The Russell Brunson Show - What Orison Swett Marden and Success Magazine Can Teach About Perseverance | #Success - Ep. 62

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I dive into one of the rarest treasures in my collection… The very first issue of Success Magazine from December 1897! And the coolest thing is that the story behind this is insanely inspiring! This was more than just a magazine. It marked the beginning of the personal development movement in America. Its founder, Orison Swett Marden, overcame enormous challenges to publish that first issue, and his story has deeply inspired me during some of my own most difficult seasons in business. Key Highlights: The story behind Success Magazine and its role in shaping the personal development movement The obstacles Orison Swett Marden faced to publish the inaugural issue How Marden’s perseverance gave me perspective and strength in my own entrepreneurial journey A look inside the 1897 issue and its early success principles Why Marden’s mission to change lives still matters today For me, this first issue is a reminder that persistence and belief in a mission can carry you through any challenge. Marden’s story has fueled my determination, and it can inspire you too! Wherever you are and whatever challenges you face, his example proves that one person’s vision can change everything! And, if you’re interested in learning more about what’s inside this first issue of Success Magazine, I’m putting a link below so you can see my notes and thoughts about all the articles and ads in this rare first edition! Get Russell's book notes here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://russellbrunson.com/notes⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Halloween is on Disney Plus. Hello. So you can feel a little fear. What's this? Well. Or a little more fear. I see dead people. Or a lot of fear.

Mom? Or you can get completely terrified. Who's that? Choose wisely. With Halloween on Disney Plus. us. Now, obviously if you want to sell stuff online, you're going to need a good funnel. But if you want a great funnel, then you're going to need to use ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is the number one funnel builder in the world, helping more first-time entrepreneurs to leave their nine to five

and to launch their dream than any other company on earth. ClickFunnels was built for the dreamer and the doer, and you can get a free 14-day trial by going to ClickFunnels.com slash podcast right now. That's ClickFunnels.com slash podcasts. ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world. This is the Russell Brunson show. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Vault. One of my favorite things I've ever found to share with you guys today. This is an issue of Success Magazine, but it's not any issue.

It is the first issue ever. This is one of the most rare things I have. And in my collection, I've actually come across two. So I've actually on two of these, which is kind of crazy. The very first issue ever, Success Magazine was December 1897. Success Magazine was, you think about, like, personal development was not a thing. prior to Success Magazine. There were a couple people who got into personal development

and success and things like that. The founder wrote this magazine, put it out there, and this became the thing that, like, blanketed the country and was the introduction to personal development principles across America. It literally changed the landscape. It changed our country. And it all started with this inaugural issue of Success Magazine.

I've not read the whole thing. Because, like, how expensive and rare this is, I took it out and very carefully was trying to read all the different pieces and stuff. So I read a lot of it. Should I pull it out? You just want to see what it looks like inside? Because it's definitely not like the magazines of today.

Although there are some really cool ads inside, which is always exciting. But this is what it looks like. You can see it right there. Front cover, we got Abraham Lincoln. I'll tell you guys that story here later. And again, it's 10 cents back then. For me, just the art of how they design these is so beautiful.

So if you look at this, again, all the different ads for different products inside. But look at like how intense just the text and the copy and how much stuff they're talking about. So it's pretty intense. to read one of these, it would be equivalent of reading, you know, probably 150, 200 page book. And they're published this every single month. In fact, the first 12 months of success they publish as monthly. And then after that, for the next 52 weeks, they actually published

it as a weekly. And I have been collecting every issue of success from 1897. And right now, I have all but two of the issues. And I'm searching for them everywhere. So if you guys have one, let me know. This right here, this is the article where he goes deeper into Abraham Lincoln calls the stepping stones to the White House. And it's a really cool article. And then the back here, Obviously, you have more of the ads. It's just fun seeing all the ads from back in the day. In fact, a lot of the books I find is from looking at the ads from the way back and they'll find the ads and I'll go on eBay and try to find the thing they're selling.

A lot of times I can find like the book series or the, uh, just the different things that were being sold in the back. It's always fun to try to see if I can find original copies of what was being advertised back in 1897. I'm aware of three copies of this out in the wild and I have two of them. So I don't know exactly it would be about both of these as part of a lot where I was buying somebody's entire library. The first person did know this was the first edition.

And so in the pricing, I spent like $2.5 million buying his entire estate. The price that was listed for this inside of the estate was $100,000 just for this one magazine. The second one though is a fascinating story because one of my friends, Dr. Joe Vitale, if you search my YouTube, we'll see him. I bought his entire library and in his library, there was a whole stack of a whole bunch of success magazines. And when he was selling it to me, he was flipping through and I saw this, I saw the corner. And I was like, wait a minute, like, I'm like, can you take a picture of that moment there?

So he found, took a picture and sent it to me. I was like, he has no idea. is the first edition. And so I didn't tell him until after we closed the deal, he shipped it all to me. And I took a picture. I'm like, did you realize you had a first edition? Success Magazine? He's like, I had no idea.

So this one I got, the second one I got, again, part of buying an entire collection from somebody, but they didn't know the value of the time. So I could sell this right now in the market for $100,000 pretty easily. And there'd be people lined up to buy it, including me. The thing I love most about Success Magazine is actually the story of the founders, named Orson Sweat Martin. Almost nobody knows who he is. It's very rare since I've been talking about this.

I'm like, even the person who owns Success Magazine now, having a conversation. I'm like, do you know about Orson Sweat Martin? He's like, who's that? I'm like, oh, he's the guy who founded the magazine. He didn't know the story behind him. And his story is why I love this magazine so much. It's a story about resilience, a story about success and failure, and it's something that is someday should be made like a blockbuster movie. I'm here to tell you guys the story so you do not forget the legend and the story of Orson Swet Martin. He was a guy, he was a business owner. He was trying a bunch of things. He was buying hotels and trying to start a business. And somewhere along the line, he found an old book

in his attic. And this book, and we'll probably, do a YouTube video on this book in the future because it's a very important one. But it was a book by Samuel Smilis called Self-Help. It was the first ever personal development book ever written over in Europe. Somehow this book had found it into Orson Swet Martin's home. He found this book in the attic. He read it and it changed his life. He just understood personal development and success and all these different principles, right?

And he got so excited that he started thinking about these things and he started writing and he wanted to write his own book. He spent 15 years writing a manuscript, but the 15 years over, it was about 5,000 pages that he had been writing this book and he was so excited to publish it. It was inside of one of the hotels that he owned. And one night, the hotel burned to the ground. And the entire 5,000-page manuscript was gone. They think about most people, what would happen

if adversity hit you like that? Like, you were writing a book for 15 years on Google Docs and then Google crashed, or you lost your Microsoft Word Doc or whatever it's right, you lose, like, what would most people do? They would throw their hands up and like, I'm out. Instead they said, like, the accounts of what happened. He was like literally there in the ashes of this hotel, realizing that his life's work had been destroyed.

And what he did that night is he walked over to the convenience store or whatever. He bought a 25-cent notebook and he tried really quickly to remember like what he had written before and started rewriting this book from memory because he wanted to bring what they call his dream book out to the world. So he spent the next however long rewriting this book and he published it. The book was called Pushing to the Front and he launched it out to the world and it became the number one bestselling personal loan book of all time up to that point. And it's credited like you look at all the presidents of the United States back then. They all read it. they quoted it, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford,

all these guys like, like all the people back then read this book. It wasn't just like some random guy, like it was literally the first personal loan book really published here in America that had a big impact. That was kind of for success. And then after that, shortly after, is when he had this idea like,

how do I get these principles out to the world? And that's when he came up for the idea was for Success Magazine. And so a couple years later, is when he put this whole thing together and he printed the very first issue on December 1897. That's when the very first issue went, went out. And that's when this success thing wasn't

just a book that some people bought, but it became a magazine across the entire country that everybody could actually read and it changed the landscape of America forever. When I first heard that story the first time, I look at so many people in my world, and in my life, myself a lot of times as well, where it's like you hit an obstacle

and the obstacle stops this, right? I mean, I just think about like, I know how much work it was for me to write my books on Google Docs, right? Where it was like, it's not that difficult I can cut and paste. Like back then in the early 1900s, or sorry, late 1800s to write a book

like it's typewriters, it's cutting and pastey's handwritten stuff. the amount of work going into something like that and then to have it gone and just lost like most people would just walk away right but there's something about when someone's got a vision or a dream that's so much bigger than themselves like it doesn't matter what the obstacle it doesn't matter how big it is like you would push through that and again that's where most people fail I think about that a lot of times like I've seen so many people who've come into my world as an entrepreneur or someone who wanted to be an entrepreneur and they're going going to hit a trial and they fail hit a trial and they fail and the ones who are successful realize that there's going to be trials along the way I get so many things after thing after thing after thing after thing right and so I see this what happened to him before he ever had any success and just it hit and it was such a I mean 15 years he spent writing this manuscript and it was gone overnight and instead of what most do people stop he's just like all right let's just keep going to start over from scratch what's fascinating about is this this pattern like followed him throughout the rest of his life right they always say that like you know people that win like winners win right you know how to win

you continue to win and so he's just a good example of a winner so after he launches this magazine think about this he launches magazine it's hugely successful starts growing around the world Yeah, again, 1897 to launches. By 1908, this thing is huge. There's literally millions of people around the country reading it. They moved their offices to downtown New York. They're in a 12-story building. The building's still there.

I haven't seen it yet. I'm going to go to next time in New York. I'm going to find the building. This is a big building, 12-story building. And that's where Success Magazine was being published from. Shipped out there, the publishing, the printing, everything happening here. And they'd shipped this magazine out through the entire world. And it was having a ton of success again in 1908.

And then by 1911, he had brought in some investors and things that happened. And investors had changed the magazine from being personal development to trying to like make it more businessy and all these ups and downs. And by 1911, the magazine actually failed. And by 1912, it was gone, like completely finished. And think about it, he spent the last 12, 13 years of life, publishes his magazine, putting it out there just to have it fail. And on top of that, even though there wasn't social media back then,

there were newspapers and there were all sorts of stuff. And so people, like, I don't know, there's a time when like, people love the hero story of a hero building up and trying to create something. But then people love watching a hero fail. Like you see it all the time. Like, you know, the same people that were just, cheering you as you were growing or the same ones that you fail or like want to laugh at you. So he, this magazine fails.

What happens is all the publishers, all the, all the writers around the country, they all start publishing, literally headlines where success fails and they were so excited to announce the world that success magazine, he's going to be successful, it actually failed. And I look at that, I'm like, I imagine, like, you've been teaching people success principles for 15 years of your life. You're so proud of it and it fails. And instead of like just having this thing, you kind of walk away from and don't want even to notice, like everybody's watching this failure across the country.

in every magazine, it's on the radios, it's like, and everyone's so excited to talk about the fact that his magazine failed, right? Now, again, most people, they'd done that spot. Like, you would have, like, you would have walked away, you would have hid, you would have changed the industry, you would have done anything. But instead, like, he's there.

He's like, I still believe in these principles. Like, yes, we fail, but doesn't mean we're failures, which is where most people end up failing, right? It's like, they say, I'm a failure. He said, this failed, but I'm not a failure. And so for the next few years, Ors went back, and he kept a couple people from the staff from the magazine printing company,

and he started writing books. And if you look at the number of books, he's written probably, I don't know exactly, 30 to 40 other personal development books that are amazing. Some of my favorite books, Orson wrote during this window of time while he was trying to figure out how do I get the magazine back? So he's trying to different things. He's trying to figure stuff out. And fast forward to, so between 1912 and 1917, nothing was published for five years. He's trying to figure this out. And then in 1918, during World War I, he finds an investor who's willing to invest some money to bring success magazine back.

So he gets this investor. He go back and he buys the magazine out of bankruptcy. and he relaunches it five years later, right? And then what's crazy is over the next time, basically from 1918 to 1924, so for the next six years of his life, he starts publishing this magazine, brings it back,

and in the next six years, he gets the subscription to this magazine. More people are subscribed to magazine when he died in 1924 than at the peak prior. I look at that, it's just like one of those like comeback stories that you're just like, this guy who lost everything in the public eye

and everyone was talking about him. Instead of like doing what most of us are doing what most of us are doing and hide and shut down, he came back and like, I'm going to mount a battle plan, how I'm going to win. I'm going to figure out of win because I'm a winner and winner's win, right? Came back, mount of this battle plan, comes back and over the next six years,

builds it bigger than when he had it originally. That's the story of Orson-Swet Martin, like one of my favorite characters in history, but specifically history of like the personal development world, right? During his life, he published over 200 magazines before he passed away and such a testament of like resilience in entrepreneurs, those who really believe in their mission and what they're doing to keep coming out there. I think for me specifically, like I've had ups and downs in my business. I've had the hero story where I'm rising, everyone's cheering for me like, yeah, and it's just like, feels really good.

And you get to the top and then in your top, then everyone wants to tear you down. I felt that part of it as well, right? I felt remounting the new comeback story. And so for me, it just gives me like a blueprint of a human who's gone through that in the public eye and successfully done it throughout its life and gives me excitement and motivation as I'm working back through as I'm working back through. I think for me, one of the main reasons why, like, I fall in love with Orson's Swett Martin, his story is because it's literally the story I've been going through. A decade ago is when we launched the company ClickFunnels, and we were the underdogs, we were fighting against all the companies that all this VC funding and had money and we were like the scrappy young guys who were bootstrapping. We came out and out the gate, we started having success and started growing, right? And it was awesome. Everyone was cheering for us. Like, we were the heroes. Like, it was crazy. Everyone was talking about us. We got PR. We were on TV. Like, every podcast was like fighting to have me on. Like, it was this huge thing. And again, people love the hero's journey, right? And they loved cheering you on during that part. And for me, like, it felt amazing. Like, you know, I I like, this is the greatest ride of my life, right? And I look at ClickFunnels in our story, like the first seven years, that's where we're at.

Like, everything was going perfectly and it was really fun, right? Same thing with Success Magazine. He goes downtown New York. He had this huge 12, 12 story building, right? And Everett's cheering for him. He's successful. And I felt like that was the same spot I was in for the first seven years of ClickFunnels. It's funny because, like, at that point for us, like, we wanted to make a change.

And it was not, this is the hardest thing is it wasn't for me personally. Like, we had an offer for some to buy our company. I would have been, like, insanely rich for the rest of my life. and we decided to turn the money down because we wanted to create something different and better for our audience. Like, that's the part I think was so hard for me. So we spent the next three years,

two or three years of our lives, like tens of millions of dollars, every penny we'd earn dumping back into rebuilding the ClickFun's platform to give this as a gift to our community, to everyone, right? Two years later, we come out and we launch it. It's different, like launching software

the very first time when you have zero customers and you get 10 and 20 and you're fixing bugs long ways, one thing. Second time we launched this, we had 18,000 people sign up the very first week. And so the software was working for us. We've been using it for a year before we let anybody else use it.

But we added 18,000 people overnight. And it was like, it's stress tested everything, right? And things started falling apart. And it was crazy because during this time when we'd create this gift that we were trying to give our audience and we told them, this is this is beta. You still get access to the original click phones. This is other thing.

Like we were so excited. But what happened is like there was this gap and it was like all of a sudden everyone was so excited to like, oh, the new click phone sucks. Like all these different things coming out. We have a lot of competitors who were literally paying people. Like I've seen the contracts. They're literally paying people, like say these things about click funnels.

And they're paying off all these people who had been affiliates of ours. They had been partners with us in the past. Literally writing them checks. We'll pay you $10,000 a month contractually and you have to do. It's insane when you see the actual contracts. But that's what was happening, right? So we have all these people attacking us. And I felt probably a little bit what Orson felt, where you open up any magazine, any radio station,

and the headlines, our success failed. And everyone's so excited. They want to see the hero crash. And for the next three or four years, that's what I dealt with. And it was hard and it was brutal. And during that time, I mean, there are a lot of personal battles. You know, we had families, drama. We had, you know, my business partner and best friend passed away.

It was just like this series of getting beaten down. And it was like the time when like all the people who were cheering my name, I was like, I was like, where are these people all go? Like now they're on the other side. And I think for me it was, I don't know, just, I mean, a dark period and dark time. Man, probably a little less than a year ago. Because part of me was just like, I just want to tap out. Like I was creating this for the same people who are now attacking me.

And it was just like, I don't know how to deal with this. And there was a time where I just wanted to walk away and just be like, this is not worth it. Like, I'm fine. I don't need to do this. I'm not doing this for myself. I was doing it to serve you and you're the same people now who are doing this. And so about a year ago is when I decided it's like, no, like I believe in this. I believe in the mission.

I believe in what we're actually doing. And so we've been remounting our comeback story. And there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes. I'm sure our community has seen it. Funnel Hacking Live this year, we did our last big funnel hacking live. And I did a presentation at the end walking through the last 10 years of ClickFunnels and talking about the trajectory. And since, yeah, we've done a rebrand. You can see the new logo on our shirts,

but we did a rebrand to kind of like refresh everything. It's interesting because Orson also rebranded. There's times when this is called success. And then when he came back, it was called the new success. And that tagline ran for four or five years before it switched back to success. But it was like rebranding, coming back out. A lot of the campaigns, initiatives that we are doing right now are insane. And we're getting market share back.

Like things are growing. Things are happening. And it's cool. So I feel like I'm in the middle of this, right? Like, 1918 is when Orson took this back over and started republishing. I feel like I'm in 1918, maybe 1919, right now. where it's like we're coming back and we're swinging and we're getting market share back and it's fun and it's exciting and again maybe it's going to take me five or six years like to

orson but there will be a time in the near future where what we will accomplish with click funnels be bigger than we ever had before and so for me it's it's a blueprint entrepreneur who went through this just like me in a different time period different era but the same struggles the same heroes journey and now i have a chance to kind of live my version of it so it's always nice when you've had somebody go ahead of you just to give you inspiration and a belief that you can do what you're trying to do. For me, I'm a big fan of modeling. And if I can't find someone to model in a situation or circumstance, it's hard to persevere so nice through the pain. But we can find someone, you're like, okay, that person did it. I can do it. And so

that's why the Orson Sweat Martin story is so important to me. I hope this helps you is you're going through things, right? My guess is you listening right now, you're probably a couple of phases. Maybe you are at the beginning of a hero's journey and you're trying to get the initial inertia and momentum to like to get out there and you're living out your hero's journey right now, right? You heard the call to adventure and you're going on this journey. And so I hope this gives you an inspiration for the first part of the excitement of like creating something new like launching the very first version of your magazine or your funnel or your course

whatever the thing is for you right and the number two of those guys who have have gone that journey right and you're at the top and now you got people who want to see you as a hero fall I hope it gives you some inspiration and motivation and just like the belief that's like what you're doing is worth it and you can succeed you might have to do what Orson did takes take it back for a couple of years like regroup figure things out and then come back again and that's okay I guess what I've had to do I took time to like figure out like what I wanted to do where I wanted to go, what I need to become, like, how we have to change things differently

to be able to be successful. And so I hope you got the value from this video. I went through this magazine and there's, again, so many really cool articles. I pulled out some of my favorite notes, including this, this article with Lincoln. Again, Lincoln was on the cover here. There's a lot of cool stories about Lincoln. Like literally, it's telling the step by step of how he got to the White House and what he did and how he did it.

And so in my notes, I'll have already published the full article of the Lincoln one because that one's so cool and against the cover shot here. And then some of my notes from some of the other articles you guys can read. All you're going to do down in the description, we'll put a link to there. For free, you can go get the notes to the first ever issue of Success Magazine. With that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I cannot wait to see you on the next one.