Mastering Entrepreneurship: Napoleon Hill’s 10 Timeless Lessons
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Hey, what's up everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And I got such a cool episode for you. As you may or may not know, last week between Funnel Hacking Live and the 100 Sales and 100 Day Challenge, I had a week off and I was like, what do I do for my week off? And what normal people do is they go to Hawaii or they take a vacation or whatever.

I was like, I want to go to Wise, Virginia, to the home of Napoleon Hill. And I want to sit there and read old boxes or open old boxes, go through the storage units of his old stuff, sort through the archives and final manuscripts and read them and just hang out for a couple of days.

My wife thought I was so weird, but that's what I did. So we flew out to Wise, Virginia and I spent three days going through the archives and just had so much fun, like reading his books and studying his life and just finding, you know, stuff that's never been published before. And his old artifacts, like his, his glasses, his, he just, just, it was, it was really special.

I was joking because they let me keep the key to the foundation while they left. So all night, it was just me and one of our dudes who was kind of filming some stuff with me. We were there in the foundation all night, just hanging out, reading, studying. And I was joking that I was hanging out with the Pulling Hills ghost all night. And it was really, really fun. But then on Saturday of that week, we actually had a mastermind group where all of our top 10 affiliates for the Think and Grow Rich Challenge flew out and we spent a day masterminding. It was really cool. And then on Saturday of that week, we actually had a mastermind group where all of our top 10 affiliates for the Think and Grow Rich Challenge flew out and we spent a day masterminding. It was really cool. And then on Saturday of that week, we actually had a mastermind group where all of our top 10 affiliates for the Think and Grow Rich Challenge flew out and we spent a day masterminding.

And to kick off the mastermind, I wanted to do a presentation. And that morning I woke up, I was like, what should I talk about? What should I talk about? And obviously, you know, I talk a lot about Napoleon Hill and his principles and success principles and all kinds of stuff, which is fun. But I thought like,

I was looking at him just through the lens of like Napoleon Hill as an entrepreneur, right? Like what did he do? How did he think? Like what were the different things? And as I was sitting down, I wrote down 10 different things that actually made Napoleon Hill an amazing entrepreneur and then related it back to what we need to be doing, what we should be doing in our businesses to get similar results to Napoleon Hill. And that's kind of where this whole presentation came from. So anyway, like I said, it was a, just a, anyway, it was the end of a really cool week and it was a really cool session to kind of walk through, um,

Yeah, Napoleon Hill is an entrepreneur, which is a different way I think anyone's ever looked about it, looked at what he does and talked about what he does. And so that's what this episode is. I hope you guys enjoy it. I hope you love it. I hope you get a lot of value from it. This is one of my most exciting episodes to date, and I hope you guys enjoy it. Thanks so much. And with that said, I'm going to push you guys over to Wise, Virginia to learn about Napoleon Hill as an entrepreneur.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. What's up, everybody? I'm Russell Brunson. So great to meet you all. I'm from Boise, Idaho.

I love funnels and old books, Napoleon Hill and personal development. Anyway, I'm excited. First off, thanks you guys all for being our amazing affiliates. We launched this new company and brand about a year ago.

And this is our second meetup with the top 10. The first one we had a chance to go to Chicago and go to the Nightingale Conan offices with Vic and everyone there. And it was fun. We had a meeting just like this and we got to talk about Earl Nightingale and his impact. And it was fun because leading up to that I had a chance to go and read everything I could find on Earl. And we were telling stories about him and the strangest secret and all sorts of stuff. And it was just a really cool, magical, I thought, event for those who were there.

And this is number two. And we thought, you know, next time we do a Philip Mastermind, we should go to Wise Virginia and go talk about Napoleon Hill. And so anyway, so we're glad to have you guys all here for it. And it's been fun for me. I came a couple of days early. We're in the middle in our company where I can event season right now. So we had like five events in a row. And then I had like this little tiny week in the middle where I had a break. And then we had like five more events in a row. And so I told my wife, I was like, hey, I want to have a vacation from all these events. I'm going to fly to Wise Virginia and go lock myself up.

in some storage units looking at old books and then throw a mastermind event at the end of the week because, you know...

as long as we're hanging out, we should have something out of an event. And she's like, you have the weirdest idea of like relaxation and fun. Um, but it was amazing. So I had a chance to come out here the last couple of days and, um, Don was so great. He let me have the key to the foundation and we were there like all night, early mornings, looking at books and manuscripts and going through the drawers and finding all sorts of stuff. And it was just really a magical, I don't know, magical, uh, time for me just to read and study and like find out different ideas about a point Hill and just kind of prepare for stuff I want to share with you guys today. And

And I think initially my thought was I was going to come and talk about some of Napoleon's principles and things like that, but...

As I was getting closer and closer, and this morning when I woke up, I was like, I don't think that's the right message for this audience. I was like, I think it would be more fun is looking at the lens of Napoleon Hill as an entrepreneur like us. Like, what are the things he was doing? Because we talk a lot about his success principles, but he's also an amazing entrepreneur and salesperson. And so I started this morning, got up, I was listening, like, what are all the things he did in the order and, like, from his timeline, what he was doing and then how it relates to us. And, like, I got so excited. So I'm going to talk about that today if you guys are cool with that because –

I geeked out. I'm a little nervous because JB Hill's here, and hopefully he doesn't fact-check me on too many things. If I'm wrong, just be like, nah, and we'll just do the fact-checking thing. But I think I'm pretty close on most of the details. But that's kind of the game plan, I thought, and I'll talk for who knows how long, and then we'll go over to the archives and have some fun. So again, this is my first time talking about this. I have no idea. This could be 10 minutes or it could be like four hours. So we'll just go until we're done, if that's all right.

So, yeah, I titled this, like, Napoleon Hill is an entrepreneur. And I want to start, I think most of you have probably heard this story before, but, and I've read about it in different places, it's kind of told different ways, but the one version I found this morning to kind of read, talk about this is, Napoleon Hill was working for a magazine back in the day, the Bob Taylor, right? Bob Taylor. Actually, I found a whole bunch of, I have a whole stack of Bob Taylor magazines from way back then, so...

super nerdy, but you know, um, anyway, so he's working for this magazine. He gets this, uh, he gets an assignment to go interview Andrew Carnegie. Um, and so he goes to Andrew Carnegie and I think it was supposed to be a couple hour meeting and it turned out to be like a three day, um, thing where every single day was going through. And so, um, and I'll talk about each day. He kind of covered a different thing that he learned from, from Carnegie, but the end of the three days was over. Um, basically, uh, Carnegie came to, to Palm Hill and was like, Hey, um,

What you should do is you should go and spend, he's like, I want to give you a commission to go and write the very first ever philosophy on personal achievement.

And, um, and he asked Paul Hill, he said, basically this was going to do, he said for the next 20 years of your life, if you follow this commission, you're going to be severely underpaid. And then eventually you'll become super wealthy and it'll, it'll change everything. It'll change the world. Um, are you willing to do this? And Napoleon sat there for exactly according to this, this version of the story for 29 seconds. And he's like, yes, I'm in, I'll do it. And then Carnegie pulls a stopwatch out and he's like 29 seconds.

He's like, I've given this commission to dozens of other people before, and nobody was able to make a decision within 60 seconds. If you would have gone past 60 seconds, I would not have given you the commission. But because you did it and you were decisive, I'm going to give you the commission. This is your job to go and spend the next 20 years of your life creating the first philosophy on personal achievement. And then afterwards he told, in the version I was reading this morning, Napoleon Hill is like,

He was all excited. And then Carnegie's like, and by the way, I'm not going to pay you for this. This is like your volunteer work. And he's like, wait, the richest man in the world. You're not going to pay me anything. You want me to spend 20 years doing this? And that was kind of the thing. And so that was the commission he got. And from that, he went out there and started interviewing all sorts of people and interviewed, you know, Henry Ford and interviewed Alexander Graham Bell and like all the most famous people that we know nowadays who were like the titans of all the industries. Like he had a chance to interview these people and put together what became

Um, this philosophy on achievement. So that is, um, I share that story for two reasons. Number one, for those who haven't heard it, that's kind of how this whole thing got kicked off. But number two, as I was listening out, like Napoleon Hill's an entrepreneur is fascinating. When you read almost any book, lecture, paper, manuscript, anything, he always starts by retelling that story.

And so my first note here for Napoleon Hill's entrepreneurs, very first thing is he has an origin story and he shares it over and over and over and over and over again. Okay. All of you guys in your businesses, we all have an origin story, right? How many guys have heard me tell my potato gun origin story more than once? Yeah. I don't know about you guys, but if I have to tell a potato gun story one more time, I will like, I want to die. I am tired of hearing it every time. I'm like, Oh no. But you tell it over, right? I'm sure for Napoleon Hill, he's probably like, Oh, the Carnegie story. Okay.

Let me explain this because it sets up everything else, right? But like number one thing that all of us entrepreneurs have to have is an origin story. And we have to be relentless and tireless in telling our story over and over and over again, even though we are so tired of it. Because every single day there's a new segment and new group of people who are coming into your world. If you're starting at like, you know, Napoleon was like, hey, point number 17, principle number 17. And like they have no context of it that nobody cares about.

about the thing you're actually teaching. Right. So, um, it's so valuable because like you hear the context of it and the Carnegie story and all the things like that's, that's step number one. Right. And so, um, of my, I think I have, I've got 10 steps, right? So step number one is having an origin story and being willing to share it, um, as often as possible in everything you do. Um, so that's number one. Okay. Number two thing

One of the manuscripts I found I had a chance to read... A lot of you guys know about the Hand of Destiny book that we had a chance to republish. But there's a second... Like, part two of that book, there's a book called The Will of Fortune. So when you go over there, you guys will see it. I was kind of freaking out because I'm like, what's The Will of Fortune? This is before, like, Vanna White and everything. So just...

Yeah. He's so, his naming of books and things, anyway, it's some of the best ever, but it's called Will of Fortune. And so I was really excited. So I spent like, I don't know, Matt was filming me where Matt's at, was filming me reading it for like, I don't know, eight hours. I was just like reading the entire thing. Right. Um, and

And it was cool because in there, again, first off, he retold the Carnegie story, which is kind of cool. And every time he tells a little differently, there's different details or facts or things he brings in, which is probably similar with all you guys telling your stories, especially if you've told the same story a thousand times. But he's telling the Carnegie story. And in this version he told, it was really cool. He said the very first day was with Carnegie. Again, it was supposed to be a couple-hour meeting. He spent the entire day with him. He said during that day, day number one, the thing that Carnegie impressed upon me the most became the first –

the first part of the laws of success. Um, and it was the mastermind principle, right? And he talked about how, when he wanted to build the, you know, Carnegie steel and everything that he didn't have the money or the resources or anything. So the first thing he did was give, get the mastermind, the people who are going to bring the money in the talent, the expertise, and he like built this mastermind group, right? He spent the whole day talking about the power of the mastermind.

And then Napoleon Hill in this version of the book, he was talking about how he didn't have the resources to pull together this mastermind. So what he started doing is creating his, what do you call it, his invisible council, his invisible mastermind or something, where he's like, well, who are the people I would want to talk to? Who are the people, if I had them here? And he had all these different...

people that you know that he looked up to who had passed away and he had this invisible mastermind and so what he would do is he would like sit down there and he'd think and he like put himself a spot where he could like ask questions and then wait for answers from lincoln and from emerson and from all these people that he looked up to um to get these ideas coming through he said when you sit there long enough like these thoughts to start appearing and start showing up

And so that whole first part of the day was all about creating the mastermind principle. Then day number two, uh, he met with Carnegie day number two to go back to the next interviews. And he said, he said on this day, uh, he said, uh, Carnegie introduced me to the twin sister of the mastermind principle. If one place ever heard him call it the twin sister, maybe somewhere else. I thought it was kind of cool. The twin sister of the mastermind principle, which is a principle of a definite purpose. And he talked about that, right? Having a definite purpose and like being, knowing exactly what you want and what you're going to achieve and what you're going to go after and get.

Oh, I should have brought it.

Um, yesterday, two years ago, they, uh, uh, Dave gave me a photocopy of Don Green's definite purpose that he had when he took over the foundation. It was like two page thing walking through like his definite, it was, ah, I wish I would have brought that. Maybe we'll see if we get a copy, but it was really cool seeing like, here's what Don Green said. His definite purpose was when he took over the foundation and now looking however many 20, 30 years later and you seeing like, wow, he actually accomplished this and so much more, but it was possible because he had the definite purpose. Right. And you guys, if you've been in my seminars, I talk about definite purpose now every time I do anything. And, um,

And I talk about how like in my personal life, like when I was growing up, I was a wrestler. I started wrestling practice, but I didn't have a definite purpose initially. I would show up and I would just go to practice and I would do the things that everyone was doing. The coach told us to do something, I do it. And then we go home. And I remember feeling like I was just, it was just, I was in my head. I was pictures like just circular.

And nowadays, after reading Out With the Devil, it talks about hypnotic rhythm. I was picturing hypnotic rhythm like this thing. And I remember at that period of my life, I was doing the motions, but I wasn't going anywhere. And it wasn't until my freshman year, one of the kids on my high school was in the state finals. I remember going to the state tournament with my dad, and we were watching the finals. And this guy, Matt Woods, he won the state title. The ref raises his hand afterwards, and I got this feeling in my – I was just like –

Oh, like that's, that's the thing I want. Like more than anything in my life. I want that thing. Like that's like, I could touch, I could see it. And as soon as I had a definite purpose, like I want to be state champ, just like he was, it shifted for me being in this like circular motion, just like doing the motion. So I also was like there and it put me into, into momentum, into a direction and it changed everything for me. Right. And it's similar to what he talked about here. We're just like picking the definite purpose and having those things. And it was funny. This year's funnel hacking live, uh,

I did a talk talking about definite purpose. And in the quote, though, Napoleon Hill, he says, I'm not having verbatim off top of my head. He says, you basically have to pick a definite purpose. And then in the quote, the second half of the quote says, and you must have a burning desire to possess it. And so for Locking Live, I spent more time this time talking about the burning desire because I've been talking about purpose. It's like picking a purpose, but purpose.

A lot of people aren't, they don't have the burning desire. And I was thinking about in wrestling for me, like as soon as I shifted from this like hypnotic rhythm of just doing the motions, like having a definite purpose, like my desire became insane. Like I was so obsessed with, I would sit there in class all day long, my teacher was talking and I'd be like drawing wrestling pictures. I'm thinking about things, picture my goals and who am I going to do? Like how, what, like what's my workout tonight going to be? And like, and it was like all encompassing. I couldn't think about anything else except for like

Like it was the closest I can think of a burning desire ever had. It's just like, that was all that would like run through my head all the time. Like I want this so bad and everything else was an annoyance. Going to sleep was annoying. Going to class was annoying. Talking to my friends, watching TV, everything's annoying. If it wasn't had to do with this, this purpose I wanted.

And that's the thing a lot of people miss is maybe they do pick a purpose. Like, oh, I'm going to lose, I want to lose 12 pounds by January 1st, but they don't have the burning desire of just like the obsession. And it's like, how do you create that obsession for people? Anyway, so that was day number two, the Carnegie spell with them all talking about definite purpose. Again, call it a twin sister of the mastermind principle. So step number one was figuring out the mastermind. Step number two is then having a definite purpose of what you're achieving as a mastermind group. And then day number three, he said, day number three, he focused on the habit of profiting from your failures.

Um, and there were so many cool things in, um, actually I took some notes on it. Can I share two or three cool things from will fortune that I thought were really cool. So we'll force you to talk a lot about this principle of, um, uh, profiting from your failures. And one of the things he said, uh,

He says, success and failure often hinge upon a person's interpretation of the obstacles he encounters, whether he accepts them as a stumbling block or a stepping stone. It's permanent failure or merely a mere temporary defeat. So failure is that we can look at it two ways. It's like, oh, this is a stumbling block that knocked me down, or it's a stepping stone to the next thing, right? Which comes back to one of the core quotes from Napoleon Hill, right? Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage, right? So every failure you have...

brings a seed with it and i was reading this i started thinking about probably what i thought what was my biggest business failure which was man this is probably now 14 15 years ago um i built a business it was growing we had about 100 employees at the time i thought like we're on top of the world that we were invincible and then 2008 hit and we were still doing awesome i was like yeah we beat the recession like we're geniuses and we thought we were so smart and then two years later like it somehow magically caught up to us and we got destroyed and it was it was

man, probably the darkest, most painful time of my life. Cause I thought we were invincible. I thought that, you know, I don't know. I think my ego got big, like all the different things. Right. And overnight I had to lay off like 90 some odd people, which is hard when, especially when you have your friends and your family members working for, you know, their kids, you know, everybody. And it was just like,

It was hard. I'd let people go. And then I had IRS coming after us for back taxes we hadn't paid, that I didn't know we hadn't paid. And then we had the landlord in our big building coming after us, suing me because we had to leave and we still owed two and a half years on our lease. Everything was falling around me. I didn't know how to do it. And I remember just thinking, this is the biggest failure. And it was hard personally. My identity took a huge hit. Anyway, it was embarrassing.

I don't know, just all the things. Every penny I'd made up at that point disappeared in weeks. Like, just to try to keep things open and shift things around. And I remember, you know, moving out of the office, moving to this little tiny office, having four or five people working for me, still not knowing how I'm going to afford to even pay these guys. And we're trying to hustle and trying thing after thing after thing. And again, it was like this...

this failure, right? But as Napoleon Hill says, like every failure comes with the seed of equivalent advantage. And what's crazy now, it's always easier to look back in hindsight and see it. But in the moment, like I had no idea, but in hindsight, it's like, because that whole thing collapsed, we had to get a spot where we were humble and tried to figure out what we were going to do and what's the next step. Right. And, uh, in that, in that process took us about four years to get back to

on solid ground where we paid off the IRS and weren't failing and stuff. But in that process is when, um, I met a guy and the guy that I met in this process was a programmer from Atlanta, Georgia, um, who basically he'd, he'd created a website like five years earlier. He's, he's a genius, created a website, set up online, and then he retired and it was just making money,

He's like, again, he's smarter than all of us combined. Like smartest guy ever made. He's like, he just built a software that just made a site that made money and he's retired and left. And so for four or five years, it was just, he was on permanent retirement as a 22 year old kid while the site was making the money. And somehow I sent an email out looking for a partner on a project and he responded back. And, um, and in this like failure, like that was the seed that I didn't know was there. I didn't know. I know it wasn't for the failure. I never would have met him.

He came into my world. We started working together for two or three years on projects and I project after project didn't really work, failed, mostly failed. It was a little success, but nothing, you know, and just like over and over and over again. And in that, in that journey, um, that relationship and that partnership became, uh, what eventually was ClickFunnels. Todd became my co-founder of ClickFunnels. He built the software. We launched it, uh, man, 10 years ago, last,

two weeks ago. Yeah, it's our 10-year birthday. We launched ClickFunnels and it went from zero to we just passed a billion dollars in sales in a decade and it was like this one thing, yeah.

It's crazy, right? It was like, it was like, if it wasn't for that failure and that seed, then it wouldn't like nothing would happen. What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. I've got something really cool for you today from my friend Taylor Wells. And Taylor spoke at our last funnel hacking live because I wanted him to share a really cool concept about what he calls the revolving pricing method. And today he decided to sponsor the podcast to give you guys more access to this super cool strategy that you are going to love. It's something we've been implementing into our high-end coaching program as well. And it is amazing, but to kind of give you some context, um,

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Hey, this is Russell Brunson. And I want to jump in really quick to share with you a new assessment I found out that is insanely cool. You guys know I'm obsessed with personality profiles and assessments, but this one is different because not only does it help you understand yourself, but more importantly, especially for us who are entrepreneurs, it helps us understand our employees, our teams, and get people sitting on the right seats in the bus so they can get more stuff done.

I just had a chance to interview Patrick Lanchoni talking specifically about this new assessment they created called Working Genius. And the Working Genius is awesome. Like this test, I had actually blocked out an hour to take it because I was so excited for the new assessment. And it only took me like 10 minutes or less to get it done. Yet, even though it takes only 10 minutes, like you can actually apply this immediately. I took it for myself. I had my team take it.

And what's cool about it is from there, we figured out exactly what people's working geniuses are. And that's important because if you're building a team or a company, you got to figure out, make sure that you have first off the right people, but make sure the right people are sitting in the right seats on the bus. And this is what this assessment will teach you how to do. Now, normally this assessment, you can go to workinggenius.com and there's two G's in the middle, workinggenius.com, but I got you a 20% discount on

on the assessment, which is only $25. So don't stress. It's not an expensive test at all. But you get a 20% discount off when you put in the keyword secrets at checkout. So go to workinggenius.com. Again, two Gs, working genius, two Gs in the middle, workinggenius.com. And then use promo code secrets, S-E-C-R-E-T-S at checkout. You get 25% off. But then go take the test. Again, it takes you 10 minutes.

But even in a 10 minute session, you will get something that is so insanely valuable to help you understand yourself, to make sure you're working in a spot that's gonna give you the most joy, number one. But then number two, it's gonna make sure that you are with your teams, getting them in the right seats as well. So anyway, I love this assessment. Go check it out at workinggenius.com and enter the promo code secrets for 20% discount. Take this test for yourself and for your team. And I promise you, it'll change the working dynamics amongst everybody and help your company to grow. So anyway, it's really fascinating.

One of the, I've shared this on like three calls so far because of my team. I was reading it when we had our morning call. Like, look what I just found. I freaked out. They all read it. So I'm going to share it because it's like just a cool, cool thing. So, excuse me, this is talking again about, uh, about failure and like looking at failure correctly and stuff like that.

Um, so it says life is just one continuous series of opening and closing doors. And if we make life a success, we must become proficient at both the closing and the opening of doors. The successful first person firmly and definitely closes behind him the doors to every person, every thought and every experience which causes him annoyance or failure. The unsuccessful person leaves open doors behind him, uh, the door to every experience he's had and to every person who has damaged him and the result that he makes is

The same. Oh, and the result is he makes the same mistake over and over and permits the same enemy to sneak in by the door and defeat him at will. Successful people do two things. They do them definitely. And immediately when the need arises, they close behind them, the doors to all negative people and influences, including the stray negative thoughts, which slip into one's mind uninvited. And they fasten those doors so tightly. They are free to turn their attention ahead to the head of them.

where they have a free hand to open the door of opportunity as they come to them. You see that a successful person must be a good door closer as well as a good door opener. The failure either leaves all the doors open behind him, or in extreme cases, the habitual failure, he actually stands with his foot in the opening of a door so not to even chance or luck can close the door behind him. Of course, he can't open the doors of opportunity because he's too busy holding open the doors of failure to which he has just passed. I thought that was so cool. I just...

I think a lot of times we're looking for the doors of opportunity, but we're not closing these things behind us, right? And it's like every person, he talks about, this is why we talk about burning bridges. Sometimes you have to burn relationships and things to be able to continue to move forward. Closing doors to negative thoughts about ourselves or other things, learning how to close those doors so you can have the opportunity to go through the open doors. Anyway.

that's the fun stuff I was geeking out at three in the morning. So, um, okay. So those are the three things. So he said, uh, after he spent the three days with Andrew Carnegie said it was, it became the nucleus for what became the laws of success. And there were three principles. Day one, he learned a mastermind principle. Day two, but his definite purpose day three was a principle of the habit of profiting from failures. And so, um, he took those things and it was the very beginning of his framework. Okay. He was going to teach and he went there and then Carnegie introduced the whole bunch of other people and said, go interview all these people. And it was cool. Cause in, um,

in will fortune, he was talking about, okay, I went and I met, uh, I met so-and-so and he's like, from this, this experience, he's like, I met this person. I realized why they're successful. The reason why they're successful is because they had a pleasing personality. And I noticed that that was common influence everybody. So then I added this piece to my framework. Right. And then he was like, I met the next person. And like this person, uh, they had this, this unique thing that they were doing that was different. Anybody else? And I realized that that was, uh, that was across all these successful people. That became part of my framework. And so when he left Carnegie, he had three, three steps in his framework, uh,

And they started gathering these things and gathering these things. So eventually, the first version of Law of Success had 15... 15? Yes, okay.

I get confused with 15 and 17. Anyway, they had 15 principles, and that became his core framework, right? And so step number two here in Napoleon Hill's Entrepreneur is after you have your origin story, step number two is you're building your frameworks, right? You're going through and you're gathering data. You're putting things together, and you start building out your core frameworks, right? And this is true for all of us, right? In my business, I spent the first decade of my business as an entrepreneur learning these things, going out there and gathering and learning and studying. And I remember after 10 years of me doing my business, then I sat down and I was like,

I've learned all these things. I want to teach other people. And I had a framework and the framework became my very first book, which is dot com secrets, right? It was just all the frameworks I had gathered over time. So for you guys, the same thing as you are an entrepreneur, right? First thing you have this origin story of how you got into whatever it is you do. Second step, just like Napoleon Hills. Now you're building your framework. This is the thing that you're going to be sharing with the world to change other people's lives. Um, and so that's step number two. Any questions on that? You guys all frameworks.

If not, that should be the focus point. I always tell people like framework creators, the people who are liberating and freeing other people. That's what entrepreneurs do is like we create frameworks to make other people's lives simpler and easier. And, um, I'm gonna go deeper into Napoleon Hill's frameworks because he created the framework initially, right? It was 15 laws of success. And then eventually he added a couple other things on over time. Um, but the frameworks became the foundation for everything else. All the other work else, if you'll see in the foundation, like everything else is based on the same frameworks. He developed the very beginning of his journey.

which is cool. And it's funny, my world, my world, like almost everything I teach or do is based on the original dot com secret frameworks that I spent the first 10 years of my business building.

uh, like gathering and developing in the next 10 years. Like that's what we do. Like our software is just us teaching is this, it's a practical application to build the frameworks from the book. Like our masterminds are us teaching the frameworks and book our live events are us teaching the framework. Like everything comes back to the same core frameworks. So you build your frameworks and then it's just use it over and over and over again. Okay. One fascinating story. Cause this was fascinating to me. Um,

Henry Ford, who built Ford and Order Company. So in the Wheel of Fortune book, he was saying that Carnegie was like, there's this guy, you need to meet him. He's not going to seem like much when you meet him, but this guy's going to change the world and he's going to be huge. So he goes and he meets Henry Ford, and he's like, that guy had no personality. He was boring, he was rude, he looked like a typical car mechanic. And he was like, I don't know how this guy's going to be successful. And he kept interviewing him. He's like, this guy doesn't, he's like, what does Carnegie see in this guy? It made no sense. And then Napoleon said, because he was so perplexed, he said,

He said, even like the interview with Ford was really weird. So he's like, I interviewed 50 of his friends and he's like, and all 50, I'm like, that guy's never gonna be successful either. And he's like, but Carnegie knew something that nobody else did. And then he became Ford. So it was kind of interesting to see him just like talking trash about Ford. So, yeah.

Um, okay. So that's number two. Number one, uh, um, your origin story. Number two is building out his own frameworks. Number three, and this was one of the coolest things, right? I didn't realize this. And this comes back to the gift we gave you guys with truthful advertising. So number three is you have to become, um, yet to become, um, um, a student of advertising and marketing. Okay. So you think about this. So Napoleon Hill, what year was the, uh,

1937. Okay. So timeline. So 1937 thing, which got published 1917, Napoleon Hill created this advertising course, truthful advertising, right? He goes to the university, he's teaching this thing. So what's 1937 minus 1917, 20 years. Okay. So 20 years before his work that went viral and like sold tens of millions of copies, he was studying and teaching advertising. Okay.

Okay. And I always tell people this come to my world who are like, they're the greatest in the world. Their thing could be health. It could be fine. Like they're the best in the world at their thing and they're broke. And they're like, I can't figure this out. My products are so much better than everybody else's and they can't figure it out. I always tell them it's like you have to become more obsessed with the marketing of your thing than you are with your thing. If you actually care about it, because that's how you get it out to the people, right? Napoleon wrote, think and grow rich. And when it sat there, but

but he had spent 20 years prior to that learning, understanding advertising and marketing. So when his big opportunity came in, this book that he wrote comes out, came out, he had the ability to write copy, to write sales letters, to get media, all these kinds of things. Cause he had become a master of advertising and marketing 20 years prior to this thing happening.

which is so fascinating it's been cool because like i've been trying to collect every um ad that i found from napoleon hill in fact we were talking yesterday about potentially putting together books we found so many ads for like not just thinking garbage all his books and like he was a great copywriter his headlines are amazing sales letters he's written he wrote courses on how to write they didn't call them sales letters they can call them correspondence letter or something but letters that actually would sell things right there are sales letters back in the day um and so

he had focused on that. So the third thing is that, um, he became a master of studying advertising, which is same for all of us, right? If you want your message to go beyond you, you have to become a master, um, at advertising. I look at nine go code at like, um,

Lloyd was the master marketer, right? He took Earl's great, great personality, great voice. And then Lloyd came in and he was, I mean, Dan Kenny told me, he's like, he's probably the best marketers I've ever seen in the history of all time, right? He took that company and blew it up to, I don't even know how big it was, but, and it's funny, we went to the archives there. They had filing cabinets with like thousands of sales letters of every, I was just like,

Oh, like the coolest thing in the world, right? So without, without both of them, it's hard to grow. Like you had to become obsessed with the advertising and marketing and that's how you get your message out to the world. And Napoleon Hill definitely did that and spent 20 years prior to thinking grow. It's coming out, uh, learning, understanding and mastering it for himself. Okay. Um, so that's step number three, the studying of advertising. All right. Step number four. Um, so that was 1917 that he did. Uh, he was teaching the advertising course two years later, 1919 is when, um,

is when he came out with his very first magazine called Hills, Golden Rule, um, which is one of the coolest magazines ever. There's a whole bunch of them at the foundation. Um, I've, I collected, I actually, so it ran for a year and a year, eight months, a year, 10 months. I can't remember what, with Napoleon Hill in charge of, it's called Hills, Golden Rule. Um, and then, uh,

By the end of year two, him and the business partner got a fighter. I can't remember the exact details, but he ended up leaving, and it shifted from Hill's Golden Rule to his Golden Rule magazine. But I have a copy of every single issue that was Hill's Golden Rule, and it's one of the coolest magazines ever. One of the coolest stories about it, if you get a copy of the magazine and have a chance to read it, there's a whole bunch of different authors in there. It was funny because I was reading these authors. I was trying to find other works by them, and there's no other thing they ever published. And then I was reading one of the books, and it turns out, Napoleon Hill, when he started the magazine, he couldn't afford to hire other writers.

So he just sat down and he became like 10 different writers and he'd write each article under a different pen name and then put it all together as magazine. Then they were all him. I think except for the first like year and a half, he couldn't afford writers. The first year and a half, every article is just Napoleon Hill under different things. Probably typed on this typewriter, which is one of the coolest things in the world. Right. But it's interesting. Look at like the progression is mine. The next thing is he needed is he needed distribution.

He needed a list. You need to be able to get his message out to people, right? So the next thing he focused on two years after the advertising course, he transitioned to building his own distribution channel, building his own magazine, right? Which same thing for all of us. Like if you want to grow a business, like,

We all know in this room, like the way you grow a company, ready to grow a business is you have to have a list, right? That's the focus point. And back then, obviously there weren't an email list and that how did people get distribution? They did it through magazines. Like that's how you got out there into the world. In fact, um, Whitney was doing the book club yesterday with, um, with, um, Elizabeth town. And, um, it was the first book we'd done with Elizabeth town. And I was like, I'm like, Whitney, you know about Elizabeth town, right? She's like, no, what, what about her? I'm like, she was one of the most, I mean, I hear no Elizabeth town, by the way.

Okay. She's one of the most important people of this new thought movement that no one even knows about. So she had a magazine called the Nautilus that ran from, uh, 18, in the 1800s all the way up to like, I think like 1960 or 70, it continued to run. Um, but she was the distribution channel for this thing, uh, for the entire new thought movement. So you look at, um, I've gotten, I think I have like over a thousand copies of Nautilus. I don't have the complete set, but

I'm working on it. Eventually we'll have them all. But if you read the Nautilus, you open it up and what's fascinating inside, um, every single author that you've heard about in this world, um, they either wrote an article in that or an ad or both. In fact, most of them are both. So you opened up and it's one of the most fascinating things. Every issue of Nautilus, it's like the mark it's, she was a distribution channel. Her magazine was going all across the entire country and everyone who had a book or a course and they want to teach, they were buying ads and

and writing articles in this magazine. It was the distribution channel. It was the email list. She had the biggest email list in the thing, and she was the one that got the messages out to the community, right? So Napoleon Hill, he's starting...

uh, Hill's golden rule. Cause he's building a list, building a distribution channel. He can send these things out and then eventually he can go and he can start selling courses or like whatever else he wants to do. Right. But he's building a distribution channel. And I don't know if he knew that's what he was doing, but it's 100% when he did. So he ran that for a year, almost a little less than two years. And then the business part of him fell apart. And then a year later he launched a new magazine called the Napoleon Hill magazine. Um, and ran that, I think for about three years, I think if I, if I remember right,

And right now I have a complete set of stuff for three missing issues we cannot find anywhere. Twice at like 10:30 at night we're in the archives and I thought I found the missing one. I was freaking out and I realized it was the wrong year. So anyway, but they're beautiful too. They're some of the coolest magazines. I think there's some that you guys probably see over there. There's Napoleon Hill Magazine and same thing.

Comes back, loses the list, starts building a distribution channel again, getting out there. So now he has the ability to get access to people through this newsletter. And then also what's cool is through this newsletter, through this magazine he's publishing, it's giving him the ability to start teaching his frameworks.

right? So he's got these articles and you notice in there, these things keep popping up. Like a lot of these principles that he's, that he's developing these frameworks. They keep, he's testing these practicing in the newsletter here and practicing over here. And you keep seeing these articles popping up where you can tell he's like refining the message and getting better at telling you and betting or better telling it, which is similar to us, right? Like when you guys go out there, at least for me, it's like, like,

I have something I want to teach. The first time I teach, it's the worst, right? So I'll go and on my own podcast, I'll talk about it. I'll get on someone else's podcast to talk about it. Every time I talk about it, the message gets clearer and more refined. It gets better and better. Eventually, I'm on stage with 5,000 people and I tell a story and everyone's like, that was the best story ever. I was like, I know. I've told it 45 times, but I got it mastered now, right? And that's what he was doing. He was practicing

he was practicing these stories and practicing things through this newsletter. And you can tell his writing style gets better and better over time. Um, as he keeps retelling stories and refining and getting, getting him tighter and getting him better. So, um, anyway, so that's number, um, number four in, in my lessons from Napoleon Hill's entrepreneur is, uh, building out a distribution channel. Um, okay. Is this good so far? Yes. Okay.

All right. Cause I'm way over. No, I'm still, I'm not good on time. Okay, cool. All right. I have no context of time. So I get confused sometimes. And sometimes it's like four hours later. I'm like, I should have stopped talking a long time ago. All right. Okay. Cause we're almost halfway there. Okay. So distribution channel after distribution chance. So again, that's a 1917, the advertising 1919, the first night, uh, Hills golden rule launches. It goes for a year, almost two years. And it ends. So what's the 1921, uh,

Napoleon Hill magazine ran until like 22 to 24-ish. And about this time, Napoleon Hill is putting together his actual... I wrote in here number five, the core doctrine. So he's taking all these principles, all these things he's learning, he's creating the doctrine of success, right? The philosophy of success, his core thing he's putting together. And so about this time is when he puts together his first real actual...

which is the law of success. And you guys will have a chance to see one of the coolest things I saw in the foundation is they had the actual manuscript for law of success. And when it was actually published, it's like eight books. Each book's got two lessons, I think.

I think it's eight books. The first edition is eight books. Uh, see me as a scene at the video. I have a pre first edition that he did the very first one, but you'll see the actual manuscript here. And it's like, it's this, it's this huge books like this fat, they bound it in a, in a book. And then they like,

around the sides, they made it like gold. So it's like a Bible or something, but it's like, anyway, the original manuscripts over here, but that was the first thing he took all these things he's been learning from, from Carnegie and from Ford and from, uh, Alexander Graham, but all these people he's interviewing and put it all together. He said, these are, this is my frameworks. These are the 15 law. I would say laws of success, but it's 15 law of success.

singular law, plural success, right? So he has that. And that became the very first thing. So he puts together and this becomes like the core doctrine or the core philosophy on success he created, right? So for you guys, the lesson from this is like, after you've been building these frameworks and putting things together, like there's gotta be a time you come out like, this is my philosophy on the thing, right? On whatever it is you're teaching or you're selling,

Um, again, I thought about that with dot com secrets was my philosophy on marketing expert secrets with my philosophy on story selling my doctor and source on traffic secrets, my philosophy on traffic. Uh, the new book I'm writing right now is the philosophy on, um,

Oh, I'm not going to tell you the title. I just changed the title, but it's going to be amazing. So, right. That's the next step is like, as you guys are learning, you're gathering all these different frameworks. It's like, and now I'm going to like, this is where I'm going to introduce the world. Like this is my, me spending 10 years of my life figuring this thing out. This is where I built dot com secrets. He spent now, I don't know what year we're on right now, but 20, 30 years of his life putting all these things together. Also like, here's my philosophy. This is the law of success and put it out there into the world. And now he has the core frameworks in a spot that he can, that he can start sharing with the world. Right.

So that was number five. And if you guys haven't looked at it through that lens of just like, cause think about this. Carnegie told him like, you need to build a philosophy on success. And so what was the philosophy? It was these 15 principles. Each principle has got stories, examples, case that, you know, for you guys, it's like, and for us, for me, for all of us, it's like, we need to create a philosophy, our philosophy on blank. It could be a philosophy on weight loss, your philosophy on winning the stock market, your, whatever your thing is like, what's your philosophy on,

Anyway, I always thought philosophy was boring, but I think this lens, I'm like, this is so cool. We actually like every one of us should have our own philosophy on something, right? If you're a content creator, it's what you're literally doing. It's like, this is my philosophy on how to do anyway. So build a philosophy. Number five,

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Okay. Number six, that's the philosophy is done. He didn't just put it out there in the world and hope people would sell it. Right. Number six, it came back to promotion. So what's fascinating during this time, you start seeing articles and ads popping up where he's promoting law of success and they're showing up everywhere. Right? So as soon as the doctrine, the core beliefs of philosophy is done, then he transitions back into selling and marketing and putting himself out there. Right. And again, so many cool ads and articles and things of him talking about laws of success, um, promoting it, getting people to buy it.

Um, and so number six in the, in this is promotion. Okay. Now, number seven, this is where this part gets really exciting for me. Um, I'm not sure I, again, I wasn't there. I'm assuming laws of success was hard to sell because it's huge. Um, it was also a book set and it may understand this right. But if I remember reading in, um, in, uh, the, the biography book, the lifetime works or not life and works. Um, what's the, what's the,

The book that tells his whole life we talked about earlier. Yeah. Lifetime riches, lifetime riches. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they said that the book set would be the bookstore, but someone could go by just, just a book number one. Right. And they go home and read it. And if I come back and they buy book two, it wasn't like they're buying a book set of all these books. Cause that'd be overwhelming. Like, yeah, I'm going to buy this whole books. So they buy one. And if you good enough, then come back and buy book number two and book number three. Right. Um,

And so I just, I just imagine that selling that's hard. Right. And a lot of success is very much like this is for everybody in the world. It's very general. It's like, if everyone wants to be successful, successful, talking too fast, everyone wants to be successful in anything. Like this is the frameworks. Right. And so what's interesting is if you start looking at the transition, right. Um,

Was it 10 years later or so? He comes out with Think and Grow Rich. And the question for me is like, what is Think and Grow Rich? If you read this book, right? He went from lost success, had 15 principles. Eventually there's 16, 17 principles, right? But Think and Grow Rich is boiled down to just 13 principles, right? That he pulled from here.

And if you look at this, like, what is this actually? Right. He's taking this, this huge book set, this fat making a smaller version and he's niching it down to a very specific audience. Okay. And so I look at this, like what thinking rich is for in my mind is this is helping entrepreneurs to be successful. Right. I'm gonna teach you how to think and grow rich.

Um, that's who this is attracting. That's who is niching down. So my number, um, number seven hit point is niching down, taking your core frameworks and then finding niches that you can affect because it's always easier to market to the niches than it is to market to the masses, right? Uh, way less expensive, way cheaper. So thinking go rich was basically taking laws of success, taking his core frameworks and making a version of very specific towards entrepreneurs. There's another book we don't have here, but it's called raise your own salary. Anybody here read raise your own salary?

Probably not many of you guys, because you're the entrepreneurs. You got excited about this book. You're going to want to be rich, right? But all of your employees like how to raise your own salary was basically thinking or rich for, for employees. It's teaching them the same laws of success, same principles, but for employees helping to make more money inside of their business, right? And you start looking at all the different things that he was coming out with afterwards was taking the same core principles, but then wrapping them in different things. Okay. So same. So it was a different hook.

Same frameworks, different stories. So there's a different hook on this one. It's going to have a different audience. Bring them in. Inside there, you have the exact same framework, but in different stories that relate it to the entrepreneur versus the employee versus the salesman versus the insurance salesman. You look at all these places. They re-niched his philosophy in tons of different markets and areas and things like that.

Right? And I think it's fascinating. So it's a different hook, same frameworks, different stories. And from that you could, you could, you could, he was able to, and you see this in his work, was able to go and hit so many sub markets. So, so prolific because he's not rethinking. I need any 12 new principles. I know principles haven't changed, but how do I apply this to this market and this market and this market and this market? When I did my very first acquisition of pulling hill things, I bought the whole library from JD who had been collecting for 20 years.

It was funny because he was like, Napoleon was my favorite author. He's like, I noticed something. He's like, I read all his books and he just kind of plagiarizes himself over and over and over again. I was like, well, you can't plagiarize yourself. But what he meant was just like, he's like, it's the same principles in every single book. They're just spun for whatever audience that he is speaking to at the time, which is so cool. So my next point here, number seven was niching down. Like, how do we, how do we take our, our core frameworks as we're going to different markets, like different hook, same framework, different stories that related back to that, that audience. Right. So that was really, really cool.

Um, in fact, Matt and I recorded a whole YouTube video in the foundation, like 10 30 at night. We pulled out as many different versions of this, right here. He did it here and then here and then here and then this, and just showing like same frameworks is different hooks, uh, different hook, same framework, different stories and how many different, how prolific he was. Cause there were so many different ways he was able to teach the same frameworks, which I thought was really cool. Okay. That was number seven. Number eight, we come back to what number six was number eight promotion,

Okay. He creates the stuff doesn't stop. Somebody was create something like, Hey, hopefully the world likes, Oh, they didn't like it. No, he creates something. And then he would go out there and aggressively market and promote market and promote. Um, we found examples of like, um, thinking, grow rich, like afterwards done. He did radio shows and it wasn't like nowadays we do podcasts. We jump on and no one comes for prayer. We will just like jump on and ask you their questions. Like

uh, we found manuscripts of, uh, these radio shows. So they would like pre-write the entire radio. So you could read it. You're like, okay, the host says this, the Napoleon will resist. And then it's like a 25 page document. That's episode one. He would do these like series where it's like,

eight or 12 radio shows talking about the principle, all promoting the book. So it wasn't just like, hopefully people buy it. It's like, I'm going to dedicate myself to writing a 12, a 12 radio show series to get on radio, to keep telling the stories, keep promoting and pushing back the book. I thought it was fascinating too, when we were at Mangalcona and they have these filing cabinets and the filing cabinets, we were pulling out these huge manuscripts. I'm like, what are these things? They're like, oh, this is, this is the radio show. Like

Earl wouldn't just like jump on without preparing and just talking. It was like everything was pre-written out. Like they were so much more thoughtful back then than we are nowadays. And same thing. So they'd write, they'd go write radio shows to go promote thinking, grow rich. He's doing articles. They're doing ads. It was fascinating when, when how to raise your own salary came out. He was like, okay, this is for employees. Like the employees most likely to buy are probably salespeople. So then he wrote this book called the secrets of master salesmanship right here.

All the secrets master salesmanship is, if you read it, it's like 20 articles or 10 articles or something like that. Um, and everyone's articles at the end pushes people back to go by how to raise your own salary. So this, and then we compile it into a book together, but all it was was basically all these articles and putting them out there, he's putting them in shift and you're sending them to newspapers and outlets, all sorts of places, trying to get them picked up these articles and how to become a great salesman, right? Salesmen would see that they would read it. And then the pitch of the end of every single article was go back and get how to raise your own salary.

So anytime he created a book, it wasn't just write the book and be done. It's like, he's writing articles, newspaper shows or radio shows, uh, uh, buying advertising, right? Just mass promotion at every single thing to get the message out to more people.

So he knows two of these things are promotion. Cause again, I think most people in the world, they forget that step. Most important step, right? Creating the thing is not what changes the world. It's the creation and then the promotion of the thing, right? Like I said earlier, you got to become as obsessed with the marketing of the thing as you are about the thing. Otherwise it'll never change people's lives. Okay. So that was number eight. I've got two more. Number nine. If you look at Napoleon Hills, uh, the timeline someday, I heard you got a whole timeline or anything. I can't wait to see.

See how everything fits in. But look at Napoleon's timeline. As he gets older, he kind of retires, semi-retires from his whole thing. And then he goes to speak at an event. I think it was in Chicago. I might be wrong on the details, though. And in the audience is W. Clement Stone. And if you don't know W. Clement Stone, he was...

Um, he built a huge insurance company, uh, worth over a billion dollars, I believe at the peak of his, of his, um, of his business. And, um, he's there and he sees Napoleon Hill. He goes to the bank. He's heard Napoleon was talking and he had read thinking rich when he was a kid, changed his life. And from the backside of that builds this huge insurance company. He comes on the wealthiest men in America and W Clemmons stone. I think W Clemmons stone, I think he wanted to be Napoleon Hill. If I'm, this is like me reading through the lines.

I may be wrong, but I was like, I think he's like, I want to be Napoleon Hill. So they ended up becoming partners together and they kind of re-kick off Napoleon Hill's career and put him back out there in the mainstream. And they were writing books together. They wrote, they were a book together. And then, uh, Clement Stone wrote a couple of books separately, uh,

And they created a business together. But it was a partnership. And in fact, when you guys go to the foundation, you notice when you walk in the back door, on the left-hand side of the door you walk in, there's going to be a picture of Napoleon Hill. And the right-hand side will be a picture of W. Clement Stone. And have any of you ever seen W. Clement Stone before? Two or three guys. Is he here? Oh, yeah. This is him right here. This picture's not goofy. Anyway, he had this little tiny little mustache like this.

And, uh, it was funny with this videos. We've seen videos of him on camera. And again, he was very, it was funny cause like it's big of a personality. It wasn't as big of a business. He builds great salesperson trainer. He seems so nervous on camera and I don't know versus Napoleon. You've seen very comfortable in these kinds of things. And anyway, it's just kind of fascinating, but, uh, you'll see W Clemson stones, uh, uh,

picture as well when you walk in. So if you don't have context with him, that's who he was. He became business partners. I think he was really good for Napoleon Hill because he kind of, he wanted, he wanted to sell his book and the guy had tons of money. So he was putting money and effort into seeing like promoting the books they did together and other people's books and kind of gave Napoleon Hill this like second lease on life. It felt like, uh, to get this message back out. And then, um, and from there they started taking the same frameworks and the repackaging different ways. So they had a course that's called the science of success and it was,

basically Napoleon Hill's frameworks plugged into this thing called the science of success. Uh, Clement stone was like, there's one law of success. You forgot Napoleon Hill. That's like the most important one. It's called PMA positive mental attitude. And so that became known later as the 17 law of success, which was positive mental attitude, which was an addition from a W Clement stone. Uh, there's a, the book they did together called PMA, uh, which is all about positive mental attitude. Um, anyway, so W Clements, no such a big part of this, but you look at like

The way that Napoleon Hill was going to be able to come out of semi-retirement and kind of have the second lease of life and blow the business back up was through partnerships. Finding people who had what he didn't have, right? Finding people with the money, with the distribution, with the desire to get this message back out and kind of put Napoleon Hill back on the map and it started growing. And again, but what they did is they didn't come back and just launch Think and Grow Rich again. They came back and here's the same frameworks. How do we wrap it differently? Okay, science to success.

Same framework, different hooks, different stories, build out home study courses, live events. They were trying to franchise it. They were going big trying to take this message out to the entire world. And it was through partnerships initially with W. Clements Stone that made this whole thing possible. So for all of us, that's the next question, right? And our business is like, we're promoting ourselves. We're the partnerships. How can we find other partners to help take this message to more people?

which obviously for us, all of you guys are our partners in this, right? Like when secret success, like I've got a big list, we can sell a lot of stuff ourselves. I can buy ads by myself, but I'm always looking like it's so much more fun and I think more fulfilling working through partners. Um, um, and again, so thank you guys all for being our partners. Um, that's the big part of it, right? It's like, how do you find partnerships to help extend your message and get out to more people? Um,

All right. And then less, less than 10. And this is one that weighs heavy on my heart a lot because I always think about this as I became obsessed with this, this stuff last over the last few years. And I've been buying every book on personal development. I can find, it has the word like, uh, unconscious success secrets. Uh, yeah. And any of the, any of the words, like I bought all of them. Right. So like you can ask Jenny on the average, everybody that has those

On eBay, I have alerts for all those things. So every day I get probably, and then every author I've ever found. And then anytime I read something, it's like I'm reading like Hill's Golden Rule, and he like will quote three different authors. I'm like, oh, so I go find those books. I buy all their books. In fact, at the foundation, I found three authors that I'd never heard of before. I'm like, Matt, I found another author. And I'm on eBay. I was like, they've got so much stuff. I was like, I just bought 32 more books. And then, yeah, it's bad. I mean, Jenny's been there for the whole, I mean. We're being in the.

I mean, probably, probably, I don't know, conservative. I mean, we're, we're probably eight, 10,000 books have been delivered one by one from the, from eBay to the post office, to our office. Everyone's like, I remember John was like, I think we should like have an intervention or something. This is not healthy. I was like, are you sure? It feels really healthy. I love anyway. Um, so, but this, this like weighs heavy on my life, right? Like we're here doing our work, right? We're obsessed with like what we do. We're changing people's lives. We love it. And the thing that I always get stuck with is like,

There's all these authors who had the same thing, right? And almost all of them, none of you guys ever heard it before. Like Elizabeth town. In fact, no one has ever heard of it before. It's like, that is insane. She was not only was she the distribution channel for that thing. She wrote probably a dozen books on her own that are all amazing. Plus she published like 30, like she was the nightingale Conan of the night to early 19 hundreds. Like she published 30 or 40 other authors. Like you see a lot of the authors, you know, if you open it up on the front, it says town publishing that she published those people and no one even knows who she is.

Right. How do you go from that big to nobody know who you are? And then you look at like the, the people that surround like Napoleon Hill still around. You look at a nine go cone and still look at the companies that are still like, what do they do differently? And so this part for me has been very, very interesting. I think a lot about number 10 here. I wrote is leaving a legacy, like succession plans. Like how do you, how do you structure this so that when you're gone, it's not gone. Right. Like most authors by the time their life ends, like

Six months to a year the world's forgotten who they are which is devastating isn't that like the saddest thing in the world? and so I've been studying like what happened and like like Napoleon Hill before he passed like they built a foundation that put things together had things in place They had people to run things they had you know there was there was stuff in place and I think for me and for all of us is just thinking about that something most people think about it most people are so excited about the here and then now they're not thinking like okay when this is all done yeah, I feel like I've been called to change people's lives I'm here on this earth. I'm doing these things and

But how do we extend it? How do we extend our lives past past when we end? Right. And so I look at, I look at what Napoleon did.

you know setting up a foundation and having a mission and having these things having partners at w clemson i think w clemson i think was the first head of the napoleon foundation then when that when he was gone then there was somebody else and somebody else and like now even see he died in 1970 right we're at what year we in 2020 so like 50 years 50 60 years ago it's still here it's still happening right where most everyone else is you know you asked a year year and a half like how did he do that so for me it's like the last thing napoleon did was he knew the worth of

of what he had created, what he was doing. And he figured out a way to live beyond that by creating something that left the legacy behind. And so for me, I don't know the answer to this. I know this is my mission right now. This is what I'm, why I'm building an event center, why I'm trying to do things. I figure for myself, like if I can figure out a vehicle that'll help to extend these authors' lives that have changed my life, like I'm hoping that by creating and discovering that vehicle is it'll be able to extend my mission and my message out for longer too. And so that's like my last obsession. So

I mean, of the hundreds and hundreds of authors I purchased, he's the one that's here the longest that people still know. Most people haven't heard of any of the other people, but you can walk into the food court of the mall and say, who has ever heard of Think and Grow Rich? And half the hands will go up for his name.

Any other author, no one's, you know, very rarely, even in rooms of entrepreneurs who should know these things, they don't know what they are. And so figuring out how to leave your legacy is the last step that Napoleon Hill did so great. You look at him as an entrepreneur. So I'm gonna go through the 10 points again real quick, just so we have a recap of them. Number one is having an origin story that you tell over and over and over again, even when you are...

beyond tired of telling that story. Number two is the building of your framework, spending time acquiring the principles and the things to make your framework, your philosophy, a real thing. Number three, studying the advertising, becoming more obsessed with the marketing of your thing than you are with the actual thing. Uh, number four is focusing on building a distribution channel for us is typically email lists and followings for them. It was magazines,

Number five is creating your core philosophy or your doctrine, taking all the frameworks, all the principles and turning it into something that you can then put out there into the world as an actual philosophy. Number six, after the philosophy is done, is focusing on promotion of the philosophy, getting it out there to the world so people are aware of it.

Number six, figuring out ways to niche down so that you can take a big, flostatic law of success and break it down into entrepreneurs or small business owners or life insurance salesmen or employees, right? So niching down to get your message out to more people where you have different hooks, same frameworks, different stories. Number eight is after you do that, then doing more promotion, getting out there and promoting even harder, right?

Number nine is looking for partnerships to help extend your message out to the masses. And number 10 is figuring out ways to leave a legacy so the work we are doing today doesn't die when we die. They can live beyond ourselves. And so those are the 10 things I think Napoleon Hill did an insanely cool job as an entrepreneur that just last two or three days has kind of crystallized my head that I thought was really fun and I wanted to share with you guys today. So I hope that was valuable and I hope you guys enjoyed that. So.