The Russell Brunson Show - Inside the Master Key System: Charles Haanel on Thought, Destiny, and the Universal Mind | #Success - Ep. 76

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I take you inside my rare book vault to reveal one of the most powerful success courses ever created… The Master Key System by Charles Haanel. This was the course that helped shape Napoleon Hill’s thinking long before Think and Grow Rich and was even lost to history for 70 years!! I discuss how I found some original copies of the course, including one I paid $100,000 for, and share some of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned from any book. You’ll also hear the actual testimonial that Napoleon Hill wrote to Charles Haanel in 1919, crediting this course for a big part of his success. The core message? Your environment doesn’t shape you… Your thoughts about your environment do!  And it all ties back to something Haanel called the Universal Mind, the same thing Napoleon Hill would later call the sixth sense. I break down how this concept works, why it's still relevant, and how to actually apply it in your life. Key Highlights: The one lesson from The Master Key System that changed my entire perspective Why you are the architect of your own destiny Understanding the Universal Mind, and how to tap into it How your subconscious mind connects to God and delivers answers Napoleon Hill’s personal testimonial to Charles Haanel (I read it word-for-word) The role of concentrated thought and why it's more powerful than you think If you’ve ever felt like you’re stuck in your circumstances, this episode is a wake-up call. Your thoughts are building your world whether you realize it or not, and once you understand how to direct them, everything changes. And if you want to get my personal notes from The Master Key System, just click the link in the description and download 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

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ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world. This is the Russell Brunson show. Hey, this is Russell. Welcome back to the vault. Today I'm going to show you guys some insanely cool stuff from one of the pioneers of this industry that almost nobody has ever heard of before, yet he was one who inspired and actually helped so many of the top people, in fact, including Napoleon Hill. I got a testimonial from Napoleon Hill about the course right here that we're going to be

diving deep into. This is the same course, three different publications. The first one, this is the first edition. Master Key System. I spent exactly $1,324.95 on the first edition Master Key Systems, which is pretty cool. But then before the Master Key System was a book set, it was a home study course. This is an original copy of the home study course. What they would do is every single month, they would ship it out. You'd go through the lesson, you filled out, you set it back in, and then you get the next lesson. And so it's almost impossible to find because nobody has all the lessons. You would

fill it out, send it in, and they send you the next one. So you'd only have the last lesson. So I found two complete sets. This one right here, I was able to buy from one of our members at Secrets of Success. One of our members had it. It spent $8,000 to buy this edition. And then this is one other edition I found, which is the most pristine copy. It looks like it's brand new, but this was published in 1916. And I spent $100,000 to acquire this version of the entire home study course.

So these are all of the Master Key systems written by Charles Hanel, who's one of my favorite authors from the New Thought Movement. In a minute, I'm going to show you guys my favorite. The favorite lesson I learned from the Master Key System, which is one of the coolest things ever. And I'm also going to show you Napoleon Hill's actual testimony that he sent to Charles Handel, which is inside of some of these books. But before I want to tell a little bit of the story because you may have heard this before. If you have heard Master Key System, there's some big controversy behind it, okay? So Charles Handel launched the home study version of the Master Key Systems in 1912.

And then four years later, when we came out, the first edition book, and it ran for a long time. I said it changed so many people's lives. From 1933 to 2003, for 70 years, it was outer print, and it disappeared off the face. base of the planet from most part, other than old copies that people were sharing and handing around, but it wasn't in print for that time. And so because there are all these big controversies, in fact, if you Google it, you'll see, there's people that talked about how the church banned this. And that's why it disappeared, like, the churches did not want people finding out about this. There's other stories and folklore that there were business entities

who did not want these, the secrets of the master key system falling in in their competitor's hands. And there's all these different things about it being banned and literally taken offline. And we have no idea which those stories are true or not true, but we do know it was off print for 70 years until 2003 is when somebody found it, found it in the public domain and started reprinting it and bringing it back forward. And in the last little while, there's a lot of really big celebrities. Like one good example is Terry Cruz, who literally quotes that his success came from Charles Handel and the Master Key system. So it's kind of a cool thing that was disappeared for so long that now is back in our world. Like we can read it, we can study it.

And it brings back some really cool philosophies that I think have been lost to, lost the time. Oh, and I'm going to show you actually the ads of how Charles Howell used to sell this in some of these magazines like Nottles. I'll show you that here at the end. I think my favorite principle that came from the whole master key systems. Okay, the master key system is broken up into 24 lessons, right? So each week you get a lesson, ship it back. And all of them, like, they compound and they build on each other. But the very last lesson in the series is my favorite. The title of it is that you are the architect of your own destiny, right? And he talks about here how so many people, they look at the circumstances of their life. They think, like, this is what God gave.

This is the life I have. This is my family. So I was grown up. Like, they think that that is their life. When he's trying to show everyone, it's like, you're literally the architect. You can design whatever it is you want. You can design if you want to be rich, you want to be poor, you want to be an athlete. You have the ability to architect it.

And the way you do that, it all comes back to your thoughts. Like learning how to control your thoughts and how to structure things. You said that your thoughts create your environment. Right. A lot of times we think that the environment we're in is the environment we're stuck in.

You see people who are grown up in poverty and come and become like these, you know, amazing influencers or people like, so it's not the environment you're in. It's the thoughts that create the environment. that you're locked in, you know. And so what happens a lot of times people are in a bad environment. Because of that, they hear bad thoughts all the time.

It's going through their head and so they locks themselves in this prison that's not real, right? These prisons that they're locked themselves aren't actually real. And when you learn that, you're like realizing the environment I'm in is all tied to my thoughts and what's happening here. Then you can break away. You say, okay, how do I want to architect my life? What do I want to believe? What do I need to do to be successful?

What are other people who are successful? What are they doing? And how do I tap into that? And that's one of my favorite lessons from the entire master key system is understanding that and really believing that you are the architect of your life. If you are the architect, you know, what does an architect do? It has a vision for, this is what the building's going to look like. Okay, based on that, you know, I'm going to design, I'm going to map it out,

and you start kind of figuring those things out. Like, that's what you can do as well? Let's come back to say, what's the life that you want, right? Who already has the thing that you desire? Like, what does that look like? And you can find people who've already figured it out, right? People have already built the house that you're trying to build, and you look at that, and from there you can reverse engineer architect your life.

Tony Robbins calls this modeling. Like, if you want to be successful, all you've got to do is find somebody who's already successful and model them, right? And that's what architecting is all about, is finding those things, not defaulting to like, here's the environment that I'm born and therefore I will be this way forever. It's like, no, no, no, my environment is based on my thoughts.

Let me change my thoughts. I can change my environment. I can change my life. The other really interesting thing he talks about in the master key system. He calls it the universal mind. Napoleon Hill used to call it infinite intelligence, right? But basically it's God, it's the universe,

it's this thing. And he talks about, he's like, all of us are tapped into that, right? I believe Charles Handel's beliefs, a lot of people from the early thought movement, they talk about we have our conscious mind in our subconscious and their subconscious minds, what they believe is attached to infinite intelligence

or what he calls the universal mind, right? It's the mind of God across everything and we're all tapped into that. And so it's interesting, you think about for most of us, like if we want to consciously figure something out, you've got your five senses. You can see something, you can smell something, you can taste something, you can hear something,

you can feel something. Those are our five senses. We can get things from those things, right? From the five senses. I can go read a book, I can watch a video, I can listen to something. But if I can get it from those five senses, it's not in my brain.

So how does our brain get all the other ideas and thoughts and everything. And their belief, and his belief specifically, is that there's this one universal mind, our subconscious mind that were all attached into the infinite. We're all attached to God. And so when we understand that, it's like, okay, I'm one with God. Like, if I will sit and I will concentrate.

He talks about concentrated thought. Like, you want to have concentrated thought on something. It's not like you're going to read and find it. You're concentrating your thought to your subconscious mind so God can bring you the answers and hand it to you on a silver platter. And it's true because think about how many of us in our life when we're trying to consciously figure out the problem to something,

We can't figure it out. We can't solve it. We're studying. We're learning. We're checking chat, GPT. We can't figure it out. And then you take a break and you go to the bathroom. You jump in the shower and you're showering.

And five seconds later, the answer pops into your mind. Like, what's just happening? The answers popped my head. Like, where'd that come from? Okay. Well, it came from, again, what he calls the universal mind. It's your subconscious mind that's attached to God. He's one who can give you these ideas that are external from the things that we're

getting from our five senses. And Napoleon Hill, again, he calls it the sixth sense. Like, you're tapping into the sixth sense. That isn't the things that have been put into your brain. these are things that are delivered to you when you need them when you're willing to tap into it. I know it's kind of woo-woo for some of you guys out there

but you can't deny that these things happen to you where you get an idea that that didn't come from anywhere. That didn't come from me. Sometimes I'm on stage speaking in a seminar with 5,000 people and something shows up and start talking. It turns out to be the thing that people need. I'm like, where did that come from?

This is not something I studied or I read or I have a notes on it. It just magically shows up and the way that Charles Handling's had the Master Key Systems explains it is through the universal mind. It's interesting. studying the new thought movement. It's really fascinating. There's different shades of it, right? And what I find the most interesting is like when people started, so the new thought movement

happened between 1880 and like 1920, right? There's all these people who started realizing like, I can think and I can change my life, right? I can think and grow rich. I can think and change my circumstance. I can think and change my environment, right? And they're freaking out about this. And then over here in America you had this, you know, the beginning of like Christianity, really coming and growing. And a lot of times the Christians believe that this stuff was evil and vice and uh but there was this time where in between the two like the christian community and new thought movement kind of bumped into each other and it's fascinating because you read a lot of the authors during this time who were trying to reconcile these two things like wait a minute i believe in god

but these things are happening like how does this work and like is this coming from god is it not coming from god and there's this crossover that happens in the middle and so for me like i really enjoy the crossover where it's like the personal development stuff where you're focusing on thinking in you know your mindset but i believe it's coming from god and i'm obviously christians i believe that it's coming from Christ and those things. But then inside there, there's this whole other section, which is more than metaphysical, which then transitions more to,

you know what we would affectionately call more woo-woo stuff. I like studying those things, but sometimes it goes deeper than I'm willing to believe. And I think everyone, for all of us, it's our shot to figure out what are we actually going to believe or not believe? Because it goes deep into, like, telekinesis and like all sorts of different levels here inside of people's beliefs and thoughts.

For me, I default a lot more towards, you know, understanding the conscious, subconscious mind, using thoughts to rewire our subconscious mind. And I believe God is definitely tied into and part of the whole thing. But I don't tend to go all the way to the purely metaphysical side. I think for me, as I get closer to those things, they get more and more uncomfortable. I'd rather stay closer on the spiritual side. So that's kind of me personally where things fall as I'm studying a lot of the things from the new thought movement. Okay, so what's cool about Charles Handel is he was out there, he wrote this and he wanted to promote it like crazy. And they said that, oh, I think over the

first three or four years, he sold 200,000 copies of the actual Master Key System's bookset. Think about that. Most people don't sell like 20 copies of their book and they've got Facebook, Instagram, all the different tools, right? He's selling this way back and they said, like, how in the world did he sell 200,000 copies of this? Now, in the thought movement, there are a lot of different magazines that kind of popped up, but there's one specifically, and we'll probably go deep into this woman and her writings in the future. But names Elizabeth Town, and she had a magazine called The Nautilus. And this, this would became like literally like the distribution channel of all of this kind of work, these books, these magazines, all these kind of things back in the day.

The Nautilus magazine was, I mean, her subscribership was huge. And so I've been collecting as many editions of this all the way back to the late 1800s, all the way through like 1950, 1960, this magazine's out there. And what's interesting is you read these, you see that this was the core way that people got their message out back then. And so they would come. And so Charles Hanna would come to Elizabeth Town and say, hey, I want to write a free article for your magazine.

So he'd write a free article talking about master keys. And he's like, I want to buy an ad in here talking about Master Kee's key system, okay? You see Napoleon Hill, same thing. Napoleon Hill will write articles about thinking and growing rich, and then he would link in the bio back to buy thinking and grow rights, and then he would pay for ads about thinking grow rich inside of here. So this magazine was the distribution channel. This was what TV was in the 80s, how to get your message out, right? This is what the internet is today to get your message out was Nautilus magazine if you were in the new thought movement. And so inside of here, I literally just grabbed one off the shelf. I'm like,

I'm pretty sure Charles Haddle promoted in here. I grabbed them on this one is from December 1924. you open it up and page number one you got the nautilus news and then boom right there is master key systems and so right here charles hannel is promoting master key systems says the master key is the key with which thousands and tens of thousands are converting loss and to gain fear and to courage despair and to joy hope and to fruition is a concise definite statement of the mighty law that underlies and controls every living thing it is the open sesame to the treasure house of nature by it you may compel conditions by controlling and causing by which the conditions are produced And then it goes on and calls out like inventors, mechanics, economists,

psychotherapists, chemists, the lectures, and da-da-da-da, get a copy of it. It says, send for your free bookment. So basically you send out for a free copy and says, send for a Master Keys booklet, which will be sent without cost or obligation of any kind, and it has an address. So you would watch that, and then he would send out, send me a copy, and then they would ship you out a copy of the book set,

and then you send it back money afterwards. And so that's how it worked. And literally, you see ads for the Master Key System in front of almost every magazine that was published during this time. So inside of Napoleon Hill's Hill Golden Rule Magazine, boom, Charles Hannel is promoting it. Inside of, yeah, basically all the publications back there, almost 100% of time when you open it, you'll see Charles Handel promoting the Master Key system. So kind of exciting. Just the first magazine I grabbed today, literally had it right there on page number one.

And now I want to take you guys to the testimonial. So Napoleon Hill, I'm not sure if he got the home study version. Can you imagine this was Napoleon Hill's copy of it? That would be insane. Maybe it is. I don't know. Napoleon Hill read it or he read the book

but somewhere as he was growing and developed he found this book set he found these lessons, he studied them and this is the actual testimony that he set back to Charles Handel. April 21st, 1919 says Mr. Charles F. Hannell St. Louis, Missouri.

Dear Mr. Handel, you probably know from the editorial in the January issue of Hill's Golden Rule copy in which my secretary sent to you that I began 22 years ago as a coal miner at a dollar a day. I had just been retained by a $10 million dollar corporation as salary of $10,000,200 a year.

for a portion of my time only. It having been agreed that I shall continue as the editor of Hill's golden rule. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. Therefore, I believe I ought to inform you that my present success and the success which has followed my work as president of the Napoleon Hill Institute is due largely to the principles laid down in the master key systems. You are doing a good work by helping people to realize that nothing is impossible of accomplishment which a man can create in his imagination.

Surely my own experience proves this. I shall cooperate with you in getting your course into the hands of the many who are so greatly needed this message. Cordially and Sincerely, Napoleon Hill editor. And one thing is kind of crazy, later in his life, after Charles Handel passed away when Napoleon Hill was in the later years, he actually also wrote a book called The Master Key Systems.

In fact, I think it happened on a shelf. Do you want to see it? If I can find it real quick. So you may wonder, where did Napoleon Hill get the idea for this title? The Master Key to Riches? I'm assuming it came from Mr. Charles Hanel. And check this out. This was a signed copy, September 1948,

To Mary from Napoleon Hill with love. So there's a signed copy of Napoleon Hill's version of Master Key to Riches. So there you go. Definitely inspired him and Charles Handel is the man. If you haven't heard of them yet, I highly recommend reading

the Master Key Systems. Obviously, it's a rare book out there. I did go through the entire book and I got my notes. So if you want to see my best notes, things that I learned the best, my favorite things from the master key systems,

down the description, click on the link, go to the notes page and you can download my notes from the book and get the highlights of the best things from the master key systems.

You can take those ideas, plug them into your head and start applying them instantly inside of your life. It's interesting when I look at these authors, The authors who seem to still be around and still relevant today are the ones who, first off, they were great marketers and advertisers.

They got their message out to a lot of people. When they die, who is the person that takes over their state afterwards? Like one of the most brilliant things Napoleon Hill did is before he passed away, he set the Napoleon Hill Foundation, he set up a president, CEO, all sorts of stuff. So there was like a secession plans when he passed away. With Charles Handel, I don't know the story exactly, but after he died, it stopped, right? There's 70 years where this book was no longer published. There wasn't like a predecessor or a kid or a foundation that was.

taking this and continuing the message to go out there, it just kind of ended. Whereas these other people, the ones who more people are familiar with are the ones where they're able to figure out how to extend their legacy past their life. And unfortunately, it's true, so many authors where they spend their life creating and figuring out and writing these books and then they go out there and they publish them and within a generation, within years, than 10 years, like people forgot about them. And so I think for any of us who are impact-driven entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out the impact, which is for me, it's like, someone once asked me at one of my inner

circle means, like, why are you buying all these old books? And I said, the reason why I'm buying these and republishing, I'm sharing the stories is because the vehicle that I will have to create to extend the lives of these authors are the same vehicle that I will be able to use to extend my life. For me, like, I want my message to continue to go beyond my generation. I die. I mean, another good example is Maxwell Malts. One of the greatest books of all times, cycle cybernetics, right?

And most people have never heard of it. They've been influenced by it, I guarantee, because most of the teachers of today have used his ideas to teach in a frame, but because he's his message, and he sold like 40 million copies of the book in the 60s and no one's heard of him anymore right I think it's because after he passed the family didn't want to do with it and it just it disappeared so um if you are legacy driven like me make sure you're thinking about like how do you how do you make sure that when you end the message doesn't and that's how you live forever