In this interview excerpt, Tony Robbins recounts his lifelong experience with food assistance programs, noting that he grew up relying on SNAP (formerly food stamps). Motivated by his personal history and the insights he gained while writing his book Money Master the Game, he launched a series of ambitious feeding initiatives with Feeding America. He calculated that he had already helped provide 42 million meals over his lifetime and set a goal to match that number within a single year, eventually scaling to a billion‑meal challenge that he completed over eight years. Currently, Robbins is pursuing a 100‑billion‑meal target, having delivered 30 billion meals in the first two years of the new campaign. He urges viewers to support the effort by donating through feedingamerica.com/tonyrobbins, promising to match contributions up to $5 million annually. Robbins explains how he leverages his extensive business network—114 partner companies generating $9 billion in revenue—to amplify the impact of his philanthropy. He also highlights his anti‑trafficking work, stating that he and his wife have rescued 71,000 children from trafficking in the past seven years, often working undercover with leading organizations.
Chapters
I did a billion meal challenge with Feeding America as my partner. I said I fed up to 42 million meals before that over my lifetime. And I thought, what if in a year, I did as much as I did in a lifetime? Because I was writing this book, Money Master the Game, and I'm interviewing all these billionaires, and I watched them take what's now called the SNAP program. It used to be called, you know, coupons or whatever it was called. I'm blanking the name of it. We used to live on it in my childhood, but they wiped out 6 billion from that so that families that really need it in order to cut the budgets, they cut that. So a family needs. It would have to go one week out of every month without food unless people like you. And I stepped up. So I was like, I'm writing this book on money, and I'm meeting these billionaires, and they're cutting this for these people. And I was like. I called my offices and on my foundation, I said, how many people have I fed total in my life? I'd never added it up. It was 42 million. I was like, wow. I was like, what if I fed as many people in a year as I did in my whole lifetime? What if I fed 50 million? And I went, what if I fed 100 million? What if I fed 100 million for 10 years and fed a billion meals? And I did in eight years. We finished that a couple years ago. So Now I'm doing 100 billion meal challenge, and we just announced 30 billion meals we've done in the first two years.
How can the audience help support that?
You can go to feedingamerica.com forward slash. I think it's TonyRobbins if you want to. And whatever you do, I'll double. Oh. So it's like, yeah. And I do that up to, you know, 5 million bucks a year to give me an idea to support that. So I'm doing another billion. I've already done a billion. Why did
it exponentially grow like that? What have you found to. It
didn't. It started with me feeding two families when I was 17, and then four, and then eight. Then I had a little company. I got my 12 people involved, and now I have, you know, I've got what now? 114 companies, and we do $9 billion in business across all these industries. So I use the leverage of all that, and then that's also what the wealth is for. You know, the financial freedom is for. It's like, I. I don't need anything more. There's no toys or something that I'm after, and that never drove me anyway. But being able to, like. I'm really proud. My wife and I have saved 71,000 children from trafficking just in the last seven years, working with some of the best organizations. I've gone out on those undercover.
