The Real Story of a Cancer Survivor

In part 2 of this special 3 part series, you get to hear more of Russell’s presentation at the ROR (Return on Relationships) Symposium! In this half, Russell explains how you should provide value to people before you ask them for anything. Enjoy the second half of this keynote presentation, and don’t forget to check out RORUniversity.com to learn more!

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---Transcript---

Russell Brunson:

Hey, what's up everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the last episode for my keynote presentation at Christopher Vos' ROR Symposium. So far, in the episode number one, I had a chance to talk us through some of the history and the background of how we started building our business and I'm excited this next episode's going to be the second half of my keynote presentation. I hope you enjoy.

And then afterwards, the third episode, we're actually going to, I opened up some Q & A and we had a really good time doing some of that as well. That'll be the third episode, so this episode would be the last half of my keynote presentation. I hope you enjoy it. Again, if you want to go deeper with Christopher Vos, make sure you go to roruniversity.com and get on his list, read his stuff, listen to what he is doing because he is helping a lot of people to build businesses by using relationships and really understanding how to do the stuff we talk about. I talked about Dream 100 in the Traffic Secrets book. This is what he's talking at a much deeper, much more powerful level.

With that said, I'm going to cue up the theme song and when we come back, you'll have a chance to listen to second half of my keynote from the ROR Symposium.

Okay. Now, I'll tell a side story because it popped in my head right now and that's what I do, right? About the time, it was after Joe Vitale promoted me, I had a list with certain sites and then I got a phone call from a guy named Tellman Knudson. Anybody here know who Tellman is? Tellman used to be big at our space. He shifted it over to more hypnosis, personal development space.

But Tellman messaged me on the phone. He was like, "Hey, Russell, I had this idea. I'm building or I'm interviewing all these people and," I can't remember, "I'm going to interview you for an hour about a topic and then I'm going to put it behind the squeeze page and then everyone's going to promote the squeeze page. People are going to join my list, they'll get your interview and all the other interviews." And I was like, Uh, okay, I think that's the worst idea ever." He's like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "I'm not going to email my list to your squeeze page so they can opt in and join your list to get my free interview. I'll just give them my free interview. Why would I do that? It does it make any logical sense." He's like, "Well, everyone's going to promote it and that way, everybody, everybody's lists, people from other lists will see you as well and it's going to be the huge thing for you." I was like, "Dude, that's the stupidest idea ever. No. No." I told him no, flat out, I was like, "This is never going to work, but good luck in your future," and I hung up, right?

I was nice because on my DISC profile, I'm a high S, so I can't be mean to people. So I was like, "Okay, well, sorry." Anyway, so that happens and then fast forward three months later, all of a sudden, in one day, I get emails from everybody, Joe Vitale, the Nitro Marketing guys, all the people who are the biggest of the time, emails from everybody and I open up and it's like, "There's this guy named Tellman Knutson, the interview is on his ListBuilder and you should go check it out."

And I clicked on it and went to, it was called listcrusade.com, it was his site, I went to listcrusade.com and sure enough, there's an opt-in to get all these interviews and I opted in and there's all these people's interviews. I was like, "What? How do you pull it off? You got the biggest names in the world to go and do this." And I was just perplexed, like how? I'm like, "This is the dumbest idea ever. I should have done it. If it worked, this is crazy.

So I found his number, I messaged him, "Okay, tell me, I'm so confused. Can I ask you a question?" So he jumped on a call with me and I was like, "Okay. I just saw yesterday 50 people all promoted your squeeze page." He's like, "Yeah, I've added 120,000, 130,000 people to my list and the last 48 hours." And I was like, "How did you do that?" And it was so fascinating. He said, "You know what, Russell? I called 49 people and I got 49 nos in a row. First one said no, no, no, no, no. You said no. Someone said, everyone said no." And he's like, "But guess what? The 50th person," he said it was Kevin and Matt from Nitro. He said, "I called Kevin and Matt and for some reason, they said yes. And after they said yes, I was like, "Cool, do you know else would be a good fit?" And then Kevin and Matt were like, "Oh, yeah, you should get so and so and so," and then they emailed the Nitro like, "Hey, you should meet so and so and so and so," they jumped over there. Those people said yes as well."

And he's like, "The next 37 people in the row all said yes." Oh, he even had Jay Abraham on the list. Anyway, he said, "The next 37 people all said yes and here we are." And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, how many of us, including me, would've stopped at the first no or the second or the third? But as soon as he got one cool kid to think he was cool, he was in. Okay? So you start thinking about this, actually, this is probably more for the women. This is embarrassing, I'm going to say this. How many you guys ever seen the movie Never Been Kissed? Drew Barrymore. Okay. Macaulay, can you act this out while I explain? Just kidding. Okay.

Here's the story from Never Been Kissed. Drew Barrymore, in the movie, she's never been kissed, she graduates high school and now she's a columnist at a newspaper. She's a big columnist and her brother was the cool kid. He was the jock and the coolest kid and he graduated now he's this loser because he's graduated from high school. Anyway, she's in her day job as a columnist and they're like, "We want article from what are the high school kids doing so we need you to go undercover back to high school and find out about the cool parties and all the cool stuff." So Josie, drew Barrymore's, character goes back to high school and within five seconds, she slides back into the nerd group which they're doing chess club and all these kind of things and she's writing articles about chess club and her editor's like, "No, we don't want these articles. I want the cool kids, the drugs and all this stuff, what's happening. We want the underground dirt, that's the article we're looking for."

So she tries to get in and she's like, no one will, the cool kids club will not let her in. So she's home and she's frustrated and then her brother's there and her brother's played by David Arquette and so David Arquette is jealous. He's like, "I want to go back to high school, I was the coolest kid in high school." And, and Josie's like, "There's no way, you don't understand, it's harder, it's not the same thing. If you went back to school, you wouldn't be cool." And it gives the idea for him. He's like, "No, I'm going back to school." So he somehow, and Tammy says it isn't on Netflix, I'm sure it's on Netflix. Anyway, this is your homework. Everyone go watch it.

So Drew Barrymore or David Arquette's character goes back and gets in high high school somehow and she sees him in the hallway, she's like, "You can't do this. It's not going to be like, you're not going to be cool like you were before." He's like, "Watch this." So he goes into the lunch room, this is the greatest scene of all film. He's in the lunch room, he's standing up on the table and he's got this huge bucket of cole slaw and he's trying to eat the entire thing, shove it in his mouth and the whole high school's cheering him on like, "Oh," and he's eating the stuff he slams the thing down. He's like, "Oh," and that fast, he's the coolest kid in high school, everybody loves him and he's the man.

And then, the next day, he's like, "Okay, I'm going to show you, Josie. I'm going to make you cool." So he goes with Josie, his sister and one of the cool kids sees him and he's like, "Oh, why are you hanging out with her?" And he's like," "Her? She's the coolest girl. She actually broke up with me, she's so cool." All this stuff. And he starts talking about how cool she is and all of a sudden, everyone's like, "Oh," and then all of a sudden the cool kids are like, "Oh, she's cool." And all of a sudden, boom, she gets sucked in. And then one cool kid thinks she's cool, the next, the next and eventually, that fast, she's cool. Okay? That was a very long story to tell you that the secret is, as soon as one kid thinks you're cool, as soon as one cool kid thinks you're cool, you're in.

So Tellman Knudson, same thing. He was going back here. No, no, no, no, and he got one cool kid, Kevin and Matt from Nitro who thought he was cool and then opened up everything else. So if you guys are on this ROR thing again, a couple things that I was hoping to get through to you guys, number one is, we're shooting for the stars, that'd be amazing, but don't start there because it's going to be really hard to get in. Build your thing. Find people who are around you who are doing the same, in the same business, same industry and start building from there and start growing. As you do that, it's going to start opening more doors for you. Someone's going to introduce you to somebody else, someone else is going to introduce you and you start building this network of people and you start doing it collectively.

If you do it collectively, all, what's the saying? High tide rises all boats. So it starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually, it gets easier to open the next door and the next door. And eventually, what happens is, I had this group of people, Mike Filsaime and Gary Ambrose, Brad Callen and Brad Fallon, all these people, all my friends at the time, Frank Kern, all of us who are this level and eventually, at that point, we're at the level of all these other people. But guess what? There's always a next level. And there was this guy that, oh, I looked up at this guy, crazy. He's a giant, he's got big old teeth. Anyone guess who it is? It's Tony Robbins. And Tony's the next level up here.

And Tony's up there and we're all down here. And one day, somehow, one of my cool kid friends got into Tony. I don't know how or who it was or anything, but somehow, one of them got into Tony. He had a meeting with Tony and blew Tony's mind and then my friend, I actually I know, it was Mike Koenigs. Mike Koenigs got into Tony somehow, blew his mind and then, so one cool guy, cool with Tony. And then Mike Koenigs introduced him to me like, "Hey, you should meet Russell." He's so and so, and suddenly Tony, I get a, and this is the craziest experience ever, Saturday morning with my kids getting ready and the phone rings, I pick it up and it's Tony Robbins' assistant.

"Hey, Tony Robbins wants to see if you can meet him today?" I'm like, "Okay, who is this?" I thought it was my friends messing with me and they're like, "No, my name's Jay Garrity, I'm Tony Robbins assistant. He's in Salt Lake City, he wants to meet with you." I'm like, "I live in Boise." They're like, "Yeah, well, he knows who you are and he meet with you. Can you get to Salt Lake?" And I'm like, "Well, it's a five hour drive. I can jump in my car." He's like, "Oh, we're flying out in three hours." He's like, "How about next week? Can you meet Tony in Toronto? He's your UPW, you can show up, go to the event, walk on fire and then he'll have a private meeting with you." I was like, "What's your name again? Is this a real person?" I'm like, "Heck yes, I'll be in Toronto next week."

So the next week, I'm flying to Toronto. Again, I've never been to a Tony Robbins event so I show up with my backpack, my computer, I'm going to sit back and take notes like the internet nerd that I am. And I walk in and people are jumping and screaming and we're sitting there dancing and rubbing people shoulders and I'm so confused what's even happening. And then, we walk on fire and the first time I met Tony actually was the fire walk. He had me in a VIP section, so imagine there's 2000 people in the event and then right next to the stage, he has these two VIP sections and I actually stood next to Chuck Liddell. I didn't know who Chuck Liddell was at the time, I'm like, "That guy looks scary," big old mustache and big old muscles and I was like, but he was there. Anyway, I saw him when he went to UFC and I'm like, "That was my partner at UPW, I know everything was messed up in his life. This is so weird." Anyway. He's probably offended I had no idea who actually was.

Anyway, we're in this little group so we could have a chance, to go back, the first time I met Tony is, after everyone leaves the fire walk, we walked through the front thing and they opened the curtain and Tony's standing there and he was like, "Russell, I heard so much about you," he gives me this huge hug and then we walk with him and I did the fire walk with Tony and that's my first impression. But check it out, it wasn't because I emailed Tony and tried to get to know him. I probably emailed him a lot and it never made it to the gatekeepers. But it was because one cool kid got in there and told him I was cool. And after that, it was open. Doors were open.

So this is in, in my mind, this is the stuff I want you guys thinking through. Sometimes, with Dream 100, we're going to turn the relationship, we're going to give a list and we're going to send it to mailboxes and that's going to be how we grow our company. There's a place and a time for that, but that's not how it really works. It's this organic thing where it's building actual relationships, getting to know people, finding out about them and their families and how can I serve them and back here, when we're all at this level, it's like me trying to help them like, "Oh, I tried this in my business and it worked. You should try that." We're having these back and forth and it builds these relationships. And then, together, we all collectively rise up to the next level and the next level and the next level to eventually, we are the top level and that's when it gets more and more fun.

So that's what I was hoping to really share with you guys, especially because I think, for some of you guys, as I'm sure for many, you look at someone who, like me, who's been doing this now for 20 years, oh, it's easy for us. Anyone will take this call. Yeah, but it's 20 years I've been playing this game. 20 years I've been putting the coins in the deposit box over and over and over and over and over again.

When I found out who Dan Kennedy was, I'm like, "Okay, I want to get to know that person, but I don't know how to get there and it was like, well, there's two ways I can get into Dan Kennedy's world. I can work my way in or I can buy my way in. I'm like, working my way could take a decade or two, so I'm going to buy my way in. So I was like, "Okay, I've joined the mastermind group, I'm getting in there." And then I didn't go. I have people, oh, people that joined my mastermind group this last time around, amazing group, but there's different, everyone's got a different mindset and I have people coming in initially and they're like, "Russell, this is so cool. Can I make a testimony with my video? Hey, can I get a picture?" And they were trying to take, take, take, take, I'm like, "Ah." When I went to Dan Kennedy's group, guess what I didn't do? I didn't take from Dan. First off, because I'm scared of him. Number two, I was like, all right, I'm going to serve these guys because I want Dan to know who my name is. I don't want me to message Dan, I want people telling Dan who I am. If I can do that, that's the secret.

So I'm in Bill Grazer's group, I'm serving the group, I'm trying to help as much as possible. I'm helping these offline people in this group to launch online businesses. I'm helping them get funnels. I'm helping them do the launch, I'm doing coordination. All this stuff to serve Bill Grazer's group. And Bill's like, "Oh, my gosh, Russell's really helpful." And he tells Dan, "Dude, this guy in our group, he loves you, he loves everything, he's helping our group." And I always wanted to speak at Dan's event, but I'm like, I'm not going to ask him because I don't want to do it, but I'm just going to keep serving and eventually, he's going to have to, because I do so much stuff for so many people, they're going to want to put me on stage.

So I get in that group and I'm serving like crazy. In fact, after, I think it was three years in, I wanted to, anyway, I had to fly to Baltimore three times a year and it's not just flying to Baltimore, Bill was in Baltimore. You'd fly to Baltimore and then you'd drive in a taxi for an hour to get to the hotel that Bill would have it at, and after three years I was like, "I can't do this anymore." So literally, I messaged Bill, I'm like, "Hey, I'm not going to re-up this next year because I just can't keep coming to Baltimore." And he literally was like, "This is the deal, Russell, you have to be in the room so you're not going to have to pay anymore, but you're still coming." I was like, "Okay." And for the next three years, I didn't pay but I kept showing up because I provided so much value, he's like, "You have to be in this room because you're facilitating all these things."

And then he had me on stage, had me on stage again and then eventually, I remember the last event I spoke at, I spoke on stage four times. I was on stage longer than Dan Kennedy was. Do you think Dan Kennedy knew my name? Yes, he did. He was like, "There's this internet nerd who keeps showing up and helping everybody, he's never asked for anything. We should get to know him," and that's how I built a relationship with Dan and then with Bill and with all these kind of things.

And now, fast forward a couple years later, the opportunity to buy Dan's company's there and I'm like, what if he hates me? Because he's not going to approve ... And I literally, I faxed him because you can't email Dan, he has no email, you have to fax him. So I had to open an eFax account, write it on a piece of paper, send it, it's this whole thing. So I faxed him, I was like, "Hey, there's an opportunity to buy your company, but I just want to make sure that you don't hate me or I'm not ... We're going to be working together so I want to make sure this is going to be a good fit." And he faxes me back, he was like, "Dude, every time I've heard about you, it's you on stage talking about how good I am, you always praise my name, all these kind of things. Of course, I would love to work with you," because he knew who I was. I had been trying to serve him for all this time and I'd never asked him for something so because of that, he said yes.

And now we're have this partnership and we're 30 days away from watching the new magnetic marketing and you guys are going to die when you see this, it's the most exciting thing ever, but it all came off of that, building these relationships over the long term.

If you guys haven't, on YouTube, there's a video, if you type in "Russell Brunson Tony Robbins Dream 100," there's a video documenting my Dream 100 process with Tony, which was over a decade and a half to do this thing, the very first time he actually promoted me. But it wasn't me coming in like, "Tony promote, Tony, promote." If I would've done that, I would've had one meeting with Tony and that would've been the last. It was a decade of me just, every meeting with Tony, "How can I help? How can I help?" People from this company would call like, "Hey, can you consult us on this thing?" I'm like, "Yes." "How much does it cost?" I'm like, "For Tony, it's free." "I'm sure your time’s valuable, we’re willing to pay you." "No, tell Tony, your money's no good with Russell," because I wanted the relationship. And fast forward now, I'm going to get emotional.

Oh. This isn't a story that we've publicly told, but you guys know Funnel Hacking Live, Dave had his cancer, if you know the real story, it's literally the worst kind of cancer you have, they give them like a 6% survival rate past eight months, 10 months, something like that. So we were so scared and after Funnel Hacking Live, after Tony off stage, went backstage with him and Tony was like, "How can I serve? What else, what can I do for you guys?" And Todd had the impression, "Hey Tony, this is our friend and partner Dave. He's dying. Is there anything you can do?"

And Tony says, "Yes, these are the people. Call this person, call this person. In fact, I'll connect you. Here's the people." Two weeks later, Dave's flying to Dallas, he's with this doctor who does things the opposite of what every other cancer doctor does, Dave spends two weeks down there with him. I won't get too deep into the details, but discovers there's a root canal that causes the tumor, pulls his tooth out, throws the oxygen in there, oxygens his body, does a bunch of things. Two days later, Dave goes back for his MRI where they're supposed to tell him how long he's got left so he can plan with his family. They do an MRI, the doctor looks inside and says, "There's not a bit of cancer inside you. What did you do the last two weeks?" And because of my relationship with Tony, I had access to this guy who saved Dave's life. And Dave's going to be here for the next 20, 30 years because I was willing to put in, for a decade and a half, this relationship with Tony and Tony had a relationship with these other guys and man ...

So is it worth it? Yes. Is it worth financially? Yes. Is it worth it from so many more things? Yes. It is. So I'm forever grateful that I didn't ask Tony to promote my thing on day one. I'm forever grateful that I didn't try to figure out what I could take. I'm forever grateful that when they asked for help, I just gave it because I love Tony and because that opened all these doors where, yeah, so whew, not planning going there, but that's the power of this stuff.

So when Christopher's talking about this, I'm sure he is told his story. He had a very similar situation where, because of the relationship, his life was saved. So you never know, it's coming into these things not looking for something, but coming in as a servant. And as you have that servant feeling and you're going into it, it's amazing what doors open and you never know what door you're going to need or when you're going to need it or what the thing is or what the, you know what I mean? It's crazy. Whew. I don't know how I wrap that up or how to-

Don Mamone:

Do you need a minute? Do you need a minute? I mean, I'm going to step in and just say, take a drip of water. That's probably one of the most amazing stories and I have to say that you, unknowingly maybe, and the reason you needed to tell that story was because we had an ongoing over-under bet on how long it takes a speaker to cry on Christopher's stage because so many people have come up and told stories from the depths of their heart and soul. So, hey, I want to thank you for joining those of us that have joined Christopher's stage in which you have an over-under on telling an emotional story, so thanks for that, Russell.

Russell:

No worries. You set a environment where it was there. Anyway. Yeah, I hope that this was helpful for you guys. Again, I was like, I could go and give you guys the foundation and step one and step two and step three, stuff we talked about here, but I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to be real as possible because it's real in so many aspects of your life. And now's the time, wherever you are, is to start planting those seeds and starting looking at who can you serve, who can you serve and the more you do that, the more doors open and the more things.

And it's okay eventually because I think sometimes, people are scared to ask and I would tease Christopher about this. He's been building a relationship with me for now, I don't even know, three or four years and we used to have a joke inside of the office, "What's he going to ask?" Somebody's going to ask something. "I don't know. Maybe he's just going to keep serving and serving and never ask." And then when he finally is like, "Hey, I'm doing this thing, would you be willing?" "Finally, thank you for asking." Because we know, there's always, all of us, when I was dating my wife, I was asking her on a date and she knows my intentions. If I already came date number one, "Hey, can we get a picture just in case if we get married, we'll have the ... " Whatever. If I'd done these weird things along the way, it wouldn't have worked, but like everyone knows, we're in business, we're in things like that, we know what the goal is, but we're trying to feel people out to see if they're genuine or not.

It's interesting. I heard Adam Sandler talk about it one time and he was like, "I don't have very many friends." He said the reason why is because, he's like, "Earlier in my career, as I started having more success, everyone wanted be my friend. I realized really quickly they didn't want to be my friend, they wanted something from me." And the higher tier you get, you'll find out that happens. For me, I don't have a whole bunch of friends because I don't know who my friends are a lot of times. It's interesting because there was a time in my life where I thought everyone who was coming was my friend and I started giving people jobs and some of you have heard the story, I built a huge company of over a hundred people and I thought they were my friends and were here because of the mission, because of the vision. And when we had a hiccup and things kind of crashed, they all went away. And it was interesting because thought that they were coming for that.

I can't remember exactly where I was trying to go with this train of thought, but ... Oh, yeah. At the higher levels, just Understand that their guards are up because they've been burned in the past and it's like, who's true friends? And if you show up as a true friend where you're giving, you're serving, they know you want to do something with them eventually anyway, that's in the back of their mind, but they're testing, is this person the person who's coming because they're trying to get something from me or someone who genuinely wants to be a friend or genuinely wants to help, genuinely wants to do something? So it's just consistently showing up for a long time and maybe it's not as fast to turning on a Facebook ad, but for the long term stability, what you're trying to do, it's the best thing. Anyway, I hope that helps. I hope that gave somebody something today.

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