The Russell Brunson Show - Dissecting The Book of Life Ad Copy and Magalogue Framework by Robert Collier | #Marketing - Ep. 59

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I share one of the coolest pieces in my collection, an original 1925 signed set of The Book of Life by Robert Collier, and the magalogue (Magazine + Catalogue) ad that sold it. Robert Collier wasn’t just an incredible author in the personal development world; he was also one of the best direct response advertisers of all time, selling more than $200 million worth of books through the mail in the 1920’s!  That’s INSANE! I break down the ad that sold this book set and why the same framework still works today. From the way he used visualization and storytelling (think Aladdin’s lamp and your own personal genie) to the powerful risk reversal and trial offer, this magalogue is a masterclass in how to sell with words. Key Highlights: How Collier’s ad opened with a powerful hook and visualization to grab attention immediately The way he layered storytelling, case studies, and benefits before ever introducing the product How he transitioned into the offer and made the book set feel like a “genie in a lamp” that could fulfill the reader’s deepest desires The risk reversal structure that made the offer irresistible (free trial, easy return, and low payments) Why the same hook–story–offer framework Collier used in print still applies to funnels, webinars, and sales letters today When you study ads like this, you see how much thought great marketers used to put into their offers. Collier couldn’t just throw up a page and run Facebook ads… He had to make the message and the offer so good people would literally mail back a postcard with their own money. Get Russell's book notes here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://russellbrunson.com/notes⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/secrets⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠northwestregisteredagent.com/russell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn.com/CLICKS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job’s visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Indeed.com/clicks 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 I got some really cool things to share with you.

I got a really cool old, original signed book set. But more importantly today, we're going to talk about the ad that actually sold this book set, which is what's going to be really fun. I spent $500 for this book set. And then the ad, I spent $50 just for the return reply card because I can't believe I found this. And I don't know where I got the sales letter, but it's one of the coolest things in the world. Okay, so this book set right here is called The Book of Life. And it's written by someone named Robert Collier.

Now, some of my marketing friends and advertisers probably know of a guy named Robert Collier, who wrote a book called the Robert Collier's Letterbook, which is one of the greatest advertising books of all time. But what a lot of people don't know is that Robert Collier, he was a great advertiser and he wrote books on advertising. But what he was advertising was his own personal development books. He is one of the most prolific writers in the personal development, New Thought Movement. One of my favorite authors, he wrote so many amazing books. And this was one of the very first books that he ever wrote. It's exciting because I found a copy that came in the original box that they would have shipped it in.

And so it's got like the original post. He's got the branding on here and everything. And then when you pull the books out, it gets the first edition. But this edition also is actually signed. by Mr. Robert Collier right there. This book was published in 1925. Again, he sold, this book said, he sold other books sets.

He had a magazine called House 7. Then he had another magazine that he launched later called Mind Magazine, a whole bunch of other stuff, tons of booklets and like, but what's crazy is that during his time, back in 1920s, he sold over $200 million worth of his information products through direct mail. So there's not very many people today's world.

We're using Facebook and Instagram, all sorts of stuff that sold $200 million. And this guy did it by writing letters like these ones, which is why this is so cool. And so you can read about the letters and his advertising philosophy in the Robert Collier letter book, but to actually find one of the original ads is really rare. It's a magalog, as I'll show you here, with a return reply card to get this exact autographed book set.

And so together, these things all kind of weave together to one of the coolest things inside of my collection. Back then, people would send sales letters out or ads and magazines. Like, he was writing what nowadays we call magalogs, right? So it's like a magazine. So people didn't know this was an ad. They get this thing. And at the top, there's this picture of a genie in a lamp.

It's called The Secret of the Ages. So you remember the story of Aladdin in his wonderful lamp, how he had to but rub this lamp and there spraying forth a powerful genie ready to instantly do his bidding. Riches, fame, power, this marvelous genie carried them into the hollows of his hand. Anything that Aladdin might wish for from power to fortune to the hand of the beautiful princess he had, but to command and the servant of the lamp would forthwith produce it. Oh, such good copy and, like, imagery is how he's pulling you in here.

As you look through the page, like just how it's structured, like, how you can live your dreams, right? So he was likening this book set to a genie on lamp, right? He's not just saying, like, buy my new book, you're going to learn how to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, he's like, imagine having your own genie where you could rub it in anything you want it could come true, right? So he's creating this visualization inside your mind of what anyone would want, right? Who wouldn't want their own genie in the lamp? And as he goes through this now, he's talking about you can live your dreams if you had this genie, right? And he starts telling stories and case studies of people who, like, had the secret that's just like a lamp and, like, what happened to them and he's sharing case studies, right?

He used the reward of the secret of success, which is now trademarked by me. So it's kind of cool that he was using my phrase in his ads in 1925, which is kind of cool. And he even has it down here, like, you start noticing the call to action and start coming to the Magalog. You can try it for free for a week without cost.

So what am I trying, like my own genie in the lamp for free for a week? Like, what does that look like, right? So it tells this story here, tells a story about how fortune came to John Randall. And this is my favorite part, the middle insert here. Here's your genie, what will you ask of him? And this is where it starts blending in together,

like the genie, the visualization of the genie, and then you rubbing the genie, and in between the genie and that are the books set. Like, these are the books. Like, this is the equivalent of the genie in the magic lamp. How different is that than just going out there and like, hey, here's my book. You're going to learn how to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

which is what most people do, right? I was thinking about this when I'm creating a product and off now, it's like, what is this like? This is the equivalent of in their life, right? Like, if you have a product teaching weight loss, right? Like, what's the equivalent? This is the equivalent of having a trainer, living by you 24 hours a day,

doing liposuction while you're walking and eating cheeseburger. Like, whatever, like, the visualization of that, of the thing that they want the most that would be the most appealing. I'm sure the liposuction actually would not be that appealing, but you got to mean like creating that visualization inside someone's mind. And the way he did it here with the genie and the lamp is so beautiful. In fact, with my new book coming out, and I guarantee you will see some versions of this I will be modeling and funnel hacking.

But here's your genie what we ask them. Then it starts introducing the chapters. Like here are the chapters of the book. The first, the law of gain, the magic secret, the unappropriated millions, the three requester's open sesame. It's just the acres of diamond. The one thing I can do, like it starts like building the interest.

right and you start coming more here's success right and you look at this imagery it's like success at the top of this ladder what is ladder it's all these books lined up like you read the first book the second book the third is moving you towards success like he's doing it through words and also the imagery like showing you how this is going to pull you to be more and more successful succeeding to what you have then notice down the bottom it starts moving to the next call to actions like if the enclosed card does not uncover your acres of diamond it'll cost you nothing and then payday starts going through and then fanning anyway we try for a free week then use the enclosed card and then the back of the thing here is when he goes back through the rest of

and then starts adding in another benefit. Like, do you want to use it to make money? He decided to make money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he goes to the call to action. And again, back then, like, nowadays, right? Click the link down below. Like, it's so easy to call to actions. These guys had to get people to literally go and, like,

find their wallet, write a check, send something in the mail, right? And so the call to action here, I'm closing with you a convenient postcard that will bring you the seven small volumes of the book of life complete for a full week's examination and trial for free. So there's been a trial offer back then. Don't decide about ordering now. You can do that later. Simply return this free trial courtesy card.

return mail I will send you the book of life postpaid then after seven days examination after you have a chance to look into it and actually test it on your own self if it won't do everything I've said and more send it back my way you realize of course I couldn't make an offer like this if I didn't know what this book of life will do for you but I do know so I'm willing to do my part are you willing to put me to the test Robert Collier and then inside of the mail artist who came in is this courtesy card which is why I spent 50 bucks for because I was freaking out when I saw this is like the actual one so someone then take this courtesy card and if you notice it's already

pre-stamps, got a two-cent stamp on it with his information. It says on the front, this coupon saves you 40%. And on the back says, Mr. Collier, free trial, yes, you may send me one of the advanced sets of the book of life, beautifully bound in autographs. Send me an autograph set to examine and try out for a week at your own risk of expense. At the end of the week, if I want to keep the set, I will send you in your special introductory price on this advanced autograph edition of $6.85 cents, which I don't know what that is equivalent of today's money, but great offer. Or $1 in the $1 month for seven months. Otherwise, I'll put the books back in the book. in their box and returned them to you in which the event I shall owe you nothing.

And they put in their shipping address and that was it. So he made this as risk reversal as humanly possible, right? They filled out, sent it out. He'd ship in the box of books. They got seven days to try it out. If they didn't like it, then they would start sending them a check for $1 a month for seven months, which is kind of crazy, or the $7 up front. And that's how he sold this book.

And you can tell this book sold a lot. You can always tell which authors from back in the day were great marketers because it's easier to find their books. You can tell which ones were not good marketers and good advertisers because it's hard to find any copies. Like Napoleon Hill, you can tell he was a great advertiser market because there's so much of the stuff out there you can still find. Robert Collier's the same way.

If you go to eBay, you can probably find a first edition like this because he was such a great marketer. So many of them were out there. I don't know how well this specific campaign did, but you can tell us the fact that there's so many of these out here that they sold a lot of them back in the day through this whole advertising campaign. I want to go through kind of diagram out what he did this magalog

because the framework he took people through is very similar to the framework you're going to be using in your advertising, in your sales letters. A lot of places you'll be using them online. You can learn so much from some. someone like this who didn't have a luxury of just creating a page and launching it and putting 50 bucks in Facebook ads to see even at work, right? Like for him to do this campaign, I mean, who would have spent insane amounts of money

like printing, shipping, stamps, posted, pre-shipping out a book before somebody even had success. Like they thought through their advertising, their marketing way more than any of us do nowadays. And so I love kind of dissecting to see what we can learn from the framework. So if you look at kind of the breakdowns, as I'm seeing it, right? Number one is that they are starting very quick with obviously a hook and visualization. So we're throwing out this hook to grab their attention, which is, again, the hooks a lot of things. I can tell from the image, from the headline, the secret of the ages, for the intro story.

I'd call this the lead. So that's number two. Actually, I'll go into that a little deeper, but it's all there to like to grab their attention so they're not going to throw it away. I remember Gary Halber used to say that people would sort their junk mail over the garbage camera, like throw it, throw it, throw it, and then they keep the two or three things actually want to read, right? And so you think about that similar, like, this is getting someone's hand, like, you need to get and actually read it. I wish I had the original envelope that came in. It's the last piece I need in this whole thing. I'm not sure what the actual envelope look like.

They would have pulled it out and boom, that's the initial like hook they would have seen in the instant visualization of like, that would be cool to have my own genie in the lamp, right? That's number one. Then you move into the lead. So the lead, when I talk about the frameworks I teach all the time, like hook story off, right? So the hook is the first and then story. The lead is the very beginning of the story. So I think that it's like you're grabbing the attention to the headline and you got to grab them really quickly.

Start pushing them to let right. You need to gauge them very, very quickly. So his lead is so strong for the Latin story and moving through it. And then from there, the lead is going to start transitioning to an ownership experience. So I'm trying to do is like I want them to experience what's like owning this without actually owning it yet, right? So how do we do that? Like, so a couple of different ways, there's different techniques you can do to increase, to create an ownership experience for somebody. But one of the easiest ones, sharing case studies, right?

After the hook and the lead, then transitions into case studies of somebody who's actually experienced the product, right? And so he tells the case study here, bubbles, right? And then transition to the case study of John Randall, right? And then from there, this is where the transition begins. Everything up to this point, right? This is the hook. We're talking about Genie Lamp. Here's the lead telling the story.

Here's somebody's experienced the end result of it, right? Boom, case study, case study. Now we're going to transition into how the thing that you are created. So in this example, the genie Lamp, how his product actually is the equivalent of that, right? It's showing like the apples, apples comparison now. So transition to your product. So transitions and all you see, okay, this is the genie. We can ask them, that's the equivalent of this book set you're going through.

Typically, after we introduce the offer, from there, we have to justify what they're buying, right? So I introduce, here's ClickFunnels. I have to justify, like, all the reasons why you should then buy this thing. Does that make sense? So we're building the story up. Introduce the offer, justify the price coming back down the other side. Number five is justification. And he's doing this to a lot of things.

Talking about success. So here he's taking you through the success pool and then succeeding with what you have, and then payday. So these are all like justifications. Like imagine payday. Imagine having success in your, you're, happiness in your marriage and your life, making more money. He kind of goes on all these different justifications, building up the value.

So justifications are building up the value of the thing they're offer. And then number six here, then they're moving into the CTA. This is where you're gonna ask somebody to go and actually do whatever the offers that you are trying to create. Okay. Now again, if you look at this through like the lens of Russell Brunson, by teaching my books and things like that, it literally is kind of like this. Like, here's your hook.

Here is your. story, right? And then last up here is the offer. I always tell people this, if you think about this, like the job of the hook is to grab their attention just long enough that you can then tell them the story. The goal of the story is to build up the perceived value of the thing you're about to sell to them, right? And the offers then to make the offer. And so everything happens in that order every single time. And so Robert Collier framework is very similar to mine, probably because I learned so much from him as one of the greatest advertisers of all time. in a genre that I love, which is personal development,

which is why I love this guy again, because, again, he was an advertiser who taught advertising, but he was also selling his own stuff that he believed in that he loved, which is all the personal development stuff. The question may be having is, do magalogs work today? Obviously, I want you focus on the maglog,

but also first one way you think about the offer and the way he structured it, okay? Because one thing I love about these guys back made is how they structured offers. How do they create so much risk reversal? Did you say how much risk reversal is his offer? Like literally, it's like, just send this to me.

I'll send you the box. If you like it, you can send me money. If not, send it back. right the risk reversal in that offer is so insane like how do you create an offer that has that where someone is like there's no risk it's going to change life if it doesn't they can send it back like creating that risk reversal is so powerful and like a lot of times we're lazy with like oh yeah if you don't like 30-day money back guarantee bubble like they're lazy with it versus like they spent so much time to figure how to structure the offer in fact back in the early 1900s they called

people who were in charge creating offers they called them scheme men there was an actual job tag like your scheme and your job is to go and create the scheme or the offer and they paid scheme man insane amounts of money. Like David Oglevy, when he was a scheme man for a company before he had his own advertising agency, he was getting paid $100 grand a year, which is equivalent of like $1.2 million a year right now to be the scheme man. Just think about the offer. So look at the way they structure the offers. Like the first thing I would say. Number two, Magalog may seem like a dead media in our world, but the reality is, I'll give you two and a half reasons why. Number one is this is basically the equivalent of a sales letter

today, right? You can take this and you can do a long form sales letter inside your funnel, where you can take this and turn into a video or you can take this concept and turning into a webinar, right. So copy is the same whether you're doesn't matter the medium you're using. If it's text, if it's print, if it's video, if it's web, it's the same thing. You're still taking people through the same process, right? So reading things like this give you the ability kind of see through those things and like learn how to really master them. Now number two, right now, every single person on the internet in your industry is all fighting to get inside of your customer's email box. And they're fighting to show their attention inside of their feeds on

Instagram and Facebook and everything. Literally I spent the last four days of my life sitting behind my computer writing, don't tell anybody there. I wrote a Magalog. We are literally sending out a Magalog to sell a $25,000 offer. This will not be on the internet. I am only sending out to a certain specific select group of buyers once a month. And so does it still work? Yeah.

Because everybody else in my world is all competing, sell their high ticket things, through webinars and challenges and all sorts of stuff. Whereas I'm bypassing all the attention, that, all the noise. I'm having the postman literally come and hand deliver my sales message putting into their mailbox, they can open up and then they can read it. So do they still work? Yeah. Am I still doing it in my business?

Yeah, I spent the last four days literally writing one. Some of you guys will get in the mail. Some of you guys probably won't. But now you know what I'm doing behind the scenes. Robert Collier, Magalogs. He's the man. Getting your customer's mailboxes. It'll change everything for you.

How many guys right now are like, I want to read this ad now, Russell, you sold me. So obviously, I don't have notes of the ad. I'm going to scan this entire ad and put it in the notes. So if you go down below, click on the link, go opt in for the notes. And when you come over here to the Robert Collier section, you have a scan PDF where you can actually read the entire sales letter as a whole. I'll also scan the courtesy card because the copy on this is insane. you can see the actual offer. So I'll put those down in the notes.

Click link down below, opt-in, and we'll give you guys access to that. With that said, let me know in the comments down below if you like this as well. We've been covering a lot of books. I've just been curious, like, do you guys want to see the ads and these kind of thing?

I collect a lot of other memorabilia from this time period as well. It's not just the books. Buy stuff from the authors and sometimes there's some really cool stories that you can learn from your business. So if that'd be interesting you if you want to see more artifacts,

more ads, more things like this. Please let me know because it'd be fun for me to share them with you if you're interested. So that's the thing so much. We'll see you guys on the next video.