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 m empire that does seven 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,

you know,

to politicians Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton,

the top traders and investors in the world. Ray Dahlio, Paul Tudor Jones, they pay him because they know that Tony is can help be their edge. Right? 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 about three specific things. The first is I actually went to a Tony Robbins event eight years ago. This is my notebook from that event.

I still have it eight years ago. Eight eight years later. And the reason why is because

I hate to be that guy. Was like, I went to a self help, some of an art that 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. I made I did it because I I made three 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 four day thing. It's kinda weird. It's not as cool as just going to Coachella or whatever.

But I wanna ask Tony about those specific three shifts so that you can hear from him

exactly what I heard in that event that changed my life. That's what we're gonna do on this podcast today. Those same exact things that changed my life, I'm gonna have him explain on the pot today. It's kinda like a live coaching session, which is people pay this guy a million bucks to do this, and we're gonna get it for free. Also, at the end of this, Tony doesn't know this, but I'm gonna actually give away. It's just under a hundred thousand dollars worth of tickets to his seminar. So for people who listen 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. So at 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, and send them to the seminar.

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 one percent of the one percent. And I wanna know what's different. What are they doing differently? He tells a story about an investor

who bought forty 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 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, 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 I had heard, oh, Tony Robinson's motivational speaker. And I I kind of was like, oh, do I I need motivation? I don't need motivation. I don't either. But I there was something inside me that because when you what 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 companies 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 b s. And I go and a couple things stood out right away. I just wanna tell you about this. My experience is 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.

Fifteen 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. Right? They're I I hear this scream that almost sounds familiar. I look over and it's Jared Butler, the guy from three hundred, like, the Spartan. And my god, if he's into this, I I think I could be into this. You know, like, You have this thing right. Give your neighbor a high five. I turned it to Vanessa Hudgins. I'm like, giving her a hug. I had this amazing experience. And when I was there, there was one guy who turned and looked at me. And he said, first time, because you just see this grin on your face.

And I was like, yeah. I mean, this this is not your first time. And he goes, no. I've been to five of these. And honestly, I was like, a little discouraged. I was like, you gotta come to this thing five times? Like, I don't know. Is that how this works? And I go, why'd you come five times? He goes,

Because when Michael Jordan's in his prime and he comes to your town, you go watch him play. Yeah. And I thought that was one of the best comments. 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 a 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 seventeen 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 did in personal development because I had a kind of a rough background. I have four different fathers. We had no money for food. I had to work two jobs. I worked as a janitor, and My mom had a friend and dad had a friend that had been my my dad my dad's description was he used to be such a loser, and now he's really successful.

And so you called and said, listen. I hear your son's gotten big. I was I I was five one in high school, and I I was six two by my senior year. I grew ten inches in a year. I tell people the difference is personal growth, by the way.

But but the bottom line is he said, you know, I I gotta move some furniture and things. I heard he's big, you know, could he come work 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 gonna take you to lunch. We're going to this lunch and, you know, and he's saying, you know, I I really did go places. You got a lot of drive. And I said, well, I'd like to ask you some questions. And he said, okay. Nice like dad used to say it 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. You guys said, what? Then he's like, well, it's kinda true. And he said, well, I went to this seminar and I said, what is this seminar? I've never heard of such things. He said, well, man, who has really become accomplished

takes twenty years of his life and teaches you in three and a half 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, 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 Janet and making forty bucks a week. So I said, how much is it? He said thirty five dollars. It'd be like two hundred and fifty dollars and and you today's dollars to give you an idea. But it was a week's pay. That's all I knew. And I was like, are you kidding me for three hours? I said, no. One of the guys rich. He goes, no. That's not it. He said he really has these tools, but he said, if you think it's too much, then you go learn in your own experience and take ten or twenty or thirty years and maybe you never learn it at all. And so long story short, mean, what I thought was the biggest decision of my life to take a week's pay. And I went and heard Jim Road speak. And I was deeply moved. And I left there going, okay. I'm gonna become president of the United States. I'm gonna start with a plan of running for junior. In high school, I would run for a student body president that would've been a state of south. 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 my hands on and came across neurolinguistic

programming NLP,

which at the time was a breakthrough in new technology of how to use language to change human emotion of behavior.

And I talked my way into this, you know, six month class. I was the only non therapist in the class.

And, and after the first weekend, I was just out using it. I've been stop. I'd go to literally over this the program I went to was at the airport, Holiday Inn, and LAX, and I'd go to the denny's that was right next door afterwards. I mean, look for people to help. It's like, give me a second. I'm gonna change your life. But, and then gradually,

I started modeling, and I started figuring other skills, and I started challenging traditional psychologists and I'm just saying, give me your worst patient. I'll handle them in an hour. And I took people with lifetime phobias, you know, been in therapy seven years and turned around in an hour, and that build my reputation. And so then I started working with athletes and then I started working with mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Gorbatov,

and you know, president Clinton had just bearing 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 when I started building companies. So today, you know, now I have a hundred and eleven companies. We do over seven billion dollars in business across radically different industries.

And, but this is my mission. This is what I do on a daily basis here. My education company is what I value most, but it's kind of the journey. And I have a lot 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 on the way. Alright. 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 it I've got this company called Hampton. You could check it out join hampton dot com. It's a community for founders. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys, but 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 join hampton dot com slash 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 Ferrari. So I needed the landing page a look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates. That's what we use. We just change 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 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 could 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. Alright. 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. Alright. Can you play that clip?

Tony Robbins sat in my seminar when he was seventeen.

Seventeen, 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 seventeen. So you don't you never know who's in the audience.

And he worked for me for three and a half years promoting my back then called adventures in achievement.

Three and a half years finally ran one of my offices at age twenty in Los Angeles. Tony Rob 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 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 gotta do water instead fire, they'll come from all over the world.

And knowing Tony, guess what? He'll probably try it.

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 a teacher in a way. How does hearing that. No. He he was a teacher for sure. He taught me some of the most important things. I think the most important thing he taught me,

was when I was, you know, I had all these different fathers and We're always broke. And so he said, change your mindset.

Change it from, can I earn twice as much in the same amount of time? Ten times as much? Fifty times, a hundred times, a thousand times. Yes. If you become more valuable, so you have to work harder than yourself than you do on your job, And he said, and 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's sung to me because 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 built across all these different industries. There's no way I view 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 wanna bet, and you tell me if I'm right or wrong, that from the ages of kinda like seventeen when you went to that first seminar maybe twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven. 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. I went to work for general owned. We development speaker. So you would go out and make two talks, maybe three talks in a month where you would go to a real estate office or a stock brokerage or some place where you would do a talk and show them by improving himself. 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, remember the guy that was number one in the in the whole company who were about a thousand 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. It was five one. 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 that you never remember my name. I said, because it'll only be a few months before I'll dwarf you.

And I said, I'll tell you why. You're lazy. You do three talks a month. I'm gonna do three talks a day. So it doesn't matter if I'm as good as you are. I'm gonna destroy you. Right? And I did. I booked myself,

to every kind of group you can imagine. But, yes, you know, if, you know, I, unfortunately, have to own a piece of the Golden State Warriors, and I've coached the team. I I haven't been there this year. Again, I've been at a chance, but they need it. But stuff is a perfect example of what you're describing. Because people don't know. The greatest three point shooter in the league. When he was, you know, in high school, he was really good. He the 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. We gotta

change it. You start it too well. 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 because 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, five hundred shots a day to give you an idea. Thirty five hundred shots a week, think about it fourteen thousand shots a month, hundred and the eight thousand shots a year. These are practice shots. So he's been in the area fifteen years. He's done two point five two million shots in practice.

In his entire career has only taken fifteen thousand shots, and he's made three thousand three pointers, and he's the greatest in history. Less than one tenth of one percent of his shots

have actually shown up in a game.

So I always tell people you're rewarded in public for when you practice in private. I think that's an amazing strategy. Is that is that your method to kinda 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 twelve hours a day for three or four days in a row, and most people wouldn't sit for a three hour movie. Someone spent three hundred million dollars 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 ten minutes, some people say ten years. Right? But it 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 itself, pick up in ninety days with no teacher You're gonna 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 with something, someone who's already done it, not somebody who's teaching me intellectually.

I go into a university where somebody understands it, but has never done it. I wanted to model the very best in the world. So I I would go interview with that. 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 when people started coaching like Mark Betty off of Salesforce. He came in my seminar, like, four times in a row. As big as I am, he stands out. And on the fourth, when he came up, introduced himself and said, you know, I'm Mark Benny often. You've convinced me to leave Oracle. I'm gonna start my own company else called Salesforce dot come, and I want you to come on the journey with me, and I'll never forget he said to me, he said, we're gonna do a we're gonna change business around the world, and I promise you we'll do a hundred million dollars in business. And now he's doing thirty five billion. Right? His company's worth little good point. So it's like, and he's done that in sixteen years, you know, the growth has been unbelievable. So Mark says I'm his coach. Yeah.

I learn as much from Mark or more than he's learned from me. Same thing with Peter Gilbert. You know, Peter and I are partners The Gold State Warriors, the LA Dodgers.

You know, we both, invested and started with the LAFC football club. He's got fifty two 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 eighteen, twenty hours a day, the faster you're gonna learn. So that's how you go about it. What's something you learned from Peter? Cause he's a fascinating guy that I think most people don't. You know of his work, because 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 Grooper stories or, or lessons learned you've had now that you partner with him on some things? How he thinks I'll say one of the most valuable principles I learned from him, him and a and friend of his. When we became friends at one stage, you know, he said, changed my life. I wanna do some do some more things with you, and he had a small group of men

about eight to ten that had been getting together twice a year, sometimes three 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. 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 eighteen years younger than just about everybody here. But you have so much doubt. 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 thirty, thirty one years old, and I'm in a place where he wants me to go off on this twelve day triple. I couldn't leave my business for twelve days in those days. I was a business operator. I wasn't an owner like I am today.

So had to go on the trip. And on the trip, though, it was such a push. I didn't wanna miss it. I did it. I was so stressed out because I felt like it didn't belong there. So

he didn't have this conversation with me about what I wanna 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's power? What do you mean by that? He said to me at the time, know, how many investment bankers do you know?

I said, no. I don't know. Maybe a dozen. He goes, how do you spend time with? I said, no. 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 economic you wanna generate if you wanna 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 that I did it deliberately, ongoingly. And for a year and a half, I'd go meet people.

I I'm not I'm not a networker per se. Because I felt like I 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 out of. I mean, some good friendships and so forth. No business came out. I mean, one day I got a phone call that led to a fifty million dollar deal for me. And then another day, about a year later, converted that into making it in one single day four hundred billion dollars for taking 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 gotta get in the environment

where the best people in the world are on a regular basis and have value, and then things will start to happen. Nothing accelerates more than that other than your own skills and develop. One of the things I got from being in proximity with you at your events immersion going there for four days and and and really soaking it all in was when you came on stage, there was a energy shift every time. And you you mentioned Mark 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 cut his I think Salesforce is, like, you know, a bunch of sales reps in the audiences. It was 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.

Hey, guys. So if you want if dodie's gonna come out here, we better warm up right now. And immediately, everybody raised their standard of how they were gonna 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,

even though I went to your event, because I wanted to be more successful and more ambitious, whatever, and these goals. I wanted to have, you know, ten million dollars by the time I was thirty. And then, you know, today, it's like our companies this year will do, like, fifty million dollars 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 Honeyam Home Energy. I've been doing this now for, like, Eight straight years since I I went to your event.

People don't know this. Explain what coming home with the whole curiosity about that. Yeah. That's 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 gonna be in. And you could tell if he was in unhappy state and you wanna kind of avoid the environment or if he'd say monkey gurus, you just say the spray monkey gurus made no sense. He had so much enthusiasm and excitement in his voice that we knew it was a good day. So I bought when I come home, I wanna make a difference. So my wife and I have this little that we do is, like, I'm home, honey, I'm home, and then we look for each other. We run towards each other. And we just hug each other and kiss But it's a it's a beautiful ritual that we've, you know, we've been together twenty four years, and we still have this aliveness and passion for each other because we still put ourselves on 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, like, 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 gonna get up and be a pro form in a peak state, if you're gonna prove peak results, you gotta be in a peak state, You gotta 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 you 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 kinda wire yourself for that. It's not so you don't have down times or frustrating times or sad times or whatever,

have all those things, but they're not the majority of the time. And if they happen, you can snap out of fast because you know how to. I mean, 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 if I waited till I felt like it, I wouldn't do ninety percent 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 you're not gonna accomplish or achieve or enjoy your life at the level that you deserve and probably desire. Right. You said something about the ninety seconds of suffering. Can you explain this concept? Because I stole this. I stole this, like, it's oceans eleven. And I came into you. I stole this framework from you, and I have been using I'm glad you stole it. That's I could worry the biggest 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 within ninety 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 ninety seconds and by the way, in the beginning,

no problem. Ninety seconds is the easy things. But then life gives you some big tests. Right? You get something that feels more like ninety days than ninety seconds.

But you get it's like any skill. Like, white 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, you know, what's going on, I can still find the beauty in that. I'm gonna 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's on 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 are certain channels where it's all comedy. Other one's all drama. Other ones, it's all horror. Right? Other ones, it's, you know, romance.

Well, the channel changers your body

because If you look at the greatest athletes in the world, Tom Brady, you know, 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 the same scripted 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 ten points, and it's the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. And he comes back the way. 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 ask you where you were at nine eleven, everybody remembers the moment. I ask you where at eight eleven, no one knows where they were. Right? Because you don't have that surge of testosterone, the energy. But we usually testosteron

is masked by cortisol, which is a stress hormone.

But in this case, their cortisol drops to the floor. So all they get is pure focus and drive. That doesn't guarantee you're gonna succeed, but increases your chances about tenfold.

Every time I get on stage, I develop that biochemistry.

Love it. And,

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 gonna come on me if I don't talk about your books. I wanna ask you a question about this. I read the advanced copy of your book, so the Holy Grail of Investing.

It's the third of these kinda like muddy related books that you've been doing, which has been fun because I like the business side. That's obviously where I kinda nerd out. Yeah. Tell the story about the guy you you know who I think he's a billionaire who who bought millions of nickels and why this guy bought millions of nickels. I think this this was so fun, and, you gotta tell that. Well, let me let me give people a little background. So I've written three books on finance. I I started back in twenty thirteen because after the two thousand eight dropout, I've been working with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the top ten financial traders in the history of the world. I've coached him twenty four 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 two thousand eight was we instead of punishing the people to almost destroyed the system, we gave them more of our money. It just 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 fifty 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 Dowie, Carl icon, Warren Buffett, PaulTutor, Jeff, all of them. So I was interviewing a gentleman that took thirty million dollars and turned it in a two billion dollars in two thousand eight, two thousand nine, the worst economic time.

And,

and I I asked him. I said, how'd you do this? And he went Ace scoreist 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 in the mortgages and everybody thought these mortgages were gonna hold up and that real estate was gonna grow forever. And he knew that wasn't true, and he bet against it with unique tools. So he literally

he could be wrong thirteen times to still make money. So that's how he turned that money around and made the greatest return in just about a week 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 was 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.

So 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 six 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 you're an idiot to even ask that question. There's no such investment. Right? No risk to reward. And he goes, no. He goes, smart people ask questions. Nobody else asked. They kept asking, and I finally came up with the answer. Nickel,

I said, Nichols.

He goes, yes. He goes, here's how it works. Nichols

to make a nickel cost eleven cents. That's how screwed up our government is. And he said. And he said, so years ago, pennies used to have copper and that's almost no copper net. He goes, those pennies are with two sets. He said the reason is because the copper value is there, but also now they're so unique. Right? He said, so I bought Nichols

Don't ever realize global worth the less than five cents? I wanna buy as many nickels as I can because he said the meltdown value alone give me thirty percent return on day one, thirty percent. I take investment when you can't lose money and you're guaranteed at least thirty percent. 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 penny as what happened to nickels. He said I can't do eleven set, five set nickels forever.

Once it changes,

the value of these original nickels is gonna be great. So he went to the Fed and asked how many nickels he could buy. You know, I think if the number was millions of nickels. He was truckloads and nickels. He has kids, unload them and put them in there. He said if I could push a button and convert my entire assets to nickels, I do it tomorrow. I can't ever lose money, and I'm up at least thirty percent.

So that's Ethan Akuro swore. Another good example is my friend, Richard Branson, and if you know, sir Richard now as they call it. And Richard is a fun guy. He's like,

Good luck. He'll he'll take risks with his life. He'll, like, get in a balloon, go on a go on a spaceship. He's, like, the oldest twenty one year old in that guy's just having fun all the time. 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 gonna take on British Airways

with, you know, building his own airlines, think of the expense and the risk of buying Boeing jets, a hundred and fifty, two hundred fifty jets. So he negotiated for a year with Boeing. So 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 it. Wait a second.

The most successful people have a different asset allocation.

They're getting much more asymmetrical risk reward

And I also, my conversation is Ray Dalio, learned a principle. I asked her, twelve or thirteen years ago when we first became friends. I said, You know, I I I prepared for, like, eleven hours for my interview with him. It was supposed to be thirty minutes and with three and a half hours because he got into it. I mean, it was great. We became friends.

And I asked him one question I asked him was, okay, out of all things we've talked about, is there one principle

above all others that would be the most important investment principle It would make somebody wealthy if they practiced it. You asked 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 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 I asked an location and finding that balance, what's right for you is so important.

He said, but I discovered something. Mathematically,

if you can find eight to twelve

uncorrelated investments,

he said you can reduce your risk by eighty percent

and make a slight increase in your upside. He said you're eliminating eighty percent of the risk. He was telling you that it's 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 is going great, people want the growth that comes in stocks. Whereas it's not going to go great, they expect that bonds are gonna 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 has tied together in the public markets.

And so sure enough, as I started doing this and looking around, I came across an interesting statistic that blew my mind. And here's what it is. In the last thirty five years,

every stock market in the world has produced a smaller return than private equity average private equity at that same time. So I'll give you an example.

Most people know the S and P five hundred, the index is the top five hundred companies in stock market,

And if you invested in the S and P over the last thirty five years,

you had an average of a nine point two percent compounded return, which is amazing. You know, you're at five percent. You're doubling your money every fourteen and a half years. If you're, you know, nine percent, it's every eight years. That's big jump.

But if you're an average private equity, not the people I interviewed this book. People I interviewed this book are the thirteen biggest in the world. So they have like

twenty percent or more compounded for decades.

One of them in this book is thirty seven percent compounded for twenty six straight years. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Right? When you're compounding battery goes crazy, but the average is fourteen point two per year. So

understand this. You're compounding

fifty percent greater

every single year compounded. So what does that mean? If you put a million dollars in the S and P five hundred thirty five years ago and forgot about it. It's worth twenty six million dollars today. It's unbelievable.

But if you put a million dollars in the average, not these guys. In the average private equity, fourteen point two, you have a hundred and thirty nine million dollars in the same money in the same amount of time. So I was like, whoa. Now what are the ultra high net with people at forty some, forty some set of their assets and private equity and private real estate? 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 five year returns?

I asked that class. Lowest five years. So, like, how bad can the bad get? Because everybody tells me about the good. Nobody tells me about the bad, usually. And I love this one because private credit was the only one that had a positive return its lowest five years in the last thirty years, twenty 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 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 five 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 company and making it better, bringing new marketing, bringing a new CEO, bringing 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 they're the masters in the universe. So I was like, okay. Let's see what they're doing. And then 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're you got plenty of money and you're outside. If you're not good looking, you don't know everybody. You're not getting to that club. I don't care how much money you have. Right? It's very similar like, you know, buying a Ferrari at any Ferrari. Yes. But the newest

hots, s p three, You know, they cost four million bucks. You can't even buy it because they're all gone already by collectors. They'll 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 got a few because of my name and some relationships,

but the amount I'm getting is too small.

And he's just Tony, he goes seven.

I'll tell you a little secret. I'll tell you where I put the majority of my money, and this guy is very, very wealthy, very successful.

So I'm leaning in, and he goes, There's this firm in Houston, Texas. I guess Houston, Texas. I was gonna 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 three 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 two percent on your money, they've been tied up for five years. And you're willing to tie it up because of the greater returns. Right? But they make two percent 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 twenty percent of the upside. If they make you a bunch of money, they get twenty percent of that. And it's not uncommon for me to go from a billion to two billion in five years.

So They make a hundred million in fees in those five years, and they make another twenty percent on a billion. They make three hundred billion dollars in a billion dollar investment. That's why they're the wealthiest people in the world. Alright. I got a lot 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 gotta get this out. But nobody could take advantage of it. Now they can't. So as a result, we put it out there. So you can imagine,

I only now see sixty five of the largest private equity firms. I own a piece of them as a partner

in every fund that they have. So I'm not there working every day till two in the morning, like, there on 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 I used to go to Dodge of every once in a ceremony way off in the deep, far seats, and right feel the cheapest age you can buy. And I would I'd 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 LASC football club, the soccer team there. We built the stadium. I got to help design it. It was fun. We got to it with my friend, Peter Gubers. Just a genius.

But the amount of money, time, and energy, and the amount of Like, 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 the rule was changed three years ago. And 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 the odd dog people pay it. Doesn't matter. And they used to be just putting butts in seats That's not treating more. So I'll give you an example. You know this, if you read the book,

my partner Peter guru bought the Dodgers with a group of people, magic Johnson, a ball group people, I'm part of it now too.

And when they bought it, they paid two billion dollars for the fur. And everybody's freaking out. Right? I remember the news. People are like, this is a crazy guy. Because no one had paid more than eight hundred million for a sports and most people believe the Dodge is worth a billion, but not two billion. So I went to Peter. It's like, I know you're not dumb. I know the smartest guy I know. So you must know something. No one else knows if we're gonna do this. Tell him he goes, Tony. You know, I like making movies with cliffhangers.

He said, wanna make you wait three days because I'll make an announcement when you hear that else, it'll come over and love low party to get it. They made the announcement.

He's sold

the local TV rights. Just the local TV rights for seven billion, made five billion on the spot. So why?

Because sports teams now are media enterprises.

Of the hundred best shows, most watch shows last year, ninety two 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 live you wanna see in real time, for down 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 one by eight to twelve.

Plus, on top of that, you share in the revenues that every other teams media. In other words, it's equal share. If you're a small team or a big share, you'll keep your local media that you get to sell locally. So the income streams are amazing. Like an example, Michael Jordan, We actually bought it. Michael Jordan bought, the Charlotte's for two hundred and seventy five million controlling interests,

twelve and a half years ago. He just sold us where one of the buyers is a group of buyers for three billion.

That's his return on that time period. In the last ten years, if you take the NBA, the the Major League Baseball soccer

and hockey, those four together, they've averaged between them eighteen percent compounded during that time versus eleven percent during the S and P five hundred. So just you're only doubling your return, having fun having something you're part of that's really cool and people can have an experience that they once dreamed about without having it 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 at set. The the holy grail of investing dot com. I think there's, like, a free chapter. So you can go download the chat or whatever. There's a free audio chapter you can listen to, and then you can pre order the book. It comes out a few weeks. I know we're over, but I gotta ask you for one 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, you know, when you when I was at the event, were talking about, oh, I've given I give this many meals every year. I think now it's like a billion meals, some insane number of that because, you know, you remember what it was like on a food.

And a part of me was, like, I'm gonna do that someday. I should do that. I should it myself again. I should do that in the future. What I you know, when I'm rich, I'm gonna do that too. And I think this probably a pretty common thing. Easy for him. He's rich. What does it mean what does it matter to him to write a five million dollar check. Right? I guess it was just five million.

Until what? Right. Fair enough. Until you told a story

about

giving early on. And give and I I I 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 twenty four years old, you're broke, and you had a giving moment that has 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. I tell people, if you won't give a dime out of a dollar, you're not gonna give ten million out of a hundred million or, you know, hundred million out of a billion. Don't kid yourself. Right? And also the value of giving transforms you on scarcity. But the background on it is I was working for Tim Room, 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. Share your own business and make some mistakes. And I found myself totally broke again, and I'm in this four hundred 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, nineteen twenty, twenty one, twenty two dollars. I don't know if it wasn't some change. I haven't paid my rent,

and I gotta figure out what to do and want 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 for the winter.

And, you know, spend five bucks in the, you know, And then I didn't drive there because it was only about three miles, but I couldn't pay three bucks 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 Marinadale Raves where I went there. There's boats going by. And I I can't I don't want the pot to pee in. Right? But I'm visualizing.

And then,

my

my and it would stack a food this high. And then the I could see the front door because of where I was sitting, and the front door opens in this beautiful woman walks in. She was just absolutely gorgeous. I couldn't help, but look, look, We didn't 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 three feet tall. He had a little vested suit on a 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 staying in 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 wouldn't date it. It was five ninety five or something like that. And I had the rest of the money in my pocket. I had no plan for this, and I I was walking out the door. There's that little boy with his mom,

and he'll fax to me. So I didn't talk to her. It wasn't going to her. I just went up to him because so moved that I just said, Hey. I said, my name's Tony. What's your name? And I kept member's name anymore. It's, you know, Johnny or whatever it was. And he goes that 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, take her to lunch like this. He goes, well, she's my mom. And I said, well, that's even more impressive.

He goes, I can't take her to lunch because, you know, I'm just eleven and And I said, yes, you can. I had no plan for it. I just reached in my pocket, took all the money out in the world, nineteen dollars, whatever was left over, and poof dumped it on, and with the change in everything right in front of him. And his eyes got big in, you know, garbage can covers. And he goes,

I can't take that. I said, sure you can. He said, how come I said, because 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 his acknowledgement. I just walked out that door to get my car and then realized I didn't have my car there. It just I'd walk. So I I'm I look like a stupid white guy skipping my house. 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 of glades 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 there was a guy I loaned a thousand dollars to about two and a half years before when I really didn't have it, but he needed it more than I did. I loaded it to him. So I've been for months and calling and setting you know, regular mail to him here because he wasn't answering the phone, and there wasn't an email in those days. And,

and that morning, I get my mail, and no no call, no response.

Now when I get my mail, 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 locked in there for me.

And he had put in you know, an extra two hundred dollars for interest and so forth. So it was twelve hundred dollars.

Twelve hundred dollars is more money than I could live on that for a month in those days. Right? I just started crying uncontrollably.

It 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 gonna 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 to me through it, but I never felt that scarcity. I never felt that scarcity again since that day. Cause if you get to that point, your brain realizes there's more than enough And you can give when you feel like there's nothing there. That's

that's what transforms you. When I interviewed sir John Templeton,

who's the first billionaire investor, started with nothing.

He said to me that the secret to wealth is gratitude Right? Because if 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 tithe for at least ten years who didn't become wealthy.

He said, Ty, it doesn't have to be a church. It's just taking ten percent of what you're earning and giving it away. And I'm proud to say I've given away seventeen percent and have done quite well.

But I did it when I had nothing. It's it's there.

I wanna play 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, three or four days yet for an event, but they like to have experienced since COVID started four years ago. Everyone was trapped at home, and I was doing stadiums, you know, and they start shutting down the studio and I'd still make about a hundred people in his stadium. So I decided I'd build a studio and I'd build these twenty foot ice, you know, walls point six seven 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 twenty thousand, thirty thousand people, not a thousand. I built software so the people couldn't step clapping, could shake their phone. It would send electric signal and if one person did hear nothing when forty thousand 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 three days. It's coming up January twenty fifth through twenty seventh, just in about a week and a half. If you wanna go, there's zero charge. It's not partially free. It's totally free. And it's about two and a half hours, three hours a day of immersion for three 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

and your business and your finances and your career. And we just we put the most we can in those three days and create huge momentum. And last year, we had over a million people again from a hundred and ninety five countries in the world. And then 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,

it's the time to rise summit dot com.

Time to ride summit dot com at start January twenty fifth through the twenty seventh that 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 well, on the moment, in that moment, I was like, you know what, gonna start giving, and I the the idea I came up with, you know, this was a pretty crazy experience I had. I just gotta look at lots of Black Friday tickets.

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, alright, I'm a start giving a what I did was I said, alright. Next year, send one person to this. I'm gonna give somebody an experience, go to UPW. And I was like, every year, I'm gonna give more people than the air force. I've sent forty four people

to your events. You know, my my mom, my dad, I don't peep anybody, anybody who, you know, other entrepreneurs who I thought, you know, might like it. Yes.

And, How have they responded as a result? How do they react? How these about fifteen percent of people

are,

like me. They're, like, they come back and it's, like, did somebody plug you in? You're, like, electric. Now what happened to you? So fifteen percent of people

their new person never looked back. I would say seventy percent of people were like, that was a great experience. I loved it.

And they're, like,

you know, but they they didn't fully get, like, you know, for me, it was, like, a a full transformation. That's being totally honest. So seventy percent of people say, man. Gonna spoil the Polish spirits.

Yeah. Exactly. And then I would say fifty percent of people were like, what the hell is this? You know, this was I I don't know what this is, and they often, you know, a lot of people I send are, like, successful tech people, and they come in almost like they wanna be the smart guy in the Reddit comments almost, and they're like, you know, they were so worried about he said this. And is that the real is it fifty four percent or fifty one percent? I'm like, you're missing the point trying to be so, you know, you're you're

being so smart. You're being dumb right now. And so people have, you know, everybody has their own experience. I think it's, you know, what I tell them is just go have the experience. Right? Go go decide for yourself.

So, you know, for people who listen to this, I'm gonna put a thing in in the description. I wanna send people who actually listen to the podcast because I've been sending people, I know. But now, you know, this year, I'll send, I wanna double it. So I think I've sent forty four people a lifetime. I wanna just send another forty four people this year. So I'll put a thing in the comments for people who go to the four day UPW that's their kinda like starter event. That's the one I've been to a couple of times. And, I think you really like it. So Since you're gonna do that, I'll match it. So we'll make it so we can weigh eighty in total. You do your forty and I'll give you forty,

to match it since we'll we'll we'll we'll invest in these people's lives together.

Amazing. Thanks so much, Tony. I really appreciate it. They talk with you, and and congratulations on what you built. Yeah. Likewise.