The Russell Brunson Show - (MS) The Strangest Secret, Have You Heard This Story?

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

If you've heard the audio recording from Earl Nightingale called "The Strangest Secret", this is the story behind it; and how it can help you to change the world. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing FunnelHackingLIVE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Air Transat presents two friends traveling in Europe for the first time and feeling some pretty big emotions. This coffee is so good. How do they make it so rich and tasty? Those paintings we saw today weren't prints. They were the actual paintings. I have never seen tomatoes like this. How are they so red? With flight deals starting at just $589, it's time for you to see what Europe has to offer. Don't worry, you can handle it. Visit airTransat.com for details. Conditions apply. AirTransat. Travel moves us. You're listening to Marketing Secrets with your host, Russell Brunson.

What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And oh, oh, oh, do I have a story for you today? Um, man, I'm so excited to tell you it's a story. So a couple precursor things. Um, tomorrow we are doing the official groundbreaking for the Atlas research center, which is crazy. Um, this is like this crazy vision I had two or three years ago. As you guys know, you've heard me talk about it to build this event center library. And, um, now everyone helped donate money towards the cause is all flying in and we're doing a big groundbreaking ceremony we got 50 or 60 people coming tomorrow which is fun and then

we got like a whole handful of cool people coming like joe vitale who i would um i bought his entire library which was man probably half of my library now was Joe Vitale's at one time. And so he's coming and speaking on books, which is going to be really cool. And then also like Don Green, who runs the Point Hill Foundation, is coming. And then Tal Tustfany, and I probably pronounced his last name wrong, but he runs the Ayn Rand Foundation. He's coming out too. So like two of my favorite authors, the heads of their foundation are coming out.

Like, gosh, it's so cool. Anyway, so that doesn't really add to the story other than I'm excited. So that's happening tomorrow and I'm sure you'll hear me talk more about it here on the podcast when it's all said and done. But it's gonna be a really cool, really special day and just grateful for everyone who's buying into this vision

and hopefully give them a really cool experience. So there's number one. Number two is as part of this soon to be launch of Secrets of Success and the whole everything we're doing there, we reached out to the Nightingale Cone Company. Because if you think about this, it's all the books I've been collecting are basically everything on personal development, marketing and sales from like 1850 to 1950, right? And most of those things are in the public domain. So I'm republishing a lot of them right now. They'll be in the members area. It's going to be really cool.

So the books, courses, me teaching, talking about all these principles, like all that stuff is going to be in the members area, which is really exciting. But that was like from 1950 to like 1980s or 90s. Actually, even further. I say 1950s to like the 2000s um there was one company that was like the personal development brand and it was nightingale conant and if you don't know conant it was started by earl nightingale and lloyd conant and it was a business started together and anyway we're working on a deal right now to try to license um some or all of the um the audio programs that they they published for 50 plus years if you'll have

members area as well which is cool so anyway we haven't finalized the deal yet but we're working on it i think anyway they're amazing and i'm really excited i think we're going to be able to to have some really cool things from the nightingale conant library inside the members area which is going to be insanely helpful so you know from the russell brunson library you got everything from 1850 1950 from nightingConant Library, you got like 1950 to 2000. And then post-2000, that's like the Tony Robbins era, right? Tony Robbins, Brendan Bouchard, like the next wave of personal development people. And so anyways, it's just exciting.

So some of the fun things are happening. But I was like, as I started going through all the Nightingale-Conant stuff, I was like, I know who Earl Nightingale is. I know a little bit about him. I've listened to a lot of his stuff and I love it. But I don't know his story. And so I actually, um, found his, his biography and just finished listening to it today actually. And oh my gosh, it was, it was awesome. But there's one chapter in particular, I want to tell you guys the story behind, cause it is like the most fascinating, crazy, cool thing. Like one of the best stories

I've ever heard. And I i never heard it until until i listened to the biography and so i want to share with you guys and i'm sure i'm going to mess up a couple of details so i recommend going to uh to audible and buying the things like earl nightingale on earl nightingale or something like that it's the name of the book it's his biography telling his whole story but there's one chapter the chapter is called the strangest secret and that's what i want to tell you guys the story behind and if you know know who Earl Nightingale is, my guess is you've heard The Strangest Secret. That's his like his trademark program audio. You know, it's like his philosophy on success.

And but the story behind it is it's like the coolest story I've ever heard. I'm not going to lie. It's one of the best ever. So what happened was Earl was a radio host, right? A radio personality. But he loved personal development things. So he would talk about all the things, success, personal development, achievement, thoughts, like all these kind of things, right?

And every week on the show, he would have these things. And he was mildly famous around the country, but, but not like, you know, not, not who he became. And, um, anyway, he, he, um, he was leaving on a sailing tour or something. I don't know if he's gone for a month or two on the sailing tour. And before he left his office assistant was like, Hey, you know, normally we have these Monday meetings or whatever it was, these meetings where we train our sales staff. Since you're going to be gone, would you mind recording something for them that we can you know while you're gone they can listen to to motivate them to do better in sales and things like that and so uh at the time Earl had been like having this you know having this thought or these different thoughts in his head about

something he wanted to create and so he uh he said they said like he woke up at 8 a.m in the morning he sat down for two hours. He wrote this little booklet, and he titled it The Strangest Secret. Then he went into the recording studio, and he clicked record, and he recorded this audio teaching this principle of The Strangest Secret. And it's not super long. I think it's, like, 30 or 40 minutes long. It might be less.

It might be 20 or 25, 30 minutes long. But he recorded this audio on a record. And then they pressed a copy of the record for everyone on the cell staff. I think, I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 of them, right? They recorded the whole thing. And then he handed it out to cell staff and then he took off and he went out of town. And, you know, back then he didn't have cell phones, obviously, so he didn't know what was happening, but he went sailing.

And I can't remember if it was a month or two months, but he was sailing and just kind of disconnected. And while he was gone, this is where it gets crazy so his office assistant uh handles out to the sales people and they all loved it and they're like this is so good and so they started asking for for more copies for their friends and family members so she started like going and you know produced a couple more records hand out for their friends and family and and they you know their friends and family got it they loved it and they started asking for more so she's like do this little side hustle she's like printing these things

handing them out printing them handing them out and then somebody uh sends one to the radio station that um that uh the earl was like the you know the voice of you know whatever he was the main radio host for and um and uh the people in the station listen like this is really really good so what they decided to do which is crazy is they without his permission without asking when they decided to air it live on the radio so they played it live on the radio um during when he would normally be speaking i think he probably told people like hey this is a record you recorded for his his staff and yeah here's something you guys can hear while earl's gone so they played it and people freaked out and then they started calling his office asking for a copy they wanted to copy the vinyl they wanted what so um his assistant was like all scared like Earl's gonna

be so mad like but but I'm doing this and so she decided she's like well if we're gonna do this I'm gonna I'm gonna mark it up a little bit so it makes a profit on so she started charging people for these records and um and so I mean she thought that would discourage them from buying it but instead it got more people wanting it more people so she started printing would discourage them from buying it. But instead, it got more people wanting it and more people. And so she started printing them and shipping them and printing them and shipping them. And it got to the point where her boss is out of the country on a sailboat. She's supposed to be doing office manager stuff. Instead, she's full-time printing and shipping these records out to people.

And so people would come to the office. They would mail in. They'd send checks and money orders through the mail, like all through word of mouth. No advertising, no marketing, not a single ad was played, just people hearing about it from other people. And during like the, I think it was the time while he was sailing the ship, they ended up selling 200,000 copies of this record, which is insane. Once again, no ads, all viral marketing. And so she's about this whole production where she's printing and she's shipping and she's so scared that when Earl comes back, he's going to melt down because she turned this thing into this printing and shipping house. Um, and, uh, the thing starts selling like crazy.

And so fast forward to Earl gets done with his sailing trip. He gets, he gets, um, you know, the boat comes back into the dock, wherever it's and um and we get there there's thousands of newspaper reporters people there and he thought he was going to be under arrest he walked in he's like he's like am i under arrest like what's happening here they're like no you're not under arrest and they said you need to call your assistant so he called the assistant she's just like i'm so sorry i don't know what's happening you know we're selling like literally 200 000 copies of this record and she thinks he's gonna to fire or get super mad at her. Instead, he's like, you know, recognizes the opportunity and he's like, keep doing what you're doing.

And so, um, race is home and this becomes their business printing and shipping these, these records out to people. And what's crazy is it became the first record to go gold, which I don't know if that means a million copies. I'm not sure how that works, but, um, they, they, um, you know, for, for records like, you know, Michael Jackson sells a million copies of those gold or platinum or whatever that looks like. I don't know. But, um, there had never been a record in, in the genre of a spoken word. So it was the first spoken word record ever become a gold record. And what's crazy is that as we were talking to Nightingale Conant, um, Vic Conant, who runs the company now, actually sent us a picture of that record. I saw it.

I was like, that is insane. Anyway, my goal is to see if there's any way I can buy that from him to let him put it in our library because how cool of a story is that? But it was the first thing that went viral. It was the first thing that, word of mouth, it was like this thing that literally changed the world. It was off of this recording he'd created for his sales team and never thought twice about it. And one of the quotes in the book, it said, it said he went sailing as a normal man. And when he came home, he was a millionaire and he didn't even know it. Like how crazy cool is that? Like, Oh, I got chills just saying it again. But when I, uh,

when I was listening to the audio book and they said that, I was just like, what a crazy cool story. So what is the moral and motivation or what what's the moral of this episode of our podcast? I don't really know. A couple things though. Number one is you should all go listen to The Strangest Secret. I'm hoping that someday we'll have it in the members area of Secrets of Success. But if not, if you buy the audiobook and it's listened to, in the appendix of the audiobook, they actually have it in there so you can listen to it. And again, I think it's like 20 or 30 minutes long if i

if i remember right um so go listen to it because it's really cool and one of the core foundational like things in the personal development industry right like so much of what has been developed since then came from this recording you know some people were inspired by it and they went deeper and they created books and courses and seminars and everything. But it was like one of those, um, those pivotal, pivotal things that like shifted, um, shifted the world, shifted society in a similar way to like thinking Grow Rich did when Napoleon Hill's book, we sold, you know, 30, 40 million copies. I get shifted the world.

Um, and this is the same thing. So I think number one is just go and listen to it, finding it and find out for yourself, like what is the strangest secret? Do you even know what it is? If you don't know what it is, you got to find out. Cause I promise you it's, it's simple, but it's so powerful. That's number one. Number two is, um, you never know what things you create are going to be the things that resonate with people. I think so many people are always waiting to like, I don't know. And I do sometimes too.

I'm going to wait to create the most perfect thing ever. And so we're waiting and waiting. We're trying to make the best thing ever versus like, you know, Earl's on the radio every day teaching and giving sermons on success. Ooh, that's a cool name, sermons of success. Like doing these things out there and trying to help, and, uh, trying to help people be more successful. It wasn't until like just randomly, like almost as an afterthought, you know, he sat down

for two hours and wrote what became his finest work and then recorded it and it went viral because of itself. How many times we've done the same thing? We try to engineer the most perfect video to go viral or a podcast episodes to be perfect and it doesn't work. Right. But we do it and do it. And eventually there's like one that hits, um, so many people I know who have gone viral on YouTube or Instagram or whatever.

And it's like, for most of them, they put out a hundred videos and then one hit for some reason. Right. And that was the one that, that became the viral video, um, that built their channel, but it changed their entire life. And so you never know. So it's just like putting stuff out there all the time. Um, there's a principle and I have not read this book yet. So this is me telling the story, like regurgitated from me hearing from somebody else. So I probably tell it wrong. In fact, just Steve Larson told me, I think it's the book war of art, but again, I'm not positive. So don't, don't quote me, but in the, in the story I heard from Steven, which I think was from that book. So that's how many, you know, how many, it's playing phone booths,

so I'm going to mess up the story. But the story from, that I heard Steve tell that was really, really cool was basically that they had these two students in an art class or something and they had 30 days and they said, half the class, you have 30 days trying to make the most perfect art possible, like make something that's going to, you know, be the best. And for the other group, you can make as many variations as you want and the last thing you make will be your art project, right? So like every day,

create something new. And then at the end of it, see which one's better. So I did this over 30 days. And what happened is at the end of 30 days, the people that spent 30 days trying to make something perfect, theirs were way worse than the people who were creating something new every single day for 30 days and eventually made something awesome, right? It was like the iterative process of trying over and over and over and over and over again that created something amazing. Um, and so the principles, you know, I think like watching Earl Nightingale story from the outside and then, you know, the story from the, from the, um, the war of art, I think, and from all the other stuff is just understanding. It's like, it's us producing, you know, putting things out over and over and over

again. And when you do that, that's when you become good enough to create something that will truly go viral. And anyway, it's exciting, especially right now for me. I've been working for almost three years on my next book project. You guys have heard me talk about it a lot. And it's just been this stagnating spot. I haven't been able to figure out how to really take it to the next level, which is why I think a big part of me is buying these books and going on this, you know, you know, this personal development rampage, try to study and learn everything for everybody. Cause I'm, I'm really

just geeking out on trying to try to figure out how to make something's truly amazing. And, um, it's interesting. I decided to partner up with, um, a coauthor on this book and I don't have all the details yet. So I want to announce it. Someone who you would know, and he's written a bunch of really good books. And so this morning, actually, I sent him over kind of my research and all the work I've done at this point. And I think I've done four or five seminars

teaching these principles. And so I sent him a brain dump, like, here's everything. Here's all the stuff I have. I want you to go listen to it all. And it was just kind of cool to see, you know, three years worth of work, like, condensed down to these, three years worth of work, like condensed

down to these maybe 10 hours of me, of audio, video, writings, everything that I gave to him to go through so we can, um, collaborate and start making this book a reality. So anyway, um, just, I'm in the process right now and just makes me think about if I was trying to sit down and write the perfect book, it'd never be perfect. But because I've been three years, like posting writing you know all that kind of stuff is getting better and better and better and I think my goal and the goal this my co-author and I which again as soon as we have finalized contracts I'll tell you guys more of the details about it but um our goal is to sell 10 million copies um which is insane um I'm you know even

a million copies is insane. I think they said like 1% of the books in the world or less than that. I don't even sell a million copies. And right now between my three books, like.com expert in traffic, we're getting close to crossing a million copies combined to those three books. But one book to sell a million copies is crazy. But you guys know, I'm a little, a little competitive, maybe hyper-competitive, but, um, the books that the, the books that, you know, are the big books nowadays sell 10 million copies. So, um, Jordan Peterson's books sold 10 million copies. Um, atomic habits, James clear book, I think sold 15 million copies. And those are the books that, you know, it's crazy. So, um, Michael, our goal, uh, in pursuing

this book is to sell 10 million copies, which would be the equivalent of Earl Nightingale's Strangest Secret. It would be the equivalent of Think and Grow Rich. It would be the equivalent of the greatest selling things of all time. And so that's the vision and the strategy and the mission is to like how do we create a book so good that we can sell 10 million copies? And so that's what we're working on. That's the secret project that will be our, you know, the big project. The goal is to launch the book in about a year from now. So that's where we're at.

So there's Russell's definite purpose that he is running towards right now that I'm excited for and excited to be able to share with you guys someday soon. So anyway, there you go. The reason why this episode is longer than normal is because I'm driving to the airport because Bill Allen, who's one of my inner circle members, who actually my Atlas members, who's the highest level mastermind. And he was one of our he bought one of the two of the million dollar seats and he bought some of the the other seats. Like, anyway, he flew out here and he's a pilot, one of the best pilots in the world. Actually, he's like a fighter pilot. But anyway, I'm sure I'll find in the world, actually. He's not a fighter pilot, but anyway.

I'm sure I'll find out the full story today, but one of the best pilots in the world. He flew out on his own private plane, and he does a podcast where you're actually in the plane during the podcast. I'm driving to the airport. We're jumping in a private plane. We're flying around in circles to do a podcast in the air. That's what I'm doing right now in about 15 minutes from now, which will be awesome. I'm sure that you guys will have a chance to hear that, hopefully. Hopefully, I have a chance to actually see it. Cause it's going to be crazy.

He's got like GoPros, like duct tape to the wings of the plane and a bunch of stuff. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Anyway, I digress. I'm almost the airport. So I'm going to, I'm going to leave you guys with, um, the challenge to go listen to the strangest secret and then start visualizing your own mind, how and when you could create, uh, the thing that will become your finest work. The thing that will be your thing that goes viral, the book that sells 10 million copies, the recording, the podcast, whatever it is. Um, and again, it's not going to come from you trying to make the perfect thing. It's going to come for you publishing a lot to become worthy enough to create the thing that will go viral and change the world. So that's it. I appreciate you all. Thanks for listening. I hope you have a great day.