In this special episode that is taken from a recent YouTube video, Russell talks about how he used the Dream 100 strategy to build a relationship with Tony Robbins over the last decade and a half. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in this episode:

-- Find out how Tony and Russell met.

-- Hear why it took such a long time for the relationship Russell had with Tony to progress over the years.

-- And see how eventually he was able to become partners with Tony.

So listen here to get the whole story of Russell’s friendship with Tony Robbins, and don’t forget to watch the video on YouTube.

So, I wanted today tell you guys the story about how I used the Dream 100 to get to meet a whole bunch of amazing people that I wanted to get to know. Now, most importantly my number one Dream 100, who was Tony Robbins, and how I used this strategy to first off become his friend, second off, getting him to promote ClickFunnels, to promote us and more recently to actually become a partner with him. And so, that's what I'm talking about today.

-- ClickFunnels: Everything you need to start market, sell, and deliver your products and services online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)

-- DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels."

​-- Expert Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Converting Your Online Visitors Into Lifelong Customers."

-- ​Traffic Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Filling Your Websites And Funnels With Your Dream Customers.

What’s up, what’s up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Right now I am in a penthouse in the top of the Cosmopolitan Hotel for a couple of reasons. Number one is I am finishing the rewrite of the Expert Secrets book. This has been such a crazy journey, but it’s almost done. You guys are going to go crazy. Just the section on stories right now is insane. Anyway, I am also here because of my wife. We have a couple of days away, and during the breaks between me writing I’m going shopping to buy clothes for Funnel Hacking Live, because Funnel Hacking Live is soon.

If you don’t have your tickets yet, you must go now, we are almost sold out. FunnelHackingLive.com. We’re going to have 5000 insane funnel hackers in Nashville Tennessee at the end of January and you need to be there. So go get your tickets really, really quick.

But anyway, that’s what we are doing right now. And I’m not going to do a podcast episode, a new one right now because instead what I wanted to do, this week we launched two new YouTube videos that were insane. It was from our trip to Fiji. One was a video we made talking about me and the dream 100 process I did with Tony Robbins over the last decade to become, first off, to get to know him, to become friends, be promoted by him, and eventually become business partners with him. So that video is amazing. If you haven’t seen it yet, go to the YouTube channel and watch it because the visuals are insane. We have video clips from every single point of the journey. So I recommend you go back there and watch it.

But I’m going to play the audio here because regardless, the lessons in it are amazing. So this first episode is going to be all about the Dream 100 and how I dream 100’d Tony over the last decade and a half of my life. And hopefully you get some good ideas from it. But again I highly recommend going back and watching the YouTube video as well, because the visuals behind this episode are amazing.

So with that said, all you’re going to do is go to YouTube, type in Russell Brunson or Funnel Hacker Tony Robbins Dream 100 and it will pop up. It’s really easy to find. And if you’re not subscribed to my YouTube channel at this point anyway, what are you waiting for? Come on, let’s do it. Alright, with that said, I’m going to queue up the theme song. When we come back you will have the chance to listen in on the Dream 100 episode.

The Dream 100, so what is the Dream 100? It's something I talk about a lot. I try to get entrepreneurs to build out a Dream 100 and to focus on that as the core foundation of their business. Yet most people don't ever listen to it,let alone actually apply it.

So, I wanted today tell you guys the story about how I used the Dream 100 to get to meet a whole bunch of amazing people that I wanted to get to know. Now, most importantly my number one Dream 100, who was Tony Robbins, and how I used this strategy to first off become his friend, second off, getting him to promote ClickFunnels, to promote us and more recently to actually become a partner with him. And so, that's what I'm talking about today.

{Crosstalk}

The reason why Tony Robbins has been one of my Dream 100, I remember 15 years ago when I first heard about him and I saw him on "Shallow Hal" and I was like, who is this guy?

{From Shallow Hal}
Tony: Now, close your eyes.

So, I went to eBay and I bought every single Tony Robbins course I could find and I plugged in, and I would listen to Tony talk to me every single day. It started to slowly shifting my mindset, shifting my body, shifting all the things.

As I was growing my company I always thought, man, it'd be so cool to work with Tony on something. I just said, I wanna figure out a way to get to know him and get to work with him.

So, to kinda put it in perspective about how hard it is to get through all the gatekeepers, since he is a celebrity that's bigger than life. Again, he's been on movies. More recently he's got his own Netflix documentary. He speaks to millions and millions of people around the world. 

“Tony Robbins is one of the most sought after seminars in the world!”

“I'd always had this thing that I wanted to meet Tony.”

“He's about six foot nine and he speaks like this!”

He coaches Presidents of the United States, runs 54 different companies, five or six billion dollars a year in sales. I always think I'm the busiest person in the world until I look at Tony, I'm like, me times 54.

For me the question's like how am I, a 22-year-old kid supposed to figure out how to get access to Tony Robbins? Literally the biggest person in my industry and probably 40 different industries.

“You think he's at home now watching this?”

“I don't know Jay, I don't know where he…”

>“I was right here”

So, what I did, that built on the Dream 100, of who are the people who may be around Tony that I could get access to, people a couple of tiers down below him. At that time my Dream 100 list included a lot of those people. People like Frank Kern and John Reece and Eben Pagan. All of them lived in San Diego close to Tony. And so I Dream 100 them, got to know them, and then one day one of them had a chance opportunity to go and meet Tony Robbins. When he got in there, he talked to Tony, and introduced Tony to all the rest of the people at that level.

I actually didn't know I was in at first until one random day I got a phone call from Tony and his team to ask me if you wanna come and experience UPW and then have a chance to actually sit down and meet with Tony in person.

“How you doin' out there Toronto?”

So, I flew up to Toronto to attend Unleash the Power Within and I came as attendee.

“Not consciously but unconsciously through a problem!”

He invited me to sit in a private section right in the front. And every time he's talking about different topics he keeps looking at me and keeps looking at me and I'm like, oh my gosh, all leading up to that night we had a chance to do the Fire Walk with Tony, which is what UPW is famous for, you get to walk on fire.

“The purpose of the Fire Walk is just a great metaphor for taking things you once thought were difficult or impossible and showing you how quickly you can change.”

And he came to me and said, “Russell, so glad to have you.” and gave me this huge hug. And he said, “come on, let's go walk on fire.”

I remember going to bed that night I called my wife, I was like, “oh my gosh, I walked on fire and I met Tony, it was crazy!” And I just I knew that that little piece of him I got I was like, “I want more of this.I want more for myself, for my family.” And so, that's kinda where it really began.

And when Tony was in his hotel room talking to me, one of the first things he said, he said, “I read about your story. I know a little bit about you and you got started with potato guns, right?”

I was like, how did you know that? He's like, “Ah, I watched this video of you.” And I'm like, “Ah, so embarrassing that you know about my potato guns!”

But when I got back from UPW I was thinking, what's something I could send him? What's something I can, a man who can buy anything, who has everything, what can I send him that's unique? That's special? And all of a sudden I had this idea. I should send him a potato gun. The actual potato gun that we made in the DVD "How to Make a Potato Gun".

And so, I waited for a month and then two months. And I didn't hear anything back and then one day I get this email from Tony saying, “Russell, I just got to my home and there's this big, huge box on the front porch.” He told me that that night him and Sage and everybody went out and they shot the potato gun in his backyard.

I wanted to send him a potato gun, because I wanted to figure out a way that Tony's gonna remember my name. And I thought, what's gonna be unique that he will always associate with me? And I thought the most unique thing I could possibly send him would be a potato gun.

One night I got a random call. And I didn't know who the number was but I answered it. And it was Tony Robbins' assistant. They said, “Hey, Tony wants to know if you wanna speak in Fiji?”

And Collette's sitting there and I was like, :Tony wants me to speak in Fiji?” And she heard that and she goes, “Tell him yes, tell him yes!” I was like, “When is this?” She’s like, “Next week.” “You want me to speak in Fiji next week?” And she starts jumping on the bed like, “Tell him yes, tell him yes.” mouthing that to me. And I'm like, “Yes, yes, we'll come!”

And that was 10 years ago. We actually stayed in this exact same house that we're in right now. And the kids were playing right here. And the first time we got here I'm like, “What should we do?” And there's a projector here so that night we sat down and we actually watched "Shallow Hal".

“Please stand up and give a big hand to Russell Brunson, ladies and gentlemen!”

“First off, I know a lot of you guys have businesses that are bigger than mine that have been around longer. But at the same time I hope that I can bring some value to you guys, because I do have a skill set, we in our company generate a lot of leads online.”

Tony sat in the back of the room taking notes the entire time. After the event we were supposed to fly home and he asked, he said, “Hey, I'm creating this new product called the New Money Master series. Do you wanna be on one of the DVDs?” I was like, “Are you kidding me?” And so…

“Let's get to it! Russell, I just wanna really thank you for coming all the way to Fiji.”

“Yeah thanks, it's been amazing so far!”

So, all this amazing whirlwind of stuff happens and there's all this momentum, there's progress. We're moving our way in! And then, nothing, for years. Not just like a year, multiple years. Like four or five years. And I got an email from someone on his team like, “Hey, do you wanna help promote Tony's book when it comes out?” And I knew that they were gonna do it wrong. And I was like, “Ah!”

And so I messaged Tony, I was like, “Hey, I know you're about to launch your book. We just launched ours, we got a huge success. I would love to jump on a call with you or someone on your team to kind of explain what we did because I think it'll help you sell a lot more books if you put it through a funnel.”

And he said, “I wanna build a funnel.” “Cool, we have this new software called ClickFunnels. We'd love to build the whole thing for you” And he was like, “Okay, how does it work?” I'm like, “Well, I need some of your time.” And he's like, “Coordinate this with my team and we'll figure it out.” We called his team like, “We’re going to need a day.” And they're like, “No.” We’re like, “Okay, can we have half a day?” They're like, “No, there's no way.” And we're like, “Well, we have to get him on video, talking about his book.” “I can give you an hour.” I'm like, “An hour?” “ “That's all. That's stretching it even.”

Okay so, we flew to Vegas, we got our own hotel room. We rented the nicest suite possible because we needed a good place to go film videos.

“How you doin'? It's been a long time!”

Okay, we got everything set up for an hour. We filmed all the videos we needed for this funnel. We gave it to him as a gift and then they used that funnel during the book launch.

“Thank you!”

“In his newest book "Money Master the Game Seven Simple Steps"

“And everybody here is getting a book!”

He was on every single news channel, Today show, CNN, everything, all pushing back to this one book funnel that we'd helped create for him.

“You gotta learn from rich people. He lived in a car! He ain't always had this book!”

It was successful, he was grateful. And after that we didn't hear from him again. Obviously he's like one of the busiest, if not the busiest man on earth.

“He's clearing out.”

And about that time is when we had launched our Funnel Hacking Live event. We had our first event and we had no keynote speakers. Our second event, we’re like, “We should get a big keynote speaker.” We're like, “You know what'd be really cool is Tony Robbins.” We’re like, “We can't afford Tony, let's just get somebody else.”

As it moved in to Funnel Hacking Live number three that's when we're like, “Okay we should try to get Tony.” And I didn't know
how that worked. I don't know what he's charged, I had no idea. But I was like, you know what? First off, if I wanna build this relationship with Tony, I need to give him access to our platform.

Number two, if I wanna build a deeper connection with my audience I need to introduce them to Tony. Tony changed my life and I know that he could change their life as well. And so, no matter how much money it cost, we decided to go for it and to just do it.

“Okay, go, okay go!”

“Here he comes, here!”

“We have Tony for the event!”

“We got Tony!”

“What?”

“No way!”

“I don't do that many talks anymore, private talks. I pick the ones that I wanna do and there's very few. But I'm here because of Russell. He is truly, yes, give a hand for him.”

He went up there and spoke for almost five hours. And when he got off, I came back on stage and it was crazy!

“Russell, Russell!”

The entire audience was standing and they started cheering my name! And it was kind of weird for me, because I didn't do anything, Tony did it. But because I had brought Tony to them they were so grateful.

After the event was over I knew that Tony was in the middle of launching his new book. And we wanted to help support this book as well and so we set up time after the event up in the hotel room for me to actually go up there and interview Tony about his book.

“I'm excited because I read his original books like 20 years ago and..”

“Yeah, that's the last time I wrote a book!”

“And then there was no books forever and then that's when I started going through the courses, and the CDs and the events, and…”

And then after it got done, him and his entourage were cleaning up and they're about to head out the door. And what he didn't know at
the time is that in my pocket I had the very first copy of the "Expert Secrets" book. And so as he was racing out I said, “Hey, really quick
Tony before you go, I just finished my second book and I would love to give you a copy of it and hopefully you have a chance to flip through it on your flight home.”

He looked at me for a second, to the book, gave me a hug and then he took off and he was gone.

“Now I can fall asleep!”

And we were just kinda like, ah, crashing, like mission accomplished, we did it! We took the interview and we promoted it and sold a ton of copies of his book. Again, trying to figure out how we can provide as much
value as possible. So, we did that by being an affiliate and selling a ton of copies of his book as well.

I'd known him at this point for about 10 years. I had built book funnels for him, I had paid him to speak, I'd given him access to our platform. I'd consult for him for free as often as I could. I'd try to provide
value as much as I can and it was the first time that I ever went to ask Tony for anything. And it was for the launch of the "Expert Secrets" book.

It was coming out. He is of all experts, the ultimate expert in so many different fields that I thought if I can get Tony to interview me on his fan page that would be the best thing in the world. I was so nervous, I think a lot of people when they pursue a Dream 100 they'll do all the work but the scary part is asking the question, “Will you promote me?”

And I had been so nervous to do it, finally I said, you know what? If I don't ask, I'll never know. So, I sent him a message and within like a minute, Tony texts back and said, “Yep, I'm in, I'll help you.” And I was like, “Oh my Gosh!”

“Tony Robbins is doing a Facebook Live with Russell tomorrow at noon, yeah!”

“Are you serious?”

“No way!”

“What?”

So, at the time his fan page had like three point nine million fans.

“This is so exciting!”

We're clicking go and went live on his fan page.

“There's a new book out called Expert Secrets. The subtitles help you define your message, build a tribe an change the world. Yes, hold that up so we all see that!”

“There it is!”

“So, we'll see the stats over here on John's computer.”

“Hearts and love baby, hearts and love!”

“The stats man!”

That video was viewed over three million times. Tony really opened up
his entire brand to me. Allowing me to be able to share my message and my story and my book with all of these millions and millions of people. And that was really the power of building a relationship with someone to get exposure and access to their entire audience.

“So, if you got my text, right? You got my text?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Yeah, okay what if you text me on, I don't have time, do I? I have people come here in five minutes, I apologize.

“So Pitbull’s coming here in like five minutes.”

“Well, thank you Pitbull, for waiting.”

“Dude, that's awesome, my gosh!”
“That's so sweet!”

All right, so this time ClickFunnels was growing. We're a little bit more financially secure. The next Funnel Hacking Live we'd sold over 3,500 tickets. And so we said, “You know what, we're at a point now when we can book Tony again.” So, we called him back up and booked him for Funnel Hacking Live in Orlando as well. And this was the Funnel Hacking Live where we introduced Operation Underground Railroad, which is a charity
that Tony's part of. Tony's the number one donor of Operation
Underground Railroad.

And then, after the event was done we were breaking it down and we had a really cool moment behind stage

“Congratulations, this makes me so happy! You've made a giant contribution. You know that will save a whole lot of kids' lives, that's just amazing and beautiful. So, congratulations.”

I think one of the sub-lessons here for the Dream 100 is that by doing that, and it wasn't something we orchestrated, it was just something where Tony and I both share the same value. And for him to be able to see that and see it wasn't just something we talked about it was something we actually did and put it into practice. It's just something that builds the connection, the friendship, the relationship, that much closer.

And so, it's important to find people that you share values with as
you're building your Dream 100 because that's what makes those relationships really matter.

So, after that Funnel Hacking Live, I want to fast-forward about six months later I got invited by Brendon Burchard to go to a private mastermind group in Wyoming with a whole bunch of amazing people. And it was a private mastermind group that nobody knew about. We flew in helicopters to get to this location, go fishing, shoot shotguns, a whole bunch of other cool things like that.

And on the flight home, Dean and I were actually sitting next to each other, talking to each other. We're talking about different projects and ideas and we're sitting on a plane, both in first class, and some guy walks past and he's like, ”Hey, I've read both of you guys' books!” And we're like, “who's was better?” And it was really--

“True story!”

And Dean starts telling me this story. He's like, “Hey, I'm working with Tony on this project.” And he starts going through the whole thing. And I was like, dude, Tony doesn't even do real projects with anybody! And he's telling me this whole thing and I'm getting more and more jealous.

“Oh, can I jump in here one minute? I just wanna tell you what this guy does behind the scenes. So, he's like, “You and Tony are doing this thing.” Tony and I built a software and a course on how to extract your
knowledge and run masterminds.”

He's like, “I wanna create a masterclass, but for masterminds.” He said, instead of buying a course from Michael Jordan about how to play basketball, imagine going to Michael Jordan's house and actually playing
basketball with him.” And he's like, “that's the difference.”

And I was like, “I get it.” and I was like, “What are you calling this thing?” And he's like, oh, he had a couple of different names. I'm like, “Dude, you should buy mastermind.com.” And he's like, “Someone already owns that, I can't get it.” And I thought, oh, that's too bad. That would've been amazing.

And then a couple of days later I was thinking about his idea and his project. And I was like, I wonder who owns mastermind.com? So, I went to mastermind.com. And sure enough there was the site there. And it looked like it had been fully developed. And I was clicking through the site. I went to the About Me page, it showed a picture of the founders of mastermind.com. And they we're literally holding a 2 Comma Club award
in their hands!

I was like, oh my gosh! I have access to these people, I can get a hold of 'em!

“So, here's the cool part. So, he tells me, ‘You should have mastermind.com. It's only a million bucks.” I'm like, ‘I don't really wanna spend a million bucks.”

I was like, “No dude, you have to have it! Masterclass.com, mastermind.com, you have to have that domain!” So, I'm like, “Dave a
million bucks is too much. See if you can negotiate.” So, Dave goes back to negotiating with these guys. And then, we had the idea.

“Do you wanna know this guy, the way he plays? He negotiates, buys
mastermind.com for 600 grand. And gifts it to Tony and I. I'm not done, I'm not done. But he's no fool! Tony and I saw that reciprocity and now we made him a partner. Nice move!”

Dream 100 at its best!

It was one of those things where it's just like you're, wow, this dreams come true! Something I hadn't even fathomed 12 years earlier, or 10 years ago when I was in this room. To be not only friends with Tony and Dean but to be business partners with them.

We launched mastermind.com. It was the biggest launch in the history of internet marketing. Doing over 38 million dollars in sales in a two week period of time. The top 10 affiliates “is gonna fly with us in Tony's private plane to Fiji! Insane! It's gonna be fun!”

That's why we're here on this trip. That's what we've been doing. And that's why the Dream 100 strategy is so important.

Looking back on it, it's crazy to think we used this strategy first off to get in the door, so that Tony knew who I was. Second off to build the relationship an build a friendship. And eventually to build a partnership. It's not necessarily the fastest way to grow a company, but it's the long-term strategy.

Tony always says.

“But most of us overestimate what we're gonna do in a year, then we get disappointed. We underestimate what we can do in a decade, or two, or three, and that's why very few people fit there. But I'm here, because this young man has true integrity. He really delivers. I know you know that by the passion that you have here. The skill sets that he gives you are there, but also everything he does is with integrity, which sounds kinda corny and boring, but it's rare.So, I really wanna acknowledge Russell, and his lady, and his team, for being the kind of people….

Year number one if you look in my Dream 100 strategy with Tony would look like a complete failure. I met him for five seconds and that was it. Looking at it over a decade now, it was a smashing success.

So, that's why the Dream 100 is so important. That's why it's important to start planting those seeds now. And if you do that now, today, not tomorrow, not in the future, not when you're ready, you start today, you start planting those seeds, it gives you the ability in a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, to harvest those seeds at a level you never thought was even possible.