794 Tony Robbins: The Icon

This is episode number 794 with number one New York Times bestselling author, Tony Robbins. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. the secret to living is giving. Tony Robbins said that, and it's something that I live by every single day. How much are you giving? Not how much are you taking and receiving, but how much are you giving on a daily basis? With your smile, with your energy, with your heart, with your hugs, with your generosity. How much are you giving? Today we've got a special episode with the icon Tony Robbins. Now, for those that don't know who he is, he is an author of a number of best selling books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, Money, Master the Game and Unshakable. He has empowered more than 50 million people from 100 countries through his audio, video and life training programs. He created the number one personal and professional development program of all time, and more than four million people have attended his live seminars. This guy is the king of personal growth. And in this interview, we talk about how money is not an enemy, but a magnifying glass. Why diversifying is key for success in business. The power of gratitude and why it's the secret to wealth. And how to feed your mind and strengthen your body for success. Now, I took the best clips of three different interviews I've had with Tony Robbins on, and we put them together for this special episode. The reason I'm doing this is because Tony is now a part of the biggest online marketing launch in internet history. He partnered up with my buddy, Dean Graziosi, who we had on about a month ago. And it's been amazing to watch them launch this program and to see the results and the impact that people have had by this course. It's unbelievable. You guys can check the replay and watch more at greatnesslink.com. .com, a full training on how you can extract the information in your mind, your skill set, and how you can sell that information online. It doesn't matter what profession you're in. If you want to earn more with your passion, they're teaching you how at greatnesslink.com. Make sure to check that out. For me, Tony always taught me about the power of mentors. You know, he was one of the few people that I wanted on early in my podcast, and we've had him on three times now. and he always talks about the power of having an inner circle. You are like the people you surround yourself with the most. So make sure you evaluate the people that you're spending the most time with. So many things we're to cover in this interview. I think you're gonna love this. Make sure to share with your friends, lewishouse.com/794. This one's gonna be a big one. This podcast is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual. Everyone wants to feel good about their finances.

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Well, that's why I've had life insurance with Northwestern Mutual for years. Their financial professionals ask the right questions, truly listen, and help uncover opportunities most people miss. I've seen it firsthand. Northwestern Mutual has been a part of my journey from the very beginning, providing the security and peace of mind I need as a human and an entrepreneur. Find a better way to money@nm.com, the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, paid testimonial by a Northwestern Mutual policy owner.

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Well, not quite. Almost 40 years. 39. It's my 39th year.

39 years. This is a question a friend of mine, Ed O'Keefe, asked. He said, With all the tools you've learned and the wealth of information over 39 years, almost four decades, strategies to break people through to help them overcome their challenges, if you can only have, if you had to strip them all away, you can always use one strategy or one thing to use. What would that be?

I wouldn't. Part of why I'm effective is because I don't buy that. I'm always looking for more strategy because one strategy will work with one person, not with another. But philosophically, I would say that the capacity to strengthen and increase your hunger is the one common denominator amongst the most successful people. You know, Richard Branson's a good friend of mine. Peter Guber, Steve Wynn, all these guys, they've never lost their hunger. Most people are hungry to achieve a certain amount, make a certain amount of money, and then they get comfortable and relax, or to get a certain level of fitness, and then they relax. But Richard is as driven today as when he was 16 years old starting. I mean, he's like on fire and he's 65 years old. Warren Buffett is 85 years old. He's as driven today as when he began the journey, right? and so people that have that hunger, I believe intelligence, I love people that are wickedly smart, and I work to be wickedly smart by educating and training myself and so forth and training my brain. But there's a lot of intelligent people can't fight their way out of a paper bag, right? Hunger is the ultimate driver. Because if you're hungry, you can get the strategy, you can get the answer. If you can't model it, you can find it. So hunger modeling would be maybe the next best skill, knowing that success leaves clues like, why reinvent the wheel? If someone took this plane was Mickey's plane who owns the Miami Heat and owns Carnival, you can learn so much from the man like Mickey, blow your mind what this man has been able to do in his life. And so why would I go learn by trial and error and maybe take 10 or 20 years when I could learn from somebody in a few weeks or a few months or a few hours something that could save me a decade? That's what it is. That's why I read 700 books in the first seven years because there's like, If somebody takes 10 years of their life, they pour into a book, and I can read that in an hour, two or three or four, why wouldn't I?

So how does someone continue to stay hungry or rediscover what they're hungry about?

The best way is get around where it's better and things will hit you. Say it again. Get around where it's better and things will hit you. Who you spend time with is who you become. So, you know, when I started coaching all these billionaires, you know, there's a part of me that said, I'm as smart in these certain areas as they are. I got to step my game up. It's not about the money. It's about how can I take the invisible and make it visible? How can I find a way to add more value to other people to such an extent where economics are not a question whatsoever? And then I can take those economics and do even more where I'm not there. I look at money as portable power. I can leverage my money to do things for people even when I sleep. I love doing these for people and I work 18, 20 hour days still, but it's really nice to have the leverage of that as well.

Sure, sure. In a few sentences, what would you say is your current vision for life? What's the vision you have and what's the legacy that you want to leave behind?

I saw, have you seen Hamilton the.

Play in New York?

I hear it's incredible.

Everyone is raving about it.

You've seen it, right, Nick? Yeah, it's amazing. Isn't it extraordinary? It's amazing. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it might be a lot of hype, but it was as good as the promise. Really? There's a line in Hamilton that I thought was really interesting. It says, Legacy is planting seeds in.

A garden that you'll never see.

I thought it was really interesting. But so for me, I know, what's the garden you want to create you'll never see? Yeah. For me, it's human lives. For me, it's, I love, my life is about being a blessing in the lives of the people I meet. I hope that whoever decides to watch your video, I hope something here will strike them and they can say, you know, I got to get in proximity or I got to raise my standard or I'm going to go master my damn money. I'm not going to dabble. I hope that it stimulates someone in a way where it becomes a blessing in their life. and my legacy is the lives that I've touched and my legacy is the institutions that I'm building right now that when I'm gone will continue to touch people. My foundation, the work that I'm doing with mentoring with kids, I mean the ability to touch another generation. But my heartfelt prayer every day is be a blessing. And you know, it's interesting. Sometimes you're a blessing just by giving somebody a few moments just by loving on them, just being with them. Sometimes you're being a blessing because you coach them or you intervene with them. you can be a blessing in so many ways, but that's my daily focus. And it's not what I'm going to build for the long term. It's really what am I going to do right now?

Why is that?

And why do you want to create that legacy? Again, it's less about legacy than it is about doing what I'm made for while I'm here and maximizing it. I want the end to have me, I want to be climbing the mountain when I die, not sliding. So to me, it's about growth and it's about giving. Those are the only things that fulfill human beings. I always tell people, if you want to be happy, it's one word, progress. If you can make progress, and if your progress is not only within yourself, but it's actually doing something of value for more than yourself, you're going to be a damn fulfilled person.

How do you stay grounded in your personal and intimate relationships when everyone wants.

A piece of you?

You sell out events, 10, 20, 30,000 people come to your conferences, pay tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone wants to interview you, you're coaching presidents, billionaires, world-class athletes, they call you, they want you to help them break through the next level. How do you stay grounded in your marriage or with your kids or with, you know, friends?

Yeah, my mom, my mom's craziness gave me a great gift. I wanted to be a professional athlete and I want to be a professional baseball player. And when I got cut from the junior high school team, I figured out I'm in trouble. So I decided to become a sportscaster and a sports writer. And so I took typing when I was in junior high school. I was the only boy in an all girl shorthand class so I could capture everything because I wanted to be the best reporter, best sportscaster. I interviewed Howard Cosell and Woody Hayes and Dodgers and Rams. I got a job working for a daily newspaper when I was 13. And then I got this huge break, which was I got these interviews. No one had, like Joe Namath when he was so famous. I got these interviews. And here in LA, KTTV Channel 11, it's now a Fox Channel. They were trying to get viewership. And so they kept trying different kinds of sportscasters. They even tried Fanny Fox, the stripper. And somebody watched some interviews I did and went, Holy shit, this 14-year-old kid, I was about to be 15, he's brilliant. He's getting interviews nobody else is getting, you know? So they called me up and they offered me the job to be the nightly sportscaster as I was turning 15. And I was out of my mind, like the dream I was gonna have when I was like 25 or 30 was happening, you know, I'm gonna be 15. And my mom said to me, Your ego's too big. And if I let you do this, you're going to even get bigger. And she not only would not let me take the job, she made me quit my job working for the Progress Bulletin, which was a daily newspaper in Pomona, California, doing sports. And I hated her and I was devastated, but it created a sensitivity inside of me that that along with, I think, watching athletes who would not sign a card for a kid because they were making money selling cards. would make me so angry that I said, I'm never gonna be one of those people. And so I'm not. You know, I certainly have plenty of pride in what I've been able to accomplish and people have been able to help, but I always know I'm just a guy. And while I've worked my ass off, I've also had grace in my life, you know? And I think when you achieve things, it comes from incredible obsessive focus, massive action and figuring out how to execute and do things effectively. And it's grace. And I never forget that that's a part of the formula for where my life is today.

Do you think people need a little bit of ego to have that kind of drive and insanity or obsession? Or is it more just belief in a bigger vision?

I think ego can produce drive, but that kind of ego will make you not be fulfilled. And we all have it until we get a few hammers. Because in the beginning, when you're young, especially a young man, I think even more so than a woman, you're trying to find yourself. You're trying to prove yourself to the world. And really, you're trying to prove it to yourself. In the very beginning for me, I used to attack psychiatrists and psychologists because I care about people so much. And I, because I learned how to handle them in an hour and they're working with someone for seven years and I would just go crazy. But I was also attacking them because I was also defensive because I didn't have a degree. And so I figured, I'm going to be on the offense. I'm going to show them. But as I grew up, I realized, holy shit, these people care just as much as I do. Now I've trained 100,000 therapists around the world with my partner, Chloe Madanes. We make films. of people's lives, like suicidal people, people who've been through hell, and you get to watch how I do it as I do it, and then you get to see them two years later to know it really worked. Right, right.

Do you ever question choices or decisions you make today? And does everything you touch turn into what you want it to be?

No, of course not. No. Failure is part of life. I mean, the difference for me though is I look at failure as a stepping stone to success. It's a speed bump. I know I'm gonna fail, but it's not failure if you learn something. And so, gosh, I've made so many mistakes. I've screwed so many things up, but every time I do, it just becomes a way for me to explain to someone else what it takes. Here's what I've done. I think I have the ability to influence people because I talk about my failures. I talk about all the things that mess me up, but I show people that I didn't let it stop me and you don't need to let it stop you. And I think that's really the secret matter.

And if everything you touch was successful, First of all, you gotta relate to.

People as much as you can. No, you'll be relate and also be total bullshit. And everyone know it's bullshit. And also you'd be bored silly. I mean, think about it. If you just said, I want this to happen, I want this to happen, you know, people don't value what they don't fight for. You know, it's like you see kids sometimes in it, you know, your parents will say, you're not gonna value this if you don't work for it. And your kid going, oh, value it. Just give it to me. Right. But it's true, you know, about things we've worked the hardest for, we value the most. So I think the purpose of a goal is not getting it anywhere. The purpose of a goal is who you become. Who you become is gonna make you happier, it's gonna make you sad. So I'm not looking for an effortless approach. There's no such thing.

Now I'm curious about relationships and building wealth. How important is it to have the right partner in a marriage or an intimate relationship relating to building wealth? Does it matter who you choose, their mindset, Does any of that play an effect in how much you're going to make or?

It won't affect how much you make, but it'll affect your relationship a lot, right? You know, getting on the same page is really, really important. But when my wife and I met, my wife, we both grew up very poor. But I decided that I was going to find a way to add so much value that money would never be a question for my family. And, you know, it would never stop me from giving or doing or sharing anything. And I made that decision early on. So I became an earner, ways of earning. She became a negotiator, a cost manager. Her mom's number one thing is somebody comes in, she goes, sharpen your pencil. That's not a good enough deal. And so when we first met, I remember we were in New York City, and this dates me how old I am, but I remember when they first came out with digital cameras, the very first digital cameras from Sony. And it was like such a cool thing. You could take 12 pictures or whatever it was in those days. But we were down in New York City, we were in Times Square. and we went into one of those camera shops and it was Christmas time and I saw the camera and I was like so excited about this camera and I said, you know what, I'm gonna get one for my brother, my sister, my mom and you know, I came up with, I don't know, it was like 12 cameras and they were very expensive then.

I think they were like 1200 or $2,000 each.

They were really crazy. Now they're like 200 for the same. Yeah, no, not even, it's a million times better. But I went to the counter and the guy goes, oh my God, Tony Robbins, can I take a picture with you? I'll put it on the wall and I said, sure. And she goes, hey, She goes, sharpen your pencil. What kind of deal are you gonna get my boyfriend here? And I wanted to grab her by the throat and just go, what are you doing here? It's like, what are you doing? And she's like, no, no, what's the deal here? And he goes, oh, well, I give it 10% off. She goes, sharpen your pencil, 10%. You're not taking a picture of my boyfriend and I'm wanting to murder her, right? And I was so mad. I mean, I was so mad. And so she got like 15% off and free camera cases and all this stuff. And I'm shaking my head. We left, I was like, I'm so, we had this big fight. Today, I just call her squeaky. She's my squeaky girl. She wants to go to Walmart as if we'd ever need to go to Walmart. And what I do is I'm delighted by the difference. And I go, you know what? What a beautiful gift. I've been in relationships before where I gave everything and people were totally unconscious with money. So to answer your question, it's nice to be on the same page. But, you know, one day I told my wife I was coaching someone and the person gave me a quarter of a million dollar bonus. I don't care who you are. It's mind-boggling it was like, he didn't have to. It wasn't part of the deal. He pays me a million dollars a year plus a piece of the upside. And he just said, Tony, you did so much for me. I just want to give you this additional quarter million dollar bonus. And it wasn't the money. It was the generosity that just knocked me off my truck seat. And so I called my wife. I said, honey, Paul just gave me a quarter million dollar bonus. I mean, it's like, he's so generous. And she goes, oh, that's nice, honey. Hey, do you know what I'm making for lunch? And I'm like, wow. So I used to get upset about now, I'm like, That's my squeaky little girls. I'm thrilled she doesn't have to think about it. I'm in charge. I don't think your partner has to. One of you has to master it.

And you have to have some alignment. Okay.

Right. But you don't want them to be against you, essentially. Well, sometimes they're gonna be. We were against each other in some ways. We're having fights. But what you eventually decide is, do I want to be right or do.

I want to be in love?

I'd rather be in love personally, right? That's a good quote. And then also I just said, you know, to her, I said, Listen, honey, I understand your intent. I had to go to her intent instead of being frustrated with her saying, this is really actually a cool quality and she's my opposite in that area. And it's a, we're a good balance together.

Right, right. You know, there's a lot of people that I grew up with who were poor, who had a negative mindset around money. They thought it was evil, that it was bad. What would you say to someone who has that mindset where they just, they have a story around money that isn't a positive one? Think of money, think of evil, bad, corruption, whatever it may be. How does someone shift it? Like what's... Is it a daily practice? Is it something they can do right away?

-It'S the truth. -Get to the truth. The truth is simple. Money does not change people. Money makes you more of what you are. It's a magnifying tool. So, what I show people is what you really want to do is create an income for life without working. the goal, if you own a business, and I would assume a lot of your viewers are business owners or getting started in business, think about how good you are in business. Think about this. The one universal rule that idiots in finance know is diversification. It's the only free lunch. You've got to diversify. Because if you put all your eggs in one basket, no matter how good the basket is, one day that real estate market, that stock market, that bond market, that collectibles market, whatever you invest in, Ray Dalio showed me statistically, it'll drop 50 to 70% on a day. Now, if you're later in life when that happens, it's over for you. So you have to diversify. And yet most people, they know real estate, so they do it, or they know stocks, so they do it, or they grew up with their parents flipping things. And it's the wrong thing to do. So you've got to diversify in order for you to be able to truly succeed. And that's why when you own a business, if you put all your money in your business, which is what most of us do naturally, you're taking a lot of risk. You put all your eggs in one basket and there's things that can happen. You know, you're, let's say you spent 20 years and you figured out how to put together the ultimate map, you know, and you remember Garmin came out with this thing called the TomTom. I don't know if you remember, used to put on your, are you old enough to remember that? Used to put on your phone? Yeah, yeah. Or you used to put on your, on your dash?

Cost a hundred bucks.

It was a breakthrough. They were making like a hundred million or something or, yeah, yeah. They were. Yeah, yeah. Six months later, what happened? The iPhone came out with Google Maps. These little bastards, excuse my French, came out with it, put Google Maps, put their own map on here and it cost how much? Zero. What are they going to do to your business when someone takes your product or service and gives it away for free? So I always tell people, competition happens, technology happens, what you must do is have a second business with no moving parts, no people, no time. Maybe it takes you two, three days a year for two or three hours after you've read the book, you put it in place and you measure it two or three times a year. That's it. Go on with your life. Now if there's a trouble in your business, you're financially set. I, in my life, have 31 companies now. We have, you know, what do we have? 1200 employees, seven different industries. We do 5 billion in sales. I mean, that used to be, you know, me and my seminar business. It's grown geometrically, but with all those moving parts, the only way I've been able to succeed is because I've taken every one of those businesses and I've diversified my assets so that when things were in trouble, I still have enough economics to take care of myself and keep the business going. So everybody needs to create a money machine that works while you sleep that doesn't have moving parts. And that's what this is really about.

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You have a great cartoon in the book. where there's a kid asking his father, you know, something about like, how do you invest your money or how does the stock market work? And he says, you put your money in at the peak, it starts to go down and lose money, and so you get scared and you take it out, and then someone smarter than you makes all the money. Something like that. So how do we, and I've done that in the past, where I put my money in somewhere high, it went down, and I was like, oh, I just lost a bunch of money. Let me take it out. and then I put it back in another time and I'm like, what am I doing? So how do we invest without fear of, oh, it's going down, I need to take it out, or like trying to time it, how do we do that? Great question.

It's one of the main reasons I wrote the book. I always tell people, if you just read the second chapter of the book, Nothing Else, it'll change your life. You can do that with multiple chapters, but that chapter is really about teaching people that winter is coming. We all know winter's coming, right? To coin a phrase. but that winter is the best time on earth. And I know that's counterintuitive, and I don't mean like being a positive thinker, I mean pure facts. So in the book, I take you through 10 facts. I'll give you a couple of them right now. The first fact I give people is, why do people not invest? They're afraid of failing. You're a millennial, right? So you grew up witnessing 2008 when you were still relatively young. How old are you now?

33.

Okay, so you were, what, 27? 2008? Yeah, 27 I guess. 27, 28 years old. So you're a young man and you're watching the world melting down in front of you. For most millennials, they are the first generation since the generation that went through the depression that is not investing at the ratio they need to, even close. And they have more debt than everyone probably, right?

With all the- They have more college.

Debt than everyone, absolutely true.

I have a friend that has $400,000 in debt, dental school.

President Obama just paid off his debt five years ago while he was still president. What? No. I swear to God.

It's mind boggling.

And he had a bunch of scholarships for the last bit it took him that long. So what I tell them is listen, paying off your debt's not enough. You've got to become an owner or you're always going to be in that place. So yes, pay off your debt, but here's what you need to know. You got to become an owner. You got to get in the game, but you got to understand the rules of the game. You don't know the rules of the game, the old phrase is, when a person with experience meets a person with money, we know the phrase. The person with the money ends up with the experience. The person with experience ends up with your money, right? So I teach people the rules of the game so they don't get screwed. But the most important thing is this, winter's coming, but people react. So let's take last year. Last January 2016, we had the worst stock market opening in the history of the stock market. Worst, first, I think it was 10 days. There was a drop of $2.3 trillion with a T. Crazy. Everybody's freaking thinking the bear market's here, the market's over, the crash is here. I think the market dropped 800 points one day and on that day, all the richest people in the world were in Davos, Switzerland, you know, for the big conference that they do every year. And they went there, MSNBC went there and everybody's freaking, what's happening? What are we going to do? And they said, let's go ask Ray Dalio. Now, your listeners may or may not know Ray Dalio is, if you're not in the financial business, probably never heard of him. You've probably heard of Warren Buffett, but Ray Dalio has done more. You have to have a $5 billion net worth and $100 million to give him where he wouldn't talk to you 10 years ago. Now he doesn't care shit how much money you have, he won't talk to you because he's You've got a closed fund. But they go and they put value on television, CNBC, he's the king. What do we do? And he says, well, you don't need to panic. Corrections happen all the time, but you need a strategy that when markets go up and down, you don't go up and down. And he said, I spent 15 years of my life to perfect such a strategy. All of my money's in that plan. And he said, It's called All Seasons, and I've never revealed it before, but I gave it to Tony Robbins. He extracted from me and it's his book. So you got to go read his book. This is what he says on national television, the data markets are crashing. And that day to give you an idea, which is the beginning of February, I think it was nine days into February, the market was down 9% in the first five weeks of the year. His strategy, which he gave me, which is made money 85% of the time for the last 75 years. It's averaged a 10% return just under, and the average loss when it 15% loss was 1.6. So if you go to Vegas and you could spend 85% of time make money and when you made money was 10% and your loss is 1.6, you can go forever. His plan made 2% while the market was down 9. So it was up 11% difference. Now, I'm not suggesting that's the only strategy to do. There's many. His is the smoothest ride with the least risk. But what it did was combination of that and then right after that, I interviewed Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. He was the head of our economy, the most powerful man in finance for 19 years, four presidents, he was there running. I was just with President Clinton this last week. He was the Fed chair for him. And I interviewed him for like two hours, or three hours off stage, two hours in front. And I asked him, in the very beginning of this thing, I said to him, I said, look, if you could put the Fed today, what would you do? And he looks at me and as I said, he leans forward and he says, resign. So I look at that and go, oh my God, I need to write a book that'll free people. So here's what will free you. Everybody's afraid of the crash. So here's what we need to know. Two terms you should understand. Correction versus crash. Anytime the market drops from its high by 10% or more up to 20%, it's called a correction. If it drops 20% or more up to 80%, like in the Great Depression, then it's called a crash or called a bear market. So how often does a correction happen? How often do we have to be prepared for it? Since 1900, we've had a correction on average every year for 116 years. So when is winter coming? This year on average. It's like how often does winter come? You wouldn't be surprised if it stormed and rained. Now some winters are long, some are short, some are harsh, some are light, but winter always comes. So I wasn't panicked when this happened last year. I'm not panicked whenever it happens because I know it's supposed to be. How long does it last? Average, 56 days. Okay, so just under two months. What's the average drop during that time? 14% over the last 30 years, 13.5 of the last 100 years. So I use the more recent one. 14% gets your attention, right? 14% you get a little gut check. But here's what you need to know. 80% of all corrections never become a bear market. 80%. So all this fear and what people do is what you said you did is they see it, it's freaking out, I'm losing money, I'm the hell out of here. And they get out. the stock market never took a dime from anybody. Only you can take it from you. You sold, that's why you lost. Right. Right? So if you look back and say, what was it like in 2008? I can remember vividly being with my platinum partners and saying, you see these $80 stocks? This is six months before the crash. I told them in April, I brought them to Dubai and I said, these stocks are gonna go to eight and some are gonna go to a buck. And by October, and I told them what to do. So they were able to get out. October, I go on the Today Show in October of 2008 and they go, Tony, there's been $3 trillion meltdown. Pump the country up, you got four minutes. Ready, go. That's not what I do, first of all, and I said, that'd be a lie. I'm not gonna be a bubble. At that point, the $80 stocks were eight. I said, some of those, I said, I'm not a market forecaster, but I work with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest investors in the history of the world in the biggest market crash in history, 1987. he made 200% when everybody else was losing their entire life. I've been coaching him continuously now for 24 years, every single day. So I said, I work with the best in the world, and they're telling me based on history in the 30s and history in the 70s, this $8 stock, some are gonna be a buck. And I remember the day in March of 2009, Citibank, which had been, I think, $70, sold for 97 cents. You could go and take your money out of the ATM. It cost you more to take your money out than to own the bank. And then I told people, it'll jump from 99 cents to $6.10, $12 in a month or two, and it's exactly what it did. So what you got to know is corrections happen every year. You got another couple of months, got to know it's 14% and you won't lose because 80% of the time it doesn't go to a bear. Now, what about the bear? The bear market, it happens to give you an idea in the last 100 years, every three to five years, you've gone eight without one. We're way overdue. In modern years, last 30 years, it's about every five years. The average length of a bear is one year. The average drop is 33%. A third of those drops go 40% or above. I don't care how well prepared you are, that's a scary thing. But it is the greatest opportunity in your lifetime to go from wherever you are financially to where you want to be. I hope your audience is listening right now.

Hear me.

If you want to leapfrog and you're a millennial and you think there's no future or you're a baby boomer and you think you're too old and it's too late, the greatest gift you have is coming. I know it doesn't sound like it. This is not positive thinking bullshit. This is the truth. Wall Street, the stock market is the only place that when things go on sale, people freak out. if I said, you like Ferraris? Sure. If I said to you, Ferraris go on sale for 50% off. Awesome. But when I tell you Apple's on sale for 50% off, you go, oh, what am I gonna do here? What's wrong? The whole world's coming to an end. If you think about it, how old are you? 33. 33. So let's assume if you were 35 and you lived to 85, you got 50, 52 years ahead of you. That means you have 52 more corrections to live through. Right. That means your probably in those 50 years gonna have 10 more bear markets to live through. If you're gonna have a gut checks every time or you're gonna leave out of it, if you didn't participate because you thought, oh, the market's too volatile, I can't trust it, all that stuff, you missed 250% return in the last eight years. I mean, you've missed out on everything while you're waiting for things to be better. And if you won't do it when it's like this, when it crashes, you're not gonna get in. So here's the good news about the bear. Good news about the bear, average ones a year. Could be longer, but that's the average. Could be shorter. But here's what's cool. Every single bear market in the history of the United States has led to a bull market, meaning right afterwards. So 2008, this plummeting, what happened in 2009? Up 67% in a year. I can show you every single bear market, and the next year when it comes out, it's this explosion. Now, that's not true in every market in the world. It's true for two centuries. in the United States. So that's why Warren Buffett says, I want to be greedy when people are afraid. And I want to be afraid when people are greedy. If you remember 2008, he was telling everybody, buy. He was having the time of his life. Buy, buy, buy, everything's on sale. So what you have to do to become unshakable is turn, the metaphor I use is turn the snake into the rope. Meaning, we all know the story. It's the middle of the night, you're walking through the yard or some place, and you see a snake and you freak out. You pull back, you come in the morning and it's a rope. once you know it's a rope, you're never afraid again. I want to take for people investing and show them how to turn that snake into the rope it really is. And I'll tell you one final stat on all this. People always say, and you started bringing up timing.

How do I time it?

Right now, things are too expensive. I want to wait. People have been saying that for eight years. Is there going to be a correction? Yes. But when it corrects, you want to invest again. You'll get dollar cost averaging. If you paid a little too much here, you'll pay paying less here. It'll bring the average price. to a reasonable place. It's going to allow you to succeed. But here's what people need to know about timing. If you are not in the market, it's the most dangerous thing. This is so counterintuitive, so I hope your audience is listening. Let me show you. There's two different research projects. One was done by JP Morgan. I just spoke for them the other day at their alternative investments conference. And to be in the room, there are 400 people. You have to have a billion dollar network to get in the room. Crazy. It was mind-boggling, right? JPMorgan did a study and also Schwab did a separate study, 20 year studies. In the last 20 years, to give you an idea, the average S&P 500, that index has produced 8.2%. Over 30 years, it was 10.28. But in the last 20 years, a little bit less. Still great. You double your money roughly, you're in a position where you double the money a little more than every, you know, what is it now, 7.2, so it'd.

Be like a little more than 10 years.

Here's what they found out. If you missed the 10 best trading days in 20 years, because you're trying to time the market and you're not in it during one of those days, you went from 8.2% return over that period per annum per year, it dropped down almost half, 4.5%. What are the chances of you knowing the past 10 days to trade in 20 years? None. Warren Buffett said, Market timers and market forecasters are only there to make fortune tellers look good. because no one can do it successfully. Even if they do it for a while, it doesn't last. It's luck. You know, Jack Bogle told me, he started Vanguard, you know, $3 trillion company. He said, we took gorillas, a thousand in a room and had them flip coins. And we did, we said, how many times have you got heads, how many you got tails? Just gorillas flipping them randomly. And he said, one gorilla in that set of those turns flipped heads 21 times in a row. Now, when you look at that, see all these gorillas doing it, you look on and say, what a lucky gorilla. He said, But in the hedge fund industry, in the mutual fund industry, when somebody does 10 in a row, you go, what a brilliant investor. -Right. What a genius. In the book, I was really excited.

To hear you talk about, you say the secret to wealth is gratitude. Somewhere in the book it says that. And I think maybe it was someone else you were referencing.

-Yes.

It came from Sir John Templeton. -And every day I practice gratitude. When I wake up and every night, I always try to say to my girlfriend or someone I'm talking to, before I go to sleep. Three things I'm most grateful for. Great. Now, why-- so I was pleased to see that. I was like, I'm on the right.

Track if I'm living in gratitude, but why is that the secret to wealth? Well, Sir John Templeton is probably one of the greatest investors in history. People don't know his name. He started out with nothing. He wasn't Sir, he wasn't from another country, came from the US. And he decided that he wanted to understand wealth. And so he saved $10,000, a huge amount of money in those days. And when Hitler invaded Poland, he developed a belief. His belief was you make your money in times of maximum pessimism. Like if you were around in 2000, eight, nine, you remember what it was like, right? You could have bought, you know, the Sands in Las Vegas, you could have bought their stock for $2.28. Today it's $67. It's a 3000% return. Not bad. You could have bought Citibank for less than a buck, right? So people in those times, he understood that. And so what he did was, and everybody thought the world was gonna end, He took $10,000. He bought every stock on the New York Stock Exchange. It was a dollar or less, including companies everybody thought were going bankrupt. But when things are bad, people think it's going to be bad forever. When things are good, they think it's going to be good forever. And they're always wrong. Life's cyclical. So there's a season for everything. So once we got through World War II and a few years later, guess what? Those same stocks made him a billionaire. So when I asked him, I said, what's the secret to wealth? His response was, you know it, you teach it. I said, what's that? He said, gratitude. and I said, why do you say that? He said, because if you got a billion dollars and every day you live pissed off and frustrated, the quality of your life is called pissed off and frustrated. But if you have nothing, but you're euphorically grateful for whatever you have, you're the richest person that you're going to know. He said, so it doesn't matter how much money you got if you don't have gratitude. So I do the same thing, by the way. I have a process I call it priming where I get up every morning, I do mine in the morning, and it just radical change to my body, kind of alter my state. And then I do 10 minutes, I never miss. And my first three and a half minutes is what I'm really grateful for. And I make myself think of at least one of those three that something really simplistic, instead of something giant, you know, the wind on my face, the look in one of my kids' eyes, you know, something of that nature. And then I do three minutes of strengthening healing and I do three minutes of what I'm gonna create my world. And I do that for a minimum of 10 minutes every day because I.

Believe you have to condition it.

You don't just hope that stuff shows up.

You set your intention each morning. But I do it every day.

Yeah, very cool. So what are you most grateful for recently in your life? So many things. Well, it's Thanksgiving. So one piece, well one is my daughter is 40 years old and she's, She's been a wife and a child forever and she's gonna bring me a grandson.

Wow.

Congratulations. Thank you very much. That's cool. But also it's Thanksgiving. So for me, it's a very emotional time because my family was fed when I was 11. We had no food at Thanksgiving and it touched me so deeply and I decided I was gonna get back. So when I was 17, I fed two families and then four and then eight. And then I didn't tell anybody I was doing it. And then I got my friends to.

Do it and my companies grew.

And, you know, I've fed 42 million people now over 37 years. But you have a challenge for this, right?

100 million people.

Well, this one, what I did is I decided, you know, I'm writing this book and in the middle of writing it, last summer, most people didn't even notice Congress cut food stamps. They don't call them food stamps anymore, but I lived on them, so I know what they are food stamps. My family lived on them, but they cut it by 8.7 billion, which means you eliminate 2 million people from the rolls overnight and they still need to eat. So I support all these nonprofit organizations and Feeding America is the largest in the country. and so I thought, I want to call attention to this. So if I donated all the profits of this book in advance, how many people could I feed? Because I normally feed 2 million to my foundation and I match it. So I feed 4 million a year. And they said, you can feed 10 million people. It was like, wow. I mean, and then as the years gone by, I've got more and more inspired. And so now I'm going to feed 50 million people personally. Not just from the book, I'm writing a larger check on top of it, but also I'm working with Feeding America to get matching funds. to feed 100 million people. Incredible. So to go from my family not being able to eat to feeding 100 million people is a pretty amazing sense of gratitude and a sense of grace. And I've done my part, but there's.

Been grace in that as well. That's amazing. It's incredible what you're doing and very inspiring.

So thank you for doing that. So anybody gets a book, you're feeding families.

That's being prominent for you.

But it also feed on the average.

50 families every book. 100% is being donated. Not only 100%. More than that. That's amazing. Now, I think I also read in the book, I don't know if you said this or someone else said this, but the key to living is giving.

Yes.

Now, I think I might have heard you say this actually back when I first saw you when I was 16 at an event. And I remember thinking, I don't have anything to give. I don't have any money, how am I supposed to invest my money 10, 20% every month? And then how can I give on top of that? But I really understood that it's so valuable and important to give. And I work with a lot of nonprofits myself, building schools for kids around the world. And I've seen a big impact in my life in the way I'm able to serve people.

Sir John Templeton told me that he's never seen anyone tithes, which tithing is usually 10% of what you earn for at least a decade. He didn't become incredibly financially free. And I think the reason is I had a moment when my whole life changed. It was kind of twofold. I was really young like yourself back then, working my tail off, trying to build a business. Big goals. You don't always succeed to start with. right? You know, it was hard. And I remember I was so frustrated because I was working 18 hour days and nothing was working and I was broke and I felt embarrassed, you know, I should be doing better than this. And so I was driving home from Orange County on the 57 freeway in San Gabriel Valley, out near Pomona, California. It probably doesn't know anybody else, but I can remember so vividly because it was almost midnight. And I was at this breaking point. And then I was like, why am I not, you know, doing better? And then I just pulled over the road and I used to keep these journals. I still have them written journals. And I wrote in big lines, you know, the secret to living is giving. And I started to cry. And I realized I am so focused on what am I not getting? I'm focusing on what I'm giving. So for six months, man, it turned me around. But then, you know, something else I get in your body, it was in my head, it was in my heart, but I had to get in there to stay. And I started going through some really tough times. And I lost everything financially. And I was mad at everybody because like, I've loaned a friend a thousand bucks and, you know, I'm doing well. He didn't even return my phone call. And what changed me was I was down to, I don't know, 22, 23 bucks, something like that. I don't know, it was $24. Enough that I knew that I didn't have money for food for the next week, clearly. And I didn't have any prospects. And I was living in Venice in this 400 square foot bachelor apartment, feeling sorry for myself. And I thought, you know what? I gotta eat. So I'm not gonna drive my car 'cause I'm not gonna spend the gas. I'm not gonna pay for parking. I'm gonna go to an all-you-can-eat place and load up for the winter, right? So I could get more by one meal a day. Right. And so there's a place called Marina Del Rey, not far from Venice. And it's beautiful community and it's right on the water. And there's a place called El Churrito. It's still there. It's a little restaurant. It had taco bar and all that kind of stuff. So I walked there for the three miles and I go, okay, I'm gonna go and load up. And I was all about myself and getting through this. And this little, this woman walked the door, actually very attractive lady. That's probably why I caught my eye. And I'm waiting to see who her boyfriend is. And there's nobody up there. There's a little guy down here. It was obviously her son. And he's wearing this three-piece suit, you know, a little vest. He opens the door for her, he pulls out the chair for her. And it was just, he stared into his mother's eyes. I mean, it was just pierced into her eyes. I don't know what it was, but something about him was just so moving. It was such a sweet, caring, loving young man. It was mother that moved me. So I paid for my meal. I don't know, it was left 17, 18 bucks. Put it back in my pocket, was left. Walked up to this young man, introduced myself, And I said, hi, I don't remember his name. I think he said his name was Ronnie. And I said, Ronnie, I said, you,'re really-- I said, you,'re a class actor. I saw how you opened the door for your lady. I saw how you held up the chair for your lady. He goes, She's my mom. I said, that's even more classy. And I said, so cool that you're taking her out to lunch like this. And he goes, well, I'm not really taking her out to lunch because I'm just 11 and I don't have a job, you know? I said, yes, you are. And I had no plan. I literally just reached in my pocket, took all the money I had, changed dollar bills and-- throw it right there in front of him. You look at me like this? He goes, I can't take that. I said, sure you can. He said, why? I said, because I'm bigger than you are. And he got this big grin in his face. His eyes got this big. And I didn't, I just shook his hand. I didn't even look at this, his mom. And I just walked out the door. But the reason I tell you the story is I had no car, I had no money. I did not, I was euphoric. I was like flying home. I was like, you know, I probably looked like an idiot, probably skipping or something. I mean, I was just I, and what I felt was, I should have been like, what the hell did you just do? I have no meal or are we gonna eat? I went home that night, I laid out a plan and the plan was gonna take me, you know, 10 days, two weeks. So I thought, well, people fast for a week. I could fast for a week, you know, that type of thing. And I had this great mindset about it. And I woke up the next morning and I get the old regular snail mail shows up and it's this guy called a zillion times. He wouldn't return my call. I open it up, there's a check, thousand bucks plus interest and an apology. Wow. So I'm sitting there and I started to cry, honestly, and I was just like, why did this happen? You know? And I don't know if it's true, but I decided that day this happened because I did the right thing. Because I didn't have a plan. It wasn't a strategy. I just thought this little soul beside me, I knew it was right and I did it. And I didn't do it because I thought I could or I couldn't. I didn't even think about it. And that's the day I became a wealthy man because I didn't have any money. But scarcity left my body. And I had plenty of ups and downs since that time, various times in my life. But I never went back to that, oh my God, you know, how's it gonna happen? It's like breathing. Do you stop and say, God, is there gonna be any air before you take a breath? You know it's gonna be there. You don't run your life by that aspect. And so that to me is what it's about, is showing people, if you won't give a dime out of a dollar, don't bullshit yourself. You'll never give a million out of 10 million or 10 million out of 100 million. It's just not gonna happen. But if you can do that now, you don't ever get beyond scarcity.

You start behind it.

You make a decision to get beyond it.

So how does someone, you know, when they're living in scarcity, they're living in fear.

Yeah.

And it's like this emotional feeling. It's in your body. Like you say, when you're like, I can't even pay for my meal. How am I gonna, like, start giving? What are some things that people can do to start overcoming that mindset or.

Start strengthening it or shifting it? I'll tell you what I did when I was first on my own. You know, I got my dad. My mom kicked my dad out when I was 17. She's very powerful among my forefathers, so. They all learned how to get the boot. She thought I was in his side, so she kicked me out next. I was 17. She chased me out with a knife. She wouldn't have hurt me, but I wasn't going back in the room. And, that's how I figured out what to do. And I didn't have a place to stay and, you know, I ended up staying in somebody's laundry room for a while. And then I started reading and feeding my mind. And then I developed this little system. And the system was really simple. And I tell people now, as I say, number one, every single day, you got to feed and strengthen your mind. Until you do that, you're always going to be in fear. because fear is automatic. The human brain is designed for survival. It's not designed for Success. Your brain is not designed to make you happy. That's your job. Right. And the only way you're going to do it is if you feed your mind, because otherwise, weeds grow automatically. My, my coach, my Mentor, Jim Rohn, used to tell me, he said, Tony, every day you got to stand guard at the door of your mind. You gotta watch what's going in, because if you're not careful, stuff will go in. And he said, all the times it's somebody who cares about you. He said, you know, if you're, your family. Yeah. Yeah. If your worst enemy puts sugar in your coffee. He said, what happens? I said, you got sweet coffee. He goes, well, if your best friend by accident or your family don't mean to, they drop one drop of strychnine in your coffee, you're dead. He said, so life, sugar and strychnine, a watch of coffee. Right, right. So every day I decided, I'm old enough, honestly, there was no internet those days. And pretty ancient, I used to go to the library because there's the only place you go. And I would read biographies. I'd read people's lives and it'd make me go, wait a second. As bad as I think it is, the greatest people in the world had it worse. Sure. So there's something here. so you feed your mind. I, Jim Rohn, you say to me, skip a meal, but don't skip reading. Said, read 30 minutes a day. I don't give a damn what it is. Today, I don't mean internet crap. I mean, read something, a biography, read something that's a strategy. Read something that's going to change your life. And the second thing I tell people is feeding your mind's great, but you've got to also strengthen your body. And you do that as an athlete, naturally. I learned to do that because fear is physical, right? You know where you feel it. And if you go work out, if you go lift, if you go run, even if you're out of shape, you just an intense walk. That experience alone changes your life. Every day in my life, the first thing I do before I do my priming, if I'm in one of my homes, I jump in some hot water for fun and then I jump in freezing water. And I have, you know, a river, you know, in one of my homes in the Sun Valley and I've got cold plunges everywhere else. So I go in 57 degree water, boom. And what it does is like, it's teaching my brain. I do, I tell my brain what to do and it does it. It doesn't feel like it doesn't want to do it. And every cell in your body is alive, right? So it doesn't have to be like two hours worth of something. It could be something you do for 30 seconds, but it's training your body to be strong because a strong body could strong mind and vice versa. The third thing I tell people is find a role model. It seems impossible till you see somebody's done it. So Ray Dalio is one of the greatest investors in history. The guy was a caddy, right? His dad was a jazz musician. His mom was a homemaker.

He's worth $14 billion.

He found someone to mentor him. Well, he found multiple people to model. You don't always find a mentor, but you find somebody you can model. And when you start seeing that somebody else can do it, and you see they really did, you start to believe, you start to get certainty. And then the fourth thing I tell people is it's massive action and constantly change your approach. And then it's find somebody worse off than you are and help them. Because when you do that, it gets you out of yourself. And that's what I really have people do. That's what we do at Thanksgiving. We have our basket brigade where 2 million people get fed.

Amazing.

Not in the one I do, the one that I get people to do. And it's amazing people go in there and they see, my God, I thought my life was tough. Look at this person's life. It makes you appreciative and puts life in perspective.

Yeah, very cool. And there you have it, mind blown. If you enjoyed this interview, make sure to share with your friends. This is the best of Tony Robbins from three different interviews that I've done with him. We brought the best information. Share it with a friend today. Be a hero to a few of your friends. Just text them in a group chat right now. The link is lewishouse.com/794 or you can copy and paste the link on the podcast app that you are listening to right now and text 12345 friends posted on your Instagram story. Tag me and tag @tonyrobbins as well. I know he checks out some of his stories. So make sure to tag him to send him some love. And again, Tony said that the secret to living is giving. What are you doing right now with your life? Every single day, are you complaining or are you upset that you're not receiving more than you want to receive, that you haven't accomplished everything you want to accomplish? The key to accomplishing more is to give more. The more you give, the more you will receive. It's a law, guys. This is principle, it will happen. You just have to learn how to.

Receive after you give.

Some people are hard at receiving. I know that took me a long time because I was really good at giving, but I didn't know how to receive that well. If that's you, just nod your head. And again, if you want to be a giver today, you can just share this link with a friend. That's a way to give inspiration, to give insights, to give tools, to help someone improve their life. So share this with a friend. lewishouse.com/794 and thank you guys so much for all you do to make this podcast great. We are almost at 800 episodes. It's crazy how much it's grown over the last six plus years. So thank you so much. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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