The Russell Brunson Show
The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do Is Play It Safe | #Success - Ep. 23
Wed, 02 Apr 2025
In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I share the wild story behind why I’m currently rocking a sling…and what ripping both of my biceps taught me about risk, purpose, and why playing it safe is a trap! You’ll also hear how an unpublished Napoleon Hill course from 1917 inspired me to level up not just as a marketer, but as a person. I break down 15 qualities Hill believed made someone unfireable, and they’re just as powerful today as they were 100 years ago. The good stuff never goes out of style or becomes irrelevant! We also talk about wrestling tournaments (You know… old dudes with replaced hips still chasing greatness), the true role of an advertiser, and why “a ship in a harbor is safe… but that’s not what ships are built for”! This one’s a personal one. It's part motivation, part business masterclass, and part time capsule from one of the greatest thinkers of all time. Key Highlights: The bicep story: Why I wrestled through torn arms—and don’t regret it Two types of “What ifs”—and which one will change your life The 15 qualities that made Napoleon Hill say: “I’ll hire you on the spot” Why personal development is the secret to great advertising (Hill + Collier knew this) The Peterson Academy model, and why it fired me up about education A ship in the harbor is safe… but that’s not what ships are built for This episode will hit home if you’ve ever felt stuck, soft, or like you’ve been playing too small. Let this be the push to get back in the arena! Resources & Links Mentioned in This Episode: Join the Secrets of Success waitlist 👉 secretsofsuccess.com Watch the Napoleon Hill training inside the app (coming soon) Learn more about Peterson Academy 👉 petersonacademy.com https://sellingonline.com/podcast https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal https://nordvpn.com/secrets Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to northwestregisteredagent.com/russell to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com/CLICKS Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is Russell Brunson wearing a sling?
I wanted to start by addressing the elephant in the room, which is, for those who can see me, like, Russell, why do you have your arm in a sling right now? And if you listened to one of the last podcast episodes, I had just gotten back. I had done a wrestling tournament, and you guys knew I had hurt both my biceps.
I was driving to go get an MRI, and that was, I think, the last podcast episode I recorded. Since then, my life has been crazy. After getting the MRI, we found out that both of my biceps had detached from the bone inside my arms, which is why it was really hard to curl anything or lift anything up. I needed to get surgery to get both of them back.
Chapter 2: How did Russell Brunson end up with torn biceps?
Some people have been asking, what was the process? How did you detach the biceps? uh, some years ago there there's a, every single year there's a wrestling tournament. It's called the master's division. So it's for people who are older. Um, and I remember when I was wrestling in college, I remember going to, to one of the bigger national tournaments. And so they have different levels.
Like there's like the senior level and then, you know, whatever. And then, um, there's a master's and a veterans division division. I remember going again while I was, you know, I was in college. I remember seeing these guys are like in their seventies or eighties with gray hair, bald out there wrestling. And I was like, Oh, so cool. And then, um, like I done my wrestling career, I kind of,
you know, that was kind of the end of it. I wasn't planning on wrestling again and kind of forgot about it. And fast forward to, you know, a decade and a half later is when I bought my new home. I built a wrestling room in it and, and, um, and I started inviting some of my old wrestling buddies over and we started wrestling. So that was kind of a fun thing. We do it once or twice a month.
So my buddies come over, we'd wrestle again. It was just so much fun to get back to like my favorite thing in the world, which is wrestling. Right. And then, Um, what's interesting is one of my buddies who, who, uh, wrestles with us, his name is Lex. One day he came back. He's like, Oh, I wrestled the tournament two weeks ago. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, there's a tournament that I competed.
And I was like, why didn't you tell me I would have gone. And so the next year we decided, okay, we're going to go to the tournaments. We put it on the calendar. Um, And, you know, life is busy. I'm running a company and a family and a bunch of other stuff. And so I remember leading up to it, we blocked out like seven days.
We were planning on like to working out a whole bunch leading up to it, but then it just didn't happen. So then the week before the tournament, we blocked out. Okay, every morning we're going to wrestle for an hour, just get prepared for this tournament. And again, I haven't wrestled competitively in almost 20 years, right?
And so we go to the very first practice, the very first day, and within the very first like 10 minutes, I injure my neck so bad that like I can't move. I can't turn my head. I can't do anything. I can't do anything. and it hurt really bad, and people were like, well, are you still going to wrestle? I'm like, yeah. I made a commitment to myself. I was going to wrestle.
I'm going to do this thing, and I had Kairos coming over, and other people, and people adjusting me, and massage therapists, and I was doing all the crazy things to try to heal my neck, and I remember going to the tournament. My neck hurt so bad, and I wrestled two days, and I did well.
I can't remember if I placed in freestyle or Greco, but anyway, wrestled two different tournaments, had some success, won a medal, and I remember one of the It was like one of these life-changing things for me. As I was warming up with some of the guys my age, this older guy came up to me. And again, he's from London. I think his name was Tony. And he's wearing a singlet.
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Chapter 3: What lesson does Russell Brunson share from his wrestling experience?
And then what's crazy is that Friday, I'll have my second arm, and then Monday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we have my inner circle meeting. So I'll be on stage with two casts on running my inner circle. So it's gonna be an interesting week, but it'll be amazing.
So the question, sorry, I told you that story, number one, because it's fun to tell the story, and a lot of you guys have asked about it, but number two, It's because the question I keep getting from everybody, including my wife, especially my wife, I love her. But it's just like, aren't you too old to do this? Shouldn't you not be doing this?
And like, that's the comment that people keep coming up. And I think the most people are so scared of getting hurt, they don't want to do things, right? Like that's just kind of this commonality that most people have. Um, like you're too old. You shouldn't be doing it. You're going to get hurt.
Like you shouldn't be doing that because what if, what if something happens in the, what if, what if there's always these what ifs, right? And most people live their lives based off what ifs, like what if this happens, what if this happens? And they're thinking about all the things that could possibly happen. So because of that, they don't pursue and do the thing that they really want to do.
And as you can probably tell, I've never lived my life that way. I've always lived my life in a way of like, what if I do this thing? What would that be like? What would it feel like? I would step back and say, if I was still competing as an athlete, I'd probably treat this different. If I knew I was hurt, I probably wouldn't have continued to compete.
But for me, it's like I compete one day a year. So it's like I'm going to do this thing, and I got like 365 days to heal. It's kind of like Happy Gilmore after he does make hockey tryouts. He's there the next day, and he's in the batting cage, and they're shooting balls, and he's hitting them in the face. He's like, 364 days till next year's hockey season.
And he's just like getting wailed on by balls. That's what I feel like. I got 365 days to heal. I'll be fine. You know, after the first year I tore my neck, I had the whole year, my next year, I didn't remember my neck. It was fine. I was able to go out there and compete and I heard something different and every year I heard something.
Uh, but for me it's, it's more like, like there's what if fear and what a faith, right? Some people are like, there's what if insert the fear. And so they don't do the thing because what if this happened? What if I get made fun of? What if I get hurt? What if it doesn't work? What if I fail? What if I go bankrupt? What if I, You know, what if people make fun of me?
Like there's that what if that keeps most people from doing anything amazing in life. And the other what if is like, well, what if I do do this? Well, man, what if I am a 45 year old guy and I'm competing in a tournament? What if I'm doing that? What if I inspire somebody else? What if I have fun? What if I win? What if I, you know, like the other what ifs is the more important one.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the quote 'A ship in a harbor is safe'?
So this is not just like one theme for the entire episode. So I apologize in advance for those who are my people, right? I want one, the one big takeaway. We've got a couple here. If you've been following me for any amount of time, you know, I always talk about as you're growing and scaling your company, the most important thing is finding the who, not the how.
Who is the person that can help you drive more traffic? Who is the person that can be your CEO? Who is the person that can build your funnels? Understanding the who will dramatically speed up the growing and the scaling of your company. Now, the best place to find the who's who can help you with your vision is Indeed. When it comes to hiring the right who's, Indeed is all you need.
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That means the person driving traffic to your funnels is going to see it. It means your new CEO or CMO or whatever you're looking for is going to see the exact ad for your business as soon as they open up Indeed. And that makes a huge difference. In fact, according to Indeed, data sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.
One of the things I love about Indeed is it makes hiring so fast. You can post the job and within minutes, you're getting applications who are coming in looking to become the who inside of your business. Prior to that, I was often posting my help wanted ads on Facebook and Instagram and then getting tons and tons of responses from unqualified people who had no idea what they were doing.
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Chapter 5: How did Napoleon Hill's teachings inspire Russell Brunson?
If any of you guys have a message you wanna learn, it's like you need to become great advertisers if you're gonna be successful. So there's the one little caveat or one little thing to share. So anyway, as I'm going through this book, it's really fascinating because he uses the productive advertising book as like the actual training, teaching like the specifics about advertising.
But then in his book, He like, there's a lesson ahead of time where he's teaching stuff related to the book chapters. And then in the back of each lesson, it's one of the coolest things. If I can find it real quick. Again, I'm flipping with one hand. So like chapter three, how to think. That chapter's insane. But basically after he goes through the chapter, sorry. What am I finding here?
He has these little, it's like a little section at the end of each chapter. And of course I can't find one now that I'm looking for, but basically it's like, it's like, um, ideas and thoughts with Napoleon Hill. And then he kind of goes through like what he learned and then giving you just ideas and thoughts to help, help go with the curriculum he just had, which is kind of cool.
I would find the exact word, but with one head, it's so hard to flip pages. So, um, you get the gist. Yeah, it should be good from there. Um, but anyway, I wanted to, um, in, in, uh, in this lesson number two of truthful advertising, he's talking about, and again, what's interesting is Napoleon Hill's Again, he's an advertiser, but he loves the personal development.
So most of the stuff he's writing about is personal development. And his premise is that you as the advertiser has to become a better person. You have to develop yourself as an advertiser, and then that's how you become a great advertiser, right? So he's spending less time on like...
on here's the structure of the ads and things like that, which the other book does, but all his writing is very much like, here's how you become a better person. How do you pick a definite purpose? How do you focus? How do you learn? How do you learn how to think? It's just so fascinating. I love the rabbit holes he goes down on that side of things, right?
Anyway, in here, as he's talking about being an advertiser, he starts going through his dream client. If you can become this person, He's like, you can get hired by any firm anywhere in the world because everybody would want to hire you if these were your qualities and your characteristics. And so I read those last night. I highlighted the whole thing in my book.
Again, I have a little red highlighter in one hand. So I'm trying to do these straight lines. It's chaos. But regardless, it's really good. So I'm going to read you this stuff because... this might help you to figure out if you're struggling life, like getting higher, getting people to give you money as a coach or consultant, like these qualities he talks about here.
And again, he's using this, like these are qualities that he wants in an advertiser. Someone who's gonna become an advertiser and work for him or for one of these firms.
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Chapter 6: What is the Peterson Academy model, and why is it exciting?
He was always trying to figure out how to lighten my load, how to take things off my plate. And that's what it is, right? Someone who will reach out and demand greater responsibility, right? And then getting ready to assume additional duties. Or they want to keep growing and getting ready to assume additional duties, right? So going out there. and demanding great responsibilities, okay?
Another great quality. All right, three in. These are good, right? I was reading this like, this is good stuff. This could be just like my own review of myself. Like, Russell, get better at these things and you'll become a better person. So, all right.
Number four, I want someone who will love the job so well that he will forget hours, forget pay, forget Saturday nights, forget all his own selfish interests and devote his entire time and thought to the task of carving out a future and the opportunity at hand. Ooh, someone's going to love the job so well. They forget everything. Okay. I don't know about you guys, but that's my world.
Like I love what I do so much that like, if it wasn't for the fact that I had a wife and kids at home, I would never leave this place. In fact, when they go on vacation, sometimes I've literally set up a cotton here and slept in here. Cause I'm like, I don't have to go home at night. This is amazing. Right. Cause I love what I do so much.
And so you want to find people and you want to be the person. And when you are, um, doing this thing that you become so obsessed that you'd like are all consumed and it becomes your thing. Number five, I want someone who will be frank and sincere with himself and, uh, and all with whom he comes in contact with and who will be a living example of our slogan, which is truthful advertising.
So we want people to be frank and sincere and, Yeah. So there you go. Frankincense here. And let me an example of truthful advertising. Truthful advertising is the name of the course. And the concept here is like, you want to give advertising that's truthful.
Like there's a lot of ways you can write ads that trick people to buy, but he's like, how do you do that in a way where you're always giving 100% of the truth? So that was good. Number six, I want to be a person who will not wait for me or some of the other officials to tell me what to do, but who will learn to see what ought to be done and do it. Ooh, This is like the self-starter, right?
They see problems, they go and take care of them. They're not waiting for someone to tell them what to do. They're like, okay, this is a problem, this problem is fixed, this has changed, and just get this stuff done. Number seven, I want a person who's big enough to overlook the little insults which thoughtless people can throw out, often unintentionally.
A person who can see something good in every human being on earth, a person who will honestly strive to develop the good there is in every person with whom he comes in contact. Okay, I think this one's almost a twofold, right? Number one, or number two is like, seeing the good in other people. But number one was being big enough to overlook little insults.
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Chapter 7: Why is personal development crucial for great advertising?
The people, I see people all the time who like, I see my staff who order the most crazy foods and are eating at like noon. I'm like, you're shot for the rest of your mind. Literally, it's going to get dim and hard to focus and hard to think through because of that. And so I love this one.
I'm just like, take care of yourself because it'll increase your energy, your mental abilities, all those kind of things when you're sharp. Number 14, I want to be a person who refused to allow himself to be aroused by anger by some ill-bred person who hasn't learned the art of self-control.
Ooh, don't get angry around people who are morons because there's a lot of them in this world and they're going to be everywhere, especially when you're online, especially when you're posting social media.
All right, and the last one here, number 15, I want a person who believes that he ought to be paid an exact ratio to what he produces for the business, whether it is $1,000 or $100,000 a year, and he'll be satisfied with that. This is a big one.
One of my pet peeves on this planet is when people come and they ask for a raise because they've been working at your company for a certain period of time. Drives me crazy. I would never in infinity years ask for a raise when I'm doing the exact same thing that I had agreed to get paid for originally. For me, I would come in and say, okay, this is what we agreed to.
I'm going to work really hard and get this thing. And then it's like, okay, I figured out a way I can add an extra million dollars a year to the company. Like, let me do that. And then come back and say, Hey, I added a million dollars to your company external from what we already agreed upon.
Like, like, and then I want to raise here or I want, you know, I want a royalty or something like, you know, it's, it's tough. Like when people, one of the hardest things internally is like, we always want to share wins and things that happen inside the company, but you share a win.
Then all of a sudden you literally next week when people start asking for raises, it's like, it doesn't work that way. Like, Anyway, it comes back to what he said here. I want a person who believes that he ought to be paid in the exact ratio for what he produces for the business, whether it's $1,000 or $100,000 a year, and he'll be satisfied with that.
So what are you actually producing for the business and money? And a business owner, if you're an employee in a business, should be making – if you're getting paid $100,000 a year, they should be making $3 or $4 million off of your efforts. If they're not – and again, there's some number that – I can't remember that –
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