Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Discovering Laws of Success From The Book That Inspired Napoleon Hill | #Success - Ep. 69

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

In this vault episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I share one of the rarest book sets I’ve ever purchased: Allen’s Working Plan, written by Irving Allen nearly a decade before Napoleon Hill published The Law of Success. This ten-volume set was sold through direct mail in the early 1900’s, and it gives us a fascinating look at what business leaders and marketers were studying long before Hill’s ideas took off. I’ll tell the story of how I discovered this set, why I paid $30,000 for it, and what makes it such a powerful piece of history. You’ll also hear the lessons that stood out most to me… Lessons that still apply today if you want to seize opportunities, build confidence, and lead others. Key Highlights: How optimism, positivity, and even a healthy ego give entrepreneurs the edge to lead and win The Andrew Carnegie quote that explains why belief in yourself (even in private) is critical for success The concept of “cycling” instead of failure, and why great entrepreneurs must go through it The balance between humility outwardly and the inner belief that you’re superior when competing in business This book reminded me that success isn’t just about tactics. It’s about mindset! The daily recognition of opportunity, the willingness to stay humble, and the inner drive to believe you can win. These timeless lessons gave me clarity and fuel for my own journey, and I think they can do the same for you. If you want my full notes on Allen’s Working Plan, including the best takeaways from each booklet, go to russellbrunson.com/notes to grab them for free!! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://russellbrunson.com/notes⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant, you're building something big. And Square's there for all of it. Giving your customers more ways to order, whether that's in-person with Square kiosk or online. Instant access to your sales, plus the funding you need to go even bigger. And real-time insights so you know what's working, what's not, and what's next. Because when you're doing big things, your tools should to. Visit square.ca to get started.

Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's selling online.com slash podcast. 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 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 amount to, 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 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. 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. But first, I got to tell you 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, watch 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 was planning on that. So we pulled up this car and we ended up pulling, I don't know, 100 different books and things into the lobby of the hotel. It's a little bit awkward. And he showed 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 Allen'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 had just recently purchased Napoleon Hill's law.

of success. First edition, 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, there's 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, uh, he told me the good story about it. And I was so excited. And I asked Michael, how much you want for this book set? 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'm on, I'm going to get my phone. I'm searching everywhere. 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 just to see, like, what he's teaching. Like, is it different to Napoleon Hill? Did he'll borrow ideas from this guy?

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 Allen'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 the Sal Extension University, which is some of the greatest marketers ever. Napoleon Hill was a copywriter for this university. And Dan Kennedy, my other mentor, also at one time, copyrighters.

They both worked for this company. He was one of the main guys there. And he was one of the best in the world at being efficient. So companies would hire him to come and do efficiency to get all their employees more efficient. And after doing this and making these companies millions of dollars, a bunch of people, I 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 law 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 booklet 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 the opportunity is ever present and you need to seize 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 with stuff there's like so much opportunity. But this is back in 19, 1918, 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 up. 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. He's like, that's not true. The 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 people were having. One of my favorite lessons this little deeper here in the book set ties to one of the point of law of success, which is positive a mental attitude. He talks about having a positive attitude, but he also says it's important to have optimism and egotism. He said that, you know, obviously got to be positive and you got to have 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 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 people that are really, really successful, most of them do have an eagle. They do have an edge. And even if they're not willing to talk about it, I remember I was doing the interview with Dan 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 eagle that I know what I'm doing and know what I'm talking about. Like people are

looking for certainty, right? And a lot of times we look at certainty and ego is 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 is become one of my favorite quotes. If you know Carnegie, at the time, Andrew Carnegie was the richest man in the world. That's where Napoleon Hill 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 achieved any great things in life unless in his private thoughts, he believes that he is superior to all other men. And I heard that as 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 the 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? You 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 amount to, 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 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 and your private thoughts, you have to believe that or else it makes it very difficult to go 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 a hard thing. And I think at least for me, when I was an early entrepreneur, right, I started doing this back when I was like 21 years old, right? I started building 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 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 and 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, whew, 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, everything

had failed. And I was like, just wrestling with this because then my own self-confidence, I 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 as this guy. And he was like the keynote speaker for the mastermind, like crazy, like crazy six He had 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 about your business. Like tell me about what's been happening. So of course I flip into like highlight mode like, oh, I did this and I did it. You know, I'm listening all the highlights and he's like, I remember he looked at me. He's like, so you ever, have you ever cycled? I'm like, what do you mean? It's like, cycle.

Like if you ever failed 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 the cycle right now, it is very, very painful. And he's like, oh, good. He's like, I will never work with an entrepreneur hasn't cycled at least once. And I was like, why not? He's like, he's like,

the first time someone's an entrepreneur to 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 there's people, there's the market, there's a million other things that make you successful. And like, yes, you grab the opportunity

by the horns and you ran with it, but there, 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 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 the entrepreneurs, like you can reframe that because failure's 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 of 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 law,

Like other countries, at least back in the day, like you would fail a business, they'd 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 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, understand that cycling was really big. And so as I started growing the business the second time, right? My second big business run was ClickFunnels. It was three or four years after our big cycle. I met my business partner, Todd Dickerson.

We had the idea for ClickFunnels. He built the software and 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 want to be humbled. I did that once.

It was very painful, right? And 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 or credits to do. 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 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 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 to 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 that. 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. I was building. Say, okay, 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 staff and our employees, you will hear me say almost every single time. Like, I fully am aware that people know who Russell Brunson is, but it is not me. It's 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 thing and get my face kicked in by the trolls and the haters and all that kind of stuff. I'm going to be successful with this. Like, I have to inside of my mind believe that I am superior to all other men. I have to believe I'm best. I learned some wrestling too when I was wrestling. I remember there's a, there's a, I had old VHS tape from Dan And those who 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 transition 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 phones, I wasn't just, I'm trying to build the business. I looked for a competitor. Like, who do I have to beat? Initially for me, it was Lee pages. 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 listen to every Clay Collins talk and interview he did. And I was like, hey, I have to get in, I have to believe 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 Infusion Soft. Clayton was number two. And I love Clayt, but he was my competitor. And I had he in my head to get spot where I am better than him, right? Right now is 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 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 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 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 key notes there's some really cool doodles the images inside of here as well I love he taught very similar to me I did make a note sheet you 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. I 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.