The thing that’s probably keeping you from actually getting what you want.
On this episode Russell talks about the first time he met Tony Robins and what he learned about himself when driving in a car with him. He talks about the importance of not being driven by significance.
Here are some of the interesting things in this episode:
So listen below to find out how Russell has changed his perspective since meeting Tony Robins.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, welcome to Marketing In Your Car. It is so cold here. Insanely cold. All of the ice, or the snow is now shards of glass and it’s crazy. That was the noise, if you’re wondering why. I was driving over the shards of glass in my car.
Alright, so today I have a very special message and this one’s important for everybody including me. Alright so I’ll tell the background of this story. A lot of you guys know I talk about Tony Robins a lot. He’s coming to Funnel Hacking Live, I’ve been a big Tony fan for forever, as long as I can remember. And the first time I met him was a really cool story.
So I went to UPW, actually let me step back. What happened is I was at my house one day working when all the sudden my phone rang, I picked it up and it was somebody on Tony’s team saying, “Hey, Tony Robins want to meet you. Can he meet you today?” and I was like, “Is he in Boise?” He’s like, “No, he’s in Salt Lake, can you come over. He wants to meet you.” I was like, “I’m in Boise.” And he’s like, “Oh, I thought you lived in Salt lake, that won’t work then. He’s going to be in Tron the next week doing UPW. Can you come and be his guest and then he’ll have a chance to meet you there.” I was like alright, how cool is that, yes.
So I booked my everything to go to UPW the next week, and I’d never been to a Tony event, I didn’t know what it was. I assumed it was like a marketing event. So I showed up with my backpack and laptop and I was going to sit in the back and take notes. And I get there and people are jumping and dancing. If you’ve ever been to a Tony event it’s closer to a rock concert than a seminar. Anyway, I was not expecting that. By the end of day one you walk on fire, day two I had shin splints, I lost my voice completely. That’s how crazy it is. So if you haven’t gone yet, you should really, really go.
At the event, first thing he teaches this really cool concept called the six human needs and I don’t have time to go through all of them right now, but I need to touch on it, because it’s important for the next part of it. So basically the six human needs, there’s four human needs of the body. There’s certainty, humans want to be certain. And then there’s variety, you want things to be crazy. Those are two needs that kind of conflict with each other, but they’re both there. And then there’s significance, we want to feel great about ourselves. And then there’s love and connection. I think I’ve done a podcast in the past about this, but I could go on for, I could teach a two day seminar just on that because it’s so cool. And then there’s the needs of the spirit, which are growth and contribution which is a whole other….anyway, we could go deep but I want you to understand that there’s those four.
So significance, love and connection, certainty and variety. Those are the four that we have to get met in our life. And there’s one for you. Just so you guys know, there’s one that’s your driving force in life. You’re either significance driven, certainty driven, variety driven, or you are love and connection driven, and it’s interesting.
So I’m going to leave that there. I wish I could go deeper, but I can’t in this podcast, because I won’t make it to the office, it’ll be a long call. So anyway, so I’m at UPW, he teaches this stuff, I’m fascinated by it and then the next day I’m supposed to meet him. So day two of the event, Tony’s not facilitating it, there’s somebody else facilitating it. So I started getting text messages from Tony’s assistant. “Hey Tony wants to meet with you in an hour.” I’m like, “Alright.” Then I get a text like 45 minutes later, “It’s going to be two hours from now.”
Anyway, throughout the whole day, I think our meeting was supposed to be at 10 in the morning, I was getting texts every 30 minutes for 10 hours. They kept pushing and pushing and pushing and finally I get a text, “Okay, Tony is ready to meet you. Here is the address.” This is pre-uber and I’m like, “Okay.” So I jump in a taxi and give them the address and they’re like, “This is like 45 minutes away.” I’m like, are you serious, is Tony not in the hotel?
So I get in the car and we’re driving and I’m hoping we’re going to the right place. This is going to be really embarrassing if I’m….So the taxi driver takes me to this hotel, drops me off, I text him, “Okay, I’m here.” And then this guy texts back, his name is Jay Garrity, and Jay would, just to kind of put it in perspective, so you feel my nervousness of this situation, Jay used to be the right hand man for I’m blanking on his name right now, for Mitt Romney when he was doing the first political campaign, the first time he ran for president. He was Romney’s right hand man, and then Tony hired him after that. In fact, most of Tony’s team at the time were old Romney advisors, which is kind of interesting.
So we get to the hotel, Jay Garrity comes down from the elevator, very professional, the opposite of me. He’s like “Mr. Robins is not ready to meet you yet, so sit in the lobby and wait.” So I’m like okay. So we’re sitting in the lobby waiting and it’s almost like secret service, that’s what it felt like. Jay kept looking at his phone, looking at his phone. Not ready, not ready. Probably sat there for another 45 minutes. Then all the sudden he’s like, ‘Okay, Mr. Robins is ready to meet you.”
We stand up and I was like, “Ahh.” Super intense and crazy. We jump in the elevator, go up to the floor, start walking down this hall really fast. We get to this room, the door’s open, there’s two security guards on both sides inside the room. I’m like, what in the world. We walk through the security guards and all the sudden Tony, this giant of a man, walks in and says, “Russell, welcome!” and gives me a huge hug. I’m like, “What.” Super crazy.
Then he has me come sit down and he’s made me dinner, you know someone made me dinner. And at the time he was pure vegetarian, so its like this dinner that was the most amazing thing in the world and it was pure vegetarian. I was like, “I could be a vegetarian if I had someone to cook this way.” It was amazing. Then he took out his recorder, clicked record on it, set it on the table, opened up a journal and started drilling me for an hour, asked me question after question after question. It was insane, I’ve never been more nervous in my whole life.
Drills me for an hour, we’re done. We finish eating, we talk for a little bit and then he’s like, “I gotta go back to the event.” So we go down and jump in this big suburban. Someone’s driving. Tony and I sit in the back and talk and it was interesting while we were talking, he was talking about a deal he was thinking about doing with someone in our market. I won’t say his name because most of you guys would know who this person is. He was like, “I don’t think I’m going to do the deal because he’s very significance driven.” I was like, “Huh, interesting.”
And then after he said that, I started thinking, at first I’m like, oh man that sucks for that guy. And then I’m like, wait, what drives me? Am I significance driven? Tony can see into my soul. I’m freaking out, what does he see about me? What’s driving me? I was so paranoid and panicky, it was crazy.
Then we got to the event. Tony’s like, ‘I gotta go, call ya later.” Jumps out of the car, goes into the hotel, and I’m standing in the front lobby like, “Huh.” That was the most intense three hours of my life. It was just crazy. But that thing he said, “Very significance driven.” So I started thinking, what does that mean? Basically it comes back to the four human needs. One of those is the driver for you that drives most of the decisions in your life. But this person he said it was significance.
I was like, apparently that’s bad. If Tony didn’t want to work with this guy because he’s significance driven. I was kind of confused at first. Then a couple months later I went to Date with Destiny. If you go to Date with Destiny, it’s a six day event that Tony has, it’s amazing. It’s like UPW times ten. In fact, I feel bad for people who go to UPW and only get to walk on water because you’re missing the depth of what Tony actually has to offer.
So I go to this next event, and the events there’s so much stuff he covers. But if you look at the one, the biggest things you work with at the event. He helps you identify the six human needs, which one is currently the driving force. And for most people it’s either significance, or certainty. I wish we could get into a couple hour talk on this, because it would make more sense, but he also said, the quality of your life is 100% dependent on your ability to, how do I say it right? It’s 100% tied to the need, your driving need.
So if your driving need is significance, that’s going to make you miserable. Whereas your driving need is love and connection, the opposite, then you’re going to have a great life. Same thing with the opposite, if your driving need is certainty, while it’s important, it’s a need we have, if that’s the driving force in your life, you always have to be certain about everything, you’re going to be miserable.
So it was basically helping you identify what is your driving need. Then learning how to shift that to the other thing. If you’re significance driven, learn, teaching how to be love and connection driven. If you are certainty driven, shifting it to variety. Because the quality of your life is going to be completely dependent upon your ability to have variety and love and connection. That’s what gives you a good quality of life, not the other two.
But most people, it’s these other things that drive them. And that’s what’s interesting. I was listening to that and for me, I’m and I think, most entrepreneurs, I’m definitely heavily driven by significance. In fact, now that I’m so aware of it, I hate it. In fact, in the world I work in, most, not most, but the majority of the people that I work with, the reason why they are in the guru business or whatever is because they are significance driven. And that’s why I always hear people, you get to know who these people are, and you don’t actually like them because they’re driven by this thing, no one knows, they don’t know what the cause is, but it’s because they’re driven by significance.
I’ve been doing a deal with a person who are trying to, someone who I highly respected and that’s why I’ve done this deal, I’ve never met a human being on planet earth that’s more significance driven than this person. And it’s completely ruined the deal, it’s ruined the relationship so much so, this is someone that I idolized. This is someone that if you would’ve told me 5 years ago that I would have a chance to talk to them, I wouldn’t have believed it. And now I’m avoiding their texts, phone calls. One of the most annoying human beings on earth because the significance is such a driving, the only thing this person can see is significance. Everything is tied to his personal significance and it’s destroying him.
I looked at this business, the people around him and he’s destroyed everything because he’s so significance driven. As a person he’s still brilliant, but a miserable life. I can’t imagine it. And I have this struggle because it’s a constant thing for me, and I’m sure for a lot of us. Significance drives us, we feel that. That’s why we’re entrepreneurs, why we’re out there. Why we want to be onstage and write books. But I, because I’m aware, I try to check that all the time because I hate that. That’s the thing I actually hate about myself. I hate that I’m significance driven.
When people give me good compliments, I thrive off that. I love that. But then when I, after I feel that, it bugs me because I’m like, “No.” I love that, but I can’t and shouldn’t be significance driven. IT’s not a good quality of life. I need to be driven by love and connection, by variety, these other things that actually increase the quality of your life. Because connection, even if it’s not about “Look about how great I am.” It makes you feel good, but it doesn’t help anything else. Love and connection is where you’re using your tools, your gifts in a more meaningful way.
So I don’t know. For you guys, I just wanted to share some of that in a ten minute message, I wish I could go so much deeper. But start thinking about that stuff. What drives you? If your personal significance is the driving force for you, I’d recommend stepping back from that. And it’s always going to be there, but being aware of it, like, “Man, I am just doing this for significance to make me feel better?” and if that’s the main reason you’re doing something, it’s the wrong reason. If the reason is that you really care about people and you’re trying to give them something, you have this love and connection towards them, it’s just a better way to live. I think people will see it and notice it.
I hope people notice that for me. I, despite the fact that it’s a constant thing that’s there in front of me all the time, I’m constantly trying to check it and put it in the back and default to the love and connection, these other things because I know what’s important and what actually helps other people, not just your own ego. Ego is the enemy. I haven’t read the book yet, but I bought it and I bought the audible. There’s a book called Ego is the Enemy, I’m excited to read it because I think that’s what holds most of us back from true love and connection. From happiness, growth, from all the other things we want. I feel like, our ego and significance we’re craving is what holds us back from that.
And if we are aware of that at least we can do something about it. I wasn’t aware of it. I look at my career the first 5 or 6 years of my business, prior to meeting Tony, I was not aware of it and it drove me, and it drove me, and it hurt my marriage, it hurt my family life, it hurt my relationship with friends. There were a lot of issues and again, I’m so far from perfect. I still do things because of significance, and I hate it. But I’m aware of it now, and I try to not make decisions based on that. I try to make decisions based on love and connection. How will this help others as opposed to how does this put me on a pedestal?
And it’s been good, it’s been really good. The relationships that have come from it, because of that. I think our ability to affect change in people’s lives have been tenfold. And the interesting thing, this is the craziest thing about it. As I have tried to push away significance and focus on love and connection, I have become more relevant and it’s weird.
I’ve gotten significance by not going after it. It’s weird. This person I’m dealing with, this person, despite the fact that they’re brilliant, they’re no longer relevant in our market, which is insane based on who they are, what they’ve accomplished and done, there’s no relevancy. They’ve been driving and chasing after significance for so long, they’ve completely just destroyed all their relationships. Their market knows that it’s all about them. They’ve destroyed what they sought after. They have lost all significance, because they’ve been seeking after it. It’s so weird. Whereas if you don’t, you seek love and connection, you seek that change in other people, you seek that, you will get the significance you are trying to get as a byproduct of it. It’s so fascinating.
So I hope that helps somebody out there. It’s definitely helping me in being more aware of it as I’m watching it unfolding before me. If you want those things, that’s kind of the work around. Hope that helps you guys. I’m at the office working, I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.