Mastering Entrepreneurship: Napoleon Hill’s 10 Timeless Lessons

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I was like, I wanna go to Wise, Virginia, to the home of Napoleon Hill, and I wanna sit there and read old boxes, or open old boxes, go through storage units of his old stuff, sort through the archives and find old manuscripts and read 'em and just hang out for a couple days. And my wife thought I was so weird, but that's what I did. So we flew out to Wise, Virginia, and I spent 3 days going through the archives and just had so much fun, like reading his books and studying his life and just finding stuff that's never been published before and his old artifacts, like his, his glasses, his, he just, it was really special. I was joking 'cause 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 Polynesian 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 spent the day masterminding. It was really cool. 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, all kind 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 relate 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 kinda 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 kinda walk through, yeah, Napoleon Hill as 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 gonna push you 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 of 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 and 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-Conant 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 'cause 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, it was a really cool, magical, I thought, event for those who were there. And this is number 2 and we thought, you know, next time we do Flip 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 days early. We're in the middle, in our company, we're like in event season right now so we had like 5 events in a row and then I had like this little tiny week in the middle where I had a break and then we have like 5 more events in a row and so, I told my wife, I was like, hey, I wanna have a vacation from all these events. I'm gonna fly to Wise, Virginia and go lock myself in some storage units looking at old books and then throw a mastermind event at the end of the week 'cause, you know, as long as we're hanging out, we should have some kind of an event. And she's like, you have the weirdest idea of relaxation and fun. But it was amazing. So I had a chance to come out here the last couple days and 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 time for me just to read and study and like find out different ideas about Napoleon Hill and just kind of prepare for stuff I wanted to share with you guys today. And I think initially my thought was I was gonna come and like talk about some of Napoleon Hill's principles and things like that, but as I was getting closer and closer and this morning I woke up, I was like, I don't think that's the right, message for this audience. I was like, I think it'd be more fun is looking at the lens of Napoleon Hill as an entrepreneur like us. Like, what are the things he was doing? 'Cause 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 gonna talk about that today if you guys are cool with that, 'cause I geeked out. I'm a little nervous 'cause JB Hill's here, and hopefully he doesn't fact-check me on too many things. If I'm wrong, just be like, nah-ah, and we'll just do the fact-checking thing, but I think I'm pretty close on most of the details. So, 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 4 hours, so we'll just go till we're done if that's all right. So, yeah, I titled this like Napoleon Hill as an Entrepreneur. And I want to start, I think most of you guys probably heard this story before, but, and I've read about it different places. It's kind of told different ways, but the one version I found this morning to kind of read, talk about, 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. Anyway, so he's working for this magazine, he gets this assignment to go interview Andrew Carnegie, 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 3-day thing where every single day he was going through, and so, And I'll talk about each day he kind of covered a different thing that he learned from Carnegie. But the end of the 3 days was over. Basically, Carnegie came to Napoleon Hill and was like, "Hey, 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 he asked Napoleon Hill, he said, basically, this is what he's 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 change everything, it'll change the world. Are you willing to do this? And Napoleon sat there for, exactly according to 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've gone past 60 seconds, I would not have given you the commission, but because you did it, and you were decisive, I'm gonna 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, and the version I was reading this morning, Napoleon Hill was like, he was all excited, and then Carnegie's like, and by the way, I'm not gonna pay you for this. This is like your volunteer work. And he's like, wait, the richest man in the world, you're not gonna 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 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 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 listing out like Napoleon Hill as an entrepreneur, it's 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 of you 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 that potato gun story one more time, I will like, I would wanna 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, ah, the Carnegie story, okay. Let me explain this, 'cause this 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 a new group of people who are coming into your world. If you're starting it like, you know, Napoleon's like, hey, point number 17, no, principle number 17, and like, they have no context of it, then nobody cares about the thing you're actually teaching, right? So it's so valuable, 'cause like you hear the context of it, and the Carnegie story, and all the things, like that's step number 1, right? And so of my, I think I have, I've got 10 steps, alright? So step number 1 is having an origin story and being willing to share it as often as possible in everything you do. So that's number 1. Okay, number 2 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 2 of that book. There's a book called Will of Fortune. So we go over there, you guys will see it. I was kind of freaking out, 'cause I'm, 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, is 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, 8 hours. I was just like reading the entire thing, right? 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 it 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 1,000 times. He's telling the Carnegie story, and in this version he told it, it was really cool. He said the very first day he 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 1, the thing that Carnegie impressed upon me the most became the first part of the Laws of Success, and it was the mastermind principle, right? And he talked about how when he wanted to build the Carnegie Steel and everything, he didn't have the money or the resources or anything, so the first thing he did was get the mastermind, the people who were gonna bring the money in, the talent, the expertise, and he 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 is 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 he looked up to who had passed away, and he had this invisible mastermind. And so what he would do is he would sit down there and he'd think, and he'd put himself in a spot where he could ask questions and then wait for answers from Lincoln and from Emerson and from all these people that he looked up to to get these ideas coming through. And he said, when you sit there long enough, These thoughts just 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 2, he met with Carnegie day number 2 to go back to the next interviews and he said, he said on this day, he said Carnegie introduced me to the twin sister of the Mastermind Principle. It's the only place I ever heard him call it the twin sister, maybe somewhere else but I thought it was kind of cool. The twin sister of the Mastermind Principle which is the principle of a definite purpose. And he talked about that, right? Having a definite purpose and like knowing exactly what you want. And what you're gonna achieve and what you're gonna go after and get. Oh, I should have brought it. Yesterday, 2 days ago, Dave gave me a photocopy of Don Greene's definite purpose that he had when he took over the foundation. It was like a 2-page thing walking through like his definite, it was, ah, I wish I would have brought that. Maybe we'll see if we can get a copy. But it was really cool seeing like, here's what Don Greene said his definite purpose was when he took over the foundation. And now looking however many, 20, 30 years later and you're seeing like, wow, he actually accomplished this and so much more. It was possible because he had the definite purpose, right? And you guys, if you've been to my seminars, I talk about definite purpose now every time I do anything. And I talk about how like in my personal life, like when I was growing up, I was a wrestler. I started going to 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. Coach told us to do something, I'd do it, and then we'd go home. And I remember feeling like I was just, it was just, I was in my head, I was picturing it was like just circular. And nowadays, after reading Outwitting the Devil, he talks about hypnotic rhythm. I always picture 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 the thing I want. Like more than anything in my life, I want that thing. Like that's, like I could touch it, I could see it. And as soon as I had a definite purpose, like I wanna be state champ just like he was, it shifted from me being in this like circular motion, just like doing the motion, to I all of a sudden was like there. And it put me into momentum, into a direction, and it changed everything for me, right? And it's similar to what he talked about here, which is like picking the definite purpose and having those things. And it was funny, this year's Funnel Hacking Live, I did a talk talking about definite purpose. And in the quote though, Napoleon Hill, He says, I don't have it verbatim off the top of my head, but he says you basically have to pick a definite purpose, and then in the quote, the second half of the quote says, and then you must have a burning desire to possess it. And so at Funnel Hacking 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 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, having a definite purpose, like my desire became insane. Like I was so obsessed with it. I would sit there in class all day while the teacher was talking and I'd be like drawing wrestling pictures and thinking about things, picture my goals and who am I gonna do, like what's my workout tonight gonna be? And it was like all encompassing. I couldn't think about anything else except for like, it was the closest I can think of a burning desire I ever had. It was 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 was annoying if it wasn't, had to do with this purpose I wanted. And that's the thing a lot of people miss is maybe they do pick a purpose, like, oh, I wanna 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 2 that Carnegie spent with them all talking about definite purpose. Again, he called it the twin sister of the mastermind principle. So step number 1 was figuring out the mastermind, step number 2 is then having a definite purpose, what you're achieving as a mastermind group, And then day number 3, he said day number 3 he focused on the habit of profiting from your failures. And there were so many cool things in, actually I took some notes on it. Can I share 2 or 3 cool things from Will Fortson that I thought were really cool? So Will Fortson talked a lot about this principle of profiting from your failures. And one of the things he said, okay, 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, he said, 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, like 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. I had built a business, it was growing, we had about 100 employees at the time. I thought we were on top of the world, thought we were invincible. And then 2008 hit and we were still doing awesome. I was like, yeah, we beat the recession, we're geniuses. And we thought we were so smart. And then 2 years later, it somehow magically caught up to us and we got destroyed. And it was, man, probably the darkest, most painful time of my life, 'cause I thought we were invincible. 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, especially when you have your friends and your family members working for you. You know their kids, you know everybody, and it was just like, it was hard. I had to let these 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 didn't have enough money. We still owed 2 and a half years on our lease. Everything's falling around me and I had no idea how to do it. And I remember just thinking like, 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 to that point disappeared in weeks, just to try to keep things open and shift things around. And I remember moving out of the office, moving to this little tiny office, having 4 or 5 people working for me. Still not knowing how I'm gonna afford to even pay these guys. We're trying to hustle and trying thing after thing after thing. And again, it was like this failure, right? But as Napoleon Hill says, like, every failure comes with a 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 gonna do and what's the next step, right? And in that process, it took us about 4 years to get back on solid ground where we paid off the IRS and weren't failing and stuff. But in that process is when I met a guy. And the guy that I met in this process was a programmer from Atlanta, Georgia, who basically, he'd created a website like 5 years earlier. He's a genius. Created a website, set up online, and then he retired, and it was just making money Again, he's smarter than all of us combined, like the smartest guy I ever met. He just built a software that just made a site that made money, and he just retired and left. And so for 4 or 5 years, he was on permanent retirement as a 22-year-old kid while the site was making him money. And somehow, I sent an email out looking for a partner on a project, and he responded back. And in this failure, that was the seed that I didn't know was there. I didn't know, and if it wasn't for the failure, I never would have met him. He came into my world, we started working together for 2 or 3 years on projects, and like project after project didn't really work, failed, mostly failed, but it was a little success, but nothing, you know, and just like over and over and over again, and in that journey, that relationship and that partnership became what eventually was ClickFunnels. Todd became my co-founder of ClickFunnels, he built the software, we launched it, man, 10 years ago last week, 2 weeks ago, yeah, it's our 10-year birthday, We launched ClickFunnels and it went from zero to we just passed $1 billion in sales in a decade. And it was like this one thing. Yeah, but it's crazy, right? It's like it was like if it wasn't for that failure and that seed, then it wouldn't— like nothing would happen. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. So anyway, it's really fascinating. And one of the— I've shared this on like 3 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 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, the door to every experience he's had and to every person who has damaged him, 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 of them where they have a free hand to open the door of opportunity as they come to them. You see, the 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 the door so not 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, you know, I think a lot of times we're looking for the doors of opportunity, but like we're not closing these things behind us, right? And it's like every person— he talks about like, this is why we talk about burning bridges. Like sometimes you have to burn relationships and things to be able to like continue to move forward. Closing doors and negative thoughts about ourselves, other things, like 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 3 in the morning. So, um, Okay, so those are the 3 things. So he said after he spent the 3 days with Andrew Carnegie, he said it became the nucleus for what became The Laws of Success. And there were 3 principles. Day 1, he learned the mastermind principle. Day 2 was his definite purpose. Day 3 was the principle of the habit of profiting from failures. And so he took those things and it was the very beginning of his framework, okay, that he was gonna teach. And he went there and then Carnegie introduced him to a whole bunch of other people and said, go interview all these people. And it was cool 'cause in, In Wheel of Fortune, he was talking about, I went and I met so-and-so, and he's like, from 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 amongst everybody, so then I added this piece to my framework, right? And then he's like, I met the next person, and like this person, they had this unique thing that they were doing that was different than anybody else, and I realized that that was across all these successful people, that became part of my framework. And so when he left Carnegie, he had 3 3 steps in his framework, 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 2 here in Napoleon Hill's Entrepreneur is after you have your origin story, step number 2 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 wanna teach other people, and I had a framework. And the framework became my very first book, which is DotCom Secrets. Right, it was just all the frameworks I had gathered over time. So for you guys, it's 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 Hill's, now you're building your framework. This is the thing that you're gonna be sharing with the world to change other people's lives. And so that's step number 2. Any questions on that? You guys all have frameworks? If not, that should be a focus point. I always tell people, framework creators are the people who are liberating and freeing other people. That's what entrepreneurs do, is like, we create frameworks that make other people's lives simpler and easier. And 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. But the frameworks became the foundation for everything else, all the other work. Also, if you'll see in the foundation, like, everything else is based on these same frameworks he developed at the very beginning of his journey, which is cool. And it's funny, my world— look at my world— like, almost everything I teach or do is based on the original DotCom Secrets frameworks that I spent the first 10 years of my business, uh, like, gathering and developing. In the next 10 years, like, that's what we do. Like, our software is just us teaching, it's a practical application to build the frameworks from the book. Like, our masterminds are us teaching the frameworks from the 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 you just use it over and over and over again. Okay, one fascinating story, 'cause this was fascinating to me. Henry Ford, who built Ford Motor 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 gonna seem like much when you meet him, but this guy's gonna change the world and he's gonna 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 gonna be successful. And he kept interviewing him, he's like, this guy doesn't, like, 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 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 of them are 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. Okay, so that's number 1, your origin story. Number 2 is building out his own frameworks. Number 3, and this was one of the coolest things about it, I didn't realize this, and this comes back to the gift we gave you guys with Truthful Advertising. So number 3 is you have to become you have to become a student of advertising and marketing. Okay, so you think about this. So Napoleon Hill— what year was Think and Grow Rich published? 1937. Okay, so timeline. So 1937, Think and Grow Rich 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? And I always tell people that come to my world who are like, they're the greatest in the world at their thing, could be health, it could be finance, 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. And 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. 'Cause that's how you get it out to the people, right? Napoleon Hill could have wrote Think and Grow Rich and would have sat there, but he had spent 20 years prior to that learning, understanding advertising and marketing, so when his big opportunity came and 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 kind 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, 'cause like, I've been trying to collect every ad that I found from Napoleon Hill. In fact, we were talking yesterday about potentially putting together a book, 'cause we found so many, ads for like, not just Think and Grow Rich, 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 didn't call them correspondence letters or something, but letters that actually would sell things, right, they were sales letters back in the day. And so, he had focused on that, so the third thing is that he became a master of studying advertising, which is the same for all of us, right? If you want your message to go beyond you, you have to become a master. At advertising. I look at 9 Glo Code, like Lloyd was the master marketer, right? He took, Earl was great, great personality, great voice, and then Lloyd came in and he was, I mean, Dan Kennedy told me, he's like, he's probably one of 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 both of them, it's hard to grow. Like, you gotta 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, spent 20 years prior to Think and Grow Rich coming out, learning, understanding, and mastering it for himself. Okay, so that's step number 3, the studying of advertising. All right, step number 4. So that was 1917 that he did, that he was teaching the advertising course. 2 years later, 1919, is when he came out with his very first magazine called Hill's Golden Rule, which is one of the coolest magazines ever. There's a whole bunch of them at the foundation. I've collected, I actually, so it ran for a year and, a year and 8 months, a year and 10 months, I can't remember, with Napoleon Hill in charge. It was called Hill's Golden Rule. And then by the end of year 2, him and the business partner got in a fight or something, I can't remember the exact details, but He ended up leaving it, shifted from Hill's Golden Rule to just Golden Rule Magazine, but I have a copy of every single issue that, you know, it was Hill's Golden Rule, and it's one of the coolest magazines ever. One of the cool 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, 'cause I was like reading these authors, I was trying to find other works by them, there's nobody, 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 a magazine and they were all him. I think except for the first year and a half, he couldn't afford writers. So 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 to look at the progression in his mind. The next thing he needed is he needed distribution. He needed a list, he needed to be able to get his message out to people. So the next thing he focused on, 2 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, the way you grow a business is you have to have a list, right? That's the focus point. And back then, obviously, there weren't email lists, 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, Whitney was doing the book club yesterday with Elizabeth Towne, and it was the first book we've done with Elizabeth Towne, and I was like, Whitney, you know about Elizabeth Towne, right? She's like, no, what about her? I'm like, she was one of the most Anybody here know Elizabeth Towne, 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 the 1800s all the way up to like, I think like 1960 or '70, it continued to run. But she was the distribution channel for this thing, for the entire New Thought movement. So you look at, I've gotten, I think I have like over 1,000 copies of Nautilus. I don't have the complete set, but I'm working on it. Eventually, we'll have them all. If you read the Nautilus, you open it up and what's fascinating is inside, every single author that you've heard about in this world, they either wrote an article in that or an ad or both. In fact, most of them are both. So you open it up and it's one of the most fascinating things. Every issue of Nautilus, it's like, she was a distribution channel. Her magazine was going all across the entire country and everyone who had a book or a course, something they wanted to teach, they were buying ads 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 Hill's Golden Rule, 'cause he's building a list, building a distribution channel where 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. I don't know if he knew that's what he was doing, but it's 100% what he did. So he ran that for a year, almost, a little less than 2 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, and ran that, I think, for about 3 years, I think, if I remember right. And right now I have a complete set except for 3 missing issues we cannot find anywhere. Twice, like, 10:30 at night, we're in the archives, and I thought I found, like, the missing one. I was freaking out, and I realized it was the wrong year. So anyway, but they're beautiful too. Like, they're some of the most, the coolest magazines. I think there's some that you guys probably see over there. But it was a Napoleon Hill magazine, and same thing, comes back, loses the list, starts building distribution channels again, getting it 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 different articles, and you notice in there these things keep popping up, like a lot of these principles that he's developing, these frameworks, they keep, he's testing them, he's practicing them 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 it, and getting better at telling it. Which is similar to us, right? Like, when you guys go out there, at least for me, it's like, I have something I wanna teach, and the first time I teach it, it's the worst, right? So I'll go, and on my own podcast, I'll talk about it. Then I'll go on someone else's podcast and talk about it. Every time I talk about it, the message gets clearer and more refined, it gets better and better, 'til eventually I'm on stage in front of 5,000 people, and I tell a story, and everyone's like, "That was the best story ever!" It's like, "I know, I've told it 45 times, but I got it mastered now," right? And that's what he was doing, like, 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. As he keeps retelling stories and refining them and getting them tighter and getting them better. So, anyway, so that's number 4 in my lessons from the Point Hill Entrepreneur is building out a distribution channel. Okay, is this good so far? Yes? Okay. Alright, 'cause I'm way over, no, I'm doing good on time. Okay, cool, alright. I have no context of time, so I get confused sometimes, and sometimes it's like 4 hours later, I'm like, I should have stopped talking a long time ago. Okay, 'cause we're almost halfway there. Okay, so distribution channel. After distribution channel, so again, that's 1917's the advertising, 1919 the first mag, Hill's Golden Rule launches, it goes for a year, almost 2 years, and it ends, so what, 1921? Napoleon Hill Magazine ran until like '21 through, or '22 through '24-ish, and about this time, Napoleon Hill is putting together his actual, I typed, I wrote in here number 5, I wrote the core doctrine. So he's taking all these principles, all these things he's learning, he's creating like the doctrine of success, right? The philosophy of success, like his core thing he's putting together. And so about this time is when he puts together his first real actual thing, which is the Law of Success. And you guys will have a chance to see one of the coolest things I I saw in the Foundation is they had the actual manuscript for Law of Success. And it's, when it was actually published, it's like 8 books. Each book's got 2 lessons, I think. I think it's 8 books, the first edition's 8 books. So you guys have seen 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 huge book, it's like this fat. They bound it in a book and then they like, around the sides they made it like gold so it looks like a Bible or something, but it's like, Anyway, the original manuscript's over here. But that was the first thing he took all these things he's been learning from Carnegie and from Ford and from Alexander Graham Bell, all these people he's been interviewing, and he put it all together. He said, this is my framework, these are the 15 laws, I always say laws of success, but it's 15 laws of success. Singular law, plural success, right? So he has that, and that became the very first thing. So he puts it 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, 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. Again, I thought about that with DotCom Secrets, was my philosophy on marketing. Expert Secrets was my philosophy on story selling, my doctrine on story selling. Traffic Secrets, my philosophy on traffic. The new book I'm writing right now is a philosophy on, how am I gonna tell you the title? I just changed the title of it, but it's gonna be amazing. Right? That's the next step is like, as you guys are learning, you're gathering all these different frameworks, it's like, now I'm gonna, like, this is where I'm gonna introduce the world, like, this is my, me spending 10 years of my life figuring this thing out, this is where I built DotCom 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, and also it's 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 start sharing with the world, right? So that was number 5. If you guys haven't, looked at 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's got stories, examples, case study, 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 your philosophy on weight loss, your philosophy on winning the stock market, whatever your thing is, like what's your philosophy? Anyway. I always thought philosophy was boring, but like, think through 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, like, it's what you're literally doing is like, this is my philosophy on how to do— anyway, so build a philosophy. Number 5. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate sees. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have 4 times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing VertuoUp, the latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch. Sense and taste in every single cup. With a 3-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew over ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself. Shop Vertuo Up exclusively at Nespresso.com. Number 6, that's the philosophy. He's done. He just put it out there in the world and hope people would sell it, right? Number 6, it came back to promotion. So what's fascinating during this time, you start seeing articles and ads popping up where he's promoting Laws of Success, and they're showing up everywhere, right? So as soon as the doctrine, the core beliefs, the 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, promoting it, getting people to buy it. And so number 6 in this is promotion. Okay, now number 7, this is where This part gets really exciting for me. I'm not sure, again, I wasn't there. I'm assuming Laws of Success was hard to sell because it's huge. It's also a book set. And it may not understand this right, but if I remember reading in the biography book, the Lifetime Works, or not Lifetime Works, what's the book that Tells his whole life, we were talking about earlier? Lifetime of Riches? Yeah, Lifetime of Riches. Lifetime of Riches, correct me if I'm wrong, but they said that the book set would be in the bookstore, but someone could go and buy just book number 1, right? And they go home and read it. And so they come back and they buy book 2. So it wasn't like they're buying a book set of all these books, 'cause that'd be overwhelming. Like, here, I'm gonna buy his whole books. So they buy one and it'd be good enough for them to come back and buy book number 2 and book number 3, right? And so I just imagine that selling that's hard, right? And Law of Success was very much like, this is for everybody in the world, it's very general, it's like, If everyone wants to be 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? 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 Law of 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 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 Think and Grow 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. That's who this is attracting, that's who he's niching down. So my number 7 hit point is niching down, taking your core frameworks, and then finding niches that you can affect. 'Cause it's always easier to market to the niches than it is to market to the masses, right? Way less expensive, way cheaper. So Think and Grow Rich was basically taking Law of Success, taking his core frameworks, and making a version very specific towards entrepreneurs. There's another book we don't have here, but it's called Raise Your Own Salary. Anyone here read Raise Your Own Salary? Probably not many of you guys, because you're entrepreneurs, you got excited about this book, you're like, I wanna be rich, right? But all of your employees, like, how to raise your own salary, was basically Think and Grow Rich for employees. It's teaching them the same laws of success, same principles, but for employees, helping them 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. Right, so there's a different hook on this one, it's gonna have a different audience, bring them in. Inside there you have the exact same, exact same, Laws, like, 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 this is fascinating. So it's a different hook, same frameworks, different stories. And from that, you could, he was able to, and you see this in his work, was able to go and hit so many sub-markets, so prolific, because he's not rethinking I need 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 Napoleon Hill things, I bought the whole library from JD who had been collecting for like 20 years. It was funny 'cause he was like, Napoleon's my favorite author, but 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, spun for whatever audience that he is speaking to at the time, which is so cool. So my next point here, number 7, was niching down. Like, how do we take our core frameworks as we're going to different markets? Like, different hook, same framework, different stories that related back to that audience, right? So that was really, really cool. 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, like, here he did it here, and then here, and then here, and then this, and just showing like same frameworks as different hooks, different hook, same framework, different stories, and how prolific he was, 'cause there were so many different ways he was able to teach the same frameworks, which I thought was really, really cool. Okay, that was number 7. Number 8, we come back to what number 6 was. Number 8, promotion, okay? He creates this stuff, doesn't stop. Some of us create something like, hey, hopefully the world likes it, 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. We found examples of like, Think and Grow Rich, like after it was done, he did radio shows, and it wasn't like nowadays we do podcasts, we jump on and no one comes prepared and we all just like jump on and ask each other questions. Like, we found manuscripts of these radio shows, so they would like pre-write the entire radio show, so you could read it. You're like, okay, the host says this, then Napoleon Hill reads this, and then it's like a 25-page document. That's episode 1. He would do these like series where it's like 8 or 12 radio shows talking about the principles, all promoting the book. So it wasn't just like, hopefully people buy it. It's like, I'm gonna dedicate myself to writing 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 Mango Kona and they have these filing cabinets. In the filing cabinets, we were pulling out these huge manuscripts. I'm like, what are these things? They're like, oh, 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. They were so much more thoughtful back then than we are nowadays. And same thing, so they'd go write radio shows to go promote Think and Grow Rich. He was doing articles, they were doing ads. It was fascinating, when How to Raise Your Own Salary came out, he was like, okay, this is for employees, the employees most likely to buy it are probably salespeople, so then he wrote this book called The Secrets of Master Salesmanship, right here. All The Secrets of Master Salesmanship is, if you read it, it's like 20 articles or 10 articles or something like that, And every one of these articles at the end pushes people back to go buy How to Raise Your Own Salary. So this, and then we compiled it into a book together, but all it was was basically all these articles and he's putting them out there, he's putting them in shifts, and he's sending them to newspapers and outlets, all sorts of places, trying to get them picked up, these articles on how to become a great salesman, right? Salesmen would see that, they would read it, and then the pitch at 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 was like he's writing articles, newspaper shows, or radio shows, Buying advertising, just mass promotion of 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 gotta become as obsessed with the marketing of the thing as you are about the thing, otherwise it'll never change people's lives. Okay. Okay, so that was number 8. I got 2 more. Number 9, if you look at Napoleon Hill's timeline, someday, I heard you got a whole timeline and everything, I can't wait to see how everything fits in. But look at Napoleon Hill's timeline, as he gets older, he kind of retires, semi-retires from this 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 built a huge insurance company worth over a billion dollars, I believe, at the peak of his business. And he's there and he sees Napoleon Hill, he goes to the event because he 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 becomes one of the wealthiest men in America. And W. Clement Stone, I think W. Clement Stone, I think he wanted to be Napoleon Hill. This is like me reading through the lines. I may be wrong. But I was like, I think he's like, I wanna be Napoleon Hill. So they end up becoming partners together, and they kinda re-kick off Napoleon Hill's career, and put him back out there in the mainstream, and they're writing books together, they wrote a book together, and then Clement Stone wrote a couple books separately, and they created a business together, but it was partnership, and in fact, when you guys go to the foundation, you'll notice when you walk in the back door, on the left-hand side of the door you walk in, there's gonna be a picture of Napoleon Hill, and the right-hand side will be a picture of W. Clement Stone. And if you guys, anybody here ever seen W. Clement Stone before? Okay, 2 or 3 guys. Is he here? Oh yeah, this is him right here. This picture's not goofy. If you see, anyway, he had this little tiny little mustache like this. And it was funny, there's videos, we've seen videos of him on camera. And again, he was very, it was funny 'cause like as big of a personality he was and big of a business he built, he was a great salesperson, trainer, he seemed so nervous on camera and I don't know. Versus Napoleon, who seemed very comfortable in these kind of things. Anyway, it was just kind of fascinating, but you'll see W. Clement Stone's picture as well when you walk in. So if you don't have context of 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 to sell his book, and the guy had tons of money, so he was putting money and effort into promoting the books they did together and other people's books, and kind of gave Napoleon Hill this second lease on life, it felt like, to get this message back out. And from there they started taking the same frameworks and then repackaged them in different ways. So they had courses called The Science of Success, and it was basically Napoleon Hill's frameworks plugged into this thing called The Science of Success. 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 Laws of Success, which was positive mental attitude, which was an addition from W. Clement Stone. There's the book they did together called PMA, which is all about positive mental attitude. Anyway, so, W. Clement Stone was such a big part of this, but you look at like, the way that Napoleon Hill was able to come out of semi-retirement and kind of have the second lease on life and blow the business back up was through partnerships. Finding people who had what he didn't have, right? Having, finding people with the money, with the distribution, with the desire to like 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, here's the same frameworks, how do we wrap it differently? Okay, Science of Success, Same framework, different hooks, different stories, built out home study courses, live events, they were trying to franchise it, they were going big trying to like take this message out to the entire world, and it was through partnerships initially with W. Clement Stone that made this whole thing possible. So for all of us, that's the next question, right, in our businesses, like we're promoting ourselves, where are 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 Secrets to 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. And again, so thank you guys all for being our partners. That's a big part of it, right? It's like, how do you find partnerships to help extend your message and get out to more people? Alright, and then lesson 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 stuff over the last few years, And I've been buying every book on personal development I can find. It has the word like unconscious, success, secrets, any of the words, like I bought all of them, right? So like, you can ask Jenny, on the average— No lie, like literally every book that has those words in it. 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 3 different authors. I'm like, oh, so I go find those books, I buy all their books, In fact, at the foundation, I found 3 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 a bad— I mean, Jenny's been there for the whole— I mean, probably, I don't know, I mean, we're probably 8,000, 10,000 books have been delivered one by one 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. Anyway, so, but this was like way heavier in 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 of before. Like Elizabeth Towne, the fact that none of you guys ever heard of her 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-Conant of the early 1900s. Like she published 30 or 40 other authors. Like you see a lot of the authors you know now, if you open it up on the front it says Town Publishing, like she published those people. And no one even knows who she is. Right, how do you go from that big to nobody knowing who you are? And then you look at like the people that are still around, like Napoleon Hill's still around, you look at Nightingale-Conant's still around, look at the companies that are still around, like what do they do differently? And so this part for me has been very, very interesting. I think a lot about. So number 10 here I wrote is leaving a legacy. Like succession plans. Like how do you structure so that when you're gone, it's not gone, right? Like most authors, by the time their life ends, like 6 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, they put things together, they had things in place, they had people to run things, they had, you know, there was stuff in place. And I think for me and for all of us is just thinking about that because I don't think most people think about it. Most people are so excited about the here and the now, they're not thinking like, okay, when this is all done, you know, I feel like I've been called to change people's lives, I'm here on this earth, I'm doing these things, but how do we extend it? How do we extend our lives 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 with W. Clemenceau. I think W. Clemenceau, I think, was the first head of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Then when he was gone, then there was somebody else and somebody else. And like now even, see, he died in 1970, right? What year are 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 ask a year, year and a half, like how did he do that? So for me, it's like the last thing Napoleon Hill did was he knew the worth of what he had created, what he was doing, and he figured out a way to live beyond that by creating something that left a legacy behind. And so for me, I don't know the answer to this. I know this is my mission right now. This is why I'm building an event center, why I'm trying to do these 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, it'll be able to extend my mission and my message out for longer too. And so that's like, my last obsession. So Napoleon Hill did it. I mean, he's, of the people we know, 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 know, you can walk into the food court at the mall and say, who here's ever heard of Think and Grow Rich? And half the hands will go up. Versus 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 well. So great when 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 1 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 2 is the building of your framework, spending time acquiring the principles and the things to make your framework and your philosophy a real thing. Number 3, studying the advertising, becoming more obsessed with the marketing of your thing than you are with the actual thing. Number 4 is focusing on building a distribution channel. For us, it's typically email lists and followings. For them, it was magazines. Number 5 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 6, after the philosophy's done, is focusing on promotion of the philosophy, getting it out there to the world so people are aware of it. Number 7, figuring out ways to niche down so that you can take a big philosophy that had a lot 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 8 is after you do that, then doing more promotion, getting out there and promoting even harder. Number 9 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 2 or 3 days has kind of crystallized in my head that I thought was really fun that I wanted to share with you guys today. So I hope that was valuable and hope you guys enjoyed that. So at blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments. It's about you, your style, your space, your way. Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right. From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee. Everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows. Because at Blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you. 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