← In Search Of Excellence
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- [00:00]
A
If you give yourself one piece of advice to your 21 year old self, what would it be?
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B
If you keep giving your all, your gifts will make room for you. The only solution to long term happiness is to get outside yourself. The human mind will always find something to be concerned about, pissed off about, worried about, but when you're serving, you're not there. Find something you care about more than yourself because that's what's going to be the secret to your growth and your aliveness. Whether it's your family, it's your friends, it's your company, it's a nonprofit thing to you, it's a mission for you. And if you've got that kind of drive, you're going to keep growing. And if you keep growing, you have plenty to give. And if you keep giving, you're going have a meaningful life.
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A
Welcome to A Search of Excellence where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is somebody most people already know, the incredible Tony Robbins. Tony is the number one life and business strategist in the world who has coached and advised some of the most successful and powerful people in the world, including three former US Presidents, Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana, as well as countless athletes and celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Oprah. He is also an incredibly successful serial entrepreneur and investor. He's invested in 114 companies and runs 12 of them which together have $8 billion in revenues. He's a New York Times bestselling author and his instructional course Personal Power, who sold more than 40 million copies. Tony is also one of the world's leading philanthropists, a mission he started when he was 17 years old and has since secured more than a billion meals for people around the world. Tony, thanks for being here. Welcome to the Search of Excellence.
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B
Great to meet you.
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A
What an honor.
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B
Thanks, Sandy.
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A
So let's start with our parents. Born in North Hollywood, raised in Azusa. And your dad, Boris, underground parking attendant. Mom, Nikki, drug addict. Used to beat the shit out of you, poured dishwasher detergent down your throat until you threw up and chased you out of the house with a knife. Tell us what that was like as a kid growing up and the dichotomy of that, of you saying that she was a great mom.
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B
Well, the Dichotomy is she really is a good human being. But when people get altered chemically, they become somebody else. And I wouldn't have called her a drug addict, but she drank alcohol pretty excessively. And when she mixed it with, like, Valium and other things, she got very violent. And I have a younger brother, five years younger, younger sister, seven years younger. And so I had to kind of be the mom and dad a little bit. It made me grow up very early. But a lot of the best qualities of my life came from my mom. To give a fair picture. Otherwise, people just generalize. She was a very loving person. She cared for her friends very deeply. So when she was sober, it was a very different experience. And that's why, personally, I never drank. I don't have any judgment people would do, but I just never wanted Altar because I was in a family where multiple people did that. My natural father also drank as well. But he had a interesting life. You know, he was a parking attendant. As you said, he's underground all day long. It was before he had machines, and he'd sit there all day long and make change with people and never move for 40 something years. And so my mom kind of despised that. So I think she instilled that in me. I don't want to be that way. I need to become more successful. But I think the truth is, as I look back on it, if my mom had been the mother I wanted to be, I truly wouldn't be the man I'm proud to be. Because she made me a practical psychologist. I had to learn her moods and her emotions, how to manage and how to shift it so, you know, we could manage those times without it becoming violent or difficult at the same time. Just to put it in balance, she pushed me to do things I never would have done on my own and built a lot of my muscle, so to speak, psychological muscle, because she was very demanding, and those things happen. And then there was a third part which I walked in with, which is, I just have a love for people. I was like. When I was a little kid, I was trying to do things for strangers all the time. But mom tells people stories. I was. One of the stories she used to tell people is like, what's Tony really like? Has he always been this way? And she said, I can remember when I sent him next door to the liquor store, because living at this liquor store, she's pregnant with my brother. So I was probably, you know, five years old. And I sent him over to get some milk and bread. And it took Forever to come back. And I came back with no milk and bread and no money and we had no money. And she said, you know what happened? I said, well, there's a poor boy there. So I gave him the money. And she said, we're poor. That's the story of the process. So I think a combination of, of reaction to the environment, but not wanting to be a victim, not being willing to settle, that shifted me. And then I have four different fathers of radically different role models. And Jim Robbins, who adopted me, name I carry, was the one that I was most close to. Even though my natural father, he was a semi pro baseball player. And I developed a lot of moxie because to develop, have love with him, it was real through sports. So initially it was really through sports that all that developed for me.
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A
So many of us have life changing moments. We're going to talk about many of yours on the show today, but one of them happened when you were 11 years old. There's a knock on the door. Can you tell us about the delivery guy?
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B
Yes.
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A
And then the three decisions that you thought about that came out of that huge event.
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B
I was 11 and we had, you know, my fathers were good men, but they, you know, variously got unemployed at various times. And when they're unemployed, my mom didn't work, so we had no income. We had some food stamps. So we had Thanksgiving when it was 11. We had no food. We weren't going to starve. We had saltine crackers and peanut butter. But when everybody else is having a turkey dinner, it really feels a bit depressing. And my mom and dad were screaming each other and saying things that I didn't want my brother or sister to hear. And once you say them, you can't take them back. And then my life has changed because knock on the door. I go there. There's this big guy standing there with two bags of groceries, one in each hand. And he had already set down a pot with a frozen turkey on the ground. And he said, is your father here? And I'm like, just one moment. I was like so excited, like little boy at Christmas. Like, this is going to change everything. My dad's going to be happy. Mom's going to be so happy. So I went to my dad, this guy at the door for you. He says, you answered. I said, I did answer it. He's for you. What does he want? I said, I don't know. He said, he can only talk to you. And then I'm sitting there waiting with internal joy and he opens the door, sees the man does not let the man even speak. And just as we don't accept charity, and slams the door on the guy. But the man holding the groceries had leaned forward a little bit so it hit his shoulder. It bounced off his shoulder, which made my dad even more mad. He said, sir, sir. He said, listen, somebody knows you're having. I'm just a deliberate guy. Someone knows you're having a tough time. And everybody has tough times, you know, at times they want you to have a great Thanksgiving. My father said, we don't accept charity. And he pushed again because the guy leaned in, his leg and foot had gone in, so it hit his toe and popped open again. And so now my dad's even more aggravated. And then the guy said something I thought the guy was going to get. My dad was going to punch him in the face. He wasn't mean about it. He actually has a soft, gentle voice about it. And he saw me and he said, sir, don't let your family suffer because of your ego.
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A
Gray line.
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B
And my father's face, I mean, I remember like yesterday, the veins in the side of his neck popping. His face beat red. And I'm waiting for him to punch him. And then his shoulders just dropped. I'll never forget. He grabbed the groceries, threw them on the table, didn't say thank you, slammed the door. And I was shocked. And then I was sad. And I didn't know how to process, you know, why isn't he happy? Or why, you know, we're going to have. We're going to have a great Thanksgiving now, you know, and. But my father had always said, you know, strangers, nobody cares about us. And I thought we lived in a very wealthy community. It was actually very lower middle class, but we were in the poorest of the poor, literally across the railroad tracks. And that's where the people went in that particular community that really had nothing. And so it looked like nobody cared. But I had different evidence that day. And I remember I didn't figure it out that day, but I don't know, about three years later, I was probably 14, 15 years old, and I became obsessed with understanding human behavior. At that stage already, I was already starting to read books and absorb things. At that stage, I took a speed reading class and said, I'm going to read, you know, book every day. I didn't do that. But in seven years, I read 700 books in human development, psychology, physiology. But I got. I started thinking about, like, what made that happen. And I've realized there's three decisions as you Noted that you're making right now, your audience is making right now. When I say we're making them, we may not be making them consciously. Most of the time, they're unconscious. So you get the same result over and over again. If it's a good result, it's a good result. Most people, not so great result. That's what it is. And those three decisions are number one, you have to decide what to focus on. Now, again, if you don't think about it, you'll be triggered by the environment or you'll be triggered by your habits. But whatever you focus on, that's your experience of life. I always tell people, you don't experience life, you experience the life you focus on. Right now, you could focus on something and get yourself pissed off. If it's not in your own life, it could be about other people. Right? You could find total joy in this moment or gratitude if you focus on something else. So we don't experience life. It's what we focus on. And what we focus on, we feel even if it's not true. So if you think somebody has taken advantage of you, you get all angry and later on you find out they didn't. You feel like an idiot, right? But when you were focused on it, it was real to you. So focus equals reality to the individual, even though it's not reality in actuality, or a simpler way is focus equals feeling. So I thought about, what did I focus on that day and what did my dad focus on that day? And it was so easy because my dad said it under his breath over and over again. His focus was he'd not fed his family. Right? My focus is there was food. What a concept. I thought that was awesome. But the biggest difference is the minute you focus on something, the second decision you have to make, your brain makes is, what does this mean? Is this a threat or is this an opportunity? Right. Your brain is doing that constantly. And so is this person disrespecting me? Is this person challenging me? Is this person coaching me? Is this person loving on me? If you think they're disrespecting you, you're going to have a very different emotional response than if you think they're loving on you. Right. And whatever emotion you feel controls the third decision, which is, what should I do? If you're pissed off, you're gonna have a very different decision. If you're feeling grateful, obviously. Right? So the meaning is, what really changed my life that day? Because my father's meeting. I know what it was. Also because he Said it over again. He unfit his family and he was worthless. And what he decided to do is leave our family shortly after that, which was at the time, I thought the worst event of my life because I loved him so much. But my meaning is what changed my life. It's why I'm here today. The meaning my brain came up with is that strangers care. Strangers do care. Somebody we don't even know doesn't even want credit. And they saw we're in need and they helped us. That changed my entire world perspective. And what I decided to do is someday I'm going to do that for other people. And so I promised myself someday I'd feed two families. I'd double the impact. So when I was 17, I had, you know, very little money. I was just getting started a little tiny business. I went to this grocery store outside of Venice, California, and I went up to the manager and I said, listen, I told him the story. I got fed when I was a kid. I want to go feed two families. I got a limited budget. How about you give me a discount? I'm not doing this for me. The guy gave me 10% off. And I thought, cheap bastard. But I took the 10%. And I took two grocery bags that are rollers and I filled them with enough for two or three days of food for two families. And then I called a local church and said, and near the barrio area, in that area that I knew people were suffering. And I said, do you have a family that really needs food but probably be too proud to get it? That was kind of model of my family. I'm sure we could have found food if we'd gone and asked for it somewhere. But we were going to do that. And so they gave me two names. And so I loaded up all the food. I borrowed a friend's van. And then I. I turned around and I. I put an old T shirt and jeans because I saw my dad responded. So I was like, I'm not going to be thanked. I'm just going as a delivery guy. And then I wrote a note, said, this is a gift from a friend. Please have a beautiful Thanksgiving. We all have tough times at times. Hope this makes your Thanksgiving better. And someday, please, if you can do well enough, do this for one other family, you know, and put love a friend. And then I realized where I was going. They may not speak Spanish, so I had a friend write it in Spanish on the back. So I show up at the house, this. I shouldn't say house, this little apartment. And I knock on the door of the first place. And this woman, about this tall comes up to my chest, looks up at me, sees the groceries and screams. And I'm like, oh, no. And she grabs my head and pulls me down to her and starts kissing my cheek. I said, no, no, no. I'm delivery boy. Delivery boy. Delivery.
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A
And.
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B
And I said, oh. And I remembered I had the notes. I reached the hand of the note, and I flipped it over. She saw it in Spanish and she read it, and she started to cry. And then she grabbed and started kissing me again. I said, no, no delivery. She goes, no. Gift of God. Gift of God. I'm trying not to cry. And then I said, well, you know, where do I put these groceries? And there's a tiny little room, right? The table's right there. And she points, and so I go to put there. And then I hear these screams. And all of a sudden, when one boy hits me. One lay. One boy hits the. I was four kids. And it turned out that her. I found out afterwards that her husband had left them three days before Thanksgiving with no money and no food. It's like, not the exact same situation as mine, but so close. It was ridiculous. It's like, talk about grace. And so, you know, the kids got all excited, so I hadn't come up to the van and help me bring more stuff in. And when I saw the pumpkin pie, it was, like, over. They were over the top. And then it was time to leave. And this one little boy would not let go of my leg. He was so cute, and he was so. Just wonderful. But I had to go. I had to go to the next house. I didn't speak Spanish, so I turned the lady and I said, feliz Navidad. Merry Christmas. It's Thanksgiving. But she started to laugh. She'd been crying. She's laughing. And I gave them all hugs. And I went to leave. And I got in the van. And I'll never forget, I was putting the thing in reverse as my buddy's van. I didn't really know how to do the gears properly. And I looked in the rearview mirror on the porch for the four boys and the mom. They're grinning from ear to ear. Mom's crying and smiling simultaneously. And I started crying uncontrollably. And I was like, why am I crying? It's such a beautiful moment and trying to get the thing in gear. And I'm literally. I couldn't see us crying so hard. And then I realized today, my worst day, became my best day. That if I had not suffered like that as a child. Would I be there to help this family? And the answer is, well, I believe I'm a good person. Probably not. And so the next year I fed four families. I was hooked. And then it was eight. And then I had a little company. I got my employees involved, then I got a bigger company, then I eventually got to 4 million people, 2 million from my foundation, 2 million from me every year. And then I was doing this book, Money Master the Game, where I interviewed Ray Dalio, Carl icahn, Warren Buffett, 50 of the smartest financial people in the world. And I'm meeting these multi billionaires that I see that the government has cut food stamps, they call it SNAP program now, by $6 billion, I think was the number. It basically means every family that needs food has to go out with one week a month without food unless people like you and I in the private sector step up. So I called my foundation and I said, how many people I fed in my lifetime? I didn't know the total number. And they said 42 million. I was like, wow. I was really excited and proud about that. But I thought, what if I blew that number through the roof? What if I did in one year as much as I did in my whole life and I did 50 million meals and I was like, what if I did a hundred million meals and I was 100 million meals for 10 straight provided a billion meals. Now that is an exciting outcome. And so I did. I teamed up with Feeding America. They distributed the food and I did it in eight years. And then it didn't stop there because I'm doing another billion, but because it hasn't got problems, not gone away, but I'm looking for sustainability. And then I was working, I was in UAE and MbS was. I had got to meet him and develop sort of relationship with him, friendship. One day he called me up and he said, come to lunch with me. I have somebody I want to introduce you to. Who's the only other person I know feeding as many people as you are. And it was Governor Beasley, who was the head of the World Food Program. He won the Nobel Prize for feeding people there for the un. And so we decided to join forces about a year and a half ago and said, look, normally 80 million people are at risk every year of starvation in this world. It's terrific. A child dies every 15 seconds of hunger. It's insane. This year it's 350 million. And no one's talking about it because the news cycle is so short. Everybody Focuses on everything else. There are 11 nations in Africa that the breadbasket for Africa is the Ukraine. So there's nothing coming out because of the war. The WF doesn't want people using fertilizer. But 50% of the world's food supply comes from fertilizer and most of it comes from Russia, which was shut down. So the price of fertilizer went through the roof. So there are 11 nations where people on the verge of starvation. No one's doing anything about it. So I said, how many meals would we need? We need a sustainable solution. How many years to get to sustainability? How many meals would we need? He said, I don't know, 20, maybe 50, 60 billion. I said, let's do 100 billion meal challenge. I said, I did 100 billion meal. I mean I did a billion meals. All I need is 99 more people like me or organizations. And I said I wasn't a billionaire when I started, you know, I grew as I contributed more, you know, and, and so we did that and it didn't turn out very fast. I went, I remember going to this one man who's a good friend of mine who's very generous, and when I did my first billion meals, he contributed to it. And he said, what you doing now? I said, I'm doing 100 billion meal challenge right in over 10 years and I'm looking for people to do 100 million a year for 10 years. And he goes, Tony goes, how much would that be? I said, it's about $100 million. You know, it's like 10 cents a meal. And he said, $100 million. He said. I said, but it's over 10 years, you know. And he says to me, that's beyond my pay grade. And he's worth $20 billion plus. I was like, oh my God, this is not going to work. So without boring you the details, I altered my approach. And we announced just two weeks ago we hit the first 30 billion meals in two years. And quite frankly, we already have commitment now, I haven't announced it yet. For 60 billion meals, we'll be at 60 by the end of this year. So we're going to blow through the 100 billion meals. But the point is, would I have ever done that if I was a well fed job, if I had been totally nurtured again? I'd like to believe I would. I'm a good person, but I don't know if I'd had that much drive. So I really believe everything happens for a reason, including what went wrong with my mom and I. I honor what happened in my life as opposed to be a victim. And I try to encourage other people to do the same thing. I never even told anybody about the story of my mom until after she passed. And I was with a. I was in New York with a group of young Hispanic and African American children who only had single mothers. And I was talking about biography is not destiny. And you can make different choices. And I'm looking at him, I can mind read. They're looking to this tall white guy who's wealth. So I told them the whole story. Not the ones I gave, but the details. They were crying their eyes out. I was crying my eyes out. And I realized sometimes it's valuable to share that with people. But my overall theme is don't settle and don't be a victim in this process. What if everything in your life happened for a reason? What if there was a higher purpose, but it's your job to find it? I believe life is always happening for me. Not to me, but it doesn't always look that way. So I got to dig, I got to find, and sometimes it takes it. I don't know. In your life, have you had any experiences where you went through that were brutal, that were painful, that you'd never want to go through again, but maybe five, 10 years later, you look back on and go, man, I'm so glad that happened. I don't want to go through it, but made me so much stronger, made me care more. Can you relate to that in some way?
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A
Yeah. Bullies stuttered as a kid.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Brutal.
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B
Yeah. But it made you stronger. It made you care more, made you be a different person. Look at the emotion in you. Even now, when you think about it, you're near tears just even thinking about it. So I think it's important for people to realize that if they go back and really look at their life, if they're. If they don't go on drugs and alter their state to alter your state, you'll never come up with a better meaning. But if you stay off drugs and you stay straight and you push for it, sooner or later you're going to find there is a benefit that far exceeds the pain you went through. And I don't want to see anybody suffer. The reason I do what I do is I suffered so much, I want everybody else to suffer. So I've spent a lifetime looking at tools to help people break those patterns. Master their body, their emotion, their relationship, their finances, the areas of life that matter.
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A
When your mom kicked you out with A knife. You were depressed. You. She kept your 86 Volkswagen.
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B
No, it's a 1960 Volkswagen.
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A
40 hours a week. You were making. She kept it?
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B
Yep.
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A
In the rain. You slept on a hill. Then you slept in a friend's laundry room.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And then you're at a book called the Power of Believing by Claude Bristol.
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B
The Magic of Believing by Claude and Bristol.
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A
Yes, the magic of believing. And you went on to read 700 books. What was so informate, what was so inspiring about that book? And if you tell us about what you were writing on the mirror as you were reading that book.
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B
Sure, you've done your homework. It's beautiful. I saw that. Radical preparation is a big part of your life. Mine too. No. When she kicked me out, she wasn't going to stab me and kill me. I wasn't worried about dying, but I wasn't going back in that house. And so I did sleep on the hill. And then it rained. So it's like that plans out.
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A
And then you just slept there in the rain?
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B
No, I got under the tree and froze. And I finally just went in. I knocked on the door of a friend. It was a girl, not a girlfriend, but her family really cared about me. And I said, you know, can I sleep in your laundry room? So that's where I was. So I had, I don't know, $12 to my name and $13, whatever. And I just took a little bit of money, got on a bus, and I went to this bookstore that I had remembered because I'd run 13 miles on my 13th birthday. I had this. This obsession. I was going to push myself. And so I remembered this bookstore. So I went there and I just was guided. This book, the Magic of Believing. And all it really taught was the power of belief. Belief controls everything. Everything you do is based on your belief. But it showed how to program your beliefs by conditioning them by repetition, by what I'd call incantations, as opposed to affirmations. Affirmations that I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy. Your brain goes, bullshit, I'm not happy. But if you use your body and your voice and every ounce of you is congruently speaking that over and over again, it basically hypnotizes you into owning that experience. And so I used to write on the mirror in the laundry room, you know, only a loser is depressed, which is not true. But I knew I wasn't a loser, so I used that as the leverage. I'm not going to be depressed because I was so depressed, Billy. And I Had all these affirmations I would do. And I go on runs, and I do. Every day, in every way, I'm getting stronger and stronger. And I would just program this nervous system of mine until I could really be in a position where I felt like I could succeed. And it worked. It produced tremendous change in me. But it didn't stop there. As you said, I'd started reading before that, but I just got reignited to read. And reading was my escape, but it was also my transformation. I escaped the world as I entered Emerson's essays. And I'd read a lot of autobiographies, especially because when you read an autobiography, you're reading the words of that incredible human being, so you're thinking their thoughts. And if you do that for days or weeks or whatever the case may be, you start to take that on. It's like if. If you want to play the piano and you can mess around on your own, but if you're smart, you learn other people's music, and all of a sudden you do some amazing things. But after a while, you play it enough, you learn enough patterns that now you become the creator. Now you start to create your own patterns. And that's pretty much what happened for me with these books. And then also events. I went to seminar after seminar. I had no money. I didn't have money for my rent. But I go invest in a seminar because I'll never go pay for this until I change what's going on in me. And then I. I was also, I. Because it was all the money I had. It was such a big investment. I wrote down. Because I said. I wrote down them and I didn't miss a word. I didn't get up to pee. I mean. And I was obsessed with using what I learned because I had to. Because I'd given up all the money I had to do it. And so that. I think some people, it's easy to do things and so they don't retain it. But for me, I was. I was obsessed with getting the result.
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A
We all have a lot of big moments in your life. Again, I want to go through yours because I think it's so much about your story. When you were 17 years old, you're working at Grandora High School as a janitor. Yeah, help me move people on the weekends. And there was a friend of your families who was a landlord. And very awkward conversation ensued where he said, my parents said, hey, you're such a loser. How are you so successful? So tell us about Jim Rohn and the influence you had on your life. And the question that you asked the landlord, and he said, no fucking way. I'm not doing that. You do it yourself.
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B
Well, my. You know, I had to help support my family. We don't have enough money for food, so I'm going to school. And I kept two different jobs as a janitor because I could work in the middle of the night. And they didn't charge you, pay you by the hour. They paid you by the result. So I could do two banks in the middle of night, do a great job, take the buses home and contribute. And then on the weekends, I would try to find something to do also, because you didn't have to do the banks then. And my mom and dad knew this man who, as my dad's words were, used to be such a loser. Now he's so successful, and I wonder what happened to him. And all he was, was he was buying properties, fixing them up and flipping them in Orange County, California, in the 1970s. Like, 78, 1977. And the market was exploding. So he was doing very well. So he needed. He was very efficient in his workforce to move things. And so he always hired, like a high school student. And I'd been 5:1 in my sophomore year, and I got a tumor in my brain. No one knew. That's why. And I grew 10 inches in a year. So I was like, get that big strapping guy. We'll do this. So I come and I. I'm a hard worker. And after two days of working my guts out, he's like, you're the hardest working guy I've ever met. He goes, I'm really impressed. Let me take you to lunch. So he takes me to lunch and. And he starts to ask some questions. I said, I want to ask you some questions. I said, you know, my dad and I. I wasn't saying trying to be harsh or funny. It's just when you're a kid, you just don't realize. I said, my dad said, you should be such a loser now you're so successful. Like, how'd you do that? He was taken back, obviously. I said, what? And he goes, well, he goes, it's probably pretty accurate about me. I said, but what changed you? And he said, I went to a seminar. I never even heard the word seminar before. I said, what's a seminar? He sits where a man who has become incredibly successful over decades takes all he's learned in the decades and tries to compress it into a few hours or a few days and save you all that trial and error learning. I said, wow, that's fascinating. I said, so how long does somebody. He goes, it's three and a half hours. I said, well, how much is it? He said, $35. It'd be like $250 in today's dollars, right? Inflation. And I was making $40 a week. So I said, wow, that's expensive. I said, can you get me in? And he's like, yeah, but you said, anymore? I said, well, will you? And he said, no. And I said, well, why not? And he said, well, because you won't value it if you don't pay for it. I said, no, no, no. I'm on my own. I've been sleeping in my car. I'm working as a janitor. I'm giving him the whole story, right? He goes, I don't hear the story. He said, if you really committed, you'll go there. Or he said, learn on your own experience and take 10 or 20 or 30 years or maybe never figure it out. So I remember I like sweating bullets over this decision. Do I do a week's pay for this 13 hour thing, right? And I was like, oh, my God. And then I went down there. I had graduated to a 1968 Volkswagen since my mom had gotten the other one Baja Bug. I pulled up in front of the nice hotel in Orange County, California, and threw the keys to the valet. You turn my engine off, and it usually had a little explosion. I was wearing a blue leisure suit, which is what people wore in those days, that I got in the thrift store. Fake gold chain. But I was ready to rock and roll, baby. I went in, talked my way, and a guy had set this thing up so I could get in. And I sat in that seminar and I'd read so many books that when Jeroen was speaking, I would finish some of his phrases and you're at a round table. I was somewhat disruptive without meaning to be, but I was so enthusiastic. And then during a break, I went up to Jim Rohn and told him the story about, you know, how I've been doing all this stuff and I wanted to come to work for him. And he's like, young man, if you want to come work for me, you have to go through all my programs. And, you know, it was in those days, $1200, it'd be like, you know, $12,000 today, 10, 10,500, I think is the translation. So I know that kind of money. I'm sleeping in my car in an old trench coat. I got the thrift store. I'm working as a janitor, you know, trying to keep everything going. And I said. I tried to tell him my story, and he said, no, no, no, I don't want to hear all that. He said, I'm not your banker. So I said, you could loan me the money, and then I'll go get these great results, and I'll tell everybody that you helped me do this, right, this whole plan. And he goes, no, no, no, I'm not your banker. He goes, you know what? If you want to come to work, you have to have the money by Saturday. And he said, everybody gets what they have to have. Some people have to survive, some people have to succeed. Decide which one you are. And he walked away. And I was pissed off. I was like, he's an asshole. I mean, I'm struggling. He's rich. I'm willing to pay for it. I just want him to finance it, you know? And then after bitching in my head about him for a while, another part of my brain started going, he's right. He's right. He's right. He's like, he's right. What? He's right. You've always got what you had to have, but you haven't had to have much. It hasn't been many months for me. And so I was like, okay. So I went to banks, thinking banks will loan you money when you need it. Which, of course, as I'm sure you know, they only loan you money if you don't need it. So I went to four banks in a row. Turned down, turned down, turned down. And I'm running out of time. So I finally. I'm outside the bank of America in West Covina, California, a place called Citrus Avenue. And I'm. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was getting myself pumped up physiologically. I know. I know what I was doing now, but I was getting in this really strong state. So I go in there and convince somebody. I walked in, I looked for somebody who looked persuadable. And there's this kind looking woman, kind eyes. I thought, she'll understand. So I walked up to her with all the energy I had, shook her hand, probably shook it off, and said, I'm Tony Robbins. I'm here today to borrow $1,200. I don't want that money for, like, to repair something. I don't want for a vacation. I want it so I can attend a seminar. And she had this weird look on her face like, I'm not getting through to her. And she Said, well, I appreciate your passion. I said, I want to go. No, I just want to go. For me, I'm going to learn how to manage my time and this and that, how to lead and blah, blah. And I said, and I'm going to go help hundreds of thousands of people. That was the goal I had at that time. And she said, okay, young man, well, let me see your application. Settle down. And she goes, I appreciate your intensity and passion. And so she's reading it, and she sees my address is on Citrus Avenue. It's a commercial street that goes through four cities. There's no apartments on it. So she says, citrus Avenue. She said, where's your apartment on Citrus Avenue? I said, well, I don't really have an apartment. I have kind of a mobile home. She said, a mobile home? So I told her the truth. I'm sleeping in my car at 24 hours between Denny's and 7 11. They don't make me move. I talk to the mailman. He gives me my mail because he understands what I'm going through. So if you send it there, I'll get it. And her eyes are getting like this. And then she says, so you want the bank to loan your money, and we'll send the bill to the 711 and you'll be in your mobile car sleeping. She goes, and then she goes, and you're 17 years old. I said, what does that matter? She goes, you can't sign a contract till you're 18. I said, I'll be 18 soon. She said, how soon? I said, I assume not to be 18. I said, I'll be 18 in two weeks. She goes, oh, you probably. I just don't think the bank's gonna loan it to you. And it's like, oh, no. You understand I gotta do this. I got even more passionate. And she said, listen. And she looked at me and she said, you're serious about this, aren't you? I said, as serious as a heart attack. I'm gonna use everything I learned. I'm doing all these things. And she said, I've never met anybody quite like you. She said, if you look me in the eye and swear to me, I will never have to come looking for you. Cause I'm not going to 711 or Denny's. I will do everything I can to get the bank to help you. But if they won't, I'll loan you the money, but you better take this seriously. And I jumped across the desk, kissed her. She was ready for that stuff. And I said, I always tell people you gave my start and that's why I've always told the story. And her name was Mrs. Williams and she got the money along with the money though she didn't have to do it. I don't know how she did it. Maybe she co signed, I don't know. But I took $1,200, which is. Makes me emotionally. But now I'm remembering it and all the money in the world is more expensive than the car I was sleeping in. Right. You know, and I went to Jim Rohn seminar and I met a man there named Mike Keys, who's still my friend today, 45 plus years later. And he had just a little bit more money than me. And he said, look, stay in my hotel. You don't stay in your car. And we were both pretty broke and there were a lot of very wealthy people were there learning from him. But because of that, like I said, it's like we were writing every word. I had to go to the bathroom and everything. At one point I figured out every word was worth like 3 cents or some ridiculous thing. But I was so committed. And then Jim wrote years later, I spoke at his funeral. He's a beautiful man. He would start his seminars and say, you know, every time I get up here I want to do a good job because you never know who's in your audience. And he'd tell the story about this kid who was in a kid who's sitting in his room and shouting out answers. And he goes, you know what? It was Tony Robbins. And today he's here with people all around the world. And then he also would tell a story about Mike, the two guys that were the most broke because we probably applied it as much or more than most people would. So that's where my whole start began.
- [32:06]
A
We all have a aha moment where we say, okay, someone tells us that we're special. And you had an interesting teacher named Mr. Cobb your sophomore year in high school. Again, I think a lot of guys all have their ultimate crush. You had one, a senior cheerleader in high school. What, what did he tell you? And took you aside where he thought you were getting in trouble and instead it just opened up your whole world.
- [32:28]
B
He, he was a very kind of right wing, straight lace guy that taught speech. And, and I get in a speech class and I screwed around. I was pretty humorous. And so I, I would take over the class to some extent. And the reason I took over the classes there was a senior song leader, cheerleader, Nancy Coleman, who I was totally in love with. But I was not in her league, but I would get her attention over everything, you know, the main football players there. I'd humiliate the guy and tease him. I was. I was crazy in those days. And so after class, Mr. Cobb's. Mr. Robbins, you need to stay. I need to speak to you. I was like, oh, shit, I'm busted. And I sat down, and it wasn't what I expected. He goes, you know why I've asked you to sit down here with me today after class? And I was like, yeah, I think I do. He goes, why? I said, well, you know. And I started to say what I did. And he goes, no. He goes, I've been a teacher for 30 years. 30 plus, I believe it was. And he said, I've never seen anybody stand up and capture every kid in this room's attention when he speaks. He said, it's unbelievable what you do. And I was, like, flabbergasted. I didn't have any reference for that whatsoever. And he said, I think you have a gift. And he said, I know more about your story than you probably think I do. Knew about my mom and things like that. And he goes, I think I found a speech that embodies who you are. And it was called the Will to Win. And it was all about. The only way I made it to that point in my life was pure will. And he goes, I want you to read this, memorize this, and compete in persuasive oratory. And I was like, I'm not. You know, you have to be a junior to do it. He goes, I don't care. I'm going to get you in. And so I read this speech. I was very emotional reading it. It was so tapped into my own story of who I am. And. And I got up and I took first place and another first place, Another first place. And I mean, I didn't win every single one, but I won about 80% of the time as I win these competitions of the year. And so that developed that skill set in me. And then I decided to run for student, my president, even though I wasn't the most popular kid in school, but I did it differently. I went to everybody and found out what they wanted and came back and told them the truth. I don't think this could be done. I think that could. And, you know, I won. And so it taught me that you didn't have to be popular, that you could. If you told the truth and served, you'd get through to anybody, because I beat the most popular kids in school. By far. So it was kind of another launching pad. Well, each of those things stack on each other to make you start to believe in something more as possible.
- [34:44]
A
You're starting your seminars, you're doing some with Jim. He's letting you speak at 20 years old. I think you're at your first seminar and there was someone there who was basically criticizing you. Tony doesn't know shit. He's really not doing anything. And then there was some. And he's basically saying, hey, I've got a client that has a snake phobia. He said, I can cure it, but the better one that I think a lot of people would be more interested in. And I think you could create a whole new business. I know you're. You've done well. I think people have said, tony is now a billionaire, is. You were able to give a woman an orgasm who had never had one in her life before.
- [35:19]
B
Not touching her.
- [35:20]
A
Well, without touching her. So, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of guys listening out there saying, holy shit, Tony, you gotta write a book about this. And then there's a bunch of women out there who are not sexually fulfilled, where I think there'd be a 50, 50 audience there on that one.
- [35:35]
B
Oh, no. I made my career by taking challenging psychiatrists originally and saying, give me your worst patient, I'll handle them in an hour. Who'd been working for five or six or seven years. I started that in Vancouver and it became kind of my calling card. Now today I train psychologists and psychiatrists. They study my work and they get continue education credits. Kind of crazy. But in those days, I was angry to see somebody spend five, six years at something that I had learned, techniques that truly could wipe it out in less than an hour, sometimes 15 minutes. And so I use that. I take somebody like snake phobia and I'd bring it out, they'd freak out, and at the end, wrap the snake around them. And people be like, holy shit, this is amazing. But yeah, one of the more dramatic ones was a woman who had an orgasm. But women are different.
- [36:16]
A
Did you demonstrate that in the seminar?
- [36:18]
B
No. Right? I did. Without touching her. And the people were just. Guys are like, can you teach me how to do that? I'm tired, you know. But women are very different than men physiologically in that area. The man you can be. I always say, you know, women need a reason to make love. Men just need a place, you know, So a woman, if she is not emotionally safe, secure, there's a whole series of elements that allow her to be able to let go and experience an orgasm. And. And so I was just able to guide her to that. But it became. People talked about it a lot. It became a big piece. But then I did things to like the Army. I took a training program that they've been doing Since World War I on training people in pistol shooting. And I told the general I could take any training program you have, cut the training time in half and increase the competency. And he said, you're crazy. I said, no, I'm expensive. Have you negotiated? I went through a year's worth of top secret clearance. And then he did a whole series of things to the army. And I cut the training program by three days out of four. One day, one and a half days versus four days and qualified 100% of the people instead of 70% of the people. So that opened up doors. I got to do coding, I got to do other things of that nature and managed to work with sports teams. And then I got Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton. And then, you know, a way to think about this is Randy. It's just patterns. Everything is patterns. So if you want to think about like I have five kids and five grandkids, I have a 50 year old daughter and I have an almost four year old daughter now. So I have quite a spread. I adopted my first three kids when I was very young. And I look at them today and I think, okay, the world is changing so rapidly. We're at the base of the change. We're not even at the acceleration of the change. And in the next, say 10 years minimum, but even five years, there'll be more change that's happened in the history of mankind between nanotechnology, obviously from AI, obviously from robotics. Right. So many things that are coming here. So how do you. A lot of jobs are going to be disrupted depending on whose studies you read, 40, 50% of the jobs. How do I make sure my kids and grandkids can do well, or you and I can do well no matter what happens in the world? I think you need three skills. Skill one, you have to. You get good at the science of or just the recognition of patterns. Everything's patterns, History's patterns, financial patterns, company patterns. What you don't get angry all the time, you don't smoke all the time or you don't drink all the time. You do those things when you're bored or when you're triggered by sadness or when you feel alone. So once you understand patterns, you have less fear because the world is in chaos. Anymore. And so I really started to get good at studying patterns of all sorts. And then the second skill, though, is if you can use the patterns now, you have power. You don't just know what's happening. You know how to use it. So that's what a great financial trader does. I worked with Paul Tudor Jones for 24 years, one of the greatest traders in history. It's like it's all patterns. If you look at somebody's great with music or singing, they know how to use the sound or the movement of their body. A great director knows when to come in, when to come out, what to do with the music. But there's not unlimited patterns. And when you learn how to use them, it's like learning to play the other people's piano. But then the ultimate level is when you become a creator of patterns. That's when you're able to do things that no one else does. You become a master of your particular domain of focus. So I look at those three skill sets and I say, I want to make sure that I had that in as many areas as possible. And when I learned how to do that, that's when I started getting the calls, because I did it to me first. And then all of a sudden, I get the phone call when the kid is suicidal. And knock on wood, I've never lost one. You know, done thousands of them. And we've got. You know, there's a documentary on Netflix called Tony Robbins I'm not yout Guru. If you go there and watch it, you see it.
- [39:54]
A
Two. Two people.
- [39:55]
B
I mean, yeah, it's mindball. And what happens is you get to see people, but you see them five years later, too. And what's happened to them, which is pretty amazing because they're no longer suicidal, obviously.
- [40:05]
A
One of them is actually now a life coach in Berlin.
- [40:07]
B
That's right.
- [40:07]
A
Which is incredible.
- [40:08]
B
That's right. You've done your homework. So anyway, long story shortened. The bottom line is, when I understood that, then I got. That's how I started getting people like the president, states or, you know, somebody coming to me saying, what am I going to do? I remember I got a phone call in the middle of the afternoon one day. It's President United States Bill Clinton, saying, they're going to impeach me in the morning. What should I do? And my first response was, could you call me sooner? It's tomorrow morning. But because I had these, I had no net. And I go, like, Serena Williams. She can't get back on the court. Her sister got killed. And it's US open. And. And I got to deliberate now that having no net, but also having developed enough patterns gave me a capacity to create patterns that produce results that people had never seen before. And then I started doing it in business. So Now I have 114 companies. We do $9 billion in business now. And across all these different industries. I have no traditional college education and business, it was just all modeling. Jim Loan taught me success leaves clues that if someone is successful not for a day or a week or a month or a year, but a decade or more, they're not lucky. They're doing something different than you. So figure out what that is. And so most of my books are that, like, I wanted to help people financially. After 2008, I was pissed off. I knew a lot in that area. I'm like, okay, Let me interview 50 of the smartest financial people in the world. And they're all different, but let's extract what do they have in common? And my billionaire clients loved it. But the average person loved it. You know, that's a New York Times number one bestseller and millions of copies sold because people could take it and actually change their life. Did the same thing with LifeForce. Interviewed 150 of the greatest regenerative medicine doctors in the world, Nobel Prize winners. Because right now, the breakthroughs that happen today on average take 17 years from the time of the breakthrough till your clinician will start to talk to you about it. I was like, I want to blow up that 17 years. So let me write the book and empower people and show them what's happening with stem cells and exosomes and all these different technologies. And so because of that, I'm able to expand so rapidly because I'm good at pulling out those patterns, then I know how to put them in a format that makes people really change and has fun doing it. Because I believe that, look, we're not in an information culture anymore. The information society died a long time ago. Is too much information. You're drowning in information and starving for wisdom. But we are entertainment culture today. So you got to capture people's attention. And most people don't have a long attention span. I got to hold them for 12 hours or 13 for four or six days when they wouldn't sit for a three hour movie someone spent $300 million on. And they're a stadium of 20,000 people. I got to get the guy at the top to be engaged. I've learned how to do that. That's a skill set to be able to do that. But it came from learning all these patterns. So I entertain them first, get them. So have the greatest experience. Laughter, joy, fun, playfulness, tears sometimes. But then that gives me right for the second A&E cubed. I educate them. I give them tools that I have modeled from the very best on earth that work, they're proven and that are cutting edge. And then they get results. And then while they're there, I empower them to practice with real human beings and see what works and doesn't so they don't just leave there uncertain. So that's why one of the reasons why so many people get such lasting results is because we have a process and we do it for everything. We're teaching finance or relationship or, you know, how to shift yourself psychologically, emotionally, or how to shift your body. We still use that kind of secret sauce to make it happen.
- [43:28]
A
I first heard your name from my speech therapist, I think 14, 15 years old. And he had done something called the Firewalk, which was invented by a woman named Molly Turkin. She had taught you it the year before.
- [43:40]
B
Before was been around for thousands. But it's all good.
- [43:44]
A
Yeah. So she, she showed it to you. I. I think and 1.5 million people have been through the firewalk. And I got. Gosh, you know, that's. That's pretty cool.
- [43:53]
B
Yeah.
- [43:54]
A
And then unlimited power came out and changed my life.
- [44:08]
B
I'm touched that dead was. How old were you when they were reading?
- [44:12]
A
I was a freshman in Michigan, University of Michigan. I thought, just thinking about my speech and just.
- [44:28]
B
Sorry. Don't be sorry. I'm really touched that it moves you so much. And I find the only place that you should never have sadness or any embarrassment of tears because water out of the eyes is one of the few places liquids can leave your body publicly and be okay.
- [44:41]
A
Yeah. I mean, well, thank you. And it was, you know, I worked so hard to learn how to feel.
- [44:46]
B
The Kleenex ram was up in here. This is. I'm Billy. Touch. I'm good. I'm with that shandy. I'll be easier.
- [44:55]
A
You know, I, you know, suffer for so long. Learn how to speech and you know, we go to McDonald's. So I learned how to say kind of a hamburger. I mean it was, it was just a lot of work every night. And I thought, you know, I worked so hard to do that. I was a good student. That was something I can control.
- [45:12]
B
Yeah.
- [45:12]
A
You know, the hardest worker. I mean, I graduated top 1% of my class at Michigan and does work my ass off.
- [45:18]
B
Yeah.
- [45:19]
A
And in that book, there were two things in that book that from the same story, which you've already told, that really made an impact on me. First of all is your, your boldness. Two years before you wrote that book, when you went and said, I can improve your shooting by 50%, you had no training and pistol shooting, you never held a gun or shot a gun before, which is Des Mountain Battle. I'm like, God, how the is that possible?
- [45:43]
B
Yes.
- [45:44]
A
And then the fact that you did it and it really said, you know, it's the power of the mind. And yes. You know, so much of my success today is really just thinking about things, I think in a different way than most people. I mean, we'll talk about preparation in a minute here. And I think, you know, there's good preparation, there's great preparation. Then if you think of the world's tallest building with the spire is very thin air, it's like a pin at the top of that.
- [46:12]
B
Yeah.
- [46:12]
A
And I really like that pin. Reminds me of the focus that you talked about. And also talk to me about how to get to that focus that anybody can do it. Yeah, it really changed my life.
- [46:21]
B
Wow, I'm really touched to hear that. That's beautiful. Well, you've had an amazing life and I'm sure you've shared on air, but I've done my homework on you too. I mean, company founded, what is it, 25% of the Internet, 30% of the Internet goes through it, you know, $19 billion company and all the other companies you built, your passion for beaches. And so I'm, I'm so touched. But you know what I really respect about you, Randy, and I find true is some of the most successful people in the world had pain initially that drove them because it wasn't easy for them, so they'd overcome it. It's like you look and say, how is it somebody, you can give them all the love, support from a family, all the education, economic well being, and they spend their life going in at a rehab and somebody else, I mean, life steps all over them and somehow they develop a hunger to do more, to be more, to give more, to share more. And you obviously have that and you lived your life that way. So when I agreed to this interview, because I saw the results that you created, because I have great respect for that, but I guessed or hallucinated, I didn't know, I guessed that you probably had a pretty rough peeing. You don't have to have a rough being to have that hunger. But like I said earlier, would I really feed a billion people. If I was well fed, maybe I fed 100,000 people. I don't know, maybe I've fed 10,000, maybe I've had two. But I think it's important for people to know what you just experienced, that the worst of times really is designed to be the best of times. But it's our job to use it, not let it use us. Most people today, our culture today reinforces people for being a victim more than being a victor. If you're a victor, you must have abused somebody. You must take an advantage if you're a victim. Well, look at all this love and attention comes your way. And it's an upside down world right now. It was generated a good portion by social media where nothing is really true, where people alter the way they look so they look better than they are and then makes people insecure all the time because they're worried about what do people find out? I'm not who I project myself to be. The easiest thing in the life is to be yourself. And your vulnerability right now I just honor and respect. I can look up into tears at the edge of the lap about something that matters. I don't think that's unmasculine. I think it's just sincere, so. And your sincerity comes from the level of intensity what you face. But look at the muscles you built.
- [48:34]
A
Yeah.
- [48:34]
B
Because of that. So you had speech difficulties. So just even say order a burger to where you are today is this incredible entrepreneur building these businesses, doing your.
- [48:42]
A
Podcast, teaching others now teaching others to get over their pain.
- [48:47]
B
That's great. Yeah, me too. That's why I'm still doing this. So, you know, I don't have this at this stage of my life. Right. I mean, I'm going to be 65 in a few weeks. In my wife's like, what the hell? You know, it's like we ever going to slow down. I said, probably not, honey. She goes, I love you so much, you crazy person. But I am. I'm crazily driven. Because now it's no longer the pain that drives me. That's how it started. Yeah. The anger at some points was driving me. But those sources of fuel don't last. What will keep you driven is not so much push as pull. Push as you're trying to make yourself doing something. Pull is that you've got an obsession for something you want to serve something more than yourself and you disappear. I mean, when we think only about ourselves, we're always messed up. Anxiety and fear and all this. You hear all these kids today talking about, you know, mental, what's the word they use for it? Not mental wellness, what do they call it? Mental challenges or whatever, you know, and wanting to soothe themselves. They know they need to become stronger and they don't know it. It's not their fault. They've grown up in an environment where you can push a button and get whatever you want in two seconds on your phone. You know, you only have to walk across the street, get the food, God forbid they'll deliver it to your house. You know, that's the world we're in. But the world goes through seasons. And the season you experience early in life of being really challenged. Every 18 to 20 years, the season changes. And so we have seasons of our life. 0 to 21 is springtime. It's easy to grow. Even if you had to work like I did to help your family, still, if it was a war, I wasn't going to war yet, right? You're being fed information, being supported. 22 to 42 is kind of like the summer where you get tested. You walk in thinking you're invincible. You're 21 years old, you're going to be President of the United States, you're going to be a multi billionaire and you're going to have 100 relationships simultaneously and everyone's going to be happy. Then you turn 32, 33, 34, 35, and you're like, shit, I can't even manage one relationship effectively and I'm not a billionaire. What the hell's going on? You get humbled, but you're the soldier of society. If during that time, 22 to 42, there's a war, you're going to war, not the people younger and older, right? And so that's the area of life that's the most challenging for most people. That's the area of life where there was the most struggle, probably for you and your youth. In those stages, you get to 43 to 63, that's fall, that's the reaping diet. If you worked hard in the spring and summer, you're going to reap. That's like when it's a fall economy, everybody makes somebody wants to give you a loan because you got a pulse. You don't even have a job, you know, they want you to buy a piece of real estate, they're willing to do it. We all know those days that happens every 20 years, like cycles, like clockwork. 18 to 20 years, 17 to 20 years. Then what happens? Then after reaping and having your most Power. We're now at this stage of your life. How old are you now? 50?
- [51:29]
A
56.
- [51:29]
B
56. So at this stage of your life, my bet is you can do more with your pinky than when you work 20 hour days. You still work 20 hour days, but now you're producing that much more. Right? Same for me. But when you get to that stage, you reap or you weep in the fall if you didn't do the work in the early seasons and you obviously worked. But I'm here to tell you, my dear friend, what's coming. Because I wouldn't believe this. You know, you go 64 to 84, 64 to 104, 64 to 120, the oldest living humans, wherever you live to, that's the winter season. But that's the season where there's the most joy in my entire life. Because one, you have relationships that are people you've loved for 30 years, 40 years. I mean, there's nothing that comes close to that. You know who you are. When you're in 20s to 40s, maybe even 50s, you're still trying to prove to yourself or maybe others who you are. You get to this point, it's like, it's not that you don't care, but you don't give a shit. You know, it's like, I know who the fuck I am and I'm not here for everybody. I'm not the right style of. I don't pretend to be, but I know my shit. And you know your stuff. I respect you. Respect me, that's cool. It's a different world. There's no, there's none of that push anymore. It's just I want to serve. Instead of like giant mission statements used to have, now my mission is really simple. How can I. Health, right? So it's like someone calls me and they're, you know, they got somebody that's suicidal. A kid is having a learning problem. A business needs to be turned around. And because I've spent a lifetime accumulating those answers, besides what I do in all my companies individually, I do that. And it makes my life feel fully alive. So as long as you keep your health, that stage is the happiest. It is the most fulfilling. And most people think it's not going to be. So that's why I want to plant a seed with everybody who's listening.
- [53:12]
A
So thinking about health, we all have had health challenges. Not everybody, but I've had big ones. I know you've had a big one. And I want to talk about two Separate events. You had a girlfriend. Why are you talking about her mom? Jenny.
- [53:24]
B
Yeah.
- [53:24]
A
And how that influenced how you thought about health in the future. I know you read a book that no longer is, kind of a book you would recommend today. And then when you're 31 years old, you're on your way to coaching Saudi Arabian sheikh who's paying you a million bucks. You're getting your helicopter's license. Yeah. You get some phone calls, and some of our best ideas come in the shower. I mean, I like to sing in the shower. I'm horrible. But you had an epiphany in the shower. So tell us about what happened and what came out of your health scare.
- [53:53]
B
Well, two things that I think you're alluding to. One is when I was just a young kid, I was very, very driven. And, you know, I achieved a good deal of success at a very young age. But then in my unconscious, my brain would say, like, how does it happen so fast? I mean, I'm working my guts out, but still, this is amazing. And my brain would go, well, you're going to die young. And then I got obsessed with cancer. Some people in our family died of it. I watched them wilt away. And so I had. It was very vivid to me. And so, like, unconsciously, it's like, I don't want to die of cancer. Maybe I'm. This is all happening now because I'm not going to be here very long. And then one day, my girlfriend's mom came home and she's diagnosed with cancer. She had it in her feminine organs and also a lump in her breast. And they told her she had nine weeks to live. And I've always been the person that's like, there's always a solution. Well, for me, I probably wouldn't have done as much. We usually do more for people we love than we do for ourselves. And so I just geared up. There was no fear in me. I was like, we're going to solve this. And so I went, grabbed all these books, and I read like seven books. And I got this one book called One Answer to Cancer, which wouldn't be the number one book I'd pick now, but it was written by a dentist who had pancreatic cancer, which is the most aggressive, and got rid of it in less than 90 days. And he thought he was going to die within six weeks. And so it was all about to detox the body and getting certain essentials into the system and so forth. And so I said to her, look, the doctor says, you're Going to die. Why don't you read this and see? Why don't you apply this? You got nothing to lose. And then they said, I want to do exploratory surgery on her. And she came to me at. I think I was 19 at the time and saying, should I do the surgery? I was like, I can't tell you. She did the surgery at armor wrong. You know, you die, but it was me. They shrunk sizably. Like, you could see it protruding for her here, and she could feel it protruding. And now she couldn't feel the protrusions. And the doctor did agree that it got smaller. And I said, it was me. I think I'd wait if it keeps getting smaller. But the doctor convinced her just to be safe. And he dug around and he literally found something the size of the top of her little baby fingernail. And the doctor said it was a miracle. And she said, it is a miracle, but let me tell you what I did. And he's like, no, it's a miracle. It was a spontaneous remission. She said, yeah, but let me tell you. And so he wouldn't listen. So she went around to churches. But what it did to me was, she's still alive today. She's in her 80s, right? What it did for me is it made me no longer have fear. It's like, okay, there's a way to handle this. And I wouldn't have probably come across it. I would have been in my own pity pot, probably because I was so afraid or I've been so fearful I wouldn't have found it. And so I became very much health oriented. And then your example was. Oh, when I. I got diagnosed at one point, I went to see this guy. I won't bore you the long story, but I went to see this doctor, and I'm a pilot. And so you have to get certified, right? I'm a helicopter pilot and a fixed wing pilot. And he decided that perhaps I had a disease without telling me. And he did these tests. So he calls me and calls me and calls me and I'm like, tell him to send the report. I'm flying to south of France and I got home one night, there's a note on my door and it says, the doctor says it's an emergency, you have to call him. So then your brain goes crazy, right? So the first time I'm like, could I have cancer? I've done all the right things, but I fly a lot. Lot of radiation. You know, your head goes crazy. It's like, stop. Because I tried to call him. There's no answer because it's, you know, one in the morning by the time I got home. So I was like, okay, I'm not going to worry. It's like a coward dies a thousand deaths. A courageous person wants, if there's a problem, I'm going to handle it. I went to sleep. I got up the next day, and the guy tells me, you have a tumor in your brain. I said, what? Because you have a tumor in your brain. You have a pituitary tumor. I said, how could you. How could you possibly know these? I did some extra blood tests because I had a hallucination. And that tumor is creating a huge amount of growth hormone in your body. I said, you know, how'd you figure that out? You know, my hands are bigger than your head. You know, my feet are size 16. He goes, no, you have gigantism. He said, there is an active tumor in there. I guarantee. I said, how do you know that? He goes, well, I did this blood test. I said, explain it to me. He goes, well, it's really complex. I said, I'm a smart person. Explain it to me. He couldn't explain to me because he didn't know how it worked. He just knew the answer. So he wanted me come in immediately. Do you know an mri? And then he wanted to go do surgery. And I'm like, I'd like to get a second opinion. And I said, will you recommend anybody? And he was not. He didn't have a good bedside manner. And I wasn't a nice person in that state. I was angry because I was shocked. And so he said, find it yourself. So long story short. And I went to Sloan Kettering and I found this doctor. And sure enough, I had a tumor in there. And it. It actually caused this massive growth spurt. 10 inches in a year. But then it infarct, which means it swallowed up a good portion of itself. I still have it to this day. But what the guy wanted to do with surgery anyway, And I said, well, side effects or what? Well, death, you know, really low energy. Well, energy's my life. So then I went to another doctor. Another doctor. Doctor's gonna send me to Switzerland for shots that they had. And you'd only have to do a shot every six months. And he said, I think that's what we can do. And I said to him, I said, doc, it was his last day of practice. He was 72. He's the best in the country. And he goes. I said, this guy wants to cut me. You Want to drug me? He goes, the baker wants to bake and the butcher wants to butcher. He said. I said, but what if I did nothing? I mean, my. My heart valves are the right size. There's nothing off except I grew fast. And he said. I said, what if it's a gift from God? Like, it makes me. He goes, well, it does make you repair quicker. You got a lot of growth hormone. And he goes, well, I just wouldn't take a chance just to be certain I do it well. The drug I didn't take, the FDA outlawed because it caused cancer. I found out a year later, so I missed a bullet. And then I finally, after, I think it was eight doctors, I got a doctor that says, you do have a huge amount of growth hormone. You get about twelve hundred dollars a month, which is what a bodybuilder would be paying at that time for this. He goes, it's going to make you restore really well. As long as you monitor it, you don't do anything. So I'm still, you know, I still monitor it, but not every three or four years. I haven't seen any change. And, you know, I'm, you know, I've got a body that I also biohack the hell out of it. But, you know, if you believe the true age measurements, I'm going to be 65 in chronological age, but I'm 52 in biochemical age, which is nice.
- [59:50]
A
At some point, people realize that they're better than different people. I remember I was playing golf. I'm a horrible golfer. Kazer, by the way, best place on earth as you.
- [60:01]
B
I love it. Yes.
- [60:03]
A
And I'm playing with this guy, and I'm a horrible golfer. And we have a fro. I have a pro golfer who came in as a friend, and we're all playing golf, and I'm just, you know, I lost 40 balls that round. And it was interesting to hear the conversation between those two guys. And the golfer said to this player who had been in eight All Star Games, ten All Star Game, he said, you know, at what point did you know you were better than everyone else? And 99% of people weren't going to make it. So when did you know that you had this incredibly special gift that you could motivate, inspire hundreds of millions of people around the world, which you have. I mean, I put up on my social media. I'm doing Tony Robbins. You know, this is. This is my dream podcast.
- [60:48]
B
And thank you.
- [60:51]
A
I got hundreds of DMs, you know, I posted to Am I Story. So Pumped. I wanted to Tony Robbins house to do a show and it just exploded.
- [61:03]
B
That's awesome.
- [61:03]
A
I mean, you've influenced so many people. When did you know you had this gift?
- [61:08]
B
Well, first of all, I'm complimented. Thank you. I think, I think my gift is different than people think it is. I think my gift is the depth of my caring. I know that might sound corny to some people, but when people ask my wife, what's something about Tony that nobody knows? And she says how much he prepares. Because I could get up and do a four day seminar for 12 hours a day without thinking at this stage. But every audience I organize, I do interviews for people in advance. I find out what they're after, what they're doing. When I do my date with Destiny, I got 5,000 people and they do a 10 to 20 page document. I read them all, the ones they turn in. Of course, some people turn them in the night before and I'm in the middle of doing it. But I'm obsessed with giving my all every time I can serve. And when I'm up there, I think that's my secret. I remember a friend of mine, good buddy, now came to a seminar years and years ago, and he was like, you know, what is this, you know, positive thing crap? This guy up there. In those days, it was the 80s, you know, you wear a suit and tie while you're in a seminar. And it's, you know, I'm, I'm by The fire, it's 110 degrees, you know, sweating. And I was on stage and I was, you know, I, I get people to change their bodies because that's how you change your mind. Just try to change your mind. It doesn't do. You got to change the physiology first. So I changed their bodies. And part of what we do is we have people extend up and rise up and jump and all these different things. And I remember he's like, you know, you know, he was with a guy that was an NFL pro bowler, and the other guy he came with was a billionaire. I was like, I'm a billion. I'm gonna do this jumping. And the guy's, I'm a. And he goes, 15 minutes later, we're all jumping because he said, we watched you. We watched the sweat go from here all the way down to the end of your tie. And it was obvious like you were giving every ounce of your soul. So if you could do that crap, I could jump, right? And so I think people, I'm able to reach people because you can't fake that for four days, 12, 13 hours a day. And they know don't have to do it. They can feel it. So people open when you're there to truly serve them, not serve yourself. And I think that's my biggest one. The second thing is I'm obsessed with strategies about how to get results faster. And they work because they're the best. They're not the best because I created them. I modeled the best combination. So when did I know that, you know, I don't know. Probably. Probably shortly after I was working with the president, and I'm 31 years old, 32, and I'm sitting with the president, United States. We were in Camp David, and as Bill Clinton at that time, and he's wanting my advice, and I'm listening to him, and I got like, this guy's the President, United States, and, man, he is really messed up, and he's the most powerful man on earth. So you begin to realize we're all just people and. And that. But my skill set kept growing, and when I started being able to do anything from turn around the army to, you know, speak in any country and take people 12, 13 hours a day and have the impact, obviously, I couldn't miss that I had that skill or the interventions that I'd done. And then, you know, you know, we all have some sense of inner pride. And, you know, it's funny for me today because I'll have young bucks come up to me and say, hey, you know, remember my name. It goes, you know, someday, you know, I'm going to. I'm going to be where you are. And I always tease them, go, gosh, that's fantastic. Because when you get where I am, you'll be where I was, because I'm not going to stop growing. So let's do it, you know, So I love that sense of growth and competition as well. So. But I don't look at it as, like, I have this great gift. I look at it like, people have gifts. My job is to help them uncover them, not I have a great gift. The gift is just loving on them and having a skill to figure out how to get there.
- [64:37]
A
I came from the California fires.
- [64:40]
B
I was there on Tuesday and Wednesday. I was there for business. And some friends and two friends lost their homes. One of them hurt on Pacific. It's terrible.
- [64:48]
A
It's just like, again, talk about getting emotional. Just, most of our friends lost their home. I got a call from Crisp School. You know, she calls all the time, right? And so I see the school pop up And I never answer the phone. It's a recording. And I only have my phone on. I'm writing a book on preparation, extreme preparation. So I don't answer my phone in the morning. And my son was in town. I tried to coordinate. You know, he's home from college. So I have my phone on there. I see it, didn't answer calls again, and said, oh, we're evacuating, meeting at school. There's a fire. Come look out. And I look out my window. I live in Brentwood, my office in Brentwood. I look in the palace, I'm like, holy. Most fires, you just see the smoke, right? This fire, it was black. Yeah, A black tornado that was just. Didn't stop.
- [65:34]
B
I was there. I saw it.
- [65:35]
A
I. I was like, oh, my God. So I rushed down to my car, got in a parking garage, and then we're about three miles away from school, and so I, you know, Sunset. I'm driving down Sunset. That maniac. So is everyone. I was a double Hong, crossing the double yellow lines, Parked, I don't know, five block away, sprinted into the school. Right. I mean, just look at the fire. You can see it expanding and. And it's just sheer pandemonium, right? You got the kids crying, you know, you got the parents, all your kids, and, you know, you run out of there and then.
- [66:04]
B
How long is your ones.
- [66:06]
A
She is eight. I have five kids, so she's in second grade. Appalli. And then we have a four and a half year old in preschool. Preschools in Santa Monica. So, you know, they close the school later, but we had to get to Pali. And six hours later, the school burned down. And two hours later, our first friend, their school, their. Their home burned out. So, so many, so many people are suffering so bad. All of our friends, 90% of our friends, lost everything. Their home, their belongings. Thank God they're all safe. Which is most important. You said that crisis is a gift. What would you tell all of those families today who are in that situation who are suffering immensely? What should they be telling their mind to help them feel better?
- [66:47]
B
Well, I know a lot of them are very angry, as they have every right to be, because the government has not done its part. And without playing politics one side or the other, you know, to empty the rose. World was empty in pacific bio states. They lied and said they just ran out of.
- [67:01]
A
Right.
- [67:01]
B
The governor was saying they ran out because of the youth. It's not true. They emptied it in the summer. Right. So there's just some stupid things that brought that about. So I understand the anger, but in the end, you still got to take care of you. You can vote differently in the future, but right now, what do you do? Well, I, I had a home in California that also burned down years ago. It was my dream home. I built it and everything I wanted had. All the memorabilia of my life, it had. You know, I grew up in an age where there weren't digital pictures. So all the pictures are gone. All my favorite, you know, rare books, all the inscription, everything that had sentimental value was gone. But in the midst of me feeling this grief and frustration, I realized this is not going to serve to stay in this place. I need to be a role model for my kids. I five kids, and I was four at the time. And I, I need to be, I need to show people how to deal with this because this is something that's unfortunately common. We're all going to experience extreme stress. I don't care how rich you are or how good a person you are, how religious you are, everyone in their lifetime is going to experience extreme stress. As you have and as I have and probably more than once. Aren't you guys glad you came to this positive conversation? But it's true.
- [68:08]
A
I mean, hearing.
- [68:09]
B
Yeah, but we're all going to have a house burned down or we're going to lose a job, or a Covid type thing is going to show, shut our business down unfairly, or you're going to have somebody, your family, who gets a terminal disease, or you're going to get a terminal disease. I mean, every one of us is going to experience extreme stress. The question is, what do you do when you have extreme stress? And the stupid answer, but it's an accurate answer, is when you're going through hell, you got to keep going. And the better answer is when you push yourself through it and you go to the other side, you get three amazing benefits that will affect your life forever. In a good way. One, you discover how strong you really are. Because if it's extreme stress and you don't give up and you don't succumb and you keep moving forward, you go on what's called the hero's journey. We've all heard about it. All the stories of mankind can be put into one fundamental story. What is the hero's journey? You're living your life, all these people living life, their ordinary, normal, day to day life. And boom. Something comes and smashes it. The smash is a call to adventure, a call to a different world than you would have entered into if it hadn't happened. You don't know what it is. You don't even know why it is. It looks like it's for terrible reasons. But as I said earlier, what if everything's happening for you, not to you? Doesn't look like it. I'm not saying it's fair. Who said life was fair? But it's going to lead to something new. It'll lead to an expansion. And so when that happens, Dorothy and the wizard of Oz, Luke Skywalker in Star wars, you can take anyone, they're living a normal life. And then something happens. A tornado, there's a landing, or his parents get killed. Something disruptive. And then usually most of us don't want to go on the journey because it's uncertain. We just stay upset with where things are. But eventually, you're usually pushed into going on that journey. And when you do, what will happen is you will meet. When our home burned down, my first thing was, okay, we lost things. I valued a lot of those things. But things are not the same as my family. Losing things is not losing family. This is a gift. And so I had to turn it into gratitude. Because when you're angry and fearful, you can't change squat. But gratefulness, you can't be angry when you're grateful, and you can't be fearful when you're grateful. So then what did that lead to? It led to us building a new home in a different place. It led to meeting new friends and made new mentors and led to new decisions to now here I am in my favorite home here in Florida. I never would have left the Del Mar castle. It was a castle built out of pieces of castles in Europe. On top of the hill was my ultimate place, my family. It's not even close to what I had the privilege and blessing of having in my life today. I love where I am and what I'm doing, but I would have never known that because I would have stayed there bar having to change. And I think that happens to a lot of us. So, by the way, when you go on that journey and meet these new mentors and meet new friends, you'll develop new skills and then you'll have new battles. It's not like it's all just easy. The battles with the external, the battles with what's going on inside of you. And when you conquer and slay your dragons, you come home the hero and you're able to give to other people. Not on book knowledge, because you've lived it, and everyone can feel when you've lived it versus you're just talking bullshit or talking something you thought of, right, or read about. And by the way, when you're done with that and you've helped those people, it'll happen again. That is life. So what I tell people is right now, you've got to cultivate gratitude. It's not positive thinking, bullshit. It's because to live in pain will not make it better in any way. You have to make that shift of gratefulness that you didn't lose it. I mean, it is a miracle that there are, what, 13 people that died out of that. When there's 10,000 homes that are gone and all the schools and all the shopping centers and all those things that are out there. That's an incredible gift. It looks like a war zone. I mean, I was there. I know what you're talking about. So that's number one. But here's what happens. You find out how strong you are. Here's the second thing you learn when you go through hell. You discover who your real friends are versus your Facebook friends, because there's the ones that show up and are there for you. And thirdly, you develop an immunity to future challenges because you develop muscle in dealing with this issue that you wouldn't have. It's like, how do you build a muscle? You don't pick a light weight and do 100 reps. That will do nothing. You get a way you can barely lift and you could push through and you're trying to do eight reps and you can't do one more, and the trainer says four more and you do three more and you get more growth there than any of the time. This is building us emotionally and spiritually. It is not fair. It is not just it shouldn't have happened and it has to. You better use it so it doesn't use you. And then the second thing I do is give them tools and so we can announce it here. I haven't made a public announcement yet. There is a tool called NuCalm that I've used for multiple years. And a lot of people, PTSD use it, but also just average achievers or average people, either one will use it so they can calm their nervous system because most of us have a lot of stress. And it also is what has great sleep mode and a great wake up mode. I've used it for years. It's one of the best tools available. I know what it is. I think it's 100 bucks a year. I'm buying a year's worth of it. And my six months I'M getting them to donate six months. And we're going to give a year to anyone in Southern California that wants it for a year, no strings attached. Then there's a skill you may have heard of called tapping. It's based on understanding meridians in the body. When things happen down, for example, in Sandy Hook. It's brutal situation. We went down there and turned families around using this 3000 scientific studies. It's a very simple tool. So we built an app so millions of people can do this. I'm doing that for people for a year and then I'm already doing something I do once a year, which is when Covid happened. Another huge unbelievable event that affected the whole world. And people are locked in their homes. I was just doing all these stadiums, right? You know, 15, 20,000 people. And they shut down every stadium around the world. London, Australia, everywhere in the U.S. so it's like I built a studio and I said, okay. People are stuck at home, they're depressed, depressants going through the roof. People are suicidal. It's like, I got to help people where they live. So even though I wouldn't have done it ever, I never said I'm going to do this in people's homes. When I'm used to a rock and roll concert of a building. To give you an idea what it's like in those seminars, like, Pat Riley, who owns the Miami Heat, was one of the greatest coaches in history. I remember the first time he came on these seminars with me. He's like, this is like the seventh game at the NBA championship. Only instead of two hours, it's 12 hours for four days. It's like the energy is unbelievable. So that's what I'm used to. I'm going to do that in somebody home in their bedroom or their living room or their garage watching me on a little screen, right? But because there was no other choice, I came up the way I did. I built this studio. 55 high ceilings, 20 foot size LED screens all around me, 50ft, 0.67 resolution. So I can see more than I can see in you right now. This car far apart from me. This is magnified. I went for the guys that who run Zoom and I said, I can't have a thousand people. I need 25,000 people. And then I said, I got to be able to bring them up to see them. I built software. So instead of clapping your hands in a seminar, you might clap here. You shake your phone. It sends an electrical signal. When one person does it, you don't hear it, but when 25,000 people do it, it's like thunder. So it produces the same experience. So then I said, okay, people are stuck at home, they're fearful. Let me eliminate every obstacle to them getting goodness in their life. Let's eliminate no travel. They can't. So we're going to do it in their home or their office, wherever they are. Let's eliminate money. I'm not going to charge anything for it. Let's make an immersion, because that's what works. Learning a language a little bit at a time. You don't speak it. Drop you in Rome for 90 days, you're going to be speaking the language. So I use immersion. But let's do immersion. That doesn't freak them out, like three hours a day for three days. And let's really give them the skills to change their energy, their body, their emotion, their business, instead of a bunch of New Year's resolutions that don't get followed through on. And so we announced it, we put it out to people, and I developed these tools to keep people engaged. And we have people from 193 countries that attend. The last one, I did a 1.2 million million people in it from every country in the world. And we're doing it again this year. And I only do it once a year. And so whether you're in Southern California having challenges, you can join that also. But people from everywhere in the world go. And again, it's not partially free. It's totally free. It's called the Time to Rise Summit. So if you go to timetoriseummit.com, timetoriseummit.com you can sign up. There's no fee for it, and you can do it at home or at the office. You do it with your family or your friends. But the kinds of results that people get are unbelievable. And I don't charge for it. But I say if the one value I want back from you for you is if you're going to do this and we're going to give it to you, I want you to do an assignment tonight. Give an assignment each day. And the transformations, and they posted on Facebook, the transformations are unbelievable. And then you have a community of a million people who are all hungry and driven to make their life better and helping each other. So it becomes. That's how I start every year now. So anyone can do that. If you're watching, I hope you'll do. That's why I'm doing a bunch of podcasts right now. I want people to know about it that's coming up January 30th, 31st and February 1st. January 30th through February 1st, content from anywhere in the world. Again, no charge. So go to that experience. But the people in Southern California, even more so I'm going to give them those tools for them, that bus for everybody else. I can't do it for everybody. And they could also go to that event. And I can promise you they'll be turned around. It doesn't mean it'll all be easy. It just means they'll be on the path to having what they really want.
- [77:14]
A
Let's talk about a couple of things that make people successful. We've talked about preparation. I'm writing a book called Extreme Preparation. It's been one of the hallmarks of my career. You do a ton of preparation as well. Talk to us about Ray Dalio and. And you said something in the book. I've been teaching this and coaching this for a long time. It really helps. Takes the impossible and makes it possible. It helps improve your win rate dramatically.
- [77:38]
B
Yes.
- [77:38]
A
And you can do if. If you're so many things. I, I've heard, oh, I can't get that job. Even if someone's firing 40, 000 people, there's a job for the person who does the preparation.
- [77:49]
B
Yeah.
- [77:49]
A
You talk about a concept called pitch and catch. I've never thought about it that way. But tell us what you did for Ray Dalio.
- [77:55]
B
Well, you don't just do Ray Dalio do for everybody, but you do it for.
- [77:57]
A
Yeah. And by your. By the way, I've done a lot of podcasts. I think around 150 podcasts. Your team was the most thorough in terms of questions, scheduling, minutes. It was, it was great. I'm like, hey, your team speaks my language. I love this.
- [78:12]
B
That's good. Well, no, I wrote this book Money Master the game and I wrote it because. And 2008, as you remember, the world melting down. But I was coaching Paul Tudor Jones at the time, one of the top 10 traders in the history of the world. You know, this is a guy who in 1987 stock market dropped 20% in one day. The largest still percentage drop in a day. You made 100% for his clients. Genius. So when this was all happening, I couldn't believe it and I couldn't believe afterwards nothing was done and that the punishment for the people that almost destroyed the financial system was give them more money. So I said, I don't have a lot of skills, but one skill I have is the ability to get to the best people. And I'm good at modeling, so let me interview the very best. So in preparation for those like Ray Dalio is one of the greatest, you know, hedge fund traders in the history of the world. There's nobody in this class. And so I prepared for him, I think three and a half, four hours the night before. I prepared weeks before, but I went even deeper. I knew every part of what was going in. So I went in as typical. I'm supposed to have a 45 minute interview and it went three hours. And same thing happened with Jack Bogle. Jack Bogle actually wrote a quote that says, Tony Robbins came by for a 20 minute interview and three and a half hours later, it was the most piercing interview of my entire career. Right.
- [79:21]
A
I get three hours today. I'll come drive with you in the car. We'll take the equipment wherever you're going here.
- [79:28]
B
Anyway, what it allowed me to do when I sat down with them is what I call pitch and catch, which means he'd say something. I knew what it was like it add some value back and forth. It built a great rapport and we're good friends today because of it. But one of the questions I asked him at the time was, what is the single most important investment principle? All the things you've learned that people should know. And he said, tony, that's a great question. I struggled with this for years and I finally came up with what I call the Holy Grail of investing, which is the title of the book that I just came out with. And it was based on what he taught me. And he said, Tony, if you can find 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments, you reduce your risk by 80% and you increase your upside. That's wild. Now that sounds wonderful on paper, but when you go to do it, it's something else. And then I was at the JP Morgan conference, they have a alternative investment conference where you got to be a billionaire to go. And I'm one of the speakers and Ray's right before me and somebody asked him some questions and kind of led to a similar question like what's the most important member? And he said, the Holy Grail. Same thing. And every head in the world, which had not written a single note the entire day, dropped down and wrote it down. So it's like, I need to realize even sophisticated people miss this one. They may know it intellectually, but they got it. So then how do you do that? It's hard because you say, okay, stocks and bonds aren't correlated. Usually stocks are Going up. Bonds are a different price point. That's usually the balance. But during tough times, they get in line. And so you have to have sophisticated tools to do it. And then I started studying history and saying, okay, your asset allocation, where you put your money at risk, small risk, larger risk, upsides, et cetera. Your philosophy. Investing is the single most important thing. Every one of the people I interviewed agreed on that. So I said, well, what is the asset allocation for the most successful people in the world? Well, ultra wealthy people have 46% of their assets in private equity and private credit. I'm like, yeah, but that's hard to get into. And then I started doing the homework and I found in the last 37 years, there isn't a single stock market in the world that has built be average private equity. Now, I wrote this book and I interviewed 12 of the Masters of the Universe people that then 20% plus compounded for more than a decade or two decades, unheard of in the normal market. Because when things go down, they don't have to sell, so they're not stuck. And when things go down, they can buy. When things go up, they can sell. They have more flexibility. The only the timeline challenge that somebody owns a stock may feel like they have. And so I started studying them and I was like, here's the real numbers. The s and P500 most people would invest in at the index has gone up 10.7 over the last 37 years. It's pretty amazing. Compounding, the average private equity of these guys has been 15.7. So if you could compound 50% faster, people don't understand what that means. If you put a million dollars in the s and P 37 years ago and you never touched it, it's worth $42 million today. If you put a million dollars on the same day, same amount of money in private equity, average private Equity, it's worth $223 million to bet. So now here's the next problem. How does the average person get that? Well, I know you're familiar there are things like a credit investor. The government doesn't give you access to all these investments. The best investments are reserved for people that already have money. It seems so unjust and unfair. I was squawking about it, I didn't do it. But somebody woke up in Congress and last year, that's why I wrote the book. Last year they came out with a new rule, said it's got to confirm it this year. But the new rule is, look, you could get a lot of Money by inheriting it doesn't mean you're a sophisticated investor. You could be a good businessman, but not a great investor. So why would we penalize people? Say, if they have a certain amount of money, let's give them a test to take. They can study for it. They understand it that anyone can have access to this. So imagine the compounding value to get your financial future when you can do this. And then there's one more thing I'll say, just because I know we're out of time. So I'm talking to this guy who was one of Paul Tudor Jones's associate partners before, and he broke off and started his own company. I'd helped him really grow his business quite a bit. And I was saying to him, you know, private equity is great, and because of, you know, guys like you and I, we have certain relationships and brand, and so we get access to some of the best. But the amount you get, they're all sold out right away. It's so small that it wasn't going to alter my life in any way. So I was. I was, you know, saying, man, it's like, how did he get in there? It's just the very best is already sold out. And he goes, tony, you've helped me so much. I gotta tell you where I put most of my money. I said, most of your money is a very sophisticated financial guy. I said, yeah. I said, where? He goes, there's this company in Houston, Texas. And I went, houston, Not Singapore, you know, London, New York, Connecticut. Same Houston. He goes, yeah. He said, they're off the beaten path, but they are brilliant. And here's what they've done. When you try to invest in private equity, you've become what's called a limited partner. And as you know, you give them your money and then they charge you 2% of your money, whether they make your money or not. And then they get 20% of the upside. And people are willing to do it because they're so successful, but it makes them very wealthy. If you look at the Forbes 400, you'll see which industry has the most billionaires. People think it's tech. It's not. They think it's real estate. It's not entertainment. It's not. It's financial services. And it's specifically not hedge funds that go up and down. It's private equity. So I look at this and I'm like, okay, these guys are the masters of universe, and they're getting 2 and 20. He goes, Tony, they have a way for you not to try to get into a fund, but to own the fur. So think about instead of embedding on a horse, owning the racetrack. I'm like, you can do that? He goes, yes. And we've done it. They've done it with some of the, like Vista, if you're familiar with some of the best companies in the world, $100 billion funds like that are producing results that are incredible. So I went and I became a client. And then it turned out the founder of that company, 20 years before it was a student of mine, like you changed his whole life. And he's like, tony, how do I get you involved? I want to get involved. So I invested in the company and then I wrote the book to let people know all these opportunities are available. Like sports teams. If you want an asset that's not correlated. Sports teams have done well in every market and every environment we've ever done. And they do better than the S and P, Right? So I work for a lifetime. I have those five rings back there. It was all championship rings from different sports where I worked with a team. And some of them now I own. So I'm a piece of the Dodgers on a piece of the Golden State Warriors. But I coach the warriors well. It's the most fun experience you can imagine. It's something you really enjoy. But also the returns on average across all those sports are 14% compounded, not 10.7. And you own a monopoly. You own a business that's a legal monopoly. And who are your customers? Fans. That comes from fanatics. And they're multi generational. And now they're not just sports teams. The entertainment value, I'll just give you one example. The Dodgers. My friend Peter Gerber bought the Dodgers. I get a chance to later on invested them. He paid $2 billion for the Dodgers. 2.1, I think it was. And everybody in the news is saying, no one's paid over a billion dollars. This is insane.
- [86:25]
A
They'll Never make money $800 million more than the second bidder in that deal.
- [86:30]
B
That's crap. And everybody's like, this is crazy. So I said, peter, I know everything. You're nuts. I know you're not natural. Slide, biscuit. Guys, I know. What do you know? What are you going to do here? And he leans forward and he goes, I love a cliffhanger. He's a movie maker, right? He goes, wait three days. I want to make the announcement. Then you call me, we'll come over and celebrate. He announces three days later. If you own a sports team, NBA like there's two 32 teams. Remember correctly, you get one 32nd of all the media coverage that's done nationally, internationally. It's huge. And the NFL, which is the first team to just, they were holding out. We just made a deal with them without doing with the NFL. They get a check for $450 million the end of every year just for their percentage of the league. Just that. But you get to keep your local rights. Peter sold the local rights for $7 billion and made 5 billion and profited in a day doing this. So you can get a small piece of a sports team, have the joy of that, have the benefit of that, and have something else that's not correlated to the stock market. So I'm passionate about giving people choices and I'm so grateful that the government is finally waking up to not limit people who can participate.
- [87:38]
A
Unfortunately, we're out of time. Okay, I have two hours more of questions and I believe in life you don't ask if you don't get. So I'm hoping to have the opportunity to come back and finish what we started. There's so much about there, there's so much about money that I want to talk to and advice. I'm going to ask you one more question before we hang up. Before we hang up, before we end the podcast.
- [88:01]
B
Sure.
- [88:01]
A
If you could give yourself one piece of advice to your 21 year old self.
- [88:06]
B
Yes.
- [88:06]
A
What would it be?
- [88:07]
B
Yeah, that's a very common question today. So it's so interesting. People ask that all the time and I've thought about it multiple ways. I think Jim Rome gave me a piece of advice when I was very young. One of those was me trying to understand why my fathers, like I said, were struggling so much, even though they're the good men. And he was the one who taught me that we're equal as souls, but we're not equal in the marketplace. You've got to add more value. But he also taught me something else when I was really frustrated. He said, tony, if you keep giving your all, your gifts will make room for you. And I think the same piece of advice. I mean, I know more today than anything else, but I think if you just keep moving forward, if you will not let anything stop you and you really focus on serving. Because I really believe the only solution to long term happiness is to get outside yourself. The human mind will always find something to be concerned about, pissed off about, worried about, but when you're serving, you're not there. There's something magical about finding something you care about more than yourself, then you get that pull motivation we talked about instead of push. You know, push doesn't last, pull does. And if you've got that kind of drive, you're going to keep growing. And if you keep growing, you have plenty to give. And if you keep giving, you're going to have a meaningful life. In the end, that's what we all really want, is a life that's really full of meaning. And so mine is full of meaning because of my family, because of my kids and grandkids. But it's also for all my chosen family and friends and all the people I have the privilege to serve all over the earth. And I've been able to do it for multi generations. I got friends that I Knew when they're 40, they're now 82 and 83, and they're still crushing it. And so that generation, I have, my generation that grew up with me, I'm 60. I have a generation of people that are, you know, 45 or 50 or 55, like you, that start listening to me when they're 20, you know, and then I've got 17 year olds that are joining it. So the privilege and the blessing to be able to serve all these different people in different stages of life. And I have more to give now because I've lived so much life. It's certain things you don't know without living them, no matter what you try and how to learn from other people. And so I'm excited about what the next 30 plus years, hopefully, if I live that long, will provide in terms of my ability to serve even more people. And I think that's what you got to do. If I were to finish, I'd say find something you care about more than yourself because that's what's going to be the secret to your growth and your aliveness. Whether it's your family, it's your friends, it's your company, It's a nonprofit thing to do. It's a mission for you. If you can find that and find something that gives you that pull, your life is going to be one hell of an adventure.
- [90:32]
A
When I started my show three and a half years ago, I made a list of my top guests. You were number one.
- [90:38]
B
I'm touched by that. Thank you.
- [90:42]
A
So I'm grateful we're here. Grateful to you for making an influence in my life and, and so many more. And I want to shout out to Doug Evans for making this happen. It never would happen without Doug.
- [90:52]
B
That's right.
- [90:52]
A
It's important. It's important to give credit to where credit is due. It's been a true joy.
- [90:56]
B
Yes.
- [90:57]
A
I'm grateful to you. Thank you very much. And I hope we do have a chance to get to know each other and sit down again.
- [91:03]
B
You should come to it. Have you ever been to an event?
- [91:05]
A
No, I haven't been to. Well, I'll tell you a quick story. And I always have to go. When I was an unhappy lawyer, I met a guy named Brian. Madam Boy.
- [91:14]
B
Yes, of course.
- [91:15]
A
And Brian. And so at some point our company is going to go public and Brian had heard about. So he invites me to sing at Peter Gruber's house.
- [91:24]
B
Yes.
- [91:24]
A
I get there and I'm the only one. They're not in the business, the entertainment business. And everyone ages. That was a movie mobile meeting for Armani suits. These young agents. I'm a tech guy, so I got. I don't know if I had jeans on and a shirt like this. I'm looking around. You got people doing jumping jacks.
- [91:41]
B
Well, it wasn't jumping jacks.
- [91:43]
A
Sort of you. They were doing jumping jacks in their suit. I was worried they were going to rip their shirts. And I remember walking out of Peter's house again, like, I read your books. I have a book, Awaken the Giant from within, first edition that I brought brought with me. It's a paperback. You can see it's got yellow pages that I've read a few times. And I honestly walked out again like you had motivated me already. I'd read your first book and here it was. And so that was the only one I had been to. But I remember walking out of Peter's mansion, you know, and I remember thinking, God, this House Up Office Foundation 29 on my pinky finger. When I got out of the car, I was so pumped.
- [92:24]
B
So imagine doing that. We did that for like two hours at his house. That was years ago. But imagine being with 10, 15, 20,000 people and doing four days a night. So you get rewired. I want people to know that, that what we do here is not about thinking. Stanford did a study. We don't have time to talk about it, but you know, people go through and they get treated for depression. That's what they were interested in. And 60% of people make no improvement. 40% of those people improve. 50% on average. Some people get well, most people on drugs the rest of their life. And when they did the study with my group, over six days with no drugs, no anything, 93% were no longer had depressive symptoms. 7% improved. 17% had suicidal ideation, meaning considering suicide going in, none of them afterwards. A year later, 71% reduction in negative emotions. 52% increase in positive emotions. So this is a conditioning process. We're discussing something which is, can be stimulating. But to get your results you got to get in your body. And that's why I still do events. So you've got to come to event as my guest and everyone please join me for, you know, go to timetoriseummit.com and you could do one from your home for a few hours a day. But if you get a chance, come to unleash the power within. You'll be my guest. So we'll blow you away. You'll have the time of your life, right?
- [93:38]
A
I promise to come. Thank you so much.
- [93:39]
B
Thanks for your time, Randy. I wish you would have prepared. Damn it. Now, Randy, I really am impressed and you've done your homework. Part about this theme along is you have so many details to talk about. But I really appreciate that because I, I'm an extreme preparation person as well. My wife will tell you I'm not and then I don't use all of it, but your brain is awakened by all of it. And you, you know, as you have more choices to be able to serve somebody when you're there, it's like think of it this way. It's like if you may have grown up with two different beliefs. You were taught so which one are you going to live by? You were taught look before you leap. You're taught who. He who hesitates is lost. Which one is going to guide you? Whichever one is more recently awakened in you. So when you prep, even if it's something you know, it's bringing it into the forefront of your nervous system so that you're more likely to be able to make that difference. So I really honor you for doing that.