Tony Robbins Changes My Life (48 Minute Coaching Session)

I cannot believe who we have here today. Tony Robbins is coming on the podcast. Tony Robbins is the number one life coach, performance coach in the world. He's the highest paying public speaker of all time. This guy's built a business empire that does $7 billion a year in revenue. Incredible entrepreneur and coach. I mean, this guy's customers, his clients, the guys who pay him to coach them are like, you know, top athletes, you know, Serena Williams and Tom Brady and Conor McGregor. You know, um, politicians, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, uh, the top traders and investors in the world, Ray Dalio, Paul Tudor Jones. They pay him because they know that Tony is, can help be their edge, right? Uh, he can help them level up. So if he can help them level up, I think we can learn a lot from him. I'm gonna ask him about 3 specific things. The first is I actually went to a Tony Robbins event 8 years ago. This is my notebook from that event. Uh, I still have it 8 years ago, 8 years later, and The reason why is because I hate to be that guy who's like, I went to a self-help seminar and it changed my life. But it did. I really came out a different guy. I came out a happier guy. I ended up, you know, at the time, I, you know, this podcast called My First Million. I didn't have my first million then, and I came up with a plan. I came up with a strategy, and I stuck to it after that event. And I did it because I made 3 specific shifts. And so I know most of you will never go to one of his events. You'll never go to the seminar. It's a 4-day thing. It's kind of weird. It's not as cool as just going to Coachella or whatever, but I want to ask Tony about those specific 3 shifts so that you can hear from him exactly what I heard in that event that changed my life. That's what we're going to do on this podcast today. Those same exact things that changed my life, I'm going to have him explain on the pod today. It's kind of like a live coaching session, which is— people pay this guy $1 million to do this and we're going to get it for free. Also, at the end of this, Tony doesn't know this, but I'm going to actually give away just under $100,000 worth of tickets to his seminar. So for people who are listening to this, there'll be directions at the end of how you can actually get a free ticket to go to one of his things if you so choose, so that money is not your limitation. It's the least I could do. This guy's helped me out so much in my life. I would love to pay it forward to the next person and, uh, and send them to the seminar. Um, lastly, we talk about his, his new book, which he's been interviewing all these billionaires, right? The, there's this championship mindset, right? He works with the top 1% of the 1%. And I want to know what's different. What are they doing differently? He tells a story about an investor who bought 40 million nickels, like literally like the coin, the nickels, why they did that and why that was such a good idea. I wanted to hear some of these stories from him hanging out with these billionaire investors because he doesn't talk about that a lot. And I'm— I nerd out about that kind of thing. So enjoy this episode with Tony Robbins. This is a real cool moment for me with this podcast to be able to do this. I thank Tony for coming on and I hope you enjoy it. Pull this one out today, uh, to just do a little refresher.

Where'd you go? When'd you go?

I went to New Jersey. It's actually a funny story. I had heard, oh, Tony Robbins is motivational speaker, and I kind of was like, oh, do I, do I need motivation? I don't need motivation.

I don't either.

But there was something inside me that, because when you, when I had watched your videos, I thought, well, it's not just that. I mean, he's a He's an entrepreneur. He's doing, his company's doing billions in revenue. He's clearly a leader. And when I went to this event, I knew that it wasn't just like, it wasn't just some generic self-help BS.

Yeah.

And I go and a couple things stood out right away. I just wanna tell you about this, my experience at your event. So I go and the very first thing that happens is I plan to just sit back. I'm here to learn. Okay. I'm not gonna jump. I'm not gonna do all that dancing, jumping around stuff. This is my mentality. 15 minutes later, that's out the window. I'm into it. I'm having a great time. The second thing is I notice, I see these celebrities up front. These are some of the most successful people I know. All right. I hear this scream that almost sounds familiar. I look over and it's Gerard Butler, the guy from 300, like the Spartan. I'm like, all right, if he's into this, I think I could be into this. You know, like you have this thing where I give your neighbor a high five. I turn, it's Vanessa Hudgens. I'm like giving her a hug. I had this amazing experience. And when I was there, it was one guy who turned and looked at me and he said, first time, huh? Because you just see this grin on my face. And I was like, yeah, this is not your first time. He goes, no, I've been to 5 of these. And honestly, I was like a little discouraged. I was like, you got to come to this thing 5 times. Like, I don't know, is that how this works? And I go, why did you come 5 times? He goes, because when Michael Jordan's in his prime and he comes to your town, you go watch him play. And I thought that was one of the best compliments. I said, Michael Jordan? He said, yeah, this is the Michael Jordan. He's like, he does many things, but he's the Michael Jordan of public speaking. And after that, I started looking at what you were doing differently. You work with billionaires and presidents and athletes and all this stuff. But every superhero has an origin story, right? Like Spider-Man got bit by the spider and that's, you know, that's where he got his powers from. I think your origin story is amazing and not, not a lot of people know the full story. Can you take me back? You're 17 years old. I think you're a part-time janitor and you'd never been to a seminar in your life. How did you, what was your spider bite? How did you stumble into this?

Well, it's an interesting question. I was already interested in personal development because I had a kind of a rough background. I have 4 different fathers. We had no money for food. I had to work 2 jobs, work as a janitor. And my mom had a friend and dad had a friend that had been my dad. My dad's description was he used to be such a loser and now he's really successful. And so he called and said, listen, I hear your son's gotten big. I was, I was 5'1" in high school and I was 6'2" by my senior year. I grew 10 inches in a year. I tell people the difference is personal growth, by the way. But the bottom line is he said, you know, I got to move some furniture and things. I heard he's big, you know, could he come work for the weekend for some extra money? So I did. I worked really hard and the guy really was impressed by my work ethic. So he said, I'm going to take you to lunch. And we go to this lunch and, you know, and he's saying, you know, I really think you can go places. You've got a lot of drive. And I said, well, I'd like to ask you some questions. And he said, okay. And I said, my dad used to say you used to be such a loser and now you're so successful. How'd you do that? You know, only a kid can say this, right? I wasn't trying to be cute. I just literally repeated it. He goes, you just said what? And then he is like, well, it's kind of true. And he said, well, I went to this seminar. And I said, what is this seminar? I've never heard of such a thing. He said, well, man, who has really become accomplished, takes 20 years of his life and teaches you in 3.5 hours the best of what you need to know to make your life work. I said, wow, that sounds really interesting. I said, could you get me in? And he said, yeah. And there was no follow-up. So I said, well, will you? And he said, no. I said, well, why not? He said, well, because if you don't pay for it, you won't value it. And at the time I was working as janitor and making $40 a week. So I said, how much is it? And he said, $35. It'd be like $250 in today's dollars to give you an idea. but it was a week's pay is all I knew. And I was like, are you kidding me? For 3 hours? I said, no wonder the guy's rich. He goes, no, that's not it. He said, he really has these tools, but he said, uh, if you think it's too much, then you go learn in your own experience and take 10 or 20 or 30 years and maybe never learn it at all. And so long story short, I made what I thought was the biggest decision of my life to take a week's pay. And I went and heard Jim Rohn speak and I was deeply moved and I left there going, okay, I'm going to become president of the United States. I'm going to start with a plan of running for junior. In high school, I'm gonna run for student body president. I'm gonna be a state. So I was just looking to have the most impact. But what it led to was me just really digging in and learning everything I could about human development. And then very quickly, because I was studying anything I get my hands on, I came across neurolinguistic programming, NLP, which at the time was a breakthrough new technology of how to use language to change human emotion and behavior. And I talked my way into this, you know, 6-month class. I was the only non-therapist in the class. And, um, and after the first weekend I was just out using it. I wouldn't stop. I'd go to literally, I was this, the program I went to was at the airport, Holiday Inn in LAX. And I'd go to the Denny's that was right next door afterwards and look for people to help. You know, it's like, come here, Sam, I'm gonna change your life. But I mean, gradually I started modeling and I started figuring out other skills and I started challenging traditional psychologists and psychiatrists saying, give me your worst patient. I'll handle 'em in an hour. And I took people with lifetime phobias, you know, been in therapy 7 years and turned around in an hour and that built my reputation. And so then I started working with athletes and then I started working with Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela and Gorbachev and, you know, President Clinton and it just grew and grew. And then along the way, I used some of the same skills called modeling, finding out what is, makes the difference in performance around businesses. And I started building companies. So today, you know, now I have 111 companies. We do over $7 billion in business across radically different industries. And, uh, but this is my mission. This what I do on a daily basis here. My education company is what I value most, but that's kind of the journey. And I've had lots of ups and downs along the way. Obviously it wasn't like a straight up experience by any stretch. It's not a straight line, but I've learned a hell of a lot. I've been surrounded by a lot of great people along the way.

All right everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. And this one's easy because I'm gonna show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say I, I mean not my team, I mean I'm the one who actually made this. So I've got this company called Hampton. You could check it out. Joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people, a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these like interesting questions. And then we'll put it in a survey and I went and made a landing page. So you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. And the hard part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a a higher-end customer, sort of like, like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates. That's what we used. We just changed the colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy. They have this drag-and-drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. And I can then see over the next handful of weeks This is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn, whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, oh, well, that worked, that didn't work, do more of that, do less of that. And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it, but you could check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started.

All right.

Now back to MFM.

I don't know if you've seen this. Have you seen this little clip of Jim Rome talking about you?

No, I have not.

Let's play this. Ari, can you play that clip?

Tony Robbins sat in my seminar when he was 17. 17. He was on the outs with his parents and he was sleeping in his car, and someone got him to come to my seminar, age 17. So you don't— you never know who's in the audience. And he worked for me for 3 and a half years promoting my seminars, back then called Adventures in Achievement. 3 and a half years. Finally ran one of my offices at age 20 in Los Angeles. Tony Robbins. Now he's a big-time superstar, bigger superstar than I am around the world. Unbelievable. And he mastered all the stuff, you know. I didn't teach him the fire walk and all that stuff, but that's Tony style, you know. He can get by with that. I couldn't do that. I did say to him one time, Tony, you got to do water instead of fire. They'll come from all over the world. And knowing Tony, guess what? He'll probably try it. Kid's unbelievable. He's unbelievable.

So what's it like? I mean, hearing your mentor, you know, somebody who became a friend, but, but started off as a, you were the student, he was the teacher in a way. How does it feel hearing that?

No, he was a teacher for sure. He taught me some of the most important things. I think the most important thing he taught me, um, was when I was, you know, I had all these different fathers and we were always broke. And so he said, change your mindset. Change it from, can I earn twice as much in the same amount of time? 10 times as much? 50 times, 100 times, 1,000 times? Yes, if you become more valuable. So you have to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. And he said, you've gotta understand whatever you do, do add more value than anybody else in the marketplace of what you do. And that really, it, it, it sung to me cuz I always try to overdeliver in anything I did, even at that stage of my life. And that's been the basis of every company that I've built across all these different industries. I mean, there's no way I'd be who I am without that piece. So I'm indebted to Jim as my first mentor.

One of the questions I wanted to ask you is you can't ask Steph Curry, how do you make a jump shot? It's too complicated, right? I can't ask you, how do you be a good public speaker? But I can ask you, how did you get good? Because my sense is, yes, you had some natural gifts. However, I want to bet, and you tell me if I'm right or wrong, that from the ages of kind of like 17, when you went to that first seminar to maybe 25, 26, 27, I would bet that you probably got more reps in than anybody else in your field. Is that— I, I could be wrong. Tell me if I'm wrong.

No, I went to work for Jim Rohn, the personal development speaker. So you would go out and make 2 talks, maybe 3 talks in a month where you would go to a real estate office or a stock brokerage or someplace where you would do a talk and show them by improving themself, they could also improve their income. That's usually what they were interested in. And so what I did different was I went out and said, I remember the guy that was number one in the, in the whole company, there were about 1,000 employees in that company. And I went up to him the first day because he was such a jerk to people. I mean, it's like total jerk. And so I, you know, I've always been a kind of protective of the little guy. Oh, I was a little guy. I was 5'1". I was protective back then, right? When I was in high school. So I went up to him and I just said, you know what I said? You're an absolute idiot. And I said, you better remember my name. I said, because it'd only be a few months before I'll dwarf you. And I said, I'll tell you why you're lazy. You do 3 talks a month. I'm going to do 3 talks a day. So it doesn't matter if I'm as good as you are, I'm going to destroy you. And I did. I booked myself to every kind of group you can imagine. But yes, you know, if, you know, I'm fortunate enough to own a piece of the Golden State Warriors and I've coached the team, I haven't been there this year. I got, I've been at chance, but they need it. But Steph is a perfect example of what you're describing. Cause people don't know the greatest 3-point shooter in the league when he was, you know, in high school, he was really good. He, his dad trained him continuously. His dad was an NBA player, but his dad at one point, he's the best player in the league, told him, we gotta change your jump shots. Speaking of jump shots, we gotta change it. You start it too low, you'll never make it in the NBA. And so he made him have to do this new form of jump shot and he became terrible. Cause you're terrible when you try to do something new, but he wouldn't let him play competitively until he could shoot well in this way. And then now he still does it. He shoots, you know, 500 shots a day to give you an idea, 3,500 shots a week. Think about it. 14,000 shots a month, 168,000 shots a year. These are practice shots. So he's been in the NBA 15 years. He's done 2.52 million shots in practice. In his entire career, he's only taken 15,000 shots and he's made 3,000 3-pointers and he's the greatest in history. Less than 1/10 of 1% of his shots have actually shown up at a game. So I always tell people you're rewarded in public for what you practice in private.

I think that's an amazing strategy. Is that, is that your method to kind of learning in general? How do you think about that?

I think of learning at two levels. I think of learning as immersion. The reason I do 12 hours a day for 3 or 4 days in a row, most people wouldn't sit for a 3-hour movie someone spent $300 million to make. I can do it because I know how to engage people in all their senses. In other words, How much is a long time? Some people say 10 minutes, some people say 10 years, right? But really a long time is when you're not enjoying yourself. You know, a minute can feel like eternity if you're in pain, but if you're enjoying yourself, time flies. And so my whole mindset was I gotta immerse people because that's how we learn. If you're gonna learn a language and you learn a little bit at a time in high school and college, most people don't speak the language. But if I took you to Italy and dropped you in Rome and said, I'll pick you up in 90 days with no teacher. You're going to speak in Italian by the time I pick you up because of the immersion. So I like to immerse myself, but immerse myself with someone who is the best in the world at something, someone who's already done it, not somebody who's teaching me intellectually. I go into a university with somebody who understands it but has never done it. I wanted to model the very best in the world. So I, I would go interview with— I'd go to work for people in the very early days as a janitor so I could get around them so I could learn how they think and what they do. Gradually I got to the point where I had these skills and so I could help people. And so I'd help them, but then I'd also learn from them. Everybody I've ever coached who calls me a coach, I'm no dummy. I learned from them. So some of my dearest friends in the world are people who started as coaching, like Marc Benioff of Salesforce. He came to my seminar, I think 4 times in a row, and he's as big as I am. He stands out. And on the 4th one, he came up, introduced himself and said, you know, I'm Marc Benioff and you've convinced me to leave Oracle. I'm gonna start my own company now. It's called salesforce.com. I want you to come on the journey with me. And I'll never forget, he said to me, he said, we're going to do a, we're going to change business around the world. And I promise you, we'll do $100 million in business. And now he's doing $35 billion, right? His company's worth. So it's like, and he's done that in 16 years. You know, the growth has been unbelievable. So Mark says I'm his coach. Yeah. I learned as much from Mark or more than he's learned from me. Same thing with Peter Guber, you know, Peter and I are partners in the Golden State Warriors, the LA Dodgers. You know, we both invested and started with the LAFC football club. He's got 52 Academy Award nominations. He's, you know, he's one of the most brilliant human beings that I know. So I learned from him. So all the people that I've coached over the years, I've learned from, and I try to do it through immersion. The more you can immerse yourself where you're thinking, breathing, doing something 18, 20 hours a day, the faster you're going to learn. So that's how I go about it.

What's something you learned from Peter? Because he's a fascinating guy that I think most people don't You know of his work, but you don't know him necessarily. He's not super out there publicly talking all the time and trying to share knowledge. Do you have any good Peter Gruber stories or lessons learned you've had now that you partner with him on some things? How he thinks?

I'll tell you one of the most valuable principles I learned from him, him and a friend of his. When we became friends at one stage, you know, he said, changed my life. I want to do some more things with you. And he had a small group of men, about 8 to 10, that had been getting together twice a year, sometimes 3 times a year. They go on these amazing trips. And they just brainstormed, but everybody there was the master of their universe, right? So it'd be like Pat Riley, you know, it was at the time, you know, the winningest coach in NBA basketball. You'd have the richest man in Canada, like this amazing who's who group. And so he invited me to come on this trip with him and he said, look, we've never brought anybody in before. You're 18 years younger than just about everybody here, but you have so much dad. I convinced the guys, let you come on the trip. And if they like you, maybe you come part of the group and come on a regular basis. Now this is, I'm just starting my businesses. I'm early on in my career of 30, 31 years old. And I'm in a place where he wants me to go off on this 12-day trip. Well, I couldn't leave my business for 12 days in those days. I was a business operator. I wasn't an owner like I am today. So I had to go on the trip and on the trip though, it was such a push. I didn't want to miss it. I did it. I was so stressed out because I felt like I didn't belong there. So, uh, he didn't have this conversation with me about what I want to do with my life. And then he said, well, let me tell you the most important principle to get you there. He said, proximity is power. And he and Peter both started nodding and saying, this is what makes everything work. And I said, what do you mean proximity is power? What do you mean by that? He said to me at the time, you know, how many investment bankers do you know? I said, no, I don't know. Maybe a dozen. He goes, how many do you spend time with? I said, none. He goes, that's a huge mistake. You must go spend time with them because as you spend time, they will think of you and they will come up with deals that will help you generate the economics you want to generate if you want to run for office or do something of that nature. And I said, okay. And so I started doing it. I felt really uncomfortable. And then I saw him again and he really gave me stuff. And so then I did it deliberately, ongoingly. And for a year and a half, I'd go meet people. I'm not a networker per se. 'Cause I felt like I don't know, I'm not asking for something and I don't know what I can do for them. I try to always be a giver. And, but nothing came out of it. I mean, some good friendships and so forth. No business came out of it. One day I got a phone call that led to a, $50 million deal for me. And then another day, about a year later, converted that into making it in one single day, $400 million, taking a company public. So I always tell people, if you think about important principles, one of the most important ones I learned from Peter and his friends was you've gotta get in the environment where the best people in the world are on a regular basis and add value, and then things will start to happen. Nothing accelerates more than that other than your own skills and development.

One of the things I got from being in proximity with you at your events, immersion, going there for 4 days and, and, and really soaking it all in was when you came on stage, there was an energy shift every time. And you, you mentioned Marc Benioff. I know you've talked at the Salesforce conference and I watched the video and he, he said something great. He goes, the next guy who's coming out here, he doesn't, I mean, Salesforce is like, you know, a bunch of sales reps in the audience. It's a white collar crew. They're all sitting down. They've been at a thing all day. He says he doesn't come out to a cold room. And he goes, so if you want, if Tony's going to come out here, we better warm up right now. And immediately everybody raised their standard of how they were going to show up for you. And you came out and you had a certain energy with you. I stole that and I started using that. I said, I don't come out to cold rooms anymore. I raised my own standard in that way.

That's great.

But I, it was not just in the work context because, um, even though I went to your event because I wanted to be more successful and more ambitious, whatever. And I had these goals. I wanted to have, you know, $10 million by the time I was 30. And then You know, today it's like our companies this year will do like $50 million in revenue raises. It's, it's, it's continued to grow. But the thing I took away the most wasn't any of the work stuff. It was how you show up at home. You had this thing that I want you to talk about called the honey, I'm home energy. I've been doing this now for like 8 straight years since I, I went to your event. People don't know this. Explain what coming home with the honey, I'm home energy is.

Yeah, that's, uh, it's just really simple. It's just, I remember my father used to come home, my fourth father especially. When the door closed, there was this pause and we waited to see what kind of state he was going to be in. And you could tell if he was in an unhappy state, you want to kind of avoid the environment, or if he'd say, "Monkey Gurus," used to say this phrase, "Monkey Gurus," made no sense, but he had so much enthusiasm and excitement in his voice that we knew it was a good day. So I thought, when I come home, I want to make a difference. So my wife and I have this little thing that we do is I come home, "Honey, I'm home." And then we look for each other and we run towards each other. He's just, hug each other and kiss. But it's a, it's a beautiful ritual that we've, you know, we've been together 24 years and we still have this aliveness and passion for each other because we still put ourselves in those high energy states. It's easy because of being worn down by work or environments or kids, or some of your family's ill or financial pressure in your business, let's say, to let your state drop. And then when you're around your partner, that's what they experience all the time. And then their state's low and then you're both Filtering life through that. So I think it's really important, just like if you're going to get up and be a, perform in a peak state, if you're going to produce peak results, you got to be in a peak state. You got to train yourself to do it at home. And then after a while, it's not phony. It's just like, if you see an athlete, they have muscles, you know, why do they have the muscle? Because they work out regularly. Well, when you push yourself into a great state regularly, it becomes your standard and it becomes how you feel all the time. You kind of wire yourself for that. It's not to say you don't have downtimes or frustrating times or sad times or whatever. I have all those things, but they're not the majority of the time. And if they happen, you can snap out of it fast because you know how to. I think that's a huge part of what I try to teach people is that you don't have to accept how you feel. And people all the time say, well, I don't feel like it. Well, if I waited till I felt like it, I wouldn't do 90% of the stuff I've done in my life. I've learned how to make myself feel like it. Because if you don't do that, you're not going to accomplish or achieve or enjoy your life at the level that you deserve and probably desire.

Right. You said something about the 90 seconds of suffering. Can you explain this concept? Because I stole this, I stole this like it's Ocean's Eleven and I came into you, I stole this framework from you and I have been using it since then.

I'm glad you stole it. That's, that's the worthy thing of stealing. Life is too short to suffer. I, I'm not gonna suffer. I know how to change my state, but I wanna create a rule that within 90 seconds, if I start to suffer, I'm gonna snap out of it. Now, don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean you don't get angry or frustrated or pissed off or worried or Any of those things, I can have all those feelings. But if you train yourself to snap out of it in 90 seconds, and by the way, in the beginning, no problem, 90 seconds and easy things. But then life gives you some big tests, right? You get something that feels more like 90 days than 90 seconds. But you get, it's like any skill, like, like shooting the basket. You do it again and again and again. You get better and better and better. And it's changed my life because no matter what's going on, I can still find the beauty in that. And in a beautiful state of mind, you'll come up with the answers much quicker than a pissed off state. Or a fearful state or a lousy state. Plus it gives a gift to everybody else who wants to be around somebody who's in a crappy state. Right. Think about it like this. You know, if you have a, if you have cable or you have satellite and you turn the channel, there's certain channels where it's all comedy, other ones all drama, other ones it's all horror, right? Other ones it's, you know, romance. Well, the channel changer is your body because if you look at the greatest athletes in the world, Tom Brady, you know, uh, locally here in Florida, You know, we have a group that's won the Stanley Cup over and over again, the Tampa Bay Lightning, and they're famous for coming from behind and winning. So the same group did tests on them before they ever worked with me, and they discovered there's a biochemistry of what they call championship biochemistry. It's where these people like Tom Brady is down by 10 points and it's the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl and he comes back to win. I mean, how? He has this huge surge of testosterone, which gives you total focus and drive. It also makes you remember everything. It's like if I asked you where you were at 9/11, everybody remembers the moment. I ask you where you were at 8/11, no one knows where they were, right? Because you don't have that surge of testosterone, the energy. But usually testosterone is matched by cortisol, which is a stress hormone. But in this case, their cortisol drops through the floor. So all they get is pure focus and drive. That doesn't guarantee you're going to succeed, but increases your chances about tenfold. Every time I get on stage, I develop that biochemistry.

Love it. And, uh, I have so many more questions, but I also, I feel like your PR team, I feel like there's a red dot that's going to come on me if I don't talk about your book. So I want to ask you a question about this. So I read the advanced copy of your book. So The Holy Grail of Investing, it's the third of these kind of like money-related books that you've been doing, which has been fun because I like the business side. That's obviously where I kind of nerd out.

Yeah.

Tell the story about the guy you, you know, who I think is a billionaire who, who bought millions of nickels and why this guy bought millions of nickels. I think this, this was so fun. And, uh, you You got to tell that story.

Well, let me, let me give people a little background. So I've written 3 books on finance. I, I started back in 2013 because after the 2008 dropout, I've been working with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the top 10 financial traders in the history of the world. I've coached him for 24 years. He hasn't lost money during that time. So I've learned a lot. But when I saw that the way we dealt with 2008 was we, instead of punishing the people that almost destroyed the system, we gave them more of our money. Blew my mind. And so I, I thought, I can't change everything, but I have access. So I decided to write a book where I interview 50 of the smartest financial investors in the world, the most successful, all self-made billionaires. Nobody from the lucky sperm club. They didn't inherit it, they created it. You know, Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, Paul Tudor Jones, all of them. So I was interviewing a gentleman that took $30 million and turned it into $2 billion in 2008, 2009, the worst economic time. And, and I asked him, I said, how'd you do this? And he went, asymmetrical risk reward. I've heard that from every great investor. I said, okay, I understand what that means, but how'd you do it? And how he did it was he saw the mortgages and everybody thought these mortgages were going to hold up and that real estate was going to grow forever. And he knew that wasn't true and he bet against it with unique tools. So he literally, he could be wrong 13 times and still make money. So that's how he turned that money around and made the greatest return in just about any period of time. So I asked him, I said, his name is Kyle Bass. I said, Kyle, I said, how would you explain this to like someone who's unsophisticated? And how would you explain it to your kids? He goes, Tony, I can't believe you said that. I just recently asked myself the same question. I said, I want my kids to understand this principle because that's what'll make them wealthy. And he said, so I thought, how can I do this? And he said, for 6 months, I kept asking the question. Where can I find an investment that is so asymmetrical? There's no downside and there's huge upside immediately. Now, most people say you're an idiot to even ask that question. There's no such investment, right? No risk, no reward. And he goes, no, he goes, smart people ask questions nobody else asks. I kept asking and I finally came up with the answer. Nickels. I said, nickels? He goes, yes. He goes, here's how it works. Nickels to make a nickel costs 11 cents. That's how screwed up our government is. And he said, And he said, so years ago pennies used to have copper in it. That's almost no copper now. He goes, those pennies are worth 2 cents. He said, the reason is because the copper value's there, but also now they're so unique, right? He said, so I thought nickels, they'll never be worth less than 5 cents. I wanna buy as many nickels as I can. 'Cause he said, the meltdown value alone will give me 30% return on day one, 30%. I'd like investment where you can't lose money and you're guaranteed at least 30%. I said, yeah, but I've seen the rules. You can't melt money anymore. He goes, yes, I know that's what they say. He said, but I don't even have to melt it, Tony. The same may happen to pennies will happen to nickels. He said, they can't do 11-cent, 5-cent nickels forever. Once it changes, the value of these original nickels is going to be great. So he went to the Fed and asked how many nickels he could buy. I forget the number was millions of nickels. It was truckloads of nickels. He has kids unload them and put them in there. He said, if I could push a button convert my entire assets to nickels, I do it tomorrow. I can't ever lose money and I'm up at least 30%. So that's asymmetric risk reward. Another good example is my friend Richard Branson. And if you know Sir Richard now, as they call him, Richard's a fun guy. He's like, um, look, he'll, he'll take risk with his life. He'll like get in a balloon, go, go in a spaceship.

He's like the oldest 21-year-old in the world. That guy, that guy's just having fun all the time.

Except not when it comes to investing. When it comes to investing, he's like, what's the downside? How do we protect against the downside? That's why he's so successful. And so when he was going to take on British Airways with, you know, building his own airlines, think of the expense and the risk of buying Boeing jets, 150, 250 jets. So he negotiated for a year with Boeing till he finally got them to agree that he'd buy all these jets. But a year from now, if he was not able to be profitable in business or stay in the business, he could return all the jets with no credit loss, no cost to him whatsoever. So we had zero downside, only upside. That's how these guys play. And then the fourth one is diversification. And when I went through those and saw them with everybody, what triggered this latest book, the reason I decided to write this final book was I saw that, wait a second, the most successful people have a different asset allocation. They're getting much more asymmetrical risk reward. And I also, with my conversations with Ray Dalio, learned a principle. I asked Ray, 12, 13 years ago, we first became friends. I said, you know, I prepared for like 11 hours for my interview with him. It was supposed to be 30 minutes and went 3.5 hours because he got into it with me. It was great. And we became friends. And I asked him one question I asked him was, okay, out of all the things we've talked about, is there one principle above all others that would be the most important investment principle that would make somebody wealthy if they practiced it? He goes, Tony, I have wrestled with that for more than a decade and I can tell you what it is. He goes, I call it the holy grail of investing, which is Why? That, that's the title of this book. It's really Ray. It's not me. Right? And I said, well, I'd lean forward. What is it? He said, Tony, in order for people to get what they want, financial freedom, they've gotta compound, right? Well, in order to get higher rates of return, you gotta take bigger risks, which then could cost you getting to the goal. That's why asset allocation and finding that balance, what's right for you is so important. He said, but I discovered something mathematically. If you can find 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments, he said you can reduce your risk by 80% and make a slight increase in your upside. He said you're eliminating 80% of the risk. He was telling me that is the most important thing that's out there and people don't know this. But now for your audience, I'm sure they understand. In case they don't, if you think about correlated versus non-correlated, stocks and bonds would be an example, right? When the economy's going great, people want the growth that comes in stocks. When it's not going to go great, they expect the bonds are going to get them through it, right? They're not necessarily correlated. So I wrote down the principle. I started looking to try to find things that were not correlated. It's rough in the world we're in today. So much is tied together in the public markets. And so sure enough, as I started doing this, looking around, I came across an interesting statistic that blew my mind. And here's what it is. In the last 35 years, every stock market in the world has produced a smaller return than private equity, average private equity in that same time. So I'll give you an example. Most people know the S&P 500, the index of the top 500 companies in stock market. And if you invested in the S&P over the last 35 years, you had an average of a 9.2% compounded return, which is amazing. You know, you're at 5%, you're doubling your money every 14 and a half years. If you're You know, at 9%, it's every 8 years. That's a big jump. But if you're an average private equity, not the people I interviewed this book, people I interviewed this book are the 13 biggest in the world. So they have like 20% or more compounded for decades. One of them in this book is 37% compounded for 26 straight years. I mean, it's unbelievable, right? So when you're compounding that, it goes crazy. But the average is 14.2% per year. So Understand this, you're compounding 50% greater every single year compounded. So what does that mean? If you put a million dollars in the S&P 500 35 years ago and forgot about it, it's worth $26 million today. It's unbelievable. But if you put a million dollars in the average, not these guys, in the average private equity at 14.2%, you have $139 million in the same money in the same amount of time. So I was like, whoa. Now, what are the ultra high net worth people have 47% of their assets in private equity and private real estate? So I started digging into that area and that's what this book was all about.

Yeah, I really liked it. There's a great chart we should throw up. It said what was the lowest 5-year returns by asset class?

Yes.

Lowest 5 years. So like how bad can the bad get? 'Cause everybody tells you about the good. Nobody tells you about the bad usually. And I love this one 'cause private credit was the only one that had a positive return in its lowest 5 years in the last 30 years, 20 years, something like that. So it was, it was cool to see these different asset classes that most people don't have the knowledge of or the access to. And I think that's the premise of the book.

So who are the people? What's the largest number of billionaires? And most people think it's tech and it's not. And then they think it's real estate and it's not. It's financial services, but it's not hedge funds and it's not VC funds. Some VC funds, but not most. I have very small. It's private equity because they have the money for 5 years. So when the market goes down, they don't have to sell. They buy. When the market goes up, they sell. They have the room to play, right? To get things done. And they're not just trying to buy something with the right timing. They're buying a company and making it better, bringing new marketing, bringing in a new CEO, bringing in new systems and building up and then selling it private or taking it public. So they have a lot more flexibility and they're the masters of the universe. So I was like, okay, let's see what they're doing. And to my friend, I said, I'm getting into some of these private equity, but the very best are like, you know, going to a club and you got plenty of money and you're outside. If you're not good looking, you don't know everybody, you're not getting in that club. I don't care how much money you have. Right. It's very similar, like, you know, buying a Ferrari and any Ferrari. Yes. But the newest hot SP3, you know, it costs $4 million. You can't even buy it because they're all gone already by collectors who buy them before they even come out. Well, it's very similar for the best people in private equity. And I'm saying, I've gotten a few because of my name and some relationships, but the amount I'm getting is too small. And he's just, Tony goes, um, I'll tell you a little secret. I'll tell you where I put the majority of my money. And this guy's very, very wealthy, very successful. So I'm leaning in and he goes, there's this firm in Houston, Texas. Like, it's Houston, Texas. I was going to say Singapore, London, you know, New York, Connecticut, right? He goes, yeah, they're off the beaten path. They're the best at this. They have found a way. They're the biggest in the world right now. One of the 3 biggest. And they said they found a way where you don't have to buy into the fund, where you can buy into the company and own a piece of the company and you own all their funds. Now, if you know how these funds work, they make 2% on your money. They tie it up for 5 years and you're willing to tie it up because of the greater returns, right? But they make 2% of your money if they don't make you anything every year. So they have a built-in income. That's great. And then they get 20% of the upside. If they make you a bunch of money, they get 20% of that. And it's not uncommon for them to go from a billion to 2 billion in 5 years. So they make $100 million in fees in those 5 years. And they make another 20% on a billion. They make $300 million on a billion-dollar investment. That's why they're the wealthiest people in the world. I like— I got to know how to do this. So I met with these guys in Houston. I became a client, and then I eventually invested with them. I'm partner with them. And then I was like, man, we got to get this out. But nobody could take advantage of it. Now they can. So as a result, we put it out there. So you can imagine I own now 65 of the largest private equity firms. I own a piece of them as a partner. In every fund that they have. So, and I'm not there working every day till 2 in the morning like they are in those pieces. The other one I'll tell you about is, you read the book, so you know, is sports. I always wanted to own a sports team. I was really totally poor.

You wanted to be a baseball player, right?

That's right. You got a good memory. I used to go to Dodger Stadium every once in a rare moon, way off in the deep far seats in right field, the cheapest seats you could buy. And I bled Dodger blue. I own a piece of the Dodgers, but to get to that point, the first team I was able to make a purchase of and be a partner in was the LAFC football club, the soccer team there. We built the stadium. I got to help design it. It was fun. I got to, my friend Peter Guber is just a genius, but the amount of money, time, and energy, and the amount of like a microscope in your bum that they do to qualify you is mind-boggling, right? To do it. So, but now in all these sports teams, I even have competing teams because a rule was changed 3 years ago. This is amazing. Only a few firms have been able to do it. And the rule allows you to buy a small sliver of teams. And why would you want a sports team? Because they're not correlated to the stock market. In inflationary times, sports teams do well. They've done extremely well. They raise the price of the hot dog, people pay it. Doesn't matter. And they used to be just putting butts in seats, but that's not true anymore. So I'll give you an example. You know this if you read the book. My partner Peter Guber bought the Dodgers with a group of people, Magic Johnson, a whole group of people. I'm part of it now too. And when they bought it, they paid $2 billion for the firm.

And everybody's freaking out. Right. I remember the news.

People were like, this is a crazy buy because nobody paid more than $800 million for a sports team. And most people believe the Dodgers is worth a billion, but not $2 billion. So I went to Peter. I was like, I know you're not dumb. I know the smartest guy I know. So you must know something no one else knows that we're going to do this. Tell him. He goes, Tony, you know, I like making movies with cliffhangers. He said, I want to make you wait 3 days because I'll make an announcement. When you hear the announcer, come over and have a little party together. They made the announcement. He sold the local TV rights, just the local TV rights for $7 billion, made $5 billion on the spot. So why? Because sports teams now are media enterprises. Of the 100 best shows, most watched shows last year, 92 were sporting events. And they'll watch the ads because everybody's cord cutting everywhere else and going and watching things, you know, streaming. Sports, the only thing live you want to see in real time for it to have value for you. And they can do those ads. So, and they buy real estate today. They, they are unbelievable organizations. So now I'm a part of the Dodgers, of the Warriors, the Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins. I mean, I go on and on and on and I have the ownership benefits, but I also have something that's not correlated. So it's 1.8 to 12. Plus on top of that, you share in the revenues of every other team's media. In other words, it's equal share if you're a small team or a big share. You keep your local media that you get to sell locally. So the income streams are amazing. I'll give you an example. Michael Jordan, we actually bought it. Michael Jordan bought, uh, the Charlotte Hornets for $275 million controlling interest, uh, 12 and a half years ago. He just sold us. We're one of the buyers, there's a group of buyers for $3 billion. That's his return on that time period. In the last 10 years, if you take the NBA, the, the Major League Baseball, soccer, And hockey, those 4 together, they've averaged between them 18% compounded during that time versus 11% there in the S&P 500. So just, you're only doubling your return, having fun, having something you're a part of that's really cool. And people can have an experience that they once dreamed about without having billions of dollars and go through all the hell of it. So there's so many opportunities like this.

And people can get it, get the book. It's at the holygrailofinvesting.com. I think there's like a free chapter, so you can go download the free chapter.

Yeah, you can listen to, uh, there's a free audio chapter you can listen to and then you can preorder the book. It comes out in a few weeks.

I know we're over, but I got to ask you for one thing.

Sure.

The one thing is we talked a lot about money and making it and all that stuff. One of the things I pulled away from you was about giving. And I think when I was at the event, you were talking about, oh, I give this many meals every year. I think now it's like a billion meals, some insane number of— because you remembered what it was like to not have food. And a part of me was like, I'm going to do that someday. I should do that. I should hit myself again. I should do that in the future. When I'm rich, I'm going to do that too. And I think this is Probably a pretty common thing. Easy for him. He's rich. What does it mean? What does it matter to him to write a $5 million check?

Right. I wish it was just $5 million until— well, right. Fair enough.

Until you told a story about giving early on and give— and I, I just want you to tell this one story because I think for most people, if they made it to this part, this will make a bigger difference in their lives than anything else that you tell them. Because I know it did for me. You told the story about going to the salad bar.

Oh yeah.

Going to a salad bar, you're 24 years old and you're broke and you had a giving moment that sort of shifted you. Would you please just tell that one? Because I think giving is not something you gotta wait till you're rich to do, which is I think the common misconception.

Yeah. I tell people, if you won't give a dime out of a dollar, you're not gonna give $10 million out of $100 million or, you know, $100 million out of a billion. Don't kid yourself. Right. And also the value of giving transforms you out of scarcity. But the background on it is I was working for Jim Rohn, this personal development speaker. And I really did well. And then I did poorly for a while and I was really frustrated. I was working hard. I wasn't getting the return. I was totally broke. So you're in business, you make some mistakes. And I found myself totally broke again. And I'm in this 400-square-foot bachelor apartment in Venice, California, feeling sorry for myself and watching Luke and Laura on General Hospital. It was just terrible. And I'm down to my final, you know, $19, $20, $21, $22. I know it wasn't some change. I haven't paid my rent and I gotta figure out what to do and what to eat. So my focus was, okay, I'm gonna go to this all-you-can-eat salad bar, taco bar, and I'm gonna load up for the winter. And you know, spend $5 and then, you know, and then I didn't drive there because it was only about 3 miles, but I couldn't pay $3 for parking too. It was just, I couldn't do that. So anyway, long story short, I get to the place, it's on the water in Marina Del Rey. It's why I went there. There's boats going by and I can't, I don't have a pot to pee in, right? But I'm visualizing. And then my, my stack of food this high. And then I could see the front door because of where I was sitting and the front door opens and this beautiful woman walks in. She was just absolutely gorgeous. I couldn't help but look. And then I waited to see if there was a guy with him as if I had any shot at this, right? And she had a guy with him, unfortunately. And he was about 3 feet tall and he had a little vested suit on, little tie. And, you know, he opens the door for her and he pulled out the chair for her. And I was just, I was mesmerized and I was moved and I got emotional. I don't know why. I don't know if it's thinking of my own mom. I don't know what it was at the time, but anyway, the bottom line is when I was done eating, I went and paid it and it was $5.95 or something like that. And I had the rest of the money in my pocket and I had no plan for this. And I, as I'm walking out the door, there's that little boy with his mom. And her back's to me. So I didn't talk to her. I wasn't going to her. I just went up to him because I was so moved. And I just said, hey, I said, my name's Tony. What's your name? I can't remember his name anymore. It was, you know, Johnny or whatever it was. And he goes, uh, I said, Johnny, I said, you are a class act. I said, I just want you to know I have so much respect. I saw you hold the door for your lady. I saw you pull the chair out for her. You're so present with her. And I said, taking her to lunch like this. He goes, well, She's my mom. And I said, well, that's even more impressive. He goes, well, I can't take her to lunch. Cause you know, I'm just 11. And I said, yes, you can. I have no plan for it. I just reached in my pocket, took all the money I had in the world, $19, whatever was left over and poof, dumped it on him with the change and everything right in front of him. And his eyes got big and, you know, garbage can covers. And he goes, I can't take that. I said, sure you can. He said, how come? I said, cause I'm bigger than you are. And then I smiled and he laughed. And I didn't even look at the woman. I didn't do it for acknowledgement. I just walked out that door to get my car and then realized I didn't have my car there because I'd walked. So I, I, I look like a stupid white guy skipping my ass, I'm sure, all the way home. I mean, I was high as a kite and I had no money and I got home and I was still cool about it and I was full cause I ate so much. And I woke up the next morning with no plan, no idea, no nothing, and no money. And it's like, I mean, no money, not a dollar, and no one to call to get money from. And it was a guy I'd loaned $1,000 to about 2 and a half years before when I really didn't have it, but he needed it more than I did. I loaned it to him. So I've been for months been calling and sending, you know, regular mail to him here because he wasn't answering the phone. There was no email in those days. And, um, and that morning I get my mail and no, no call, no response. That morning I get my mail and there's all the bills and there's a handwritten note and I open the note. And it's from this guy apologizing to me and telling me that he was so sorry I was there for him when he really needed it and he had not been there for me. And he had put in, you know, an extra $200 for interest and so forth. So it was $1,200. $1,200 is more money than I could live on that for a month in those days. Right. And I just started crying uncontrollably. I was like, you know, why am I crying? This is beautiful. This is beautiful. You know, it's like, And then I realized, wow, you know, when I had nothing, I gave everything. And here this is, what does this mean? I said, I don't know what it means, but I'm going to decide it means because I didn't give to get and I didn't give what was easy. That's why I'm receiving. And it's like that day on, I can tell you I've had ups and downs. I have so many companies in the early days. I had a couple companies on the verge of bankruptcy. They didn't go bankrupt. Thank God I hung on and made it through it. but I never felt that scarcity. I never felt that scarcity again since that day. Because if you get to that point, your brain realizes there's more than enough. When you can give when you feel like there's nothing there, that's what transforms you. When I interviewed Sir John Templeton, who was the first billionaire investor, started with nothing, he said to me that the secret to wealth is gratitude, right? Because it doesn't matter how much money you have, if you're not grateful, you're not rich. But then he said also, I've never met anybody that tithed for at least 10 years who didn't become wealthy. He said, tithe, it doesn't have to be a church. It's just taking 10% of what you're earning and giving it away. And I'm proud to say I've given away 17% and have done quite well. But I did it when I had nothing. It's there. I want to plant one more seed with the audience though, and that is if they'd like to have an experience, you know, they can't come for the, you know, 3 or 4 days yet for an event, but they like to have an experience. Since COVID started 4 years ago, everyone was trapped at home and I was doing stadiums, you know, and they started shutting down the stadiums till they could put 100 people in a stadium. So I decided I'd build a studio and I'd build these 20-foot ice, you know, walls, 0.67 resolution. I could see everything. And I went to the guys, you know, who built Zoom and I said, look, you know, I need you to help me get to 20,000, 30,000 people, not 1,000. I built software so that people could, instead of clapping, could shake their phone. It would send electric signal. And if one person didn't hear nothing, when 20,000 people do it. It's like thunder. And it allowed me to literally explode in the number of people I reach. So now I do a free seminar once a year for 3 days. It's coming up January 25th through 27th. Just in about a week and a half. If you want to go, there's zero charge. It's not partially free. It's totally free. And it's about 2.5 hours, 3 hours a day of immersion for 3 days in a row. And it's really designed to help you get a plan and make the changes necessary in your energy and your emotions, in your business, in your finances, in your career. And we just, we put the most we can in those 3 days and create huge momentum. And last year we had over a million people again from 195 countries in the world. And then you're part of a community of people helping each other. So if anyone likes to go, you're welcome to, you can do it from your home or your office. You can bring friends or family. Again, there's no charge. You just go to, what is that? What is the highlight? It's the, uh, it's the timetorisesummit.com. Timetorisesummit.com. It starts January 25th through the 27th, and I'd love to serve you guys and go deeper.

Amazing, Tony. I don't know if you know this, but at that event, when you told some of these stories, I, on the moment, in that moment, I was like, you know what, uh, I'm gonna start giving. And I, the idea I came up with, I go, you know, this was a pretty crazy experience I had. I just got lucky. I bought some Black Friday tickets. Uh, I, I don't know how I stumbled into this, but this was cool. And I've, I'm a different guy right now and I decided, all right, I'm gonna start giving. I, what I did was I said, all right, next year I'm gonna send one person to this. I'm gonna gift somebody an experience to go to UPW. And I was like, every year I'm gonna gift more people than the year before. So I've sent 44 people now to your events. You know, my, my mom, my dad, I know people, anybody, anybody who, you know, other entrepreneurs who I thought, you know, might like it.

Yes. And, uh, how they responded as a result, how did they react outta these events?

15% of people are like me. They come back and it's like, did somebody plug you in? You're like electric now. What happened to you? So 15% of people, they're a new person, never looked back. I would say 70% of people were like, that was a great experience. I loved it. And they're like, but they didn't fully get like, for me it was like a full transformation, just being totally honest. So 70% of people would say—

Oh, you would've sold the Paul experience.

Yeah, exactly. And then I would say 15% of people were like, what the hell is this? This was, I don't know what this is. And they, Often a lot of people I send are like successful tech people and they come in almost like they want to be the smart guy in the Reddit comments almost. And they're like, you know, they're so worried about he said this and is that the real statistic, 54% or 51%? I'm like, you're missing the point trying to be so, you know, you're being so smart, you're being dumb right now. And so people have, everybody has their own experience. I think it's, you know, what I tell them is just go have the experience, right? Go decide for yourself. Uh, so, you know, for people who listen to this, uh, I'm going to put a thing in the, in the description. I want to send people who actually listen to the podcast because I've been sending people I know, but now, uh, you know, this year I'll send, I want to double it. So I think I've sent 44 people lifetime. I want to send another 44 people this year. So I'll put a thing in the comments for people who go to the 4-day UPW. That's your kind of like starter event. Uh, that's the one I've been to a couple times. And, uh, I think you'll really like it.

Since you're going to do that, I'll match it. So We'll make it so you can weigh 80 in total. You do your 40 and I'll give you 40 to match it since we'll invest in these people's lives together. Amazing.

Thanks so much, Tony. I really appreciate it.

Great talking with you and congratulations on what you built.

Yeah, likewise.