How Tony Robbins $125M Loss Became His Greatest Lesson...

Do you think some people who are math people and logical, they're conservative? Do you think people that are born more with creative right brain, they're liberal, and then maybe even some of the zodiac. I'm curious to know what you'll say about Zodiac. Is there certain people where you'll see patterns to say, that guy's independent, he knows how to entertain both ideas and then say, here's what I think we need to be doing, right? So, and then negative and positive. Are there people that you believe are born negative, positive? Like, is there such a thing as a crap magnet? Somebody that they just can't help themselves, they can't be sick? Do you believe in that?

No, I do believe we have nature that we're born with. And I look at lots of different patterns to understand what makes somebody tick. Not just one. I use Chinese medicine as one to notice, is this person more water, Are they more wood? Each of those qualities, you're kind of born with certain things. If you're wood driven, as an example in Chinese medicine, you're a pioneer, you're driven, you push. This would be a very strong one for you. For example, that wood person has got to grow that wood person. They face challenges with more intensity. Every one of these also under stress or in a negative state, their positives can become a negative. Those people get angry very easily if it doesn't move forward, Right. Steve Jobs would be a perfect example of that. Right? It's like if you know Steve Jobs, he was brutal, right? But he was committed to the outcome, whatever it takes. If you get around somebody who's fire driven, this is somebody who's born where they're always joking, they're super optimistic, everything's funny. And some of you are irritated by them because they're cracking up about when they're talking about something serious, right? But fires burn. They have this tremendous energy. But fires also, they burn out very quickly. If one of the things they have physiologically, because Chinese medicine treats everyone differently. Based on your constitution, right? The physiologically, if they don't eat, they get hangry. My wife is a fire, by the way, and I've got very strong wood and a lot of strong fire. So she has got this tremendous energy, excitement. But we don't go anywhere without food because you know what's going to happen, right? The sweetest person on earth is going to become crazy. If you're somebody more earth, you're more the person, less extroverted, more, you know, you're the peacekeeper. What you care about is everybody Getting along. You care about harmony and the community. My second strongest is. Is actually Earth because that's how I build communities. That's what I do. That's why I care as deep as I do. Then there's some people that are metals, by the way. These are based on the seasons. They just look at fall in two levels. They look at. At the beginning of fall, end of fall. Beginning is earth, the end is metals. And metals is someone who is very, very precise. Everything has to be a very specific way. They're very elegant in their delivery. They think things through very, very specifically. And the challenge for them is if it doesn't go exactly that way, they can get very frustrated, get a lot of grief in them. And then there's water. Water's like the philosopher, the person that they lose themselves in things and they go off. And by the way, we have all these qualities.

So.

But it's which one's strongest in. Right. The water will wants to know truth and they think it through and they'll. They lose themselves. So just as an example, understanding those just. That's one typology. I use dozens. Right. That helps me know that. Okay. In my life, my wife's fire. I know that this is my fire. She's going to burn this way. I don't get upset by it. I don't think she should be like me. If I got a son, which I do, that's more Earth, he's not going to be as driven as me. I used to think he's got to have the same drive. Jericho. Yes. He's. He's. He's unbelievable. He's got a heart of gold and he works hard and does a great job. He's unbelievable.

Coach, you can say he's a sweet guy. He's sweet.

He's got more earth.

Right?

Right. He can fire off his wood, but it feels a little not natural for him as real. Sure. And then, you know, I can look at my other son is fire. He's always cracking up. So I. Each of my kids are differently as well. I've got. In my life, you know, my wife couldn't carry. So we. We have a woman who'd been with us for 12 years. Dear, dear friend. Traveled with us everywhere. Names Mary. And Mary's part of our family and she carried our child, our latest child, because my wife couldn't carry. So we're a family. We didn't send her away. Surrogate. Yeah, she's our surrogate. But we kept her. So we even made her the VI die if Sage dies, that she also. She's the person ends up with our child. That's how deep it is. But she's very much a water person. Mary is. And so, like if we want to go to a movie and I'm going to a movie to escape, I want to go take off. Here's the time of the movie. Let's go. Right? And then I'm like, where's Mary? She got caught up in something and I used to get frustrated about it. Now I anticipate it. Mary's going to get lost, so I'm going to let her know it's 15 minutes earlier. I'm going to go find those reminders and I'll get upset about it. So my point is, I could give you a dozen of these examples. This is only one example where understanding people's nature is where now you can empower people the most. Not making them be like you, that's the problem people do with their kids. You have how many kids?

Four of them.

Four kids. Yeah, I know. I'm sure you don't have a favorite kid, but do you have an easier kid?

Do I have an easier kid? Yeah, I do.

Yes.

Yeah.

Isn't he more like you or Sheik?

Well, the one that's more like me is super competitive, but I don't, I don't have a challenge with any one of them.

That's great.

I'll tell you like one of them is.

I have.

Oldest one is purely politics and fighting. He reads and devours books. Like he just finished a book on Thomas Soul. 600 pages. He just, you know, he's, he'll go through Atlas Shrug, Fountainhead. He'll just kind of go through it.

Right.

The other one is.

How is he?

He's 12. The 11 year old is a sports guy. You know, he trains every day, three, four hours. And for soccer he's got straight A's.

Yeah.

And his worst grade is 93.

That's awesome.

And he's extremely independent and prepared. My two girls, you know, the obviously youngest one is three. She's just the most charming, charismatic out of the entire family. But I would say a couple of them, you know, my oldest, my wife would tell you, has a side of my personality inside of hers. And my youngest son has a lot of me in them. Yes, a lot of me in them. So he likes to always be around me.

Yes. The one that's most likely is usually the easiest influence because you try to influence them the way what influence you. If. So you clean your room. What worked for you, you'll deal with that kid and you'll respond. The other one might say read between the lines or maybe you won't do that but certainly not going to respond. Respond right at the same level.

I think what you're trying to say is. And babe, if you're listening, he's trying to say have more kids so you can like I'm trying to get my. That's what, that's how I interpreted it, Jen. I just.

But go ahead, you were saying.

I digress.

I love that. No, I'm just suggesting that most people are good influencing people that are like themselves and that the more you understand how people are different to influence another person you have to know what already influences them. And so when you're talking about these people that you're describing in salespeople, here's a question for you. Can you take a very non social person, can they be a great salesperson? Could they do well in a sales job?

Great. You can make them a 7. Can I make them a 9 or a 10 naturally. Where another guy's naturally comfortable doing that? Probably not.

Probably not. You could probably do a 9 for a short period of time when they're really hungry and. But the second question is will they do the job well long term? And the answer is no, because it doesn't match their nature. If you take someone who's very super social and make them an accountant, can they do a good job? Yes. Will he do a good job long term?

Bored out of their minds. They gotta get out, they gotta be around people.

So you have to match the nature to the person as opposed to saying there, this is the wrong person. You've got people you've brought in that maybe you didn't recognize the patterns yet of who are the best. I, one of the ways we do it and salespeople and all my companies, I learned this from a partner I had years ago who passed away. We, we know that we need somebody in that position. I want something in that position that cares, that connects with people. But if they care so much, sometimes they just accept limitations. I accept your limitations. Then there's no growth for you. Right? There's a sales always made either. I persuade you what's possible, you persuade me what's not. So you need some with ego strength who can take rejection. So what we do in our companies, we have a standard process. We put out an ad, let's say that says looking for the very best influencers. Top of the line, world class, nothing less. Great opportunities, great economics call only if you're world class. And then they call and they say, I'm calling for this job. And they talk for a few seconds and we say, oh, yeah, well, you don't sound world class to me. Versus, well, can you tell me about job? No, tell me about you. And within a few seconds, we usually hang up the phone. Now, we do that with everyone, even the most talented people. Why? Because we're working for the guy that calls back, you know, and he'll say, oh, you know, it must have been a bad connection. You disconnected from me. We said, no, we just weren't getting it. And we'll hang up again. The person will come three times, and we'll use humor or connection or break our pattern. That's the person we now take to an interview. When we do the interviews, we do the same things. You get rejected so many times going through our process that only the absolute strongest egos there, but we're also looking for the strongest caring.

So let me.

So we look for someone. I think of it this way. Good people are found and then trained. Not just trained, okay, for a particular position. It's different for everybody based on their nature.

So now, like, you know, we got disc star, all these other things that are out there that we can use. So there's a lot of people that would love to work for Tony Robbins. Okay, Some of them get a chance to work for Tony Robbins. But you've talked about it where I think one time, what was the amount of money that one of your partners or somebody took?

I don't.

I don't know. I remember a big number. It was a couple $400 million. I think it was 125 million.

$125 million.

Okay, so how does a Tony allow or not catch a pattern or somebody with a bad character who comes in that's able to take advantage of the great Tony Robbins? You got to be kidding me. How does that happen?

Well, it happened at much earlier age, but it also happened because I looked at somebody who had taken a company. I know this person for more than 10 years, want to do business with them. And he worked with a large network marketing company at the time. He took him from losing a million dollars a day to making 1.6 billion in EBITDA.

So the track record was pretty in.

EBITDA, and I won't tell you the company Amway. And. And so they were losing money, turned them around. His name is Bill, and Bill always wanted to do business with me, but he'd been there for a long time and Then one day, you know, he had had a meeting and the founders weren't involved and the kids were involved, and the kids were in a situation where he wanted them in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they're based, you know, take on and help sponsor this, you know, the center for kids that were left behind. And he only won a million dollars from each. And they all have more money than they could ever dream of. And they all turned him down. And they all bought brand new Gulf Streams, each of them, and it pushed them over the edge and goes, tony, I'm out of here. I'm leaving. I'm going to come join you. So we came. We're going to form a company and go overseas and do this. And then he didn't call me for three weeks after this. And John Paul dejori, if you know, you know, Paul Mitchell Hair care was. Or if you know, Patron Tequila Multibillionaire, he was my partner as well in doing this. So we're going to go.

He lives close to you, the patron. We. We looked at his house. He's in the Millionaire, if you know what I'm talking about.

Yes, I do. Yeah. So anyway, the two of them come to Fiji. We have a meeting, we agree. Then he doesn't talk to me for three weeks. I'm like, something's wrong. He finally calls me up and says, tony, I don't know what to do. You know, I went to the board meeting and said, I shouldn't participate in this board meeting. I'm going to go off of Tony Robbins, start this business. And one of the founders of Amway, who's since passed, got him. And there was no zoom in those days. Got a satellite link he was having a heart transplant and said, you're going to leave me in this situation. He didn't like the kids. He loved the founders. He goes, I don't know what to do. I said, brother, you got to stay there. I mean, I'm disappointed. Obviously, we got to stay because it's not fair to you, because it doesn't matter. It's not fair. You got to stay there. And so then he said, well, when. When the founder dies, we can become partners. I said, oh, great, I'm going to root for the founder to die to make this happen. So, long story shortened.

He.

He finally came to me and said, he's still alive, but if we take one of his kids, we can be partnered with them, not in network marketing. We can build this set of nutritional companies together and we'll have, you know, a billion six worth of resources here to help make that happen. But what I didn't know is that the co founder, the one of the children there who thought he was. We thought he was a billionaire. He represent himself a billionaire and signed the deal. He had not inherited any money at that point. He only had $5 million to his name. And we went and purchased Twin Labs and several other companies. And then what happened was overnight Twin Labs had a lawsuit. Several things occurred and we found out these guys had no resources whatsoever from Amway. And so I had to figure out what to do, how to turn things around. Because you sign a deal called joint and several, you probably know what that means. Back then I didn't know that meant that, yeah, I'm not on for 1/4 of this. I'm on the hit for all of it. If I had the most money and I did. So I went through that process. But guess what? The way you become great in life and in business is by crossing the threshold of your comfort zones. Right? I mean think of it as there's a threshold of control when you're young. Your threshold control is I can handle anything within this circle of influence. But that's out here. It's kind of tough. But if you get enough challenges, hopefully you break through and you solve all those problems. And now all these problems are solved. That's how you grow, right? So I had to solve a $50,000 problem one time to stay in business or go bankrupt. Now I gotta solve $125 million process and me grow. That's how you get to multi billions because you learn how to deal with thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions. So it was one of the most valuable experience of my life. I never made the mistake again. Join several mistake and also you can't bet on one of your partners. You got to know who all your partners are. So every experience I've ever had.

So what, what, oh what different approach do you have to the game now when it comes down to that? So if you're going to do business with somebody or you're going to hire somebody that's going to have access to all your information, they're going to be in your life, they're going to come to your house, they're going to be around your sage, they're going to be around everybody. What is the filtering process now that's different than before.

Private investigator and every single person I go do business with if I want to do a partnership with on every aspect of their life and I offer them to do the same with me. So it's clear who we are and who we're dealing with. That's number one. So I can.

Are you. Are you. Are you serious?

I'm dead serious. I got multiple.

Tell me so. Let's just say we're doing a business. He Pat, before we do anything, I got to hire a PI on you. You can do the same on me.

Yes. You got nothing to hide, do you?

I love that. I love that. And by the way.

By the way, whatever the PI Brings back, I bring it to you and say, I love that. I bring it to you and say, this may be. This may be this is what they found. Tell me what you think. So and so that has saved me so much. Sam.