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You're about to make a trade. Which u do you listen to? Is it get optioning those options or let's do a little research. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart what's going on, everybody? Good morning. I hope you are feeling so good today as you're listening to this episode. I'm actually right now hosting my inner circle here in Boise, Idaho. This is the top 100 businesses in our community who fly out, and I have a chance to work with them, and it's insane. It's so much fun. So we're about to start day number two, and I wanted to give you guys a podcast episode. Basically let you listen to our conversation that happened a couple years ago as I was trying to build what I'm building today. A lot of it has now come to fruition about my old books and the event center and the library and all these things that we're doing and why we're doing it. But a lot of people think that I'm crazy for collecting old books and being obsessed with them and stuff. And when I was in Mexico, I gave a. It's kind of an impromptu presentation. I jumped up and I wanted to start talking about some cool things, and that's what you guys gonna be listening in on. So I'm talking about why I'm obsessed with books, why I think books are important because it's the only thing that outlives the life of the author and probably a half dozen other things. So hope you enjoy this episode and maybe get you inspired to go write a book. Hopefully it does. All right, thanks, everybody. And jump over to Mastermind paradise in Mexico. This is the Russell Brunson show. Okay. I'm curious how many of you guys who are here in this room, like, you are driven. Everyone's driven by different reasons, right? Different purposes. How many guys are driven by legacy? That's the reason why you are here. I'm curious. Okay, awesome. About half or so. Maybe, maybe three, four. I know not everybody is. And I don't think when I got started, initially, I was either. Initially, when I got started, I just wanted to make money if I'm completely honest. Right. I think most of us, that's kind of the initial thing. Like, I gotta make some money. And then you start making money, and then you realize really quickly, like, oh, the money wasn't the. I thought that me getting the money was gonna be the thing that brought me happiness. And you start getting the money and you're like, I'm not very happy. I'm not Feeling fulfilled. And then you see the people who you're affecting with your business, and you see them happy. Like, oh. Like Allison talked about, right? Like, that feels really good. This. Nah, like, not so much. That feels really good. I want to do more of this so I can get more of that. Right? And so we started getting this business where now we're more into, like, helping and serving. But somewhere along the line, if it hasn't happened yet, I think it'll happen for all of you somewhere in the journey where all of a sudden.
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Start looking at things differently. And I remember, for me, it was. It was probably. It might have been when the Expert Secrets book launched. I'm not exactly positive, but those who have followed me for a long time, I've launched a lot of offers in my day, I would say, Conservatively, we've launched 150 plus different funnels. Each funnel had its own different offer, right? And some funnels did awesome, and some did horrible. But it was interesting because, like, we would always, like, put together our. Put our time and energy and effort, and we'd get an idea, we'd create it, we'd launch a product, we'd make a whole bunch of money, and then like, a week or two later kind of would die down and then put on Evergreen and kind of, like, trickle along, and then we'd, like, get another idea and launch a bug product, make a bunch of money, and they would drop down. And that kept happening over and over again. But I thought that was what the business was like. Big ups, low downs, you know, and keep doing that over and over and over again. And I remember the first book I launched, as you guys know, is Dot Com Secrets. I remember we launched that. We made a whole bunch of book sales. And then books kept selling, and books kept selling, and books kept selling. And I was like, huh, this is weird. Like, this. This is the first thing I've created that's lasted longer than the launch. But it was a book. It was free plus shipping. Wasn't like I was making tons of money on it, but I was like, that was interesting. And then we're doing thing, you know, thing after thing. And clickfunnels was growing. And I remember the clickfunnels revenue. I used to get texts every morning from Stripe. How many guys get the text from Stripe? That shows you how much money made the night before. That's a good feeling, right? And clickfunnels was growing. Like, at first, it was like, you made 50 bucks today, at least 97, right? Or 37. But it got smaller, and they started getting bigger and bigger. Each day got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I remember, like, one day it was like, 10 grand. Like, we're making, like, 10 grand a day. And then it got to, like, 20 grand, then 30 grand, then 50 grand, then 100 grand a day, and then 200. And all of a sudden you're just like, what the crap, right? And so it's a good feeling, right? You're like, all this stuff I'm doing, like, all the things I'm putting in, like, keeps growing. So this kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so the ClickFunnels income got awesome. And then in the past, we do these launches, right? We were like, here's a product launch. Here's a product launch. But then what happened is that we would do this product launch. Like, we spend three or four months putting it together, coordinating it, writing the copy, like, doing all the stuff. And then we do this launch, and here's my income, and it'd be like. And you see this little, like, blip. And that was it. And I was like, that didn't even affect anything. And I'm like, okay, let's do another launch, make it even bigger and put more time and energy into it and do the next thing. We do this big, huge launch, like, blip. And this little blip. And I'm like, all these things I'm doing are having no impact at all. Like, it's driving me nuts. Like, I want to see, like, I don't know about you guys. Like, I want to win. I want to see, Like, I want to see the needle move when I do something big, right? You guys understand that feeling? And I was getting frustrated. Like, this is so stupid. Like, I keep doing these things. And somewhere in the line is where I decided I wanted to write my second book, which is Expert Secrets. And so the Expert Secrets launch, and the same thing happened.com Secrets launched this little blip. But then the Expert Secrets books kept selling and kept selling and just kept going. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, when I create things that aren't the written word, they sell for a while, and then they stop. I was like, this is really, really interesting. And so I started thinking more about that, and eventually I was like, okay, I'm gonna write another book, and same thing. And over the last 20 years of my career, the four things that sold the most, obviously, ClickFunnels consistently sells. But the other ones, they're the three books. The three books are the things that continually sell and it was just interesting. So that kind of started this, this thought process in my head. So some of you guys know Last Funnel hacking live. I actually talked about this in the inner Circle room. I can't remember if I talked about this to the whole group or not, but how many of you guys know that I'm in the process of building a library? Is that the nerdiest thing ever? Like seriously, 20 year old Russell would make fun of me right now. Like, you're going to build a library you don't even go to? You hate books, right? But that's like all I can think about. This is like my thing that I'm working on. So this is the sketch, this is what the library looked like. On the left hand side, here's the actual library. So the whole, the whole thing is 20,000 square feet. It's right behind the ClickFunnels HQ. So in the future we'll have a chance, you guys will have a chance to come and see it and do anyway. But this is what it is inside of the inside of the. Let me go back one inside of the library. When you drive up to, there's all windows there and you'll see these three statues. So these three statues represent Atlas. So Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, which is where most of us are at. How many of you guys feel that pressure, right? Whenever I hear the story about Atlas, I feel like, oh man, that's us as entrepreneurs, as creators, as people trying to change the world. Like we're literally holding the weight of the world on our shoulders. How many guys here, your friends or family or people complain about like their responsibilities? Like, I had to go to work today, my boss was so mean and blah, blah, was so hard. And I'm like, but then you went home and you watched TV and you played with your kids and you didn't think about working until the next day. I was like, I have that times. 400 people, their families, their kids, plus our customers, plus like, oh, like I wish I had your problem that your boss was mean to you. That's what you're upset about? Like, oh, okay, we're a different breed. I had my category kings all read a book recently. How many of you guys have heard the book Driven? Okay, this is a book for those who have read it so far. Like make the noise of like how you felt when you read that book. Okay, I had to write. This is like your reading list for. I'm gonna have a whole bunch of reading lists for you guys over the next Day and a half. But this book, Driven, is really fascinating. It talks about people who are driven, which I think is probably a big majority of this room in here. And they've actually done studies. They found that people who are driven actually have a genetic mutation, a gene that's different. Where people who are driven, they're driven because they try to accomplish stuff, but then we have our ability to feel success, to feel fulfillment when we achieve the things actually chemically lower, it's different, which is why we keep chasing. We keep chasing, looking for that hit, because we're trying to figure out what it is and we can't ever get it. And that book's fascinating. You start reading it, you're like, oh, my gosh, I am different. And it's not just like, I'm messed up in the head. Like, this is actually a chemical gene thing. And then you start realizing how powerful it is, but also how scary it can be, too. People who are driven are always, a lot of times, like super successful entrepreneurs or they can become alcoholics. They can become, you know, there's a thin line depending on how you learn how to manage it and things like that. So the book is really, really good. Okay, so the stats will come back. So Atlas is the driven people, the ones holding the weight of the world on their shoulders. And I think a lot of us feel that pressure. If you've ever read the book Atlas Shrugged, in the book, the premise of the book is like, what happened if all of the producers, all the people who have the weight of the world on their shoulders, if all the outside government regulations and things got so heavy, we're all saying it wasn't worth it to us anymore. And we stood up and we shrugged and said, this isn't worth it. And we walked away from our responsibilities. What would happen to society if that happened? And in the book, it's a chilling story about what happens to society, how it crumbles and everything falls apart when the prime movers, when the producers stop producing. And so obviously, for me, I don't want that to ever happen. That's my mission, is to support you guys and give you guys the tools and stuff so that you can bear the weight that you've all been called to bear. But this is a good realization of, like, if we're not careful, this is what's going to happen. And so when you drive up to the library, this is what you'll see. You'll see the three statues there as you come in, which is kind of cool. And you zoom back out on the right hand side here is an event center. And the event center is where eventually in the future we'll do more events and meetings and stuff happening there. And it's going to be really, really cool as well. So that's what we're building. And the reason why I started building this, somebody asked me this last night actually at dinner, which is fascinating because I've been recently collecting old books. And the story behind how I started collecting some of these old books and this kind of comes back into my whole thing about legacy. And I want to talk about is probably 6 years ago I bought a first edition Book of Mormons. Those who are members of my church, you know, that's like the most rare. It's crazy. There's only 5,000 ever printed. There's like 300 of them left on the earth. And so I went and I bought one on ebay. And it was like the coolest. It's the first time I bought an old book. And I was like, it's so cool and it smells like it's been in a cellar for a million years. And it was like the coolest thing ever. And so that was my first thing I had. And I was like, this is like just. It was special. And then a couple years later, I met somebody else who is actually a collector. He spent 40 years of his life traveling the world trying to find old books for the Mormon people. And they found all the first editions of all these different things. And over the next. Over the last year, I've probably bought way too many, but a whole bunch of first editions of like all of the rare Mormon books. And as I've been getting them, like, these are the most amazing things in the world. And I thought in the library someday I was like, it'd be cool to have different sections based on the things that I value. So a section on religion, then having under like glass cases, like all of the first edition books that I've been collecting. And then like the religion section with all the other books, right? And then I was like, oh, well, what other sections? Like, what other things do I value? Like, I value business and personal development and health. I'm like, okay, how do I find the coolest, like, health books in the world? And the cool, like, old ones, like the originals back in the day and the original personal development books. And so that started me on this journey. And I'm gonna show you guys what a journey of obsession looks like. Cause this is the tale of Russell's spending now over $4 million on old books. But it started in the last, like, 120 days. It started with this one. So this was the first one I found. I was like, this was the original Laws of Success. So if you guys have ever read the book Laws of Success, this was written. This was written in or published in 1928. This one was actually published three years before Napoleon Hill published it to the world. He wrote this. He had his own personal printer. The school that he was by had a print shop. So he went and actually printed a couple copies on his print shop.
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And then he took those and he mailed them to, like, the president of the United States, kings and queens, the best, biggest business leaders as the thing you wanted to give them. Like, you guys, this is my book. And he sent these out to everybody. This is the only known one that's still in existence, hand signed by Napoleon Hill. And I found it on ebay. And I was like, that's the one that's gotta be under the glass case in the library in the personal development section. Because it's like the coolest thing in the entire world, right? And so that started the obsession. But I was like, it was.
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If you read the Magnet or the behind or Magnetic Market newsletter next month, you'll see I put the ebay listing in there. But the ebay listing, it was listed for $1.5 million. I'm like, oh, that's a lot of money for an old book. But I was like, but it's so cool. So, like, for months, you know how they look at it every day for a month, month after month, like, oh, it's so cool. Wish I could afford that. Oh, it's so cool. Oh. Anyway, it kept happening. And then I started buying everything else around that. Every first edition Napoleon Hill book I could find and things that I was buying them and. And eventually, as I was buying all these old books, one of the boxes came in. There was a letter from a guy, and he was like, hey, I see you keep buying old Napoleon Hill books for me. He's like, I have a whole bunch more. If you're interested, text me and we can talk. And I feel like I was walking into a trap. Because I'm like, oh, man. And he could tell. He knew who I was. He's like, hey, Russell, I'm a big fan. You keep buying stuff from me. So I'm like, I'm walking into a trap. Somebody who wants me to text them. But, like, anyway, so I texted him. I was like, hey, I got your thing. And then I thought, I was like, this is your listing for this book right here, right? He's like, yeah. I'm like, well, just, you know, my. My goal in the future is to buy this from you someday. He's like, we better hurry because there's somebody else trying to buy it right now as well. I'm like, he is so good. I was like, come on, there's nobody else that wants this. He's like, no. And he told me the person's name. I knew who the person was. And I was like, this is either really. Anyway. And I'm like, huh? I'm like, that's so much money for some old books. He's like, but you don't understand. He tells me the story behind him. And I'm like, oh, tells me a story. What does it do? Increases the perceived value. I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, I'd have one. Dead presidents have one. Nobody else has one. Like, oh, how cool would that be, right? And he's telling me a story, and then he's like, by the way, I've been collecting full time for 20 years. And he's like, I got a bunch of other stuff. Do you want to see it? I'm like, yes, please. He's like, they're not listed on ebay, but I'll show you. So he starts sending me text messages of pictures of things. Like, Napoleon Hill had a magazine in 1909 called Hill's Golden Rule. And he had every single first edition of the 1909 magazine. He sent me all the pictures. I'm like, oh, my gosh. And then he was like, did you know that Napoleon Hill's business partner actually screwed him over? And he's like, and this year, Napoleon Hill went to work one day at his magazine. He started and it and his partner changed the title from Hill's Golden Rule to Golden Rule magazine and basically pulled Napoleon Hill out of it. Didn't publish his articles and cut him out of the business. I'm like, no, right? And he's like, these are the only issues they have. Do you want these two? I'm like, yes, I have to have those too. And he's like, oh, but did you know after Napoleon was so mad, he went spend the next year of his life raising money so he could go and he could start another magazine. Started a new magazine called the Napoleon Hill Magazine. I'm like, no, I had no idea. He's like, do you wanna see pictures of that? I'm like, you have pictures of that too. So he sends me, like, The January issue in the February and the March in the April. And I'm just like freaking out, like, oh. I'm like, what else you got? And he's sending me just thing after. Oh, he sends me this right here. He's like, I have over 250 pages of hand typed stuff from Napoleon Hills typewriter. He hand typed it, he has the handwriting on it. You guys probably can't see this, but like there. He literally edited on it. Stuff like he cut and paste, like if you wanna change the headline, you know, cut a headline and then glued it on the page. That's how he edited back in the day. And you see his notes, him crossing out big sections. And he showed me all these things. He's like, yeah, these have never been published before. I have these as well. I'm like, okay. I'm like, what's it gonna take? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, what's it gonna take to get everything you have? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I need the whole thing. He's like, I've been collecting for 20 years. I have a lot of stuff. I'm like, I understand that. What's it gonna take to get everything? And yeah, I'm the best buyer ever. If you guys ever have something I want, tell me a good story. I'm in. Like, I will mortgage my house. Like whatever it takes cuz. Cuz old books. Anyway, so this was the 250 pages as well. And went back and forth and found out he had a whole bunch of stuff. And so we negotiated back and forth. I got a good deal. People are like, how you're not getting screwed over? I'm like, I don't know, but I don't want to lose out on this. There's another guy bidding on it right now. Like, I need it. Someone asked me later, how do you know that they're actually worth that much? I'm like, because I paid that much. So the next dude's gonna be like, well that guy paid this much. That's how much it's worth, right? Because it's only worth what someone will actually pay for it. So I just set the value of it because I paid for it anyway so I can justify it a thousand ways anyway. So we went. It was enough stuff. I'm like, well, can you just ship it to me? He's like, I'm not gonna ship you this stuff. He's like, it's a lot of stuff. I'm like, well, can you Give me a list. He's like, no. It's like my entire house is filled with stuff. He's like, but if you do it, I'll. If you want to buy everything, I'll give it. Give everything to you. 20 years of my collecting, all for you. And so we set up a date and a time, and we actually rented a private plane because it was. We had so much stuff, we couldn't fit it. I was gonna post. I didn't have time to put the pictures in there. I'll show you guys later. But we rented a private plane. Two of my kids flew with me, flew out there. He had it all laid out, and he rented a church and laid it all out, showed me the whole thing, and told the stories behind all the different things. And we packed it all up, like, 30 different crates of books and stuff, put it in to the plane, and flew home. And I was like, I have the greatest Napoleon Hill personal development collection of all time. And that's kind of where I went. I'll show you this in a second. But this actually gets worse because then I get home and I got all this stuff. It's all laid out everywhere, right? And I'm seeing Napoleon Hill stuff. There's all these other authors I never heard of before, right? So I start looking, and I'm like, reading that this person and this person, and I start going deep into the history of, like, where these things came from. So, like, Napoleon Hill was there, but Napoleon Hill's mentor was a guy named Orson Sweet Martin. Orson Sweet Martin is the guy who started Success magazine, which, by the way, I got the first edition Success magazine from this guy as well, which is crazy cool. 1897, like, first edition. Like, it was insane. So he was Napoleon Hill's mentor, but Napoleon Hill ended up working for him, writing for him. And so I go to ebay, I type in Orson Sweet Martin. And Orson Sweet Martin had written, like, 50 different books, okay? And nobody knows who this guy is. So I went on ebay, and for all, almost nothing, bought every single first edition copy of every single one of Orson Sweet Martin's books. And then I'm reading through all his books, and he talks about this guy in the 1850s who was his mentor, a guy who lived in Europe. His name is Samuel Smiles. And he was the very first person ever to write about personal development. The first. And he wrote a book called Self Help. He taught a group of kids how to be successful in life. And he taught this group of kids, and everyone's like, this was amazing. You should write a book. So he wrote a book called Self Help. First personal development book ever written. Orson Sweet Martin finds this book like 50 years later, after he passed away, reads it, starts success magazine. Boom. Launches Napoleon Hill. Boom. Launches Jim Rohn. Boom. Launches Tony Robbins. Boom. Changes the world from one Dude's book in 1850s. Isn't that powerful? And so, yeah, so I went back and I bought every one of his books and then his mentor's books and then in the magazine, Napoleon Hill's like, I met this guy, I met a millionaire, told me to read this book and I'm like, oh, I go to ebay and I buy that book and the rabbit hole goes deep. And I'm so grateful for ebay because if I didn't have ebay, I'd be in a plane flying from bookstore to bookstore. Like, it'd be a nightmare. But I want to show you guys what it looks like about 120 days later, after digging, jumping in this rabbit hole. Here's a 12 second video if I can get it to play. This is in the Clickfunnels office. Oh, obsession. Yeah, there's the rabbit hole. Literally. You can ask Jenny this. The mail people know my name. They not just the mailman who brings us the 40 packages a day, but the entire post office knows my name. They're like, oh, we got 400 more books from Russell today. And they bring them and it's the greatest part of the day anyway, so I'm telling you this to lead up some stuff. It's interesting if you look at what lasts beyond the moment. And this is something I've been like in my head playing with for a long time. I look at someone who. I look at someone like Jim Rohn, right? Jim Rohn's amazing. Changed so many people's lives. Look at Tony Robbins does these amazing events, changed everybody's lives. But what lasts beyond the moment, it's not the event. We do funnel hacking live. We spend $3 million. People come in, we speak, we change everyone's lives. And then minutes over, like the impact of the people there, it goes on, but everything that was created just disappears. But the written word lasts longer. This is my big aha I've been having. It's like, oh my gosh, like, of all the things I've done, events, courses, book, like everything, books are the only thing that lasts. I'm hoping in 500 years from now, there's a kid on ebay who's googling Russell Brunson and finding my own books and buying Them and like, changing the next generation of people's lives, right? The written word lasts longer. The other thing that's interesting is if you look at, like, most of the people who've written books, most authors, they write a book, and when they die, what happens? It dies with them. Okay? But some people didn't. Who's lasted longer. I started looking at who are the people that lasted longer than their lifespan. And it's few, but most of the people who lasted longer than their lifespan. One of the main reasons why that happened is because they wrote their books back before the copyright laws happened. Most of Napoleon Hill's works are in the public domain. So when he died, other people were able to get them. They're in the public domain. They could republish and keep going, going, going where everyone else is like, this is my copyright. They hold it so tight, they publish their thing. This is my copyright. And then they die. And then it disappears. Isn't that interesting? Okay. And so one thing. I'm gonna put this on camera right now for my posterity. When I die, I want everything that I've ever created to go to the public domain. I want the next generation to take everything I've got and, like, build upon it and keep going and keep going. Right? Thank you. And you think about it. You look at Elon Musk, right? Like, you look at what he's done. Like, the reason why he is the richest man in the world is not because he hoarded his trademarks and his copyrights, right? He created all this stuff, and then he put it in the public domain. And now everybody can build electric cars, new kind of stuff, because he didn't look at the scarcity. Like, this is mine. I have to hold. I have to keep it tight. He gave it to everybody, and everyone can build upon what he's developed and became the richest man in the world. So it's just interesting. But I look at this from us as people who are trying to change the world. How do we live beyond the moment? How do we live beyond the launch? How do we live beyond our lifespan? How do we live on forever? Now, this became really real for me because you guys know my mentor, Dan Kennedy. I had a chance, and I've gone through everything Dan's ever put out there. I've gone through his courses, his events, his seminars. And then when Bill Glaser sold the business, some. I shouldn't say morons on camera, but some people bought the company from him and then, like, destroyed it. And then for like, 10 years or even Longer than that, anyway. A decade. Like, didn't do anything, literally, for a decade. They didn't buy an ad. No new people came into the Dan Kennedy world for a decade, right? The more and more people forgot about him and got wit, and it got less and less. And Dan's written a lot of books, obviously, which is nice, which I think has extended his legacy. But most of Dan's greatest work is not in his books. Most of his greatest work were his events, his life, his life. Two, three day boot camps he would put on in a group like this in front of the people he wanted to serve the most. Like, he had so much amazing stuff, and then it just kind of died after the first group bought it. Adam Woody bought the company and worked really hard to kind of clean some stuff up. And then I was in a really fortunate spot where they were trying to sell it and we were able to get it. And as I took this over, I started. It was cool because we bought Dan Kennedy's, like, bought everything from Dan Kennedy. And the first thing they do is they sent me a Google Drive link. I click Google Drive link and it's here. Boom. 40 years of intellectual property in Google Drive. And I was like, this is better than ebay. This is everything Dan's ever put out. Ever. Most I've known, people never heard of or seen. And I'm going from folder to folder to folder, and I'm just freaking out that, like, I'm now the steward of this. Like, what am I gonna do with it? I'm like, well, I could create a course. Most of these things are videos or audios or things like that. But I keep thinking through this. I'm like, the thing that lasts beyond, like, when Dan almost died three years ago. And if that would have happened, it probably would have been the end. I would have just, you know, dissolved away. And in a decade from now, no one knew who Dan Kennedy was. How many guys knew Dan Kennedy was before I told you who he was? About half of us. How many guys? First time hearing Dan Kenney was when I was like, dan Kennedy's the greatest. There's the other half. Okay. He gets smaller and smaller. Like, each gen, not like generation of kids, but each generation of entrepreneurs, right? Like, since I've been in this business now, 20 years, I've seen probably four or five generations of entrepreneurs up, come up and down. But, man, another 10 years or so. Like, most people would hear a legend of Dan Kenny, but it would be over. They wouldn't hear anything else, right? Which is Interesting. So I was like, well, I like one of my goals. I told him this when I Like, my negotiation with Dan ahead of time was like, okay, this is the deal. I know who you are. I'm your biggest fan. Like, whatever you want, I'm gonna give you. Like, he was trying to, like, if you want, I get a call, I can explain the value I provide. I'm like, you're Dan Kennedy. You don't gotta explain nothing to me. Like, I understand what the value you provide, But I was like, my goal is I want to make your legacy live forever. And he's like, well, it doesn't actually work that way. He's like, nobody's legacy lives beyond them. What are you talking about? He's like, I tried it with. He bought Maxwell Maltz Psycho Cybernetics. Dan bought the rights from the family back in the day and tried to keep it going, and then it died. And then he sold to Matt Fury. Matt Fury typed it going, and then it died. And pretty much how many of you guys here know who Maxwell Maltz is? Ooh, look at it. It's like, 10%. Okay. He sold, like, 10 million copies of his books. But the legacy's died, right? Partially. Cause the copyright's been hoarded, so no one else can build on it. It's interesting. So I was looking at this, and I'm like, okay, well, we have all this Dan Kennedy stuff, like, how do we extend his life? What do we do? And so I'm going through all the archives, all the things, and we're putting together this offer. I'll talk a little about this right now, and at the end, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this. But when we put together this offer, this was. I wanted to figure out, like, how did Kennedy grow his company back in the day? And they. They launched their company and grew it through an offer that they internally called the Mifke M I F G E. When we started talking to their employees and their team, we're like, how did you guys sell people access to the newsletter in the past? Like, the mifke. I'm like, the mifkey. Like, the mifke. I'm like, that sounds so weird. And so we made fun of it. So much so that when we write the headline for this, we literally have to put it into the headline so that I won't forget what it actually means. So MIFKE is the most incredible free gift ever. Mifke. Most incredible free gift ever. Okay, so this is how Dan Kennedy launched his company. Back in the day, his whole goal was he wanted to print newsletter. That's how the medium he wanted to use. He wanted to be able to hand deliver something to people's mailboxes every single month. And the way they got people in is by creating a mifkey. And. And if you look at most of the great subscriptions throughout time, like, think about Sports Illustrated. How many of you guys remember when Sports Illustrated was advertising on TV really heavy back in like the 90s? Okay, it was interesting. They tried to sell people subscriptions to Sports Illustrated, but guess what? Nobody wanted to buy subscriptions to Sport Illustrated. So instead they made the MIFKE for Sports Illustrated. What it was, the MIFKE was, hey, if you get a subscription to our magazine, we. What we're doing is we're going to give you this football clock and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. The most incredible free gift ever until we beat it with Dan's. But, like, that was at the time the biggest thing, right? And that built Sports Illustrated. And so that when Dan launched his company, same thing. Like, we like people, it's hard to sell membership. We need to create an incredible offer to get people in. So they had their mifke, they launched it. So when we took the company back, it was kind of the same thing. Like, let's rebuild. Let's take what works and then build upon it. So we built out our first version of the mfke. How many of you guys, by the way, went through this funnel and bought. Yeah, for those who didn't, I spent millions of dollars buying this thing. We had the greatest team of all time. Even if you cancel the first day, like, buy everything we do slowly just to see the pages. Like, literally the first issue of the newsletter is just me walking through page by page, the numbers, the metrics, the stats, so you can see exactly what we did. So you guys can model it. Like, I'm doing this not for my own health. I'm doing this to give you guys models, what you can model in your businesses, by the way. So anyway, not that I'm trying to pitch you on this, but come on, it's the greatest free gift of all time. Greatest free gift ever for 20 bucks. Anyway, so we're going through here and we're building the software out. And as we were doing it, one of the first things we did is we found in the hard drives, there was a book series called the Lifetime Work of Dan Kennedy. Now, I don't have their design because their design looked super lame, like a grandpa from the 1800s made it. And I was like, in my mind, Dan Kennedy's like this gangster. We need to make him tough and amazing. And so I had one of my designers designed this cover. And now that's the Dan Kennedy I know. That's the guy who brought marketing to the world. So I need to change his perception, because the Dan Kennedy that he's been putting out there wasn't quite as cool. So we went in there and we found in the hard drive, they had sold it at one time, like, 10 info summits ago. It was like six binders of all of Dan Kennedy's swipe files. It was like, literally, if you hire Dan Kennedy for a console day, you fly out there, and he's got these big filing cabinets with all his swipe files where when you ask him a question, it's like, hold on. He walks over, pulls out the filing cabinet, pulls out the thing, like, oh, here's 400 ads that'll help you with what you're doing. So this offer was like his swipe files, his filing cabinet that he had put together way back in the day, and put it in this six binder set. So we took it and put it into his book set, made it look really, really good, and started selling this. It's the first upsell here inside of the mifkey. And so again, we did design, made it look awesome. And we took this thing that was a digital somewhere and turned it into the printed. Like the written word. Printed word again.
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Right.
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I went a little deeper into Dan's archives, and I found out that between 2012 and 2019, for his diamond members, he. If you guys have heard the legend of Dan Kenny, he doesn't have an email address to this day. All my correspondence with him happened through fax because that's the only way you can talk to Dan. We tried to buy a fax machine. They don't sell fax machines anymore. Do you know that? Unless it comes in this huge, big old printer. Because we were trying to do a funny video ad, and Jenny ran down there. Like, you can't just buy a fax machine. That's not a. Like, I think there's two people on the planet that still use them, and one's Dan. Anyway, so. But what's so cool? So diamond members pay 300 bucks a month, and for seven years, every single Friday, he would write a fax. He would fax it directly to the fax machine of his members or to the E fax account for all of us who didn't have Fax machines. Anyway, and so he wrote this thing, sent it out. It was amazing. And then it just died. The 300 people who were on diamond got it. They read it, changed their life, and then it just disappeared. Like, the legacy. The thing just ended. And for me, as, like, a student of Dan, I'm just like, oh. And so I'm going through the folder, I'm reading, like, fax after fax. I'm like, some of these faxes are so insane. Like, they're amazing. In fact, one of them. This is the only one I can remember off top of my head. But Dan had just went and seen Batman, the third Batman with Bane. And he's like. And Dan's grumpy about everything. So in the facts, he starts with like, I just saw a stupid movie about Batman. But he's like. But there was one principle that was really good. So how many of you guys have seen the third Batman with Bane? So, you know the scene like Bane breaks Batman's back. Oh. And then Batman's throwing this pit, the Pit of. What do they call it? The Pit of No. Pit of Despair. That's. That's from.
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Yeah.
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Princess Bride. Anyway, he's in the big pit, right? And so he's down there healing his back because, you know, you can heal a broken spine without anything in, like, weeks. Like, it happened for him. But he gets his back healed. And then, like, the legend is, if you climb out of the pit, you're free. You can get out. And so everybody tries to climb out of the pit. And so they tie this big, huge rope around themselves. They climb up the pit, and then they jump to try to get their freedom. And then they always fall and smack into the wall, and they never make it. And so Batman decides, I gotta get out of here. So he ties the rope around his waist, climbs up, jumps, and, like, misses the thing and smacks and does it day after day after day. And then finally, this old guy who's in the jail with Batman down there says, there's only one person that's ever escaped. And they said, well, who escaped? And there's. The whole legend said the reason why that one person escaped is because they jumped without the rope. So when you have the rope on you, you've got something holding you back. Like, you're like, oh, I might not make it, so I'm gonna have a rope. And so when you might not make it, you don't jump the same way as if I have to make it, Right? And so Batman heard that, comes back to the to the hole, doesn't put the rope on, climbs up and then jumps with everything he has, Boom. Catches it, gets out, and then saves Gotham, right? And Dan shares that in the facts. He tells the story and he says, the power behind that is so many of us entrepreneurs. It's like we're trying to, like to do the thing, trying to hit our goal, trying to do something, but we're doing it with like a rope on our back. Like, oh, I might fail, but I'm gonna try. Hope I don't fail, but I'm gonna try. Hope I hope I don't fail and we don't make it. It's like, if you wanna have success, you gotta cut off all the ropes and just go for it. And that was a fax from dan Kennedy, like 15 years ago. I'm reading this one thing, I'm like, this is amazing. So many people need this and everything else. And I think it's like 300 something faxes. So I messaged Jenny. I'm like, jenny, here's the fax folder. Turn this thing into the written word. We need a book that we can then sell and we can use. And so she put it all together, put in this huge book. And now this is the book we'll be launching in like a week or two from now that gets people to upgrade to the diamond membership. So someone wants to get to $300 a month level if they want to get these faxes that I upgrade to the diamond level and we give them the book. But now this book, all this fact is all the work that Dan put in once will hopefully now live forever. And it'll be selling this thing till the day I die and then beyond, because it'll be in the open source and you guys can all sell it and it'll be amazing. Right? But that's kind of, again, my mindset is like, how do we turn things into the written words so they last longer than just ourselves? Next one. Dan Kennedy's got two really good courses he did. One's called Personality and Copy. Who here went through the Personality and Copy? I know most inner circle members did. Another one was called the Influential Writing Workshop. Anyone go through the Influential Writing Workshop? This is literally Dan's greatest work. And one person in here has gone through it. What are you guys thinking? Come on. This is amazing. But it's. I understand it's courses. Die Influential Writing Workshop was before they had video cameras. They just had a microphone. So all this is audio. How many of you want to listen to dan talk for 25 hours? Yeah, like four. Yes, I do. But most people didn't. Right. And so what happened? This thing he created, he put time and effort and blood and sweat, one of his greatest things he ever created. And people who were there experienced it and then it was over. People confer hacking live and it's over and they miss it. Right? It's over. Like a sliver of the humanity ever gets the value from this thing that was created. So for me, it's like I need to help Dan live forever. But I also have a lot of stuff about story selling and storytelling as well. So what I did is I took all of Dan's stuff and we have some really good writers and editors who are taking it. And have you ever just gotten straight event transcriptions and you read it and they're kind of weird because like when we talk face to face, I can explain something three or four times. But you read a transcript and someone explains something three or four times makes you look like an idiot. Like I've tried every one of my books. I'm like, I have the idea I'm going to record myself talking and then I'll just transcribe it and my book will be done. It doesn't come off the same way. So we have someone who's gone through literally both of those two events and then one of my events and taken it and rewritten it. Not rewritten it, but fixed it. So everything's in line and it just makes. It's awesome. So this will be a two book set coming out later this year. But it's everything Dan's have written on personality and copy, his influential writing workshop. And then my story selling, my epiphany. Bridge everything into this book set where now I can launch this thing and it'll be out there for forever. Okay. Because the best, it's interesting, the best I ever taught story was actually at the original fad event. Who here was anyone here at the original FAT event? With Inner Circle? I remember Brandon and Kaitlyn Hormozy. There's probably like a handful. You guys were at the original, original FAT event and that was the very first. It was like the week after I'd sent the manuscript for Expert Secrets to the publisher. And like it was the most top mind ever. And I taught it in a way that was different. But. But once again, there's one person in this room who was in that room. No one else has ever seen it. So now I'm taking those pieces back out. Now I'm making it live beyond ourselves. Okay, where this can go forever. And someday in 500 years from now, somebody will be on ebay and type in Russell Brunson, Dan Kennedy. And all of a sudden this will come up and somebody in some future generation will be able to continue to run with this and build upon it and go from there. Mind hijacking. How many of you guys went to the Dan Kennedy's mind hijacking event? Yeah, it was insane. Literally, I was on a call with Dan last week and he's started talking about mind hijacking. And I just finished going through the course. I was like, dude, I went to that course. It was good. He's like, yeah, it was literally the best thing ever. And no one's ever seen it. I'm like, don't worry, I'm gonna take that thing. You spent all that time and energy and effort, and we're gonna take it and it's gonna live for forever by turning it into the printed word. A couple of things I wanna caveat on. This is what I'm doing with these books is not what I'm doing with a regular book. My traditional books are seven bucks free, plus shipping, whatever, right? With these things I'm doing is I'm trying to create high ticket expensive books. The only person in our market really doing this right now is Ben Settle. Anyone here follow Ben Settle? Have you noticed that every month or so he launches the high ticket expensive book. They're like 300 bucks to $1,000 or more. And I bought every single one of his. In fact, the thousand dollar one I bought twice because the sales pitch was so good. I bought it and it showed up. I was like, oh, I literally have it. I was like, oh, it's right there on my shelf. So I'm one of us. I understand. But I want to create things like that that are like. My goal with this is to try to shift the market to increase the perceived value of the written word. I think sometimes like, oh, it's just a book. Like, okay, the other books that are important, but I want to create something where the perceived value is bigger. So these are going to be expensive 300, $500,000 books. And beyond that, again, get passed on. How many of you guys have been to every single funnel hacking live in the past? Is it just. Dave is the only one and my team and Todd. Yes, Todd's been everyone. So Garrett White, for example, spoke every single one. And it's been interesting if you guys have seen Garrett's transformation from Garrett to like Rah to Garrett, like all dressed in white. And it's like this fascinating thing, especially when you listen back to back to back to back to back. But no one ever has because yeah, it's video, it disappears, it dies. And so right now we're taking Garrett. Garrett actually doesn't know this yet. This is going to be a surprise, so don't ruin it for him. But we're taking all of his presentations, doing the same kind of process, turning it into a book where now that can live beyond itself. And I'm doing it. I've got probably 15 of these, maybe more. You can ask Jenny, she'll make fun of me. But in production right now, because I'm trying to take all of Dan Kennedy's work, all of my work, all of Napoleon Hill's work, all the people that I have stewardship over their intellectual property and help it to live beyond itself. Because I feel like if we're not careful and if we're not building on each generation like this, I. It's a really, really scary thing. I'm gonna talk more about it probably late tomorrow night. Do I talk about it? I'm gonna ruin. I'm gonna retalk about it tomorrow night. But those 250 pages in Poland Hill that I found of his hand typed typewriter, there's one section and he titled it My Interview with Thomas Edison after he died. And it's this whole conversation he had with Thomas Edison after Thomas Edison had passed. And it's fascinating. Anyway, I got chills just rethinking about as I'm reading it. It's crazy because what Napoleon Hill would do is he would have conversations, people would pass it on, he'd like think about, okay, who's someone I admire, I look up to, like Thomas Edison. He's like, okay, I want to like, what would Thomas say to me sit on a typewriter? He'd type a question and he said just ideas would flood into his mind as if Thomas Edison was sitting there telling him what. So he'd like type the question out and he'd start typing everything that would come to his head as fast as he could. And so these 250 pages are like, question, answer, question, answer. And it's fascinating cause he asked Thomas this, he's like, he's like, you're dead. How are you having this conversation with me? He's like, I'm dead. But he's like, but I'm here in spirit, trying to continue on my life work. He said, I no longer have a body to continue my life work. But I'M trying to find other people who have bodies, who I can inspire them to take on my work and move forward. And for me, there are two things happen. Number one, when I heard that, when I read that, I got chills. I was like, okay. Number one, there are people trying to inspire me to continue their work. Napoleon Hill, like all Samuel Smiles, like, all these people, I'm buying their stuff. There's gotta be a different reason. Like, there's stuff that they've said that's been dead to the world that I'm supposed to be bringing back and sharing and bringing back. Right. And I definitely feel like I've been inspired to do that from these people, but also gave me motivation. Like, when I die, I don't believe it means I'm dead. I believe when I die, the work that I'm creating right now that I'm trying to get into this world because I feel like I'm in a rush to get something out here. When I die, it inspires me knowing that there's people that I'm past. I can hopefully give them ideas and help them continue to run. We're all building upon these different things. If we have to start over from ground zero, how sad is that? So anyway, that gave me faith and hope and excitement just reading that. And I don't know if it's true or not. I believe it is. But regardless, it gave me motivation on that we need to keep these things because if people stop reading books, if people stop consuming, people stop learning from the last people who are here, like, what a tragedy that is. I feel blessed. Like so many of the principles that I've learned from Dan Kennedy, I've been able to build this ClickFunnels platform on. And some of you guys have benefited from that. And I'm hoping that I'm watching right now, all of you guys in different industries, like, taking some of the frameworks and platforms and building on those and, like. Anyway, so I don't know exactly where I'm going with that other than I just think it's really, really cool. So. All right, I got two more things to share you, and then I'm gonna open up Q and a for about 20 minutes. Does that sound good? Cool. Okay, so the first thing I wanna share with you is we created this mifke offer. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but of all the funnels I ever created, this was the one that had the best metrics, meaning the highest earnings per click and the highest average cart value in the Past the way that they launched their newsletter, it would take them like, I think it was like five or six months to break even. The last time I looked at this, the average cart value of this Funnel was like $303, which means I could spend $300 to get a newsletter subscriber for this thing, which is insane. It means I can spend so much money and we are probably seeing my ads everywhere. And so I saw that. I was like, if I could spend $300 to get a trial customer into a newsletter, like, I should funnel hack myself, right? And so I did a podcast on this. I'm like, everyone. I shared this with dozens of people. Like, oh, that's really, really cool. I was like, I'm not telling you this feedback. Oh, that's really, really cool. I'm telling you this so you can copy it in your market. And so me, I was like, russell, you just told me how cool this was to get people to sign up for your newsletter. You should use the same tool to get people to sign up for your software. And so we created a MiFKE offer for ClickFunnels. How many of you guys have seen us launch this over the last week and a half or two weeks? Okay, couple interesting things for us to get somebody to sign up for a Click Funnels trial. John said the exact numbers, but it's like $150 to $200 to get someone to take a free trial.
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Okay.
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Off the ClickFunnels homepage right now, it's costing us $60 to get somebody to get the ClickFunnels mifkey which gets them in. And on top of that, our average cart value, it's lower than the Dan Kennedy one. I think it was like 150 or 175. Am I close on that? The cart value? So the normal trial was costing us almost $200 to get a free trial. There's no upsells or down sells, so we're in a whole 200 bucks when someone joins Click Funnels. Now, when someone comes to this funnel, only cost us 60 bucks to get that person to make $150 point of sale. You see how that works? So, like, Click Funnels was growing, but now it's going to grow way faster because we funnel hacked ourselves. So if you guys have any kind of continuity or membership or anything, like, look at these two funnels and model, you'll notice how almost identical they are. In fact, it was funny. Our design team initially did it and it looked way different. I was like, this looks awesome. Except for it doesn't look like the one that we already built. I'm like, make it look like this. But we're trying to make it different. I'm like, no, we're literally copying ourselves. We have full permission to copy ourselves. So just copy, like we know this works. Don't deviate from the thing that works. And if you notice when someone gets both these offers in the mail, they get the printed word. Okay? I want people getting this, the printed word. There's magic, there's power, there's something different that lasts beyond just the moment, more so than anything else we can do. And so I wanna show you that, just kind of share that. So you guys can look at those, go through those funnels, funnel, hack them, but then think about that for yourself. Like, how can I create a Mifke for my business? What would that look like? How would I create it? What would I do? And then start thinking about as you guys are creating what you're creating. Like if you do a live event, if you do a course, if you do something like, can you make a high ticket printed version of that? We have our 2 comma Club Live event, the virtual event that we do, which I'm super proud of. I love it. It's one of my favorite things, right? Every single time we do it. The first time I think we had 5,000 people. Then the second time it was like 3,000, then 2,000. Now we get 2 or 3,000 every quarter when we run that and it's amazing. But then the event's over and then it just. The impact of the people keeps going, but then it ends. And so I'm taking all of that and I'm going to turn that into a high ticket book that we can sell, we can put out there into the world that people can have that'll last beyond just the moment of the actual event. This is where my mindset's at because I'm trying to figure out how to live forever beyond like my days here. And it's all about, like continuing on the legacy. That's why I think the written word, the print word, is the most powerful thing we have as entrepreneurs. And so that's what I want to share. All right, with that said. That good. You guys like that? Okay, all right, question over here. How do you go through the content and get as much out of it as possible? Because I feel like I get something, I scratch the surface, I get the next thing, I scratch the surface. Some of them I get into more depth. But you've Obviously gone really deep. Great question. I actually literally been talking about this tomorrow, but I'll give you the short version and we'll go deeper tomorrow. One of the mistakes people have is that if I'm going to go through Dan Kennedy course, I got to implement every single thing that Dan says along the way. In my mind, there's two types of teachers and two ways that I consume stuff. Okay, if you look at Hero's Journey, there's the guide, right? So a guide is someone who gives you a framework. It goes from A to Z. And the goal of, like, consuming this content is to do number one, number two, number three. And I'm trying to get something done right? So like, the 2ccx program is very much A to Z. We're trying to go like, here's the first thing, second thing, third thing, the way to consume this is you listen to A and then you pause it and you do A. Then you listen to B and you do B. And that's the way you consume when you're learning from a guide. The second type of learning I'm doing is to change my belief patterns, okay? So my belief patterns are different. I'm not listening to Dan Kennedy trying to go from A to Z because most of his stuff is not very much A to Z. He's like, mind hacking is like 49 different mind hacks you can do to whatever to your business, right? So I'm listening to that. Not because I'm trying to go A to Z. I'm listening because I want to figure out, like, pieces I can implement in here. Like, oh, I can use that. Oh, I can use that. But more so it's because I'm trying to change. I don't know how to doodle this, but I'll draw this. I'm trying to change my belief patterns inside of my head. So I'm consuming this stuff over and over and over again. Not looking for an A to Z. I'm just consuming it to enjoy it, to change the thoughts inside my mind. Tony Robbins, for me, is the same way. I listen to everything Tony's saying, but I'm not implementing everything Tony's saying because I don't need to at most points in my life. But I want Tony in my ear and in my head all the time. Because I want to start thinking like Tony. I want to start acting like Tony. I'm trying to change my belief patterns. Most people are using TV and horrible music and these things to, like, subconsciously program their belief patterns, and they're jacked So I don't want that. I'm like, who are the people that I love that I respect? I respect their opinion. I want those things happening in my head all the time. And I'm not learning to try to implement everything. I'm just listening to shift my internal belief patterns. And then as things come up like, ooh, I can use that one. Oh, that one's awesome. Oh, that one I can't use. I'm gonna store it back here because someday I'm gonna be talking to so and so at the bar, or someone's asked me a question, I'll be like, oh, I heard Dan say this. This could help you. But I'm not trying to do everything A to Z. If you try to, like, learn everything A to Z, it's like, duh, I'm gonna die. And so for me, I'm only doing one of these at a time. Like, I'm picking a guide. I'm focusing on one step by step, process at a time, and that's it. I don't want to be doing two. Two will make everything go crazy. But I do listen stuff like this all the time, looking for the nuggets that can apply to the framework that I am doing and then to shift my internal belief patterns so I can think like Tony, think like Dan, think like the people I respect. So when decisions happen, I just. I think differently than I would by myself. Does that help? Cool. I said, we'll go deeper in that tomorrow. We're going to go deeper into, like, subconscious mind and a bunch of cool things that'll help, hopefully. So question about creating the world where now there's a lot of overlap from one program to another to then to the book. So any thoughts to share about how do we sort of draw that segregation line between people who have come to the event versus the book? Just kind of created that infrastructure around now. So many different products. You talking about in my world specifically? Yes, great question. I actually did a podcast on this literally last night. So in a week from now, it'll come out and you can listen. Just kidding. I'll tell you. So what I talk about the podcast was interesting. How many of you guys know who Brooke Costilo is? Do you guys know Brooke? So Brooke has got probably one of the biggest, not the biggest, info product companies that I'm aware of. She has one framework, she teaches. She's got one framework. It's five steps, and that's her framework. And you can go on a podcast, she talks about it. You can get for free. You can do your blogs for free. You can. Like, it's everywhere for free, right? But then she's got a $300 a month membership site that like, teaches people how to apply this in their life in tons of situations. Like, I'm struggling with smoking, I'm struggling with this. Just tons of different ways, like, practical application of the framework. And then from there, she's got like a $18,000 if you want to become certified on her framework, 18K. And she's got one framework that she's basically done the same thing. And I want to show, because some people, when they're trying to be an expert business, they get overwhelmed. Like, oh, Russell's got 2,000 frameworks. I need all of them. I'm obsessive compulsive. So it's a little different for me. Like, I've got my core frameworks like this right here. These are Russell's frameworks. Bom like, everything we teach is inside of here, right? Like my frameworks, from value ladder to different funnels. And the funnels, like sales scripts, that's everything around, like, the structure of a funnel. And then, like, how do you sell inside the funnel? Expert secrets is like, all that stuff, like how to write copy, how do you tell the stories, how to do all that kind of stuff. And then traffic is. How do you get traffic? But this is like, this is Russell's frameworks, okay? And so again, I talk about these for free on podcasts. I talk about them in videos, everything. You can buy the books for not that much money. And then it's like, now each step of the value ladder, we're going deeper on them, right? So if you do like the One Funnel way challenge, One funnel way challenge, we pick one framework, Boom. We show you how to build one certain type of funnel, one certain type of sales message, one type of traffic. So we're just picking 1, 1, 1. And we're doing that. When you join 2 comma Club X, the same thing. 2 comma Club X. We're not saying, here's every Russell's framework. They're all there. But we're saying, okay, the specific frameworks you should focus on. If you're on the expert side, it's a challenge framework. And then we're gonna go to a webinar until you get a million bucks. And then we're drive traffic. That's the framework. If you're on the E Comm side, it's getting the product with Alison Cart funnel driving traffic. So there's this very specific word picking certain frameworks. And in that window, if you're at the 0 to 2 comma club area, it's just blinders. Russell's got a thousand things you can do in the books, but these are the only two that matter until you hit a million bucks. So just do that with blinders and ignore everything else. That's your A to Z. Do not deviate. Are you in the expert side or E Comm side? The expert side is very simple. So a number one is like, launch a challenge, build your course, do a webinar scale with ads. That's it. Only do that. That's it, right? If the E commerce side is the same thing, there's a very specific path. Now, what's cool about it is you come to a mastermind like this and we're sharing different ideas and things like that. My goal with this is not for you to be like, oh, I need a tiny offer and I need this and this. Like trying to do every single thing it's saying, does this, like, will this help me in my path? If not, cool, like, maybe I'm not ready for that yet, but I'm understand that now. I'm going to put it here and I'm going to be able to do that and in the future, right? Or the other cool thing about this is let's say you're doing a challenge, right? So like, I'm working on my challenge funnel right now. We had a challenge funnel. Challenge funnel panel. That's hard when to say challenge funnel panel. Yesterday, right? It's like, oh, they talked about the badges. I could use that. Oh, they talked about this. I could use that. When you guys are networking and masterminding here on the property, same ending, you're in groups, like finding people are doing like, oh, cool. I could add that to my thing. Like, oh, I don't do that right now, but that's really cool. Or like, oh, I love how you, how you look at your business. I love how you're doing stuff and it's keeping those things separate. Cause here the core is keeping you on the path. We're gonna give you a million times more things than you need. But just understanding it's cause everyone's a different path, different journeys, and we've gotta serve everybody. But for you, it's being very clear. Like, this is my path. I'm not deviating it. I'm just doing step one, step two, step three. Everything else I'm learning is like, what can I apply to this? Or what's something that's gonna be in the background. A lot of you guys, my presentation, you're like, that's cool, Russell. In like 30 years from now, when I care about impact, then I'm gonna write a book and we're gonna do some stuff. And that's totally cool. You don't have to right now, but I want that in your head. I want you guys thinking about that. Because for me, I started finding more and more fulfillment as I shifted from, like, money for me, money for customers. How do I do this so that in a thousand years from now, the thing I'm doing now still lives on. Like, that gets me so fired up today thinking about the impact. And some of you guys, that's not where you're at. Some of you guys, that's where you're at 100%, right? And you're like, that's what you're thinking about. It's like, I did this thing, I'm making money, but like, God, like, how do I get beyond? And so, yeah, you'll learn a lot of things, but just always remember, like, there's a. There's a framework you're going through. Stick to that. And everything else is either helping you increase your belief in yourself, in other people, what you're doing, or it's like tweaks and changes and things you can implement to help in those pieces. Does that help? Cool. Thank you. Hey, Russell. Ethan King from Atlanta. I'm really fascinated by the high ticket books, especially the $1,000 book that you mentioned. Could you repeat the author's name and talk a little bit more about the sales letter and how you structured the offer? Yeah. So Ben Settle is the guy. If you look at Ben Settle, Ben Settle's business is really interesting. It's pretty simple. So all Ben Settle has is a squeeze page. If you go to bensettle.com there's a squeeze page. And then you put your email address in here, and then he sends you an email every day for the rest of your life, literally. I joined his list like 12 years ago. He's not missed a day yet. Like every single day. And most of the things are pitching his $97 a month email players newsletter. That's his core business. And he did that for, basically, man, I don't know, 10 years or so. And then he was trying to figure out a way to. He calls it in one of his books, he calls it Operation Money Suck, which he got from Gary Halbert. But it's like, how do I suck more money out of these people? So what he started doing was he was like, well, I've written a decade worth of newsletters, so 120 issues, right? Once a month for 10 years, he's like, I'm gonna start making themes. So he's like, well, what are the newsletters I wrote on this topic? He's like, oh, in the last 10 years, I wrote 15 newsletters on this topic. So he literally just takes the 15 issues of the newsletter on that topic, puts them together in a book, and then he kind of has commentary that takes from page one to page, from issue to issue, and then sells it as a book. Like, hey, last 10 years I've been talking about, you know, all these things, but I had a lot of, you know, in these 15 issues I talked about blah, whatever. It was like affiliate marketing or how to, how to build a list or how to whatever his different. Whatever his topics were. And if you miss any of those issues, like they're all in here, plus the other commentary and other things like that. And the book is $297. If you get on his list, you'll start getting. Because now he's gotten like a dozen of books like this he's built. And so every month he's pitching one of them to the list. And there are different price points from 97 bucks to 1000 bucks and all sorts of different things, but for him it's just a long form sales letter. He's got no video, just that's what he does. And mostly he sells it just to his own people. It's not like he's buying ads for it and things like that. It's just his existing list who has a relationship with him, he likes them, knows him and trusts him. He does these book drops. And I bought a lot of books from him. Who here's bought a Ben Settle book? Yeah, he has one that explains his version of the model. And I used to know the URL off top of my head and I can't remember now. Anyway, I can post that in the group when I find it. But yeah, that's kind of how he does it.
B
So I'm obsessed about legacy too. I'm always thinking about what allows us to stick around. I'm watching the giants behind us and I'm just really curious of when you were searching through this and looking at all the different types of mediums or through relationships and being. Continuing on. You're continuing. Dan Kennedy, why did you come to.
A
Written form as the primary one? What really stood out as that as the medium that keeps living? Yeah, well, I think so for Me, as I was buying all these courses and these books, everything on ebay I could find. There's not like. Also, Jim Rohn did. There's a couple books out there he wrote, but there's not much. There's much else, right? Tony Robbins has got his four books now, but Tony's not the best author ever. I love Tony. He. He's the best in the world on stage, but as an author, he's only got four books. And they're good, but they're not great. He would tell you that he doesn't like writing books. So when he's gone, that's what he left behind. UPW, he's done 10,000 times. It's almost identical time to time to time, but it's gone. When Tony's gone, it's gone. Oh, one thing I forgot to add that I'm doing with these books is I'm making mine multimedia as well. Meaning, like, when you're reading the have it all book, you'll open it and in the chapter one of Garrett's thing, there's a QR code and you scan it and boom, It'll pull up the entire presentation. So you can watch it or you can read it, because CDs and DVDs don't live on. Like, I tried to buy. I bought so many people's, like, cassette tapes, DVD sets, record sets. And I have them, but I can't consume them now, right? Napoleon Hill had a record set. In fact, all my category king members I got original copies from. I sent them out. Like, Napoleon Hill, like, record set, which is so cool. But, like, no. Have any of you guys listened to him yet? No one's got a record player. No one's got. No one's got DVDs. Like, Dan's whole entire world was DVDs. I used to go to their event in the back room. They had every course on DVD I bought. They had a package called Whole Enchilada. Had them all shipped to my house. I don't have a DVD player anymore. But books will never die. Like, I can always flip through a book. That's the thing is every other source eventually just disappears. And so that's my biggest thing is just like, it's the thing that. That if there was an EMP and bomb that blew up and everyone's electricity goes off, we can still read books. Everything else is gone. So that's why I've been obsessed with that. And like I said, from my own personal standpoint, I've launched probably 60 courses in my Days only people talking about are my books. I've never had someone come back like that Micro continuity course changed my life. We sold a crap ton of them. Never books. They always tell me there's something about. I don't know, there's something about the written word that's different that. Anyway, so I don't know, I could be wrong, but I think I'm right.
B
Hey, Russell.
A
So I got the MIF key newsletter. I bought in, man, it's awesome. And so I actually funnel hacked it and looked through it. But I was curious, like what's your mental framework for developing a MIF key and what kind of categories you want to make sure that you hit when you're creating that? Cause I saw with the Dan one, like you hit on like saving time, you hit on a lot of different areas. So I just love your mental framework to hear on that. So a couple things. Number one is like we want. This is like for a lot of people, the first introduction, right? So like we got to give them something that's amazing, that's going to get them. So if you look at. On the mifke we. The MIFKE is like a blend of me and Dan together, right? So it's like the best Dan Kennedy thing we could get. Someone's a magnetic marketing book because it's like the foundation. Like here's the. Like you read this, you're like, oh, I understand the foundation of Dan Kennedy. And then we can build upon it. And then on my side, we gave them the, as you know, the, the big old 74 funnel swipe file. So a whole bunch of funnels. So that gives them like eye candy of like, oh, these were funnels are. And they're so excited. So that was what we shipped to them because we wanted to get something physical in their hands and then from the digital in the members area. Again, as you mentioned, we're trying to different things like not just like because there's marketing people, there's sales people, there's Internet nerds, there's, you know, there's a lot of people who are kind of hitting with this like Dan's list and my list. And so from Dan's, like, we need something about like marketing and sales. And then like the time management is just always like, I don't know. People love that stuff. By the way, Dan Kenney's time management course is the funniest one ever. He talks about how like if you want to contact Dan, you have to you fax his assistant. His assistant once a week takes all the faxes and FedExes it to him. He gets the FedExes. Your hand writes back on him. He FedExes the FedEx back to you. And then his assistant scan, like texts or faxes you back. Like, that was his process. And his whole thing's like, if you separate how fast people in communication, they actually ask you good, intelligent questions, they think through it versus, like texting 800 times. Anyway, it's the best time management course ever. But yeah, on that side. And then on my side, I'm like, hey, I'm thinking through, like, people are coming in from his world. Like, they need, like one of the foundational things they need for me. So we give him the funnellology course because it's the foundational, like, funnel things theories, right? And then we gave them.com, like the audio versions of my book. Not the audio books, but like the audio events we did just to teach them the core fundamentals of Russell Brunson so that when they came into that world, they understand my core philosophies. When my people came in their world, they understood his core philosophies. And then together we can start now. The newsletter makes sense. Without those things, the newsletter, there's not a lot of context. We're just like, I'm getting this random thing in the mail. But if you have the initial foundational context, then we can build upon it. And so ClickFunnels was very similar. We put the funnel hacker cookbook. The recipe's like, here's a ton of funnels you can create for any circumstance you might have. And then the 30 days is because still the majority of people that join ClickFunnels are brand new beginners. So 30 days book is like, here's 30 different ways you can build a funnel to make money. And so it gives them those core foundational things. And then from there we have obviously the software. And then one cool thing we did is we took our. You guys know we have like our five day lead challenge, which is a free challenge, and we have our ofa, which is our paid challenge. So we gave everyone our five day lead challenge here, but we gave them coaches in there to help coach them through it. Because if we can get them to generate their first lead on click funnels, they almost never leave. Like, that's one of our metrics. If they set up a landing page and generate a lead, we've got them for life. If they don't, during that first 14 days, we lose them. So now we give them the training, show them how to Set up their. Their first funnel, which is just a landing page. And so we have coaches that help them through that process. And the end of those 14 days of coaching, then those coaches upsell them to the OFA paid challenge 14 days later. And so those are kind of things we plugged into those.
B
I don't actually have a question, but you just skipped over it really quick with what you sent us. So the category kings in the group, Russell bought all of that stuff, put it on an airplane, flew it to his place, and then he showed it to all of us and told us not to tell anybody about it. So it showed. Christmas time, something showed up in my house. It was a big box and he skipped over it. It was a success course from the 1950s that he bought, that he sent to us that sells for a couple thousand, five, ten thousand dollars on eBay. And this is him earning a customer for life. And so what I took from it, my wife actually got me a record player for Christmas. I opened up and there was a record player there. And so I raised my hand. He didn't see me. I was the only one. And I had a mastermind meeting in January and I was able to play some of those records for 300 people at my mastermind. And so exactly what he's talking about right now is actually happening then. He doesn't even know about it. And a lot of people don't know about it, but Napoleon Hill was talking to my community and talking to their soul. And they're taking it and they're going implement it in their business. And the trickle down effect is happening like the ripples are going out. So that's the kind of man that's standing in front of us all right now is giving away the stuff that he's buying to his community. Can we give it up for him?
A
Thank you. And Doug, here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates, excludes Massachusetts.
Episode 81: The MIFGE Secret – Turning Offers Into Legacy Assets That Live Forever
Date: October 22, 2025
Host: Russell Brunson
Podcast: The Russell Brunson Show | YAP Media
In this deeply personal and tactical episode, Russell Brunson shares the philosophy, stories, and practical strategies behind his obsession with legacy, the “MIFKE” (Most Incredible Free Gift Ever) concept, and how to transform offers into assets that outlast their creators. Drawing from lessons in entrepreneurship, history, and personal experience, Russell explains why the written word holds a unique place in creating a legacy, and shares actionable insights for entrepreneurs aiming to leave a lasting impact.
On Content Consumption & Implementation Strategies
On Overlapping Offers, Segmentation, and Info Product Structure
On High Ticket Books: Sales Letters and Offer Structure
Medium Matters: Why the Written Word Wins
Mental Framework for Designing a MIFKE Offer
“I want the next generation to take everything I’ve got and, like, build upon it and keep going and keep going...”
— Russell Brunson (22:14)
“The reason he [Elon Musk] is the richest man in the world is not because he hoarded his trademarks and his copyrights...He gave it to everybody, and everyone can build upon what he's developed.”
— Russell Brunson (22:53)
“Books are the only thing that lasts. I’m hoping in 500 years from now, there's a kid on ebay who's googling Russell Brunson and finding my own books.”
— Russell Brunson (20:53)
“If people stop reading books, if people stop consuming, if people stop learning from the last people who are here, what a tragedy that is.”
— Russell Brunson (41:36)
“I think the written word, the print word, is the most powerful thing we have as entrepreneurs.”
— Russell Brunson (45:36)
| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------| | 00:45 | Starting from money to meaning/legacy | | 03:48 | Why books, not offers, become legacy assets | | 05:34 | Building the library – vision & symbolism | | 11:44 | Buying the original “Laws of Success” | | 18:17 | Mapping the “genealogy” of personal development | | 19:15 | eBay obsession and collecting habits | | 20:19 | The written word outlasts all other media | | 22:14 | Russell’s public domain declaration | | 25:15 | Dan Kennedy’s legacy and Russell’s acquisition | | 28:45 | The original MIFKE model and Sports Illustrated | | 36:25 | Turning content into expensive, collectible books| | 43:00 | Printable, legacy-building “offers” | | 47:30 | Q&A: Learning styles and frameworks | | 56:15 | Multimedia printing and physical preservation |
End of Summary
For more modeling, see Russell’s newsletter funnels, ClickFunnels MIFKE, and Ben Settle’s book drops (see episode for URLs & resources).
Skip to 22:14, 43:00, and 56:15 for core takeaways on legacy, offer structure, and content preservation.