Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - How To Leverage the Public Domain (Like Walt Disney)

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

I've written 3 books, but I don't consider myself an author - I consider myself a curator. Public Domain is the best-kept secret to collecting the best of the past and using it to leverage your current offerings similarly to what Walt Disney did once upon a time. Hear my process for curating the books, topics and ideas that I can present an offer that leverages the public domain! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing Secrets of Success Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Metro links and cross links are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Welcome to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. My name is Russell Brunson, and I'm what you call a serial entrepreneur, but with a twist. You see, 50% of my time, I'm the CEO of ClickFunnels, helping over 100,000 brands to grow their companies with funnels. And the other 50%

of my time, I'm actually in the trenches using ClickFunnels to grow the startups I believe in. During this podcast, I'll take you behind the scenes and show you how we are bootstrapping ClickFunnels and my other businesses from startup to nine figures and beyond. Welcome to the show. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I got a treat for you guys today. You may or may not know about this concept called the public domain. This is things whose copyright is expired.

And you can take these things and you can sell them. You can republish them, you can do a bunch of really cool things with it. It happens to be the way that Walt Disney made all his money and it happens to be the way that I'm making a lot of my money with right now with Secrets of Success and a lot of things I'm republishing and stuff like that. So about a year and a half ago, I did a meeting with my inner circle and I just showed them all my first edition books and stuff and then I spent 15 minutes kind of going over explaining how public domain worked and what they could do with it. And I've showed them all my first edition books and stuff. And then I spent 15 minutes kind of going over, explaining how public domain worked and what they could do with it.

And I've never published this anywhere or showed it anywhere. So I was trying to find a cool episode to share with you guys this week. And I thought this would be a fun one. So here you can learn the secrets of public domain, how it works, why you should care, and how you can find some really cool things that you could republish for your market.

Hope you enjoy it. And we'll talk to you soon. My game plans, I'm going to talk about a little about public domain. I printed out a two-page thing that you guys all should have on your desk, and it's stapled. So this is kind of the legal side of the public domain, which is kind of cool. Then I'm going to walk you through kind of my vision, what I'm trying to do with the library and the statues and all this stuff. This is the actual, like, print architecture plans for the library that will be built on the land next door. And then we'll walk over to, uh, it's like two buildings down and walk us through the, the makeshift library where we're

storing the books until I have a big library to put them in. And then we'll come back here. And then these are all my first edition Book of Mormons and all stuff. So you guys want to see them. I'll probably go through and probably take 30 minutes or so for me to kind of go through them. Do you want to see them cool? If not bail either way, but these are so cool too, I think, but I'm a book nerd, so they're fun. Okay. Uh, is anyone here familiar with the public domain is okay. A few of you guys. So the basic gist is the copyright laws have changed throughout time. And so any book or any work, so not just book, any work that was published before 1923 in the United States is automatically in the public domain.

That means the copyright is expired. That means you can get those books and you can do whatever you want with them. That's how Disney made all their stories, like Aladdin and Princess – or not Princess Bride. Aladdin, Snow White, like all the old Disney movies, yeah, are all basically public domain books that fell in the public domain. Walt Disney took them, turned them into – made a derivative work. And then the derivative work that you make is copyrightable. It's like, you know, Frozen is copyrightable, Tangled is copyrighted, but the original story still came from the public domain. Um, and so the majority, not majority, but a lot of their movies and stuff are. Um, and so that's kind of cool. Now, anything published between 1923, 1963,

um, if the copyright wasn't renewed, I think it's, uh, if the copyright wasn't renewed 28 years after it was published, then it automatically falls into the public domain. So it's like, it's estimated only 7% of works between 1920 through 1963 were ever re copyrighted. If not, so it's like 93% of things published in that time fell into the public domain and after that it gets all fuzzy so for me for the most part um anything pre-1923 is when i get really really excited okay so just kind of real quick like my vision what i'm trying to create with all the stuff because yes i'm going to build the library yes we're gonna build big statues um in the library over here but like the goal and the plan is for this to be a super profitable income center it's not gonna be just me collecting old books. Like I want to do it for worth the reason. Um, how many guys follow

Ryan holiday? So Ryan holiday wrote a bunch of marketing books, as you know, and then he got into the stoic era and he became obsessed stoicism. And so then the next set of books he wrote have all been on the stoic era. Like that's the, the, the window in time that he was obsessed with the, the, the writers and the people he was obsessed um with the the the writers and the people back then right so all the people he studied were like seneca and marcus aurelius and like all of the stoic philosophers and so he's taken all their works which are definitely the public domain that's like i don't know two or three hundred years after after christ or somewhere in that windows when when the stoic era was and he took all his books and he's rewritten uh egos

the enemy obstacles away um still this is the key those are all based on his books and he's rewritten, uh, he goes the enemy obstacles away. Um, still, this is the key. Those are all based on so principles. And he wrote the daily stoic and then he's done a whole bunch of other stoic books and projects and everything. His whole Instagram channel, uh, related to stoicism has got a couple million followers and like, he's just gone really, really deep on that era and that timeline. And so for me, the, the era that I'm obsessed with is from about 1850 to 1950. Um, that is an era that's, that's known as the New Thought Movement.

And it's when people started thinking for themselves and they started doing this thing. And the very first person that was kind of the new thought leader, the very first one was a guy named Samuel Smiles who was in England. And he did a little event like this for some youth and told them that they could think and become better at life. And the people were like, this is amazing. And so he wrote the very first ever personal development book called self help by Samuel smiles. Um, in there's a ton of copies on my eBay for like 20 bucks. First edition is like 1850. Like it's amazing. Um, so you'll notice that when you go there, there's a Samuel smile section, like every Samuel smiles book I found is, is in there. Right. And then Samuel smiles again, that was like 1850 ish. Um, in the early, like late 1800s, like 18, uh, like 1890s or something, some guy here in America

found the Samuel smiles book and he reads it. Uh, and he's like, this is amazing. And so he, his name is Orson sweet Martin and he got all excited. And, um, he started a little magazine called success magazine and he was the founder of Success Magazine. He then wrote a book. I think it was a 400 or 500-page book he had written. He had the manuscript. He owned these hotels and stuff. And the manuscript was in a hotel.

And then one day, the hotel burned to the ground, and his manuscript was gone. Can you imagine, Rachel, what that would feel like right now? Yeah. And so he literally was like standing in the ashes of his hotel, his things gone. So he walks to the bookstore, grabs a pad of paper, and starts rewriting as fast as he can. Writes as much as he can remember and publishes his first book called Pushing to the Front, which is his first book on personal development. And then he ended up writing like 50 or 60 books after that. And then published Success Magazine.

And so over there you'll see the whole section of Orson Sweet-Martin, all of his books that I'm able to find. Plus I have a whole bunch of first edition Success Magazines, including the very first issue ever is over there, which is insanely cool. And I've got about a dozen that were published in the 1800s and then a whole bunch from the 1900s and beyond. Um, and then inside of Orson Sweet-Marden, that's where these other guys start popping up like Napoleon Hill and Charles Hanel and all these other people who've written all the books that most of you guys are probably more familiar with. Um, Napoleon Hill's got all his stuff. Charles Hanel wrote the master key systems. Um, and anyway, so when you go over there, you'll see like we have a Napoleon Hill room. We've got a, uh, like a personal development

room. And then I've also been finding all the old business classics, um, from all the big business people from back in the day. So there's also like a business room and right now it's in the middle of chaos. We haven't taken anyone over there yet. So don't judge the thing, the Napoleonon hill room setup all the rest are kind of like chaotic but i'll show you guys kind of some of the core things that are that are cool um we also have a big um scanner in one of the rooms i'm taking these books we have a scanner to scan them all turn into into pdfs and turn them into ocr into word docs so we can republish them and things what's that so we can all sermon NFTs. Yes. Don't worry, Andy. It's in the, it's in words. Um, so that's kind of the core things. Um, any questions about that at all? Yeah. I mean, no, and it is an obsession. I tell you guys what it's called. Hold on. Let me tell you the

definition. This is a legit thing. Um, there's a term for this. I found it. Um, it's, uh, okay, here's this call. It's called a bibliomania. It says bibliomania can be a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder, which involves the collecting or even hoarding of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged. So that's about where we're at. No. So this is how I got into it. So, um, so again, uh, in the, yeah. Um, so the very first old book I bought, so, uh, in the Mormon world, the book of Mormon is our, is our ancient scripture. And, um, the first printing, there were 5,000 printed, but there's only about 350 of them on the planet. And so my whole life, I thought it'd be cool someday if I could ever afford to get one. So one day I was depressed and I found one on eBay. And so I bought it. So this is the very

first, first edition Book of Mormon I bought. And that was the first time I ever got into it. And then a few years later, I met this guy who then sold me on all these ones. And so I bought all these. And that's when I had the idea for like, Oh, I need a place to like, I've been sitting in a safe. This is stupid. Why are they in a safe? Like I can't show them to people. I was like, I need a library and we'd bought this land. I'm like, we should put a library. I could put them in there and put them under glass and it'll be this cool thing. And I was like, we can have a religion section, but I'm like, what other things am I passionate about? I'm like one passionate about personal development. Like I should have a section of personal development and then one on business

and then one on stoicism, all the health and fitness, like all the things I'm passionate about. And I was like, well, I had these really cool first editions that would be cool to have under glass in those sections. But like, what about the personal development section? I'm like, what do I put there? And so, um, I started, that's what I started eBay looking for first edition book, uh, personal development stuff. And you guys will see it today. I think some of you guys saw it last time, but the, the first edition of point Hill, uh, laws of success was, was on there for $1.5 million. I was like, Oh, that would be the piece that would be in the personal development section. And then, uh, when I got to know the guy who owned that, that's when I flew out to his place

and I bought his whole 20 years of collecting. And then, um, that's, that's where, and then, and then it was a slippery slope. And I was telling Rachel, like I was reading, like I read Napoleon Hill magazine. I'm sure reading, I'm like one page into it. And he's like, he's like, I met a millionaire today. And the millionaire told me to read this book called the goldfish. I'm like, what? So I'm like, are you being like the goldfish? I found the book. And then I see the author's name. I'm like, did he write any other books? I type that in and I find all the other books. I buy all his books there. And like within 15 minutes, I'm reading like three verses into our three, um, paragraphs in the magazine. I bought another like 22 books and that's like how it keeps growing.

So, um, anyway, but it's been so much fun. And so it's, it keeps growing. And like I said, uh, there's 31 boxes from Joe Vitale's library being dropped off here tomorrow, but it's from that same era of like when they're learning about personal development and business and, and sales and hypnosis and mindset and like all the, like all the things around that, like it was like this time where everyone's minds were just popping up and new ideas are being created. And it's like the most fascinating time in the world so and you'll see like these guys are doing direct mail like we have a whole bunch of the first ads and things like that it's just it's fascinating to me so that's kind of what it is and um yeah yeah yeah so a

couple things number one is nfts my goal is to do an NFT launch that will pay for all the costs for the library and the statues and all that kind of stuff. Hopefully it's summer, maybe a little later on this year. But on top of that, like I said, some of the first edition stuff, we're printing them and we're scanning them and stuff like that because we'll be republishing them. I have my next book is a success book. And so I'm creating a MIFGI offer for the success market, which is going to have a whole bunch of Napoleon Hill stuff that even the Napoleon Hill Foundation doesn't have. So we'll be bringing people in the continuity through that. There's a whole bunch of different ways we'll be doing it. All my favorite authors, there's one of my, I feel like one of my callings is I had this conversation with somebody. Oh,

I was talking to Rachel Hollis last night about this. Like, I don't, I've never really considered myself an author. Like that, that word never, like, I don't know. I wouldn't say I'm an author. Um, but I think I'm more of a curator. It's like, if you look at all my books, they're curation, right? I spent a decade trying to figure out marketing and I curated all the best things and put them in order and then doodle them. And I was like, this is my understanding of this topic and this topic and this topic. And so I'm kind of the same way. Like I have like Charles Handel, who I love. He's got, you know, a dozen books he wrote that nobody knows about anymore. I want to go through all those books and then curate and like have one

book that's like, this is like, this is Charles Handel. Like this is the, this is the master key system. Like you guys, and you know, and like Napoleon Hill, like here's all the stuff. No one else is going to geek out and read all of this stuff. But it's like, if I can curate and like, this is the thing that like the essence of like what he had or Orson Sweet Martin, like here's all the stuff no one else is going to geek out and read all of this stuff but it's like if i can curate like this is the thing that like the essence of like what he had orson sweet martin like there's so many amazing things but no one besides me is going to go buy eight you know eight of his books but i can go through all that curate and be like this is the the thing and all this all the books have like cool stories and cool vsls and anyway it's gonna be fun so that's kind of game plan uh because most of the stuff that we're collecting all is in the public domain. So we can republish the majority of the things, which is

cool. So anyway, just a lot of, I'm trying to create a lot of fun front ends that aren't like my face. So if I can leverage this huge brand and this huge movement and bring people from that into our world, it just gets really fun.