The Russell Brunson Show - Andrew Carnegie: How One of the Richest Men in History Viewed Wealth and Legacy | #Success - Ep. 73

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I take you inside my collection to talk about one of the most influential men in history… Andrew Carnegie. At one time, he was the richest man in the world, and his ideas shaped generations of entrepreneurs and thinkers, including Napoleon Hill. I share some rare books and artifacts from Carnegie, including a signed copy of Around the World and a first edition of The Gospel of Wealth. But more importantly, I unpack the lessons from The Gospel of Wealth, an essay that had the biggest impact on me from Carnegie’s work. He believed that dying rich was a disgrace, and that wealth should be used to build opportunities for others, not just handed down. I contrast his philosophy with Ayn Rand’s views, and talk about how those ideas play out in business today, especially when it comes to philanthropy, profits, and building something that lasts. Key Highlights: How Andrew Carnegie influenced Napoleon Hill and Think and Grow Rich The core message of The Gospel of Wealth and why it matters today How I realized Ayn Rand’s philosophy and Carnegie’s approach to giving were actually similar and not contradicting each other Why charity tied to strong offers works better than guilt-driven giving Lessons from Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt on building generational wealth By the end, you’ll see why Carnegie’s vision for wealth still applies to entrepreneurs today, and how you can use these lessons in your own business and life. And if you want my notes from this essay, you can find them below! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://russellbrunson.com/notes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Hey, this is Russell. Welcome back to the vault. Today we're talking about one of the men who was at one point in time, the richest man in the world. This is Mr. Andrew Carnegie.

We're talking about some of his books here, some really rare stuff. Before I dive into this, people ask me why I'm obsessed with Carnegie. And partially, because at one point, he was the richest man in the world. I love studying people who have figured out how to create wealth. But number two, he is the origin story of Napoleon Hill. If you know Napoleon Hill, think and grow rich, Napoleon got a commission to go interview Andrew Carnegie about how he built his wealth up while he's interviewed Andy Carnegie. They hit it off, they became really good friends.

It's supposed to be like a three hour interview, and Napoleon spent spending three days with him. At the end of day three, Carnegie told me, he's like, I'm looking for somebody to write the first ever philosophy on personal achievement. And I'm looking for someone who's going to dedicate next. 20 years of life to create this and do you want to do it. And he sat there and waited and as the story goes, and Napoleon Hill instantly said, yes, I'll do it. And Carnegie pulls a stopwatch out of his pocket and says 29 seconds. He's like, I've asked this over 200 people and you're the first person to say yes

and under a minute, therefore I'm going to give you the commission. And then from there, Napoleon Hill went out and created everything that he did, laws of success and everything else. And so I love the story of Carnegie. And that made me interested in like his life and what he did. How did he become the richest man in the world? And so we've got a couple books here I'm going to go deep into. This first one here, this is actually a really rare unique book.

is called Around the World. Carnegie had his chance. He was traveling the world and he was writing down everything he was learning going to Tokyo and Japan and around the world like all different things

he was learning. This specific copy of the book is really unique because this one is signed by him. So here is Carnegie's actual signature. This book cost me $7,500. So there's the price that I paid for this book.

And the reason why I did is number one, it's signed by Carnegie, which is amazing. But number two, this was signed by Carnegie one month before he closed what at the time was the largest business transaction

in the history of the world and what made him become the richest man in the world. He partnered with U.S. Steel, they did this huge merger, and from that he came the wealthiest man in the world. And one month before that merger happens when he signed this book, and he signed it to his lawyer, who was working on the deal. And so this is the lawyer's book one month before signing. And in the top it says, yours to the brotherhood of man from Andrew Carnegie. And so it's just kind of a cool, unique thing. It was signed in 1901. The book was written in 1884. This book had a new cover put on it, you know, a nice leather cover.

This is actually a copy of the first edition without the new covers. That's what it will look like in the bookstores. I bought this as part of a collection. So, I don't don't have the actual pricing on this. My guess is probably worth about $1,500. It's kind of what you'd probably be able to buy it for right now for first edition around the world. And this was a special copy he made just for his lawyer. One month before they closed the largest deal in U.S. history. But honestly, it was the biggest business deal up to that point. And it made Carnegie the richest man in the world. The reason why I got so obsessed with Andrew Carnegie is as I started buying my Napoleon Hill things. I wanted to know, like, who influenced him?

Like, where did he come from? And so Carnegie obviously was kind of the origin story that set Napoleon Hill on his way. So I was like, and this guy was the richest man in the world. It's like, what did he know? What did he understand? Like, you know, one of the the things I learned from Tony Robbins is like, if you want to be successful, we're going to model people who are successful, right? So Carnegie is one of the most successful humans have ever walked this planet. Like, what did he do? What did he believe? What did he think? And so I started buying everything. These are some old paintings.

These are about $500 a piece. You can buy these on eBay. These are actually from like different matchbooks and things like that. These are originals from back in the day. I got paintings of Carnegie, just all sorts of stuff that wanted just to understand and get in his mind. As I started reading his things, the thing that I think was the most prolific to me and had the biggest impact on me. It was actually, it was an essay he wrote. I believe in the 1889. It was called the Gospel of Wealth.

And later that got put into a book. And so this is the actual book called the Gospel Wealth. This is the first edition copy of Gospel Wealth, which was published in 1900. I bought this one for $1,272. So $1,272. I paid for this first edition. And there's a lot of different reports and things that Carnegie wrote. But there's just one section where we took the actual report, it was a lot smaller called

the Gospel Wealth and it's in here. And so when I read the Gospel Wealth, I actually had a friend who read it first. And he was like, have you read the Gospel Wealth. I'm like, no, I have a bunch of Cardi's stuff. I haven't really gone deep. And the things that I read have been good. But again, like around the world's amazing. but it didn't have anything to do with, for me, like, business or marketing or sales, whereas

the gospel wealth gave me something very applicable. And so I read it. The book is big, but just the actual essay on gospel wealth is very small. That was the thing that had the biggest impact on me from Carnegie's life that I could actually translate into my business today. And so we can dive into that. Do you guys want to? Should we dive into that?

So this is a quote from the gospel wealth essay from Carnegie. He basically concludes in the report. He says, if a wealthy person dies with vast wealth intact, having failed to distribute it for good, then they die in shame. The man who dies thus rich dies disgrace. And so Carnegie's whole belief was like, you can go and you can make a whole bunch of money. But it's like, your job is to take the money, live the way you need to be able to survive. But the rest of it, he's like, you shouldn't be passing on your kids.

He's like, that's not the way it works. And they're going to be spoiled. He's like, you create this wealth and your job is then to give it away to society, to help things. And so you see what happened when Carnegie, he did this biggest transaction in the history of all time, right? And he becomes the richest man in the world. First thing he does is he goes out there and he builds, I think it's like three or four thousand libraries. Like Carnegie Hall, things that you guys have heard of, right? He built all these things.

He was giving the wealth back to society. Because if he kept it, then it would be a disgrace. Like, that's not how it's supposed to be. I love Ayn Rand and her thoughts. And this seemed very the opposite with Ayn Rand. If you read Atlas Shrug and things like that where she's very much like, as a producer, you should collect money and like you shouldn't give it to the government or give it to, you know, the government just wants the money so they can give it to the poor and things like that.

And at first I was like, ah, there's this disconnect where Rans like, Iron Rans like, no, you got to keep the money and like don't give it away. And Cardney's like, all the money you make, you should give it away. I'm like, how does it work? And then I read something that Ian Rand and. wrote that was interesting. She said, what she disagrees with is like the government coming with a gun and then like, give me your charity to go give to people and try to take the money from you through taxes and stuff to go to give to the poor, right? She's like the most evil person

on the planet. Most evil character written of all time was Robin Hood, who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. So what you should do is, is you should in business be selfish. Like acquiresments, make as much money as you possibly can. And then from that, then you should give, but that's giving it because you want to, not because the government's coming to you with a gun and trying to take your money away. And that was the big thing. I think Carnegie nailed as well. It's like collect this stuff and then go out and your philanthropic efforts are the end result of what you should be doing with your wealth. And so how does this rate to people nowadays?

It's been interesting in my business. I've seen a lot of people who they'll start their business a lot of times. They're like, you know, we have half our money to charity. And they struggle because it's hard from them to make profit when half of money goes to charity, right? And they're trying to make their business very philanthropic. But the problem is like it eats the profits and you can't actually grow and the business dies, right? You knows Carnegie didn't give half his money to charity when he was growing up. Instead, he focused on the business.

He collected all the money. and then when he was able to, then he gave it all away. So I think the people I see their most successful are those who inside their business, they make as much money as possible, and then separately they're taking the profits so they can give them away and not necessarily weaving it into your business because a lot of times I can strangle hold your business doesn't actually grow.

Now, a couple of things we've done inside the click funnels community, and this kind of goes the opposite what I just said. But when we launched click funnels a decade ago, we're like, how do we attach what we're doing to a bigger mission, right? And so for us, the mission we decided to partner with was village impacts. Some of our friends, they build schools in Kenya. So we set up initially where every time somebody builds a funnel inside

a click funnels and it goes live, we would donate a dollar towards village impact. And so each year at the end of the year, we look back and like, hey, how many funnels were built? The first year was like 18,000 funnels have been built. We're like, oh, that's a big check. Your road check for 18,000 and gave it. And the next year was like 25,000, then 30. And they got a point where all the funnel hackers in our community were building, literally hundreds of thousands of funnels every single year. And so every year we've done that. And what's been cool about is we had a chance to see all these schools being built as a community everyone getting together, like being excited about the fact, like we're building funnels, but because that we're building

schools and helping these people with different opportunities. I think when you look at your business that way where it's like how do you make as much money as possible but then from the profits from the revenues not because you have to because the government's trying to take your money with a gun but because the goodness of your heart's like now that I have these things I want to do what Carnegie said I want to give the wealth back to help people who are less fortunate to me and so anyway I thought the gospel wealth is just a cool it was my favorite thing that Carnegie wrote that was very applicable to me especially seeing somebody who

literally had it all someone who was the richest man the world and who decided to give it all away it was a pretty cool story we've had a lot of people who've come into our world who want to use click funnels raise money for their charity It's fascinating when you look at the mindset of someone who's trying to raise money for charity traditionally, right? Is they come and like, hey, donate some money to our cause and you're going to help these children. You're going to help whatever. And that's like the way they look at it. If you think about like in a perfect world, people would all be like, yeah, I want to help these charities, right?

But that's usually the thing, like traditional offer the most charities put out there is not a good offer, right? It's like, hey, if you donate money for us, we're going to help kids, you know, we're going to help whatever. That's the offer. And you even know in the ClickFunnels world, like when we try to do charity things, right, hey, we're going to raise money for charity. In their heart, like, I want to raise money for charity. They don't want to give money for that, right? We had one of our ClickFunnels members who had a charity, and he came in,

and he read the dot-com's secret book. And he's like, I'm going to actually build a funnel that's going to raise money for my charity. So he built a funnel. All the revenue from the funnel went to go fuel the charity. But what you realize is like, I got to create offers. Like people trade money for offers. They don't trade it just because they want to feel good about themselves, right? And so you have to create a really good offer.

And he ended up winning a two comic club award for his charity by having a funnel that had upsells and downsells where people were getting value for things they wanted and that money went to charity, right? We found the same thing at the funnel Hockey Live when like we wanted to raise money for Village Impact and also Operation Underground Railroad. First couple times we're like, hey, yeah, if you want to donate money, you can. And it was like crickets. Like a couple of people felt guilty and they would walk away.

And in people's hearts, they want to do good, but they just, it's hard. So after we started creating offers, okay, if they donate to charity, what's the valuable thing we can give back to them? Like, what's the offer we can create? And so we start creating offers for the charity. It's like, hey, when you donate X amount to the charity, then Stu and I were going to come to Boise and we're going to do a three-day event on how to launch your membership site, right?

We did that. And also, people went crazy because they want to give, but for most people, it's like, they're going to be parting with money they need an offer. I think that's one of the big things is like you see most charities they just don't understand good marketing. So when they put it out there, people aren't willing to trade with their money. Even though you think in their head, like everyone says like, oh, yeah, I don't need money to charity.

Fortunately, very few do, but if you can create an offer where it's like, what are they getting out of it, that's what gets people to actually move. I remember when my kids were young and Dallon, who's my oldest and my twins, remember one day he said to me, he's like, dad, this is so great that I'm rich. And I was like, no, you're not rich. Like, I'm not going to give you anything. I will teach you and train you and help you, but I'm not going to give anything. I've been in this business long enough to see a lot of like father's son,

entrepreneur groups where the father built something from ground up and the sun comes in and kind of rides the waves. That person doesn't develop. They don't have the, it's like they never had the pressure and the stress that you have to go through as an entrepreneur to create something big and they're kind of given things. And I never like that. And so for my kids, I'm like, I've told them. I was like, if you want to work for me, cool.

But like you're not getting special treatment. Like you can come in and you can work if you want to or you use something else on your own. The people during Carnegie's time where the families are still around today, right? and there's books been written on this. Like, those families, they didn't just give the money to their kids. In fact, I can't remember the two, the two groups. The Rockefellers and the Vanderbilt or something, does anybody know?

There are two families. So the Vanderbilt family, they basically took their money and gave it to the kids. And within a couple generations, it was gone. And the Rockefellers, instead, they went and they set up like family bank. Their posterity would come to the bank and if they wanted to start a business, they would get a loan from the family, when they'd go after, start the business, they'd pay the loan back with interest. And these guys now, you look at them generationally, 100 years later, everyone in the

family is, I mean, not everyone in the family, but the family as a whole is very, very wealthy. And that's the two differences when you start looking at how the game is played. A lot of times when you give things to people that are unearned, they don't cherish them and they lose them. So I look at the lottery winners. When $100 million, $150 million and you think it's like these people should be the richest people in the planet. Like nine times out of 10, their wealth is completely gone within like a couple of years

because they never had to go through the pain and the energy to actually earn it. I think what Carnegie did was smart. He wasn't just handing out money to people. He was building things he thought would create generational wealth. building libraries. He was building these different things with his wealth that he thought would help people and give them the structure. It wasn't just like freebie handouts. I think that's one of the keys when you're doing this is like, how do you create opportunities for people but not give them handouts? That is a little bit about Andrew Carnegie, who was

the wealthiest man ever to live on his planet for a while and what he did and what he thought. I went through the gospel of wealth, which again, it's not a very long read. So you could probably go find a copy online. But I did have a section of my notes. I pull out my favorite things, my favorite parts of it. And if you click a link down in the description, go over there. We'll send you a copy of my notes from the gospel of wealth. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If so, check out some of these other videos. I'll show you guys some more cool books here in the very near future.