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.
How many times we've done the same thing. We try to engineer the most perfect video to go viral or a podcast episode it's going to be perfect, and it doesn't work. But we do it and do it and eventually there's one that hits. 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. And that was the one that became the viral video that built their channel and changed their entire life. And so you never know. So it's just putting stuff out there all the time.
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. Man, I'm so excited to tell you guys the story. So a couple precursor things, tomorrow we are doing the official groundbreaking for the Atlas Research Center, which is crazy. This is 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 now everyone helped donate money towards the causes 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 a whole handful of cool people coming, like Joe Vitale, who 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 Don Green who runs the Napoleon Hill Foundation's coming and then Tal Tuscany, and I probably pronounce his last name wrong, but he runs the Ironman Foundation. He's coming out too.
So two of my favorite authors, the heads of their foundation are coming out, that's so cool. Anyway, so that doesn't really add to the story out that I'm excited. So that's happening tomorrow and I'm sure you'll hear be talking more about here on the podcast when it's all said and done, but it's going to be a really cool, really special day and just grateful for everyone who's buying into this vision, hopefully give them a really cool experience. So there's number one and 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 Conant company because if you think about this, so all the books I've been collecting are basically everything on personal development, marketing and sales from 1850 to 1950. And most of those things are in the public domain. So I'm republishing a lot of them right now. They'll be the members area, it's going to be really cool. So the books, courses, me teaching, talking about all these principles, all that stuff's going to be in the members area, which is really exciting.
But that was from 1950 to 1980s or 90s. There actually even further, I say 1950s to the 2000s. There was one company that was the personal of development brand and it was Nightingale Conant. And if you know Nightingale Conant, it was started by Earl Nightingale and Lloyd Conant, and it was a business start together. And anyway, we're working on a deal right now to try to license some or all of the audio programs that they've published for 50 plus years. People 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 have some really cool things from the Nightingale Conant Library, inside the members area, which is going to be insanely helpful.
So from the Russell Brunson Library, you got everything from 1850 to 1950, from the Nightingale Conant Library, you got 1950 to 2000, and then post 2000, that's like the Tony Robbins era, right? Tony Robbins, Brendan Char, like the next wave of personal development people. So anyways, it's just exciting. So many the fun things are happening, but 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 listened to a lot of his stuff and I love it, but I don't know its story. And so I actually found his biography and just finished listening to it today actually. And oh my gosh, it was awesome.
But there's one chapter in particular, I want to tell you guys a story behind because it is the most fascinating, crazy cool thing, one of the best stories I've ever heard, and I'd never heard it 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'd recommend going to Audible and buying the, I think it's like Earl Nightingale on Earl Nightingale or something like that is the name of the book and it says biography, telling his whole story. But there's one chapter and the chapter's called The Strangest Secret and that's one I want to tell you guys the story behind. And if you know who Earl Nightingale is, my guess is you've heard The Strangest Secret. That's his trademark program audio. It's like his philosophy on success. 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, a radio personality, but he loved personal development things, so he would talk about all things, success, personal development, achievement thoughts, how all these kinds of things. And every week on the show he would have these things and he was mildly famous around the country, but not who he became. And anyway, 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, 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 while you're gone, they can listen to motivate them to do better in sales and things like that."
And so at the time, Earl had been having this thought or these different thoughts in his head about something he wanted to create. And so they said he woke up at 8:00 AM in the morning and 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 30 or 40 minutes long or maybe might mean less, maybe 20 or 25, 30 minutes long. But recorded this audio on record and then they pressed a copy of the record for everyone on sales staff. So think, I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 of them. They recorded the whole thing and then he handed out to sales staff and then he took off and he went out of town. And back then 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 handles out to the salespeople and they all loved it and they're like, "This is so good" and so they started asking for more copies for their friends and family members. So she started going and produced a couple more records handout for their friends and family and 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 printing these things and handing them out, printing them, handing them out. And then somebody sends one to the radio station that Earl's like the voice of, whatever he was the main radio host for, and the people in the station listening, "This is really, really good."
So what they decided to do, which is crazy, is without his permission, without asking him, they decided to air it live on the radio. So they played it live on the radio during when he would normally be speaking. And I think he probably told people like, "Hey, this is a record you recorded for 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 a copy of the audio. So his assistant was all scared, "Earl's going to be so mad", but I'm doing this.
And so she decided, she's like, "Well, if we're going to do this, I'm going to mark it up a little bit so he can make some profit on", so she started charging people for these records. And she thought that would discourage them from buying it, but instead it got more people wanting it and more people, and so she started printing him and shipping him and printing him and shipping him. And it got to the point where her bosses out of the country on a sailboat, she's supposed to be doing office manager stuff and instead she's full-time printing and shipping these records out to people. And the people would come to the office, they would mail in, they'd send checks and money orders through the mail all through word of mouth, no advertising, no marketing, not single address play, just people hearing that from other people.
And during, I think it was the time while he was sail 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 when she's printing and she's shipping and she's so scared of Earl comes back, he's going to melt down because she turned this thing into this printing and shipping house. And the thing starts selling crazy. And so fast-forward to Earl got done his selling trip, the boat comes back into the dock wherever it's at, and we gets 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, "Am I under arrest? What's happening here?" And they're like, "No, you're not under arrest." And they said, "You need to call your assistant." So he called the assistant and she's just like, "I'm so sorry. I don't know what's happening. We're selling literally 200,000 copies of this record".
And she thinks he's going to fire or get super mad at her, instead he recognizes the opportunity and he's like, "Keep doing what you're doing." And so race is home and this becomes their business, printing and shipping these records out to people. And what's crazy is it became the first record to gold, which I don't know if that means a million copies, I'm not sure how that works. But for records, Michael Jackson sells a million copies, goes gold or platinum or whatever that looks like, I don't know. But there had never been a record in the genre of a spoken word. So it was the first spoken word record ever become a gold record. What's crazy is, as we were talking Nightingale Conant. Vic Conant who runs the company now actually sends 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. And 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 he went sailing as a normal man and when he came home he was a millionaire and he didn't even know it. How crazy cool is that? Like, oh, I got chills just saying it again. But when I was listening to the audiobook and they said that, I was just like, what a crazy cool story.
So what is the moral and the motivation or what's the moral of this episode of our podcast? I don't really know. A couple of 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 that 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 20 or 30 minutes long if I remember. So go listen to it because it's really, really cool. And one of the core foundational things in the personal development industry, so much of what has been developed since then came from this recording. Some people were inspired by it and they went deeper and they created books and courses and seminars and everything. But it was one of those pivotal things that shifted the world, shifted society in similar way to Think And Grow Rich did, Napoleon Hill's book, they sold 30, 40 million copies. It shifted the world. And this is the same thing.
So I think number one is just go and listening to it, finding it, find out for yourself 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 because I promise you it's simple, but it's so powerful, that's number one.
Number two is you never know what things you crate are going to be the things that resonate with people. I think so many people are always waiting to, 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, we're waiting, we're trying, and we're trying to make the best thing ever, versus it rolls on the radio every day teaching and giving sermons on success. And ooh, that's a cool name, Sermons of Success, doing these things out there and trying to help people be more successful. It wasn't until just randomly, almost as an afterthought, 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 episode it's going to be perfect, and it doesn't work. But we do it and do it and eventually there's one that hits. 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. And that was the one that became the viral video that built their channel and changed their entire life. And so you never know. So it's just putting stuff out there all the time.
There's a principle, and I have not read this book yet, so this is me telling the story, regurgitating me hearing from somebody else, so I'll probably tell it wrong. In fact, Steve Larson told him to me, and I think it's the book War of Art, but again, I'm not positive so don't quote me, but in the story I heard from Steve, which I think was in that book, so that's how many it's playing phone booth. 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 a half the class, you have 30 days trying to make the most perfect art possible, make something that's going to be the best. And if the other group you can make as many variations as you want and then the last thing you make will be your art project. So every day create something new and then the end of it, see which ones better. So they 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. It was like they iterated a process of trying over and over and over and over and over again that created something amazing.
And so the principles, I think watching Earl Nightingale's story from the outside and then this story from the War of Art, I think, and from all the other stuff is just understanding it's like it's us producing, putting things out over and over and over again. When you do that, that's where 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 to the next level, which is why I think a big part of me is buying these books and going on this personal development rampage, trying to study and learn everything for everybody because I'm really just geeking out on trying to figure out how to make something truly amazing.
And it's interesting, I decided to partner up with a co-author on this book and I don't have all the details yet, so I won't 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 three years worth of work 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 collaborate and start making this book a reality.
So anyway, just I'm in the process right now and just makes me think about if I was trying to sit down and write with the perfect book, it'd never be perfect. But because I've been three years creating, posting, writing, all that kind of stuff is getting better and better and better. And I think my goal and the goal, my co-author and I, which again, as soon as we have finalized contracts, we'll tell you guys more of the details about it, but our goal to sell 10 million copies, which is insane, even a million copies is insane. I think they said 1% of the books in the world or less than that, I don't know, even sell a million copies. And right now between my three books like Dotcom, Expert and Traffic, we're getting close to crossing a million copies combined those three books. But one book sell a million copies is crazy.
But you guys know I'm a little competitive, maybe hyper-competitive, but the books that, the big books nowadays sell 10 million copies. So Jordan Peterson's book sold 10 million copies. Atomic Habits, James Clear book I think sold 15 million copies. And those are the books that it's crazy. So our goal in pursuing this book is to sell 10 million copies, which would be the equivalent of Earl Nightingale's Strangest Secret, be the equivalent of Think and Grow Rich, 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 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, 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 Russel's definite purpose that he is running towards right now and 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's longer than normal is because I'm driving to the airport because Bill Allen, who's one of my inner circle members who actually one of my Atlas members, he's the highest level mastermind and he is one of our, he bought one of the two of the million dollar seats and he bought some of 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 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. And he flew under his own private plane and he does a podcast where we're actually in the plane during the podcast. So I'm driving the airport, we're jumping a private plane and flying around in circles to do a podcast in the air.
So that's what I'm doing right now in about 15 minutes from now, which would be awesome. So I'm sure that you guys will have a chance to hear that hopefully, but hopefully have a chance to actually see it because it's going to be crazy. He's got like GoPro's 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 to the airport I'm going to leave you guys with the challenge to go listen to the Strangest Secret and then start visualizing your own mind how and when you could create the thing that'll become your finest work. The thing that'll be your thing that goes viral, the book that sells 10 million copies, the recording, the podcast, whatever it is. And again, it's not going to come for 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'll go viral and change the world. So that said, I appreciate you all. Thanks for listening and hope you have a great day. Talk soon.
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