If You Never Stop Learning, You Never Stop Growing

The most successful leaders and innovators don’t always have a formal college education but are passionate about their learning and growth. There are always new perspectives, strategies, and techniques to learn and adopt.

It Would Be Crazy Not to Learn from the Mistakes of Others

Some of the best learning comes on the other side of failure, but if you could learn from someone’s mistakes instead of repeating them, wouldn’t you take it? Authors can condense decades of knowledge gained from hard-earned experience into just a few chapters. Those disciplined enough to dedicate time to reading can save themselves from a lot of trial and error.

Books Can Light a Motivational Fire

Running a business is not for the faint of heart. There is a reason that 65% of businesses fail within the first 10 years. Successful business owners need the grit and tenacity to face challenges, overcome obstacles, start again after failures, and persevere through difficult times. Books can motivate and inspire you to keep going when things are hard. Seeing how other leaders have faced challenges can give you the courage to do the same.

You’ll Learn from the Very Best

Sure, when you take a business course, your instructors are capable and competent, but when you read business books, you learn from the best. It’s like having a personal conversation with Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller. Business books give you access to the most successful leaders in the world.

A Variety of Perspectives Will Benefit Your Business

Having a mentor is crucial when starting and growing a business, but you also need a variety of opinions and perspectives. Books give you access to a wide range of experiences and ideas. You’ll start to see patterns and common themes in habits and strategies that, when applied, will strengthen your business.

You know that line in “Hamilton” where Alexander Hamilton says he is “never satisfied”? He had so many ideas and so much he wanted to accomplish. He was always looking to the next thing, never content to stay where he was.

Have you felt that way before? Is your view of the world different than everyone around you? Do you have an insatiable appetite for knowledge and growth? Do you sometimes feel like a square peg in a round hole?

We’ve created a community for learners and leaders just like you—people looking for more success, happiness, fulfillment, and tenacity. What started as an underground book club for a handful of Russell’s inner circle is now available to anyone as a part of the Secrets of Success Movement. When you join this mastermind community, you are joining an exclusive online book club about business, with monthly discussions and insights from the most transformative books.

While reading is often considered a solitary activity, a book club supersizes the benefits of reading. It holds you accountable to your reading commitment, helps you get deeper insights from what you read, and connects you with other like-minded leaders and thinkers.

But that’s not all; you’ll have access to Russell’s entire Atlas Research Library. Over the years, Russell has read and listened to a massive number of business books. He has a passion for literature that has the power to inspire and transform, and he has spent millions of dollars collecting these books, along with many rare and valuable manuscripts and artifacts. He envisions a modern-day school of success, a collection of online book resources about business, entrepreneurship, motivation, and success available to high-level thinkers and passionate leaders.

Here’s a sample of some of the great literature you can access in the Secrets of Success online business book library:

“How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie

The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

Dale Carnegie was a wildly successful salesman and popular public speaker who influenced an entire generation of leaders, including a young Warren Buffett. Buffett took Carnegie’s course on winning friends and influencing people when he was 20 years old, and the diploma still hangs in his office today.

For nearly every business endeavor, your success depends on your ability to work with and get along with people—clients, investors, employees, and community members, among others. Carnegie teaches that your ability to influence others largely depends on listening to and understanding their point of view. He outlines principles for getting people to like you, winning people to your way of thinking, and being a strong leader without giving offense.

When you apply his principles for influencing people with respect and empathy, you’ll find greater success in your business endeavors and more fulfillment in your relationships. Carnegie’s wisdom has stood the test of time. It is as applicable and transformative as when it was written nearly a hundred years ago.

“The Master Key System” by Charles F. Haanel

“Then comes the process of visualization. You must see the picture more and more complete, see the detail, and, as the details begin to unfold, the ways and means for bringing it into manifestation will develop. One thing will lead to another. Thought will lead to action, action will develop methods, methods will develop friends, and friends will bring about circumstances, and, finally, the third step, or Materialization, will have been accomplished.”

Haanel’s book was originally written as a 24-part course, and reading it feels like taking a class on mastering your life. It teaches you how to harness the power of the laws of attraction and concentration to achieve your goals.

According to Haanel, our minds have untapped power, which we can unlock through discipline and positive thinking. Positive thoughts will bring positive outcomes, but the “debris” of limiting thoughts will prevent us from achieving our goals. Therefore, we must be the masters of our thoughts. Our thoughts will determine our destiny.

“Pushing to the Front” by Orison Swett Marden

“Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.”

In the forward to this book, the publishers claim that “it is doubtful whether any other book, outside the Bible, has been a turning point in more lives.”

For over a hundred years, Marden’s book has inspired people to see failures as a stepping stone to success. He argues that failures are not just obstacles to be overcome but can be the fuel that ignites the fire of success. Opposition can lift us towards our goals like a kite that needs the wind to fly.

Marden uses the examples of men like Horace Greely, Elihu Burrett, and Frederick Douglass, who overcame poverty and a lack of opportunity in their youth to educate themselves, chase their dreams, and become successful and influential men.

He points to specific examples from history of prevailing against poor odds:

• It took a fire destroying London to rebuild it as a beautiful, modern city
• Cervantes wrote Don Quixote while imprisoned
• After Ulysses S. Grant lost an early Civil War battle, the public called for his removal. However, Lincoln appreciated his grit, and Grant became the key to Northern victory in the war.

In Marden’s words, “Show me a really great triumph that is not the work of persistence.” He reminds us that the key to success is not talent or even education but determination, hard work, and perseverance.