Earl Nightingale’s “Strangest” Secret

I just recently finished listening to Earl Nightingale’s biography and there’s this crazy story that I wanted to share with you!

Before Earl Nightingale became the legend he now is known as, he was a mildly well-known radio host who loved to talk about personal development and a bit of an entrepreneur.

In fact, he was the owner of an insurance agency. And he spent many hours motivating and inspiring his sales team to be successful.

At one point, before he was about to leave on a sailing tour for an extended period of time, his sales manager asked him to record some inspiration for the sales team before he left. So he woke up at 8am, wrote for a few hours in a booklet, and then recorded a 17-minute track that would change millions of people’s lives.

He didn’t know that, though.

He gave the recording to his sales manager and then left on his sailing tour.

And this is where the story gets CRAZY.

While Earl was gone, his sales manager passed the recording around to the sales staff. They were so blown away by it that they asked for copies for their friends and family. Then their friends and family were so blown away that they also asked for additional copies.

It quickly got out of hand — and they could only produce the records so quickly. So to slow demand the sales manager started charging people for the records… but that only increased people’s desire to get a copy.

The recording — which Earl Nightingale had titled The Strangest Secret — had gone well and truly viral.

All through word of mouth.

His company was now spending way more time selling this single recording than they were selling insurance!

In fact, it became the first ever spoken word record to “go gold” and sell over a million copies... and when Earl returned and saw what had happened, he saw the opportunity and pursued it.

(This reminds me of a quote from Seneca: “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”)

So… what is this “strange secret” that so many people were impacted by?

Here it is — it’s well worth 17 minutes of your life 🙂