.

Right.

And I remember I was at this mastermind in Mexico.

And one of the days we're sitting there and I'm at this dinner table.

And sitting next to me is this guy.

And he was like the keynote speaker for the mastermind, like crazy, like crazy successful guy.

He had like bought and sold like 50 different companies and all sorts of stuff.

And we're having this conversation talking to each other.

And I remember he asked me, he's like, well, tell me, tell me about your your business like tell me what's been happening and so of course i flip into like highlight mode like oh i did this and i did that you know i'm listening all the highlights and he's like and remember he looked at me like so have you ever have you ever cycled i'm like what do you mean he's like cycled like have you ever failed and and come back again i was like actually yes and i told him my first cycle and i was like and if i'm completely honest i'm in the middle of a cycle right now it is very very painful and he's like oh good he's like i will never work with an entrepreneur who hasn't cycled at least once and i was like why why not he's like he's like the first time someone's an entrepreneur they have success they believe that they are the reason they were successful.

Like, yes, they have to be, they have to have skill sets, right?

But he's like, but there's people,

there's the market, there's a million other things that make you successful.

And like, yes, you grabbed the opportunity by the horns and you ran with it.

But he's like, if they haven't cycled once, they still, he's like, I remember he's like, they still believe their own bio.

They're still drinking their own Kool-Aid.

He's like, after they've cycled and they realize that, then I'm willing to invest in them as an entrepreneur.

But prior to that, I won't.

And I remember the first thing was like, I remember hearing the word cycle.

I'm like, oh, that sounds so much better than failure.

Like, okay, there's a word.

I didn't fail i'm just cycling right now which sounds better i hopefully for all you entrepreneurs like you can reframe that because failure is so painful we're cycling it's like okay everyone does this right every good entrepreneur cycles they all go through the ups and the downs in fact i believe like the bankruptcy laws from the founding fathers this country were literally a gift from god right it gives entrepreneurs like us the ability to go and try test and risk because if it wasn't for bankruptcy laws like other countries at least back in the day like you would fail a business they lock you up for the rest of your life right so like who would risk like it's the scariest thing in the world like the founding fathers gave us these laws so that you could could try you could try to create something if you failed it wasn't the end of your life like you could try again right it took the ultimate risk away and so for me it was like understanding that cycling was really big and so as i started growing the business the second time right my second big business run was click funnels it was three or four years after our big cycle i met my business partner todd dickerson we had the idea for click funnels he built the software and uh we started going out there and i remember the second time around i was like okay what are the lessons i learned from the first time that i don't want to make this time right the first lesson for me was like god will have a humble people either you can humble yourself or he will humble you i was like okay i don't i i don't want to be humbled i did that once and it was very painful right uh and i i do believe part of my first the first big cycle was because of that like i wasn't humble so i'm like i need to remember to be humble what does that mean for me right it means i need to give credit where credit's due i need to be thankful for the people that work with me i need to like acknowledge god's hand in everything that i'm doing because it's not just me there's a lot of a lot of things that make this thing happen right and yes i still need to develop my skill set but i got to remember that like i need to stay humble number two It's like I learned this along the way.

It's like when you are building a business, when you succeed, you have to give credit to the the people around you, to your team.

But if you fail, you have to take the credit yourself.

And that's a hard thing to do, right?

You as the producer, as the entrepreneur who's going out there risking your money, your livelihood, your everything, you can't be taking the credit for it, right?

When you succeed, you give credit to your team.

When you fail, you take the failures on yourself.

That's how you build a team of people who will go to war with you, right?

And so that was my thoughts as we're building.

It's like, hey, this is my fault.

We fail.

It's 100% my fault, right?

I have to take that.

And then I have to be so grateful for people on my team because I couldn't do it without them, right?

And we try to acknowledge that as often as we can.

Whenever I'm meeting with our, with our, and staff and our employees, you will hear me say almost every single time, like, I fully amware that people know who Russell Brunson is, but it is not me.

It is the team of people behind us that make this all possible.

And then third thing, though, it's like, and it comes back to the Carnegie quote, like in my private thoughts, though, right?

Not publicly, but in my private thoughts, if I'm going to be the person who is coming through here and I have to develop a market, I have to smash through things.

I got to show up every single day and get my face kicked in by the trolls and the haters and all that kind of stuff.

Like, if I'm going to be successful with this, like, I have to, inside of my mind, believe that I'm superior to all other men.

I have to believe I'm the best.

I learned this in wrestling too when I was wrestling.

I remember there's a, there's a, I had an old VHS tape from Dan Gable.

And those who don't know Dan Gable, he was the Michael Jordan in my sport, right?

He only lost one match his entire career.

He went to Olympics, won the Olympics, and nobody scored on him.

And then he became the coach of Iowa Hawkeyes and was at the time the most winning coach of all time, I think in any sport.

They won like 20 championships in a row.

and i watched this dvd and he had this little clip where he said i'd never let an athlete step on the mat for me unless in their mind they know they're going to win i remember having that impact as a wrestler i was like okay if i step on the mat i have to believe i'm going to win like i have to believe that i'm superior to that person or else i'm going to lose right half of the battle on the mat is always a mental battle so i was like that's the attitude i have to go into this right now i transitioned to business right and business is a competition right and i'm very competitive so when i'm looking at this the reason why when we started click farms i wasn't just i'm trying to build a business i looked for a a competitor.

Like, who do I have to beat?

Initially for me, it was Lee Page.

Like, that was the brand.

All right.

Clay Collins was the owner.

That's who I have to beat, right?

And it was a mental game.

Like, it was like, okay, I have to, in my head, so I listened to every Clay Collins talk and interview he did.

And I was like, okay, I have to get in.

I have to believe that I'm better than him so I can go and compete against him, right?

Until we passed him.

And then who's next?

It was InfusionSoft.

Clay Mask was number two.

And I love Clay, but he was my competitor.

And I had to get in my head to get the spot where I am better than him, right?

Right now, as we are on the second half of the ClickFunnels journey right now, like I know who my competitors are.

I know exactly who they are by name.

I watch them.

I study them because I have to beat them, right?

And so in my mind, I have to believe I'm superior to them.

If I don't, that's when you come up in a wrestling match.

If you don't believe you're superior to somebody, that's when you pull your punches.

That's when you're going to shoot, but you're like, oh, that guy's good.

So you don't quite shoot all the way.

And that's when you lose, right?

You have to believe you're better than them when you step on the mat.

And the same thing is true in business.

You have to believe you are superior to them in your own private thoughts.

There's the yin-yang, right?

How do you remain humble outside?

and actually be humble, not just like, this isn't placating to like acting like you're humble, but actually being humble, but mentally, the mental game inside yourself.

As Carnegie said, again, in his private thoughts, he believes he's superior to all other men.

You have to have that edge if you're going to win.

And so I love this book set because it re-brought out that idea again that be okay with the healthy egotism, like having that, because it's the thing that gives you the edge to actually win the battle that we call business.

All right, if you want to go deep into this book set, which you cannot find anywhere, it is not online.

And like, I don't know anywhere you can find it other than right here.

Luckily for you, I went through this entire thing and I have my notes going through booklet by booklet, all the ideas, the highlights, the keynotes.

There's some really cool doodles and images inside of here as well.

I love he taught very similar to me.

I did make a note sheet.

You can get my notes for free.

There's a link in the description.

Click on that.

It'll take you to the note sheet.

We have a chance to go and actually see what's inside this book and hopefully pull out some nuggets and some ideas to help change you and help give you that edge.

Other than that, I appreciate you guys.

Hope you enjoyed this video.

If you did, please let other people know about it.

And we'll see you guys on the next one.

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