Ep 37: Tony Robbins on Morning Routines, Peak Performance, and Mastering Money

Hey folks, Tim here. My bestselling card game, Coyote, which I made with the amazing team at Exploding Kittens, just won the Pop Insider Best geeky game of 2025 and also best stocking filler in the Made for Moms Toy Awards 2025. It is on sale everywhere. It's cheap, it's fast to learn, has 4.8 stars out of five. People are loving it. CoyoteGame.com will take you to all the retailers, but you can find it everywhere. It is a game of thinking fast and laughing faster. Think char meets hot potato meets a bunch of brain fun. It's good for your head. It's perfect for families with kids age 10 plus or adults who are kids at heart or don't take themselves too seriously. A lot of adults love this game and as I said, it's available everywhere. Amazon, Walmart, Target 8,000 plus retail locations, you name it. So please check it out. I loved making it. People are really enjoying it. It has 300 or 400 million plus social views of gameplay online and try it. Enjoy it this holiday season. Check it out. CoyoteGame.com one more time. That's Coyote Game.com or anywhere you buy your games. Now back to the episode. Optimal Minimal at this altitude, I can.

Run flat out for a half mile.

Before my hands start shaking.

Can I answer your personal question now? It is inappropriate time.

What if I did the opposite?

I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over metal endoskeleton. Ferris show.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. This is a very exhausted Tim Ferriss. And welcome to the Tim Ferriss Show. So glad to have you. You know, I am one tired son of a bitch right now and I couldn't be happier about it because I've been flying around the country doing various experiments and I had the opportunity to go to Palm Beach, Florida to to sit at the home of Tony Robbins and ask him just about everything I've ever wanted to ask him. And this is a very special interview for me. This is the interview, the conversation I've wanted to have for 15 years. And now that I'm back in SF, gathering myself, drinking some what appears to be Laughing Coyote tea, I have no idea what's in it. Could be all sorts of drugs. Psilocybin. And I'm thrilled to be putting this out there for you because Tony is a fascinating character. For those of you who don't know him, he has consulted or advised leaders including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and Mother Teresa. He's consulted members of two royal families, the U.S. congress, U.S. army, U.S. marines, three U.S. presidents, including Clinton. And other celebrity clients would include names, you know, like Serena Williams, Andre Agnes, Greg Norman, of course the golf legend Leonardo DiCaprio and Oprah Winfrey, who calls him superhuman. The stat that always just sends my head spinning is that Tony has developed and produced five award winning infomercials. That's of course how a lot of people came to know of him. And these infomercials have continuously aired on average every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day somewhere in North America since check it out, April 1989. It's just Tony TV out there 24. 7 insanity. This particular conversation is broken into basically three parts. The first third of our very long conversation involves me asking him the questions I've always been dying to ask him ever since I first was exposed to his material. And I explain a lot of the background, which is kind of hilarious when we get started. The second third and the third third would. And of course along the way we talk about his daily routines, the types of questions that he asks, world class performers and so on. The latter portions of this focus on what Tony has been researching and really teasing apart and analyzing for the last, well, several decades, but especially the last four years. And that is, how do you master the game of money? Why is there so much financial illiteracy? And how do you stack the deck so that you can win? Because there's a lot of hijinks and there's a lot of nonsense out there. How do you actually invest? What do you do with your money? And it's a huge topic. But he has interviewed and in fact coached some of the most unbelievable minds in the world of finance and investing. I couldn't believe the list, including people like Paul Tudor Jones, Ray Dalio, who is of course a whiz in the world of hedge funds. The list is unbelievable. Carl Icahn, David Swensen, who turned $1 billion into I think $23 billion for Yale. Some curious characters like Mark, Dr. Doom Faber, sir John Templeton, Kyle Bass, who became very, very, in effect predicting and shorting the subprime crisis. Or at least he made his fortune, one of his fortunes in seeing that through the looking glass. These are the Navy seals, the top of the top. And he has been able to ask them just about everything that you would want to ask them. And a lot of what Tony's going to say is controversial or counterintuitive. No doubt you'll disagree with some of what he says, but I guarantee you, even if you don't care about investing or you think you don't care about investing. And by the way, if you've decided not to think about investing, that is a decision in investing. I guarantee that if you listen to this entire conversation, which I plan to listen to over and over again, it has a lot of information that you will take away at least one or two things from Tony that lead you to say, holy shit, I've never looked at that aspect of my life that way. And it'll turn things upside down and you will walk away with a completely different lens through which you can look at how you're living, how you're handling your business. And I think you will find tremendous value from this single interview. So I will leave it at that. You know, I don't want to oversell it. I will say that for me, Tony can be an intimidating guy just in sheer size. He's a big dude and he can actually palm my entire face. And we have a photograph of that that I'll share. But I get into that in the interview. He's also a very seasoned pro and I have a lot of respect for him. So it takes me five or 10 minutes. I'd say, yeah, let's just say 10 minutes to find my feet in this interview. When we hit our stride, then all sorts gems come out and there's a lot of good material in the beginning, but give it some time, be patient, listen to this whole thing. It is worth your time. So without further ado, I think I've had too much laughing Coyote tea. Here's Tony Robbins. All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. I have a very exciting episode for you and a very exciting guest, Mr. Tony Robbins. Tony, thank you for having me in your home of all places.

I'm glad to be home. That's a rare thing. Much less to have you here. Grateful to have you here as well.

And we have many different topics. I have many different questions I'd love to delve into. Of course I, perhaps unbeknownst to a lot of my fans, have a long history with Tony Robbins, but not in person. This is the first and for those of you who don't know some of the background. When I first graduated from school and moved to Silicon Valley to chase the billions that seemed just that were being handed out in 99, they were in 1999. In 1999 they were, in a way. And I was driving a hand me down beat up green minivan from my mom, the Seats got stolen from inside or at least the back. So all my co workers started harassing me and calling it the molester mobile. And the job, the company didn't seem to be a long term fit for me. And when I was on a road trip at one point I bought personal power, may have been personal power too. And I started listening to it to and from work on my commute, which is terrible for those who don't know the Bay Area. If you're on 101 between San Jose and SF, it's horrible. And ultimately that was one of the catalysts for me starting my first company.

Wow, I'm really touched knowing all that you've done that really touches me completely because you've been an inspiring character to me. Not the four hour work week because I'm looking for the four hour sleep week at this stage I'd like to be able to pull that one off. But really I think the way you attack subjects and that's what you do, you don't look at them, you go after mastery of them. And the way you experiment and the way you constantly dig underneath to find the organizing principles. I feel a kinship with you. We're in different stages of life and things like that. But I have enormous respect for you and I don't feel that way about everybody. I like everybody, but I don't respect everybody. You deserve the respect because you go deep. Most people are really their surface level in what they do. So excited to chat with you and see what can come out of this conversation.

Thank you. For sure. And I have of course a bunch of self interested questions that I think will also be interesting to other folks, hopefully. But what's always impressed me about your entire career and the results that you've achieved is how far you've been able to take it in terms of working with say the top 1% of performers in the world. And I read in your new book, which everyone should take a look at. We'll be delving into it a lot more as we progress in the interview. But there was A quote from Mr. Benioff, Salesforce, who credits you with effectively, if there were no Tony Robbins, there would be no salesforce.com.

That'S a pretty big point in the make. I don't think he might have told me exaggerated, but he kind of walked me through because it started very much like you hit him on the freeway in Silicon Valley.

Every day listening and you get these. You're able to reach such a high caliber of individual when you meet with such people. Whether they're presidents, athletes like Serena Williams Agassiz, actors like Hugh Jackman, whoever it might be. Benioff's quote was, tony said to me that the quality of my life was the quality of my questions. So what I would be curious to know is when you meet with these top performers, where do you start? What are the questions that you ask them?

Well, I ask questions before I meet them. The question I want to ask before I meet them is who are they? What are they made of? What are they after? What's preventing them from getting it? Where are their wounds? What is their deepest pride? Not in a negative way, like, what are they proud of? Try to find as much as I can in advance so that I can be really effective and efficient when I meet them. When you meet somebody, yourself, myself, the most viable thing we have is our time. So I try to be beyond respectful of that, but also I load my brain with all the distinctions I can so that when I enter into an interaction with someone who's more engaged, I have a disproportionate amount of information, ideas, insights, wisdom available to me, and then I can react to what's really happening in this moment. So I have what I think in advance, and then I have what the moment shows me. And I think the blend of that is really valuable, because in the moment, people can show up in all kinds of ways. Somebody can show up. The meanest person on earth can be kind in the moment. The kindest person can be very mean in the moment. So I like to grab both those. And then what I want to do when I meet them is I want to try and understand what is it that they really need, not only what they want.

Right.

Because what you want, I'm sure you've experienced this. I have in my life, gotten what you want. Then you're like, is that. What the hell? Because what really makes us fulfilled as human beings is what we need. And there's only so many needs. So I dig under what the needs are. I look at what's their model of the world, how they approach meeting those needs. And every model has limitations and challenges, mine, yours, anybody's. And so that tells me before I even meet them, where the real challenge is. And then I listen for what the surface challenge is. And my goal is solve a surface challenge, but also give them more than they bargained for. Solve the deeper challenge. And ultimately my goal is that they have a greater quality of life. And most people I work with have an extraordinary quality of life. They may not realize it. They may have forgotten it. They may lost track of it. Unless I'm dealing with somebody, which I also deal with who's coming back from Afghanistan with ptsd. And they got light sensitivity and they can't sleep at night. They wake up in cold sweats and they're shaking while they're talking to me. That's a different game. Boom. That's something that's gotta be dealt with in a different way. But when you're talking about peak performers, their challenges are usually they're hungry for more. Right. That's the nature of probably people listening to this. They're going to listen to Tim Ferriss, they're going to listen for more. Give me something beyond what everybody else is talking about. And then you're always seeking to try and find that by not limiting it to yourself, same as myself. Let's go find whoever's best in these areas and let's pull it together and let's find the organizing principles that codify this. So I'm looking to figure out, you know, what is that more that they want and. Or what is it that's stopping them. And then I go into the experience and just absorb what's there. And the combination of the two is how I'm able, usually to get pretty extraordinary results. But without the prep. What most people know about me is the level of prep I do.

Right.

Like I can get up and with my pinky, do six days in a row without, you know, a note or anything of that nature at this stage. That's not intelligence, that's experience. That's the 40,000 hours, not 10,000 hours, you know, over the years. But I still prep because what I do is I activate in my nervous system that knowledge base of what I want to be able to serve somebody with. I try to bring that to the surface so it's readily available. It's the difference between emotional intelligence and what I call emotional fitness. Emotional intelligence is the. Intelligence is the capability to deliver something. Fitness is the readiness to be able to make that happen. So I'm more interested in being emotionally fit or being emotionally fit for that person in the moment.

And when you interact with people, for instance, Paul Tudor Jones, legendary investor and trader, or Agassiz, or anyone who's at the peak of their game and suddenly enters a slump.

Yes.

What are the commonalities, if any, that you've spotted in the best of the best, who then cease for a period of time being the best of the best? What triggers that type of downslope?

Everybody's got different triggers. There are some common patterns. And one pattern is doing so well that you go beyond your vision. And, you know, it's the astronaut syndrome. You know, what do you do when you've, you know, you're 31 years old, you. You flew to the top of the mountain, literally look back at the earth and saw the picture. We've all seen photographed, come back, shake the President's hand, have the ticker tape parade, okay, now what do you do with the rest of your life, right? And so most of those astronauts, if you know their histories, they went through some really tough times. Some were alcoholics, some got addicted to prescription drugs. And so, you know, in some cases, that's why I enter people's worlds, is they've done so well. They've called the market, you know, almost hour by hour, a week in advance. And they made more money in a day than most people have ever dreamed of when everybody else lost their shirt. And everybody's want to know what to do. Okay, I've done that. Now what do I do after I've called the market during the worst day in history? You know, most people lose momentum then, or they get distracted because it's like we need something to go for. We all need what I call a compelling future, Something that will get us up early, keep us up late, and excite us. At least the nature of a high performer. And if you don't have that, life feels very dead for those people. And so, you know, you're President of the United States. I remember Bill Clinton saying to me, I was with him in Aspen, and I was there at fundraiser, and he asked me to come visit him. And he threw me in the car and said, come down the hill with me. It was one of those serene moments, and the lights are flashing. We come down Red Mountain in Aspen, if you know the area. And he stood across from me, and it's right after the blue dress incident had come out. And he says, tony. And I said, like, I'm still so young. He said, you know, what am I going to do when I leave? You know, what I'm going to do in my 50s? This is the wildest thing. I said, if I were you, I'd get the hell out quick. Because he's talking about, I'd run a third time if I could. And I was teasing him about it, but he found a compelling future. And Bill Clinton today has something even greater in his life that he's going for. So the slump shows when people outrun their vision, or the slump can show when they meet their vision but it's not fulfilling. Or the slump shows when people just end up developing some patterns they're unaware of that cost them. And this can be so such a small thing with an athlete that can occur and sometimes it shows like a Tiger woods when something happens in their emotional life and while they try to say I'm an athlete here and I'm a human being over there, they don't separate. And so what I got to do in those situations, regardless of what triggered it, is I've got to come in and get them to re anchor in their nervous system. What made them so effective. And you understand myelin, the idea that the more you do something, the more you wire yourself. It's like the myelin, the white portion of the brain. It's almost like using. If I do something over and over again, I literally wire myself with this myelin. It's like having high speed cable in there or whatever the appropriate. I don't know what it is anymore, what high speed really is these days, the proper term. But versus having dial up. If you do something over and over again, you can process so much more rapidly. So I will find where is that myelin in that person? What specific pattern will hook them back up again to that part of their brain where it's effortless, to that part of their brain where they instate and they don't even think? You know, Andre Agassiz was decades and decades ago. He'd been number one in the world and all of a sudden he dropped. I was number 19 or something at that stage. It's like 90, 91, 92, whatever it was. And nothing worked. And nothing worked because he kept working on his swing and he kept working on his wrist. And he was really upset with his father, who was his coach. There was all these dynamics going nobody wants to talk about. He was actually to the point, he shared later on that he was thinking about quitting, you know, playing the game. This is really early in his career and you know, he's gotten injured and Andre is very frustrated and Brooke Shields brought him to me. They were just dating at that time. And he said, I don't need positive thinking. And he said, you know what, you know, Tony's not positive thinking. He's going to show you these strategies. So he comes to me, I sit down with him and I said, I said, andre, he's telling me about how he's doing this. I said, think of a time he hit the tennis ball perfectly. I said, don't think about it, go to it. I got him in state, got him kind of in that place where the myelin's being fired off. And then I said to him, okay, you feel that? You feel that? Yeah. I go, were you thinking about your wrist? He says, no. I said, then how the hell would you think you would ever get back to that peak form of focusing on your wrist? Right. So I've got to get them back into the pattern that made it work. And then oftentimes, I've got to help them resolve some other issue that's distracting them. That is something else in their life that's pulling them apart from peak performance.

His story is an amazing one. Open the Autobiography is one of the best I've ever read.

That's wild.

It's such a fantastic book. Looking at the longevity of your career, the scope and scale of the Tony Robbins empire, so to speak, your endurance has really impressed me. And so I'm wondering, after these decades, what are some of your daily routines? For instance, what do you typically eat for breakfast? If it's up to you, Yeah, I.

Have salad and fish. It's like, standard. I'm boring as hell because I just know it's fuel.

Yeah.

Before I met my wife, we've been together for more than 15 years. I was completely anal. I was like. I hadn't had chocolate. I hadn't had ice cream in, like, 15 years. Right. It was just crazy. And then she came into my life, and I'll never forget, I thought, God, this woman's incredible. She's a phlebotomist. You know, she does the blood. She's an acupuncturist. She's a nutritionist. We're having these green drinks, and we had this lunch, and that's where she ordered a hot fudge sundae. And I thought, what in the hell are you doing? She goes, living, you bastard. So she loosened my ass up just a bit, which was great because I loved her. So I. You know, she calls it zigging and zagging. We zig, zig, zag. And then she zags, or we zag. And when I was first with her, I was like, you're zagging. We were traveling through Europe, you know, Rome and Italy and, you know, various parts of France, south of France. And I was like, you know, you seem to be zagging every day. And she goes, well, I'm on vacation. And then later on, we were traveling. I said, you know, the problem is we're always traveling. So you're always on vacation. But she's fit as hell, in great shape. But I'm fish and salad. I'm a high grains protein type of guy, Very low carbs. But my regimen is I start with something to strengthen and jolt my nervous system every freaking day. I will sometimes ease into it. I'll go in the hot pools. I'm fortunate enough to have multiple homes. My home in Sun Valley, I have natural hot pools that come out of the ground just steaming hot. I go in the hot pools and then I go there in the river. Here I go in a 57 degree plunge pool that I have and I have on every home I have every.

Immediately upon waking up.

Waking up, it's just like boom. Every cell in my body wakes up. And it's also just like training my nervous system to rock. That there is no. I don't give a shit how you feel. This is how you perform. This is what you do. Even when I'm taking vacation, I do it. It's just, I don't know now I like it. I like that simple discipline that reminds me the level of strength and intensity that's available at any moment. Even if I'm relaxing. I can bring that up at will. It's myelin. I also have a cryotherapy unit in all my homes. Have you tried cryotherapy?

I haven't.

You know what it is?

Maybe you could elaborate. I mean, I can put the two words together and probably get.

Oh my God. With all that you do, you're gonna love this. I'm surprised. I'm glad I'm teaching Tim Ferriss something.

For the first time I've done ice bath. Oh, not the first time.

Ice baths suck. Trust me. I'm on stage on a weekend, I do my Unleashed power within program. Three days, it's 50 hours. You've never been to an event. You gotta come as my guest to an event sometime. I would love to, but I'm gonna give you an idea. People won't sit for a three hour movie that somebody spent $300 million on. And I got like Usher or Oprah going, you know, Tony, I love you, but two hours, most I can do. And 12 hours later, you know, Oprah's standing on a chair going, this is the most incredible experience of my life. On Cameron. Usher's like, dude, I'm in for all three days. But for me, one of those days alone, I wear odometer and I'm Fitbit and it's 26 and a half miles on average. Wow. We start at 8:30 in the morning, I finish at 1:30 or 2. There's one one hour break. People can vote with their feet. No one leaves. You know, there's on average 20 minutes of just crazy ass standing ovations, music, stuff that happens at the end because people are just, it's like a rock concert. It's so much fun. But this wear and tear of doing, you know, basically marathon after marathon after marathon on the weekend, back to back, it's pretty intense. And so over the years, like the inflammation in my body, the demands I've had to do everything I can to reduce it. Nothing has come close to cryotherapy. Cryotherapy was developed in Poland and eastern Germany and the eastern bloc countries. And what it does is it uses nitrogen so there's no water. And unlike an ice bath, what you do and you know, you get spasms and you got to do them still, right? If you're a boxer, you're a runner, you're an athlete, which is what I would do before hated them. There's none of that process. But it reduces your body temperature to minus 220Fahrenheit. And you do it three minutes and it's mind boggling. In fact, I have one here and I'll throw you in at the end if you want. I would love to, that'd be great. I have a unit here, I'll do it for you. But what it does is, and I do it about three times a week, usually when I come back from an event, I do it a couple days in a row. And what it does is it takes all the inflammation out of your body. And you know what inflammation does to every aspect of the body and the breakdown. But it also, it sends emergency signals to your brain. It's like resetting your neurological system because your brain's going, you're going to freeze to death. It sounds horrific. It really isn't. You'll find out it's not that painful going in. My cold plunge at 57 degrees feels more jolting than this does, even though it's colder. Because the fluid of water versus the nitrogen around you is different, right? The connectivity, the conductivity. Exactly right. And so, but what happens is your nervous system gets a signal. So it's like everything in your body connects because it's like emergency. Every part is a reset of your nervous system. You get to experience explosion of endorphins in your body, which is really cool. So you get this natural high, you feel this physiological transformation and you get the reduction of inflammation. What it was used for originally is for people with arthritis. And I found my first one because my mother in law was calling up and she was just crying in pain and no medication was enough for her and I hate somebody medicated anyway and so I started doing this research and it just started to come to the US and now Valley, Lakers, most football teams. It's spreading like wildfire amongst the sports team and so that's where it took off. So I went and got her one and I mean it took her I think three sessions and she's out of pain and now there's another day she's in pain. Now most people can't afford to go buy a unit but there are local places now, they're popping up all over the United States where athletes go, where people go, where people go for rejuvenation. It's amazing for the skin but it's one of the greatest things. I got it for her, so I got it for me and now I'm addicted. So I've got one every three minutes.

What type of unit do you know the actual model or the brand that you.

Yeah, there's two of them, the best out there. It's. Was it Java Junka? J U N K A I think it is. I'll get it for you when we.

Go downstairs and I'll put it in the show notes for those of you who.

Yeah, if anybody wants to do it. But also like if you're in la, there's a place there on. Well, I'll give it to you and put it in your notes. A couple of the locations there, there's some great guys. I'm getting another unit. This is brand new home so and I'm building an additional guest house and additional size gym and so forth. I'm getting a unit though, that's better. This one just goes up to your neck but I'm getting one that encloses you a full room. And the reason is about 70% of your nerve receptors are from the neck up. So when you step into one of those it's even more powerful. But other than that I didn't do much unique or different with my life.

I don't believe that entirely. I'll keep digging. So you have either the sort of contrast therapy that you mentioned, the hot cold, the cryotherapy, you have salad and fish.

Yes.

How far after? So if you were to kind of spec out the first hour of your day.

Well, the first every day I do the water, I take in the environment and then the first thing I do before I do anything else in my day is I do what I call Priming. And priming to me is different than meditating. I've never been really a meditator per se. I know the value of it. But the idea for me of sitting still and having no thoughts just didn't really work out for me. It was just a pain in the ass. And I just thought, it's not natural, right? It's like that's what works. But when I'm in nature, I feel that form of meditation when I stand on stage and someone stands up, and my brain, it's done. I don't even know what it is, but person's suicidal. I've never lost a suicide, for example, in 37 years, knock on wood. Doesn't mean I won't someday. But I never have. Out of thousands. And we followed up with them. So it's like there's something that comes through me, and it's quite meditative. It's like I experience it as a witness afterwards. It's one of the most beautiful gifts in my life. So I know that meditation, but for me, what priming is, if you want to be. Have a prime life, you got to be in a prime state. And, you know, weeds grow automatically. I don't give a damn what it is. My teacher, Jim Rohn, used to say that. And so what I do is I get up and I do a very simple process. I do an explosive change in my physiology. I've done the water already, right? Cold, hot. Then I do it with breath. Because I know, you know, all forms of Eastern meditation all understand that the mind is the kite and breath is the string. So if I want to move that kite, I move the breath. So I have a specific pattern of breathing that I do. I do 30 of these breaths, and I do them at three sets of 30. And that creates a profound physiological difference in my body and from that altered state. I usually listen to some music. And I go for, I promise myself, 10 minutes, and I usually go 30.

And you do that in this room that we're sitting in?

No, I do it all up. This one room is where I do it. This has got a great vibe. I'll do this. When I do it at night, I usually will go outside because I love the wind on my face and I love taking the elements and so forth. But I do it in multiple places. I'm on the road. I do it doesn't matter what day. I always. I do not miss priming. The reason is I'm not. You don't get fit by getting lucky. You don't get fit by working out for a weekend. You know, you live your life that way. Fitness is because it becomes just part of who you are. So what I do during that time is I do three simple things and I do it minimum 10 minutes. Three minutes of it is just me feeling, getting back inside my body and outside of my head, feeling the earth, my body experience, and then feeling totally grateful for three things. And I make sure one of them is something very, very simple. The wind on my face, you know, the reflection of the clouds that I just saw there. But I don't just think gratitude, like I let gratitude fill my soul. Because when you're grateful, as we all know, there's no anger. It's possibly angry and grateful simultaneously. When you're grateful, there is no fear. You can't be fearful and grateful simultaneously. So I think it is one of the most important power emotions of life. And also to me, there's nothing worse than an angry rich man or woman, somebody who's got everything and they're pissed off.

I want to surprisingly high number, though.

Yeah, it is. Because they develop a life that's based on expectation instead of appreciation.

Agreed.

And I tell people, you want to change your life faster than trade your expectation for appreciation. You have a whole new life. So every day I anchor that in and I do it very deeply and emotionally. Then the second three minutes I do is a total focus on feeling. Presence of God, if you will, however you want to, language that for yourself. But this inner presence coming in and feeling that heals everything in my body, my mind, my emotions, my relationships and my finances. I see it as solving anything that needs to be solved. I experience the strengthening of my gratitude, of my joy, of my strength, of my conviction, of my passion. And I just let those things happen spontaneously. And then I focus on celebration and then service. Because my whole life is about service. That's what makes me feel alive. So I flood myself with that, with a breathing pattern that I take that does the opposite. Takes the breath down through my body and back up again. And then the last three minutes are me focusing on three things I'm going to make happen, my three to thrive. And I have some big things that I'll do. And sometimes I'll do things that are smaller, but I see them, feel them, experience them. So it's a really simplistic process. 10 minutes. But I come out of it in my power. It doesn't matter if I had two hours sleep, I'm now ready. You know, it doesn't. And I do this even when I Have no sleep. That's how committed I am. And as I say, I've always said there's no excuse not to do 10 minutes. If you don't have 10 minutes, you don't have a life. And that's how I got myself to do it. And now that I've done it, 20 to 30 minutes is almost always what it is because it actually feels extraordinary.

And where can people learn more about the breathing pattern? Or could you describe it?

I'm putting a link online because I just started to share this just recently and. And I'll get it for you. I don't know what is off the top of my head, but it'll be up shortly, I think this week.

Okay, awesome. And I will also put that in the show notes, guys. So that's just fourhourworkweek.com podcast and you'll be able to find this episode on the I have to ask, what type of music do you usually listen to?

I have a variety. But for that meditation, I have one in particular, which is a oneness meditation that a friend of mine made who's from India, that I find really profound. No singing in it or anything like that. It's just the sound of a vibration that's going on, and I just love it. But that's what I'm doing currently. In the past, over the years, I've used all kinds of different pieces of music, but I don't use modern music or pop music or rock music. I do that to work out, you know, rap. I don't know, it just feels weird to be doing rap while you're meditating. But again, what's different is I don't look at this meditation because I look at it as it's priming. Courage, love, joy. It's priming gratitude. It's priming strength. It's priming accomplishment. It's priming. You know, when I'm doing my gratitude piece, I'm doing the circle of who's closest to me and, you know, circling that out to everybody I love and sending that energy and healing out to them as well. So to me, that's. If you want prime time life, you gotta prime daily.

Well, I like the term priming also because I think that most people who struggle with meditation or even attempt to use meditation are utilizing it for that purpose. They're doing it first in the morning. And, you know, when you said, if you don't have 10 minutes, you don't have a life, it reminded me of something that Russell Simmons said to me, which was, if you don't have 30 minutes to meditate. You need three hours. And I don't always do 30 minutes, but I do meditate in the morning. And it's been a very consistent pattern through among all the people that I've interviewed so far on the podcast.

Really?

Practically 100%.

Wow, that's wonderful.

And of course, we'll get to Ray Dalio, but also very avid meditator.

He's coming with me to India in a couple weeks.

That'll be an amazing triple for a.

Week of this experience.

Oh, amazing. So the. When people hear the name Tony Robbins, I think many different people have different assumptions or images in their heads. What are the biggest misconceptions or the biggest misconception about you?

Oh, my God, there'll be so many, right? Depends on who you talk to. You know, when you've been in the culture at any level, for any period of time, people put their projections out to what you are. And then also, I didn't help myself. I did infomercials for a period of time, but I didn't want to, want to do infomercials. There's just, I had these insights and skill sets and I didn't have it. If I was a great singer, which I'm clearly not, there was a distribution channel, right? I could do that. If I wasn't bullshitting myself, I could rock the world. But in my world, write a book which most people don't read, go do some speeches. So I looked around, saw these silly ass infomercials, and I said, these guys are a disaster. Tommy Vu. Come beyond my boat and watch me get these women and I'm rich. And I'm like, oh my God, it's disgusting. So I thought, you know, if you really did something that was real and the kind of people I reach, you know, I don't have to pay for endorsements. They'll do it. You know, maybe people start to understand this is real and maybe it'll help me reach people. And it did. It got me Bill Clinton, it got me Princess Diana. It got me, I mean, it got me a pretty amazing group of people at that stage. But also you're known by the company you keep. So when you're between spray on hair and, you know, whatever, rotisserie chicken, diamonds, then you're, you know, you're seen as that. And also I talk fast. I'm a passionate son of a bitch. And so I'm not talking fast because I'm trying to sell something. I'm talking fast because my brain Functions that speed, right? That's how my brain goes. Slowing it down is just so boring to me. The faster I go, the stronger my brain becomes, the quicker I come to solutions. So, you know, when I'm most excited, I want to serve people. It speeds up. So that helps when you've got a room of people where you can move and modulate that energy. But when you're seeing somebody on TV and they look like they're a crazy bitch and they're six, seven, and they got hands bigger than your head, you know, you start going, you know, who is this guy? But the people that have actually, like yourself or Marc Benioff or, you know, President Clinton or whoever, who've, you know, actually entered into my work. Once they entered my work, they go, oh my God, this is very different. So I think most people think I'm an infomercial guy or a salesman or a motivator. I mean, I hate the word motivator. It is the bane of my existence because I've never been that. I've never. I don't believe you should just go pump yourself up. I believe in intelligence. I believe see things as they are. If you can see a jar, you can't lead. But don't see it worse than it is. So you got an excuse not to try. And that's what most people do. They make it much worse than it is because they're afraid of failing. So they come up with a reason why, a story, why it's not there. And I don't tolerate that shit. I'm not the guy that says there's no weeds. There's no weeds. There's no way. I'm the guy who goes, let me show you where the goddamn weeds are. And let's pull these son of a bitches out right now and stop bullshitting. Let's do it, you and I. I'll do it with you. That's my approach. I think most people think it's a pump up approach because, you know, the media sees 10,000 people in a room and they're jumping up and down and you know, what is this piece? That's because I believe that learning. I believe what I do for people at its essence, when I do events is e cube them. E cube is I entertain them first. Because people in our society want to be educated, but they much rather be entertained. So if I can rock you and get you to have an experience where you feel fully alive, then. And it doesn't matter who you are, you're, you know, you're from Any stage of life, any socioeconomic background, then I'm going to be able to have your education go deeper. And then. So that's the second part. I give you the best education, the best tools. And the third one is I empower you while you're in this state. I get you to do things that you won't forget, do things that will be in your body, do things that create momentum. So I think the misconception, at least my perception is they don't realize I'm really a strategist. I mean, I consider you a strategist. I know you're inspirational. Everything else but being inspiring is nice. You know, it's like motivation. There's nothing wrong with it. It's like a warm bath. You should take one or you stink. But that's not enough. And it's never been what I've been about. But, you know, most people in our society are interesting that it's like, if you're looking to improve yourself, people in our world think that's natural. The average person's like, what's wrong with you? I remember I took a company public when I was, what, 39 years old, had a really wonderful hit. 400 million bucks. It was extraordinary. And the man who ran my company, been the former CEO of cbs. Brilliant guy. Brilliant guy, Peter. And Peter, at one point, while we're in the midst of this company, he said, I want to go to Harvard and I want to take this extension course. You know, very wealthy guy, been head of the largest networks in the world and now heading up my company. And I remember three or four people like, what's the matter? Why is he doing that? He lost his edge. It's like versus life is growth, baby of you. You don't keep growing, you're going to die. But most people are afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of, I'm not looking good. I'm afraid to fail. And so that creates a challenge. I think the answer question is, they don't know that I'm a strategist. They don't know how much I really care. They have no clue the depth of what I teach or the diversity of what I teach. Subject, your body, your mind, your emotions, relationships, your finances. They don't know the real impact or they don't know who I really work with. You know, the assumption is he's taking over weak people's minds and pumping them up and giving them all this casting spells upon them. That's crazy shit. But. But I'm not here to try to dispel that what I try to do is the reason I'm still here is the more people you touch, the more you reach. I don't have to do that. The people that have been through my events are the greatest people to balance that out and social media, it's been really wonderful because people say, well, this is what this guy is. And 12 other people go, you've never had an experience. Let me tell you what this really is about. And that's really been a wonderful enhancement to my ability to reach people with social media.

Just to reiterate something you said about inspiration being necessary but not sufficient. I think that, like you having the label sort of motivation or motivational speaker applied to what I try to do is very frustrating because one of the things that differentiates.

They put that label on you too?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I didn't know that.

It's just an easy label to throw around.

I know. It's like, what else are you calling.

It's like, well, I'm not going to read the book, so I might as well find a label that I can understand. And I was going to say, at least you had an infomercial, but at least you weren't selling the Four Hour Workweek on those infomercials. You have twice the level of hell that you already get. But the difference in your material, because I really wanted to better myself when I was hitting some very rough spots in my first year out of school. And the difference between, say, Personal Power and a lot of your other material, including the new book on money and finance and investing, which you guys. At some point, I'll try to share some of it with you, but I have, I would say, probably 20 to 30 printed pages of notes in Evernote. I still have about 50 pages left, but it's a big book. We'll get to that. I was giving you a pat on the back. It's like, oh, another 600 page book. I know how these go build your biceps. But you give very tactical next steps at the proper time. So you do sugarcoat the medicine a bit by capturing people's attention. And not to make this Glengarry Glen Ross, you know, Aida. But you have to have those elements in the proper sequence or you can't elicit action from people.

That's right.

And that's something that you've had huge. You've been very influential on my teaching, which is how I would view my writing because of that model. And so if you look at, say, the Four Hour Workweek as one instance, the reason that I have these comfort challenges at the end of each chapter is because I know I'm going to have big asks later, and I want to condition people to take action. I think that your material's some of the best in the world I've ever seen in that capacity.

I want to say something about what you said because it's really important, and you're one of the few people I've heard actually notice it. And I've noticed it in your work. And I just. I didn't know it was influenced by me in any way. I'm complimented by that. But I think you probably would have got there on your own just by the nature of your thinking. The dog bit Johnny. Johnny bit the dog. Same exact words, different syntax, totally different experience, especially if you're Johnny. And people don't realize that sometimes when they think I'm 30 pounds overweight and I'll never get this, I've tried everything, or I'm, you know, my. My every relationship sucks. You know, how do I end up with men or women like this? Or, you know, this is my third business and I'm still not there. I don't see how it's gonna happen. They don't realize that victory is near. And the reason is it feels like a million miles away. And they're doing the right things, but at the wrong time, or they're doing the wrong things, you know, they're doing the right things in the wrong sequence. You know what I mean? So there's. Timing is so invaluable, some of that you and I know we can't control. Some of that's freaking luck. But the more you study how things grow, whether it be organizations or human beings or families or communities, or the way in which people, you know, study ontology or study of knowledge, there's a sequence, and it's like if I know somebody's phone number and I dial the wrong order, I don't reach them, but I do that. Same exact ingredients, the right order. And that's what people need very often. Often they just need a slight twist and they don't know it and they give up. And so my part of my passion is to help people find that 2 millimeters, you know, that little tiny shift that changes it all. One of the people I have, these people that I've coached over the years that are the best in the world at what they do, and. And I'll take on clients who I think by touching them, I can touch massive number of people. That's why I started with Paul Tudor 21 years ago, and it's turned out really well with his Robin Hood group growing huge, giving away a billion to over this time and the impact that it's had. But one of these people is one of the top, to give you an idea, facial surgeons in the world. And I remember I went to go see him one day for one of our sessions, and he was late. And I'm waiting, and I have no problem. I'm busy. And the nurse says, he's gonna be a while. She says, he said, Dr. Teflon said, why don't you come in and watch? And I said, wow, love that. So, you know, I get all scrubbed up, the whole thing come in. He's got rock and roll music in there. And this guy is like an artist and a scientist mixed together in the most powerful blend with a giant heart. And I go in there, the music's Blair, and he's, hey, Tony, how you doing? He goes, watch this. And he cuts his. He lifts this woman's face off. Oh, Jesus. And I felt a little state change. And I was like, you know, I stayed around for a few minutes just, you know, to put up that I can handle this shit. And I said, you know, I got a few calls I gotta make. Got the hell out of there. So I go into his office. He goes, just use my office to make a call. So I'm recovering in his office.

You get the basket, and then you're using his office.

I'm not a squeamish guy, but that was. I just wasn't prepared, right? So I'm sitting in his office, and he's entered a stage of life where, you know, this is a guy the Sultan of Brunei paid $2 million to fly him over, like, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, to do two of his family's faces. This is a guy that anybody in Hollywood who had the money in those days, there was nobody but him. The best on Earth, because he mathematically figured out how to trigger beauty by what you and I would call submodalities. I think I shorthand for you an NLP term, right? Those little triggers in the visual triggering device that affect kinesthetic change in human beings. And so I'm sitting at his desk, and he's got this manuscript. So I'm curious, the manuscript he's working on. And he wants to finally teach other surgeons because he's so old, he doesn't want it just himself anymore. He wants his material not to die. And he's got maybe 150 pictures of the most Beautiful women in the world in the last 20 years, across, culturally, around the world, stars, movie stars, different countries. He's got the same thing for men. And then he's got all these drawings and he showed that this is ironic. He goes through and he shows that he makes no more than seven changes ever. And the biggest change he makes is 2 millimeters. And yet I saw an 84 year old woman look like she was in early 50s and gorgeous. And that's all the changes he made on her. I'm telling you, it's mind boggling. Like for example, he knows that the measurement of the pupil of a woman's eye, if you measure that size and you measure the distance below your nose to the top of a woman's lip, it's only for a woman if that measurement is smaller than the people that are eye men, when they look at someone's face, are driven and sexually attracted to her. If it's the same size of pupil, there's attraction. If it's just 2 millimeters more, she has an average face. If it's more than 2 millimeters more, her face is what he calls butt, ass, ugly. That was a technical term he used at that point. But so when I tell women this, they start measuring their eyes. So he makes this little change and it creates that puckered feeling that men don't even know. Why. It's instinctive. It's just a triggering device that's instinctual. That. So he knows the seven, he knows the two millimeters. And it's like you take somebody 84, 50 and looking pretty damn hot, you know, maybe not to a 20 year old, but a 30 or 40 or 50 year old, certainly it's mind boggling. So I've always learned. It's like golf, right? You know, 2 millimeters, the difference between, you know, shanking way over here or putting it on the green. So that's the whole thing. Victory is near. But you got to know that very often syntax is all that has to change. There's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with the core ingredients. Got to sequence it differently.

Yeah, so you mentioned a few things. The first, is that hand bigger than someone's head or face? I think that for everyone listening, at some point I would like to see if you can actually palm my face. And I'll put that out on social media because I'm pretty sure that you can and I'm sure everybody would love to see. There are probably a lot of people listening who don't like me very much and would like to palm my face. So Tony will step in for you later. I'd love for you to mention a little bit about the new book and just sort of a very basic overview. And then I have a bunch of specific questions because this is the first book in 20 years.

20 years.

20 years. And I've read pretty much everything that you've put out that I'm aware of. And I guess part of me thought a few things when I saw that this book was related to money and also referring to it as a game in some ways, I thought, number one, what hasn't already been said? There's so many books.

That's what the publishers do.

There's so many books on money. And I think that perhaps undeservedly so, I feel like I understand a lot as it relates to investing in money. I've read David Swensen. I've read about his allocations. I've read the annual letters of Warren Buffett. I read the letters to shareholders from people like Howard Marks or other hedge fund managers. I know some of those guys. I saw a couple of names pop up that I recognize. And you said in the very beginning of the book, I've tried to do stuff like this in the past, so I realize how hard it is. You're trying to write a book that the neophyte, someone who's never taken their finances seriously, will derive a lot of value from. And yet at the same time, you say even very sophisticated investors will be able to get a lot out of this book. I thought to myself, oh, boy, this is really talking a big game. And the interviews at the end of the book alone are worth magnitudes of order more than the book itself. You've got Bogle, you've got Ray Dalio, who runs, I believe it's still largest.

Hedge fund in the world. Largest hedge fund in the world. Largest mutual fund with Bogle, Large hedge fund with Ray Dalio. Carl Icahn, who's Time magazine put him on the COVID as master of the universe. This guy that sends out one tweet and Apple goes up 17 billion in an hour. It's up 50%. He was out doing it again today. I don't know if you.

You saw.

Carl's quite a character. Yeah. No, two things. One coming. What you said, that's the challenge. I love when I do my business mastery programs. I bring people in from usually somewhere between 15 and 30 countries. I translate four or five languages. They're different financial systems, but business, the psychology and the strategies of business. It's a worldwide game. And so I bring people in there that are brand new. They come in like just starting a business and you got people in there like Homex, largest homebuilder in Mexico is one of my events, you know, a billion dollar business. And I, they credit me with $750 million increase in two years, almost doubling their business. And I take this chiropractor or this dentist, you know, army of three and so I'm going to double their business in six months. So I love that challenge of how do you hit both? And it's not easy to do very hard. Thus far I think we pulled it off. Pulled it off primarily because of who I. It's not me doing the teaching, it's me going to the best on earth and getting them. Simon Schuster told me the same thing. People say, why didn't you write a book in 20 years, what the hell you been doing? Well, about every four days I'm on an airplane, I see a quarter of a million people a year in 15 countries. That's what the hell I'm doing. And I love, I live for that environment, the rawness, the aliveness. Every moment something's changing, you never know who's gonna stand up. You don't know what the challenge is gonna be. I mean that feels alive. And also it's just real and it's now. And if it's not working, frickin change it, who cares? When I go to write, As I did 20 years ago, I'm sitting still. That first alone makes me crazy. And then number two, you took away my hands, my music, my voice, my face, my intensity. And now I just got written words, which I clearly am not a skill that. But when I concentrated on, I am. But I also go, this is immortal. I can't improve this. It's like once you write this shit, it's done. So I've avoided it like the plague. And then also most people don't read, frankly, it's true, they read blogs. It's like most people. I can see a generation looking at this book, it's 600 what, 30 pages, right? But it's these seven steps that you can do a chapter a day and in 30 days you got a different financial life. That's where if you're crazy like me, you'll do it in a weekend, you know. But what's interesting is they'll say, you know, why don't you put this in a blog? You know, why don't you put this in an infographic? Mastery doesn't come from an infographic. What you know doesn't mean shit. What do you do consistently? And you got to go through stages of understanding intellectually, which anybody can do, but you got to do. And you got to get where there's enough emotional intensity attached to that understanding that you actually do it. And then you got to get enough consistency. Both those that it gets in your body, you don't have to think about it, becomes who you are. And those stages of mastery require. It's like, I took Taekwondo. I didn't want Taekwondo. I wanted to learn Aikido because I thought it was a beautiful art. And I like the idea that you don't have to hurt somebody. 10 people attack you at once, and it's like, wonderful. So I learned some Aikido, but I had the privilege of being exposed to Grandmaster Jun Rhee, who brought Taekwondo to this country, and he trained Muhammad Ali, and he trained Bruce Lee and his acupuncture and so forth. Amazing history, and a beautiful man, like the most happy human being you ever meet. And he loved me and what I did and was touched by it. And he said, would you like to do this? And I was 23, 24. So I said, yes, but I must get my black belt. Fastest time in human history, and you must come travel with me. We will do this every day. Kind of like, you're insane ass, right?

Yeah, I read your book in two.

Days, so it's like completely insane. So he came and I finished being off stage at midnight or 1am and then I have to go train from 1 to 4, and then I'd sleep from 4 to 7, 33 and a half hours, four hours, sometimes eight if I could squeeze it, get up and do my next day. I did that for nine months. I did get a black belt legitimately in the shortest time in history, but I hated it and never wanted to do it again. But I'll never forget, I was doing these moves and it's like, geez, four in the morning, I'm doing the same fricking move and I'm done over and over and over again. And I said, master Re. I said, can we go to the next move? And he said, grasshopper, this is the next move. You know, and he started to laugh. He goes, the fact that you think this and this is the same move is why we're still doing it. But you know what? It was really true. So I'm into mastery. And so what I really wanted to make sure happened with people is that we got them to that place. And when I Went to Simon Schuster. It was a crazy thing. So I'm doing these events. I'm loving this Simon Schuster. Been begging me for a book for decades. A huge contract. He made it bigger and bigger. And I said, I don't need the money, I'm not doing it for the money. So they finally came back and I. What triggered me is I saw this documentary called Inside Job.

Yeah, did you see it? Great.

Yeah. Matt Damon did the audio on it and it won all kinds of awards. But what's happened? If you didn't see it, I really recommend you see it. But I do want to prepare you at the end. You're either extremely pissed off or you're really depressed, depending upon your personality. And I was pissed off because they show how a small number of people basically put the entire economic world at risk. And when they put us near imploding, the punishment for that was to reward them by putting them in charge of the recovery, printing more money and then taxing everybody else on earth and giving their money back. It's the greatest thievery that's happened in human history. And so I thought, this is making me angry because there's no solution. And I thought, there's got to be a solution. I thought, you know what? I got access. The one thing I got access because I called Coach Paul for 21 years and I mean, he's never lost money in 21 years and mind boggling, his company's never lost in 28 years. I was brought in when he's having a tough time to help take things to the next level. And I thought, I know these people, I know this process. What if I took what the ultra wealthy and brought it in? So I think I got this great strategy. Go to Simon Schuster, who's wanted a book forever, and the first thing you say is no. What do you can't tell me no. He goes, tony, no. Jonathan, brilliant man. Jonathan, carpe. You don't want to do this. He goes, people are dying for a book on peak performance. For you, dying for a book on anything but not finance. This, this category is a dead carcass, is what he said. It's been picked clean. Same things you're saying, right? Ironically, so did the head of the financial division. He goes, there's nothing new to say. I said, that's because everybody's attacked the same way. I'm going to go to the people that know, not the platitudes of the same bs. He actually offered me a larger advance to not do a financial book. And I said, Look, I'm not doing it for that. I'm in for this book. And so now he's really thrilled, which is really wonderful. In fact, the head of that division came back and said, he said, I really thought the category is dead. I had the division. He goes, this is alive. So I'm real proud of it. But I think what's great about the book is there's not a word in there that's coming from me on the financial side. I don't tell you my opinion. Who gives a shit what my opinion is? I don't know Ray Dalio's opinions. I want to know. Jack Bogle's been. I want to know what Carl Ickins. I want to know what Mary Calhoun Erdos, who's head of JP Morgan and manages 2.3 trillion with a T. I want to know her opinion. When it comes to the emotional, psychological side, yeah, that's been my baby for 36 years. Those opinions are clearly mine. I'll stand on them. So I'm real proud of what it is and I think anybody who reads it will be touched. And I wrote it to empower readers of all types. But I also wrote it because I was looking, thinking about a vehicle for writing another wrong, in my opinion. I think the system is clearly, you know, guys, you know, if you read Flyboys or you talk to Michael Lewis or anybody like him, they'll describe to you how high frequency trading today is so extreme. We've all heard about it, but it's just so extreme. It takes 500 milliseconds for you to click on your E trade and say, I want to buy the stock of Apple. And you got guys that have spent a quarter of a billion dollars to straighten the lines between Chicago and New York so they could save 1.4 milliseconds and they're going to trade hundreds, maybe thousands of times. They know you're going after Apple. They know what to do. They make money, little microprocessors. One of the HFT groups was going to go public last year, so they had to do their filings. Do you know how many losing days they had in four years?

I do not.

One. One losing day in four years. It's front running. So the system's rigged. But even though it's rigged, you can still win. That's why I wrote this book. I want you. You can still win. And here's how to win. And here's the people showing you how to win. So I wanted to write that wrong. I wanted people to have an advocate But I also wanted. I'm pretty passionate about taking care of people as society's forgotten. And I decided initially I wanted to, like, raise my game. They cut $8.7 billion from food stamps last summer. Most people don't even notice it. It's the equivalent of every family who's being supported going without food for one week out of the month for 12 straight months. And I've been supporting my family. Was fed when I was 11 years old. I had no food. This man came by and delivered a turkey and food, and he was just the delivery guy. Changed my life. It made me believe strangers care. So I cared about strangers. I've been paying it forward. And I fed 42 million people in 37 years. This year, I'm going to feed 50 million people. And myself, personally, I started with, I'm going to dance the book. I'm not going to wait and sell books and see how it goes. I'm just going to dance it all down like, well, I don't want to do 10 million. I'm going to do 20 million, then 30. So now I'm doing 50 million and I'm getting matching funds. I'm feeding America, delivering the food, and I'm getting matching funds targeting 100 million people this year alone. And then I'm putting a system in place to sustain that. So doing this book has been opening up doors to thinking larger. Because when you're sitting with Carl Icahn and he goes, yeah, I just closed the deal today. I made $2 billion. Two billion. The day I was there, after only 18 months of investment, where he put out. I forgot the number he started. It was a small number in Netflix.

Netflix.

He made it that day. And he's now putting all this money in Apple and he does a little tweet and 17 billion of value goes up right away. Or you're sitting with Kyle bass, who took 30 million and turned into 2 billion in two years in the middle of a subprime crisis.

Good at the short game, telling me.

To do that, it's like, holy cow. I mean, I started learning things, which. It changes the scale of your thinking. So I'm babbling here because what I want people to know is two things. Yes, I think this truly, if you give yourself the gift of this book, it's a category breaker. But it'll show you step by step. And I go from where you are, you want to be. If you're highly advanced, you're going to learn out of the 55 plus. I say 50, but it's really 55 plus Nobel laureates, self made billionaires, hedge fund guys, biggest in the world. I put the 12 biggest in the book. And you know, I went to these guys with the promise of a 45 minute interview and my average one was three hours. So I know how you function because I do the same thing. But what was really cool was like, you know, you get with Carl and I get down with Carl and the first thing he does is he throws the video crew out. It's like, Carl, what's the deal? I've never met him before. He's like, no, I said video crew. But I just changed my mind. Okay, how do we do the interview? We'll do the audio. No, I don't want the audio. No audio. How am I going to do this interview? Just take your pencil and your pen, get over here. And he said, I'll give you 10 minutes. And now we're dear friends. And three hours later I'm out pictures with he and his wife. And he's saying, you got a way to help change this world. And he endorses the book and supports it. So I want people to know that this has been a four year journey of going to the smartest people on earth and finding out the vast majority of them are incredibly genuine in wanting the average person to do well. They just didn't think there was anybody who could translate. And when they saw that I could and I could pitch and catch with them because I do 18 hours of prep before I sit down with Ray Dalio. They were willing to share things that they'd never shared before. And later on we can talk about what I learned from Ray Dalio because it's pretty amazing.

Oh yeah, no, I do want to talk about Ray and fascinating guy. I mean I'm so fascinated with the entire world. I mean whether it's. And there's so many different breeds. This is something that I want to talk about. But you have say the Paul Tudor Jones for those who probably haven't ever seen a very old film. I think it's available like bootleg VHS called the Traitor is an amazing old documentary. You can find it. But you can see his style versus say the high frequency guys or a Renaissance. All PhDs right outside of Wall Street.

That's right.

And then you have the, the Ray Dalio types.

All things in common if you look, they all have different strategies. I mean some are let's shake the tree of the corporate guys and make sure we get more value out of it. Right Carl? And some guys are like Templeton, I got to interview him multiple times before he died. It's like, wait for the bloodletting.

No blood in the streets.

That's what you invest, blood in the streets. But it's like when maximum pessimism hits, that's where you make all your money. That's what he did. And then there's the guys like Bogle, which is. It's the index, baby. And these days, even Warren Buffett, it's the index, baby. So they all do approaches. But what's in common, I think, is I'll tell you four things I saw that stood out. And one is overly simplistic. And that's why people don't pay attention to it. But these guys pay attention to it. They don't lose. Half the key awakening is not losing. And they are obsessed. Every single one is obsessed. And not losing money. I mean, a level of obsession that's mind boggling. And it isn't just these investors. Sir Richard Branson, for example. People see Richard and he's such an outgoing, playful, crazy guy. He's kind of an introvert in some areas, but when it comes to athletics and taking on challenges, he's out in the world. But his first question to every business is, what's the downside and how do you protect it? When he did his piece with Virgin, I mean, that's a big risk. And start an airline. He went to Boeing and negotiated a deal that he could send the planes back if it didn't work out and he wasn't liable. That's the level these guys think at. So they look to see, how do I not lose money first. Because the average person has no clue if I lose 50% in 2008, well, guess what, you got to make 100% to get even, not 50% because your principal has gone down so much. So it's like people don't understand. You lose 60%, it's 200% to get even. And so the average person, you know, lives in a world where they try not to lose money, but they're not obsessed. These are obsessed. Second thing they all have in common, every single one of them is obsessed with asymmetrical risk reward, which is a big word. It simply means they're looking to use the least amount of risk to get the max amount of upside. And that's what they live for. So I'll give an example. Paul Tudor. When I first went to do the turnaround, when Paul was having some challenging times, he'd broken his leg. You know, think about this. He did Better than anybody in the history of the world during the biggest stock market drop in history, literally. And then he went to the mountain. He went to the moon. Now what? And so lost a bit of the edge and, you know, got involved in other things and so forth. And now he's got a broken leg. He's not going to the office. And I got to come in, so I had to go watch that film. That's the first thing I did.

The white tennis shoes.

I wanted to go see everything about him, study his physiology, the way he used to move, because this guy's not moving at all. What his face was like, how he breathed, tone of his voice. What were the physical strategies, what were the psychological strategies or the financial strategies. I got to go, you know, to Druckenmiller. And so, I mean, the who I got access to back then was unbelievable. See, what was he like then to put the plan together to do this turnaround? And when I started making those shifts in him and you could see the shift happen, immediately it got really exciting. I got hooked on what was going to happen. So as I did this same process, basically that's what I'm thinking about doing things. Once I did the same process during these interviews, I didn't just look at the trading strategies. I looked at the psychology of what set it up. But here's what I found with Paul Tudor at the very beginning, getting back on track when he was at his best, he made sure every single trade had what he called a five to one. That means if he was going to risk a dollar, he wasn't about to risk it unless he was certain he was going to make five. Now, you're not always right. So guess what? If I risk a dollar, make five, and I'm wrong, I can risk another dollar. I still make four. I can be wrong four times out of five and still break even. Their secret is not that they don't. They're not wrong if they set themselves up where they risk small amounts for big rewards. Proportionally, Paul, you know, if he's right, one out of three times, he still makes 20%. So the average person risks a dollar trying to make how much?

$10.

That's right, about 10. If I could get 10%, wow. My dollar right, 20% would be unbelievable. How often can you be wrong?

Not very often.

Not at all. Right. You're in the hole, you're starting from the hole, and you got to build back up. So their asymmetrical worth, like I was with Kyle Bass, and Kyle Bass risked. Check this out in the middle of the subprime crisis, he made $2 billion out of 30 million because he risked. For every 6 cents he risked, he had an upside of a dollar, 6 cents for 100. Well, you could be wrong 15 times and you're still okay in that area. I mean, he was brilliant to figure it out. He's a genius figured out. But that risk reward is why it is. He showed his kids, he taught. I said, how do I teach this to the average investor? And he said, well, you can teach them the way I taught my kids. And I said, how'd you do that? He goes, we bought nickels. I said, what do you mean you bought nickels? He said, well, I did research. I had this question. That's another thing that all these guys do. They ask a better question we talked about, they get better answers, right? Better quality question, Better quality answer. What's wrong with me? You'll come up with stuff. How do I make this happen? No matter what, you'll come up with different answers. So his question was, where in the world is there a riskless trade with total upside? And he started looking around and he said, I'm worried about inflation. So he decided, well, gosh, of all the currencies in the world, a nickel, what it's made of today, it's not made mostly of nickel, by the way. He said, it's costing the US Government nine and a half cents to make a nickel. That's how our government functions. I'm going to spend almost 10 cents to make something worth half as much. Right?

The Pentagon plan.

Yeah, that's right. It's the perfect plan. So he said, but you know what? Just the actual material value, right, is 6.8 or whatever it was. Six something. Six and a half, we'll call it for round numbers. So he said, if I buy a nickel, it's never going less than a nickel unless you believe the US Government's gone. So I've got something that never goes down in value. So I got a guaranteed return. I'm not going to lose my principal. But day one, it's worth 36% more than the day I bought it. How many investments can you have 100% guarantee of no loss and have 36%? I said, yeah, but that smelt value. And I saw they passed a law a few years ago. I think Charlie Rangel, whoever it was, was the one who pushed it through. He goes, yeah, but Tony said, that doesn't matter. He said, let me tell you why. He said, look at pennies. When they Changed it from pure copper to tin and all things, they changed. What happened to the old pennies? There's a scarcity of them. And now a penny from those days is worth 2 cents. It's 100% more valuable. So he said, at some point, the government cannot continue to do something cost twice as much. Some point, they'll make a change in the materials, and then all these nickels are worth an unbelievable amount. So he said, I just showed my kids, here's a risk. You need things different than everybody else. Don't think I have to take huge risks for huge rewards. Say, how do I take no risk and get huge rewards? And because you ask that question continuously and you believe in an answer, you get it. So, you know, he said, listen, if I could put my. Convert my entire wealth in nickels right now, he said, I'd do it. I said, you're insane. He goes, I am insane. But it's the best possible fundamental investment. He started telling me how to do it. He bought 40 million nickels.

Wow.

He has 40 million nickels. Fills up a room bigger than this, right?

Better be on the ground floor.

And he had his kids dragging them in and laughing, having fun. I mean, it's like their little treasure room.

So he can legitimately do, like the Scrooge McDuck backstroke through a pool full of nickels.

So that's asymmetrical. I'll give you one more and I'll shut the hell up.

No, no.

You're asking me what the. You tell me the difference is. I want. You know there are differences. We can spend hours and hours on the differences, but what I think is useful is what's aligned because then it gives something universal that can be applied.

Absolutely.

The other one for them is they absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know they're going to be wrong. You look at these talking heads on television and people screaming at you and hitting bells and telling you what to buy, and they're right, right, right. The best on earth. The Ray Dalios, Right. The Pabls, the, you know, I don't give a. Who you talk about. You want to look at Carl Icahn. They all know they're going to be wrong, so they set up an asset allocation system that will make them successful. They all agree asset allocation is the single most important investment. There wasn't one person in terms of your vehicle that wasn't the most important thing. No matter how they attacked it, Asset allocation was the element there. And the last one is they are. They're lifelong learners. I mean, these people are machines. Like you, like me, like Peter, like most of the people you and I share as friends. They just are obsessed with knowing more because the more they know, the more they realize what they didn't know. And then they apply that and they go to another level. And every time you think you're the best you can be in anything in life, your body, your emotions, spirit, your finances, there's always another level. And these guys live by it. And the last one that I thought almost all of them were real givers. Not just givers on the surface, like money givers. That's wonderful. But really passionate about giving. And it showed up once they saw what I was doing was legitimate and was really real. I mean, then they're opening up three hours of their time with something none of these guys will never give.

Oh, yeah. I mean, their hours are worth a lot, saying the least. Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show. I've used them. I like them and I think you will too. 99designs.com forward slash Tim it's the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. You can see the projects that I've put up, the competitions that I've spearheaded, including the book cover of the four hour body. And you can also get a $99 upgrade for free. So check it out at 99designs.com. Tim of course, you can subscribe to this show on itunes. You can also find every other episode in the show. Notes links from this episode@fourhourourblog.com that's F O U R H O U R b l o g.com and just click on podcast. There's all sorts of other cool stuff, including my interactions with people like Warren Buffett, Mike Schnode of Linkin Park. The list goes on and on and on. And I would love your feedback. Let me know what you thought of this show, who you'd like to hear on the show next, and any other thoughts, really. You can find me at Twitter at tferriss, that's twitter.com ferris forward/tferiss and on Facebook @forward/timferriss with two Rs and two Ss. Until next time, thank you for listening.