Ep 35: Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis (XPRIZE) on the Magic of Thinking BIG

This conversation talks about doing HUGE things -- how do you even get started? How did Tony and Peter get started? Be sure to also check out the Global Learning XPRIZE at http://www.xprize.org TONY ROBBINS Tony Robbins has consulted or advised international leaders including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, Princess Diana, and Mother Teresa. He has consulted members of two royal families, members of the U. S. Congress, the U. S. Army, the U. S. Marines and three U. S. Presidents, including Bill Clinton. Other celebrity clients include Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, golf legend Greg Norman, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Robbins also has developed and produced five award-winning television infomercials that have continuously aired on average every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day somewhere in North America since their initial introduction in April 1989. PETER DIAMANDIS Dr. Peter Diamandis has been named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders" by Fortune Magazine. In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight. Today the X PRIZE leads the world in designing and operating large-scale global competitions to solve market failures. Diamandis is also the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. He is also the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity’s grand challenges. In the field of commercial space, Diamandis is Co-Founder/Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and mining of asteroid for precious materials. ### This episode is brought to you by 99Designs -- See what I've done there myself by visiting http://www.99designs.com/tim

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tony Robbins?

  No, this is inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:25Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs.com, which is the largest online marketplace for graphic design, with more than 850,000 registered designers from all over the world who compete for your business. I've used them for years, and I've used them for some very big projects, like the book cover for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number-one New York Times bestseller, translated into at least, I would say, 10, 15, 20 languages. And I used 99designs because I needed results, and I needed them very quickly. So, here's how it works. You need a logo, a website, book cover, t-shirt, car app, whatever. You put a description on 99designs.com, then people submit designs, and in a week or less,

• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

  you have an original design that you love, or you get 100% of your money back. So, check out 99designs.com/tim. You can see some of the projects that I've done personally. And you can also get a $99 upgrade for free. This highlights your project, listing it with a prominent background, bumping it to the top of the page. And, on average, this will attract close to 200% more designs. So, check out 99designs.com/tim, and I think you'll like what you see. This episode has two amazing guests, Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis. We're going to talk principally about how to think big. What is involved in thinking big? Really,

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  10x-ing, 20x-ing what you're trying to do. And siphoning down the bios of these two gents was very, very challenging. Both of them make me look like a real lazy bastard who hasn't done anything with his life, which is inspiring to me. So, there are different ways to take it. But let's get started. Tony Robbins, for those of you who don't know, he's often called a motivational speaker, and I think that's a total misnomer, because he is really a peak performance strategist. And his clientele is really astonishing. He has consulted or advised people including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Di, Mother Teresa. He's

• 2:30Tim Ferriss?

  consulted members of two royal families, members of US Congress, US Army, US Marines, three US Presidents, including Bill Clinton. And some of his other celebrity clients include Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, golf legend Greg Norman, Leonardo DiCaprio, the list goes on and on and on. He's been named by Accenture one of the top 50 business intellectuals in the world, by Harvard Business Press as one of the top 100 business gurus, by American Express as one of the top six business leaders in the world. And I should say, certainly last but not least, he is the creator of a product that many of you may have seen around, which is the number one personal and professional development system of all time called Personal

• 3:12Tim Ferriss?

  Power. I have quite a background with this program, and in a future episode, Tony and I will be talking a lot about it. But Personal Power has sold more than 40 million audio tapes and CD copies worldwide. He himself has also developed and produced five award-winning television infomercials. And here's the stat that might blow your mind. They have been continuously aired, on average, every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, somewhere in North America since April 1989. Okay, so for more than 20 years, I guess 25 years, every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, a Tony Robbins infomercial has been on television in North America. It's

• 3:56Tim Ferriss?

  amazing. And that is just a small fraction of his bio. But I don't want to cut Peter short. Peter Diamandis, or I should say Dr. Peter Diamandis, has been named one of the world's 50 greatest leaders by Fortune magazine. In the world of innovation, Diamandis is chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight. The X Prize is really intended to lead the world in designing and operating large-scale, global competitions to solve what Peter might call market failures. He's also the co-founder and vice-chairman of Human Longevity, Inc., a genomics and cell-therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy

• 4:39Tim Ferriss?

  human lifespan. It goes on. He is the co-founder and exec-chairman of Singularity University. I've actually spent time there as adjunct faculty, basically in the entrepreneurship track. This is based at NASA Ames Center. It's a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially-growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity's grand challenges. Ray Kurzweil, some of you may know, also very involved with that. And in the field of commercial space, Diamandis is the co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary ... ah, Planatory. I need more caffeine. Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft, check this out, to enable the detection and mining of asteroids for precious materials.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  These two guys are amazing. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. And often what holds us back is not lack of resources, it's not lack of tools necessarily, it's lack of ambition. We don't have dreams, aspirations that are big enough to really catapult us to the next level of thinking, strategy, operation, and so on, execution for that matter. So I wanted to bring these two guys on and talk about how on earth they got to be where they are today, in terms of just magnitude of impact and sheer sort of force of will. So I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, please meet Tony and Peter. Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

• 6:08Tim Ferriss?

  This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I am very excited to have two of my friends on the line, Peter Diamandis and Tony Robbins. Gentlemen, how are you?

• 6:20Tony Robbins?

  Great, how are you?

• 6:21Tim Ferriss?

  I'm very well. I know that you're both very busy and I will want to dive into quite a few different subjects. So, right off the bat, I think that the topic, the general topics, and I think there are two intertwined that I'd love to explore in this conversation, are number one, I think, an aspect of your psychologies that both of you are very well known for, and that is thinking big. So, I'm going to dive into that. But how you started thinking big, and really big, in many cases. And then, secondly, how you learn, and how you have learned. And so, I thought a very, perhaps, tactical way to start off and just

• 7:00Tim Ferriss?

  jump into it, would be asking you each, and maybe, Peter, we could start with you, what book or books you've gifted to other people the most, outside of your own?

• 7:12Speaker 03

  Sure. There's actually a few books that have changed my world that I've gifted. The first is Reading the Spirit of St. Louis by Lindbergh. And, you know, the setting is his story of this epic adventure in 1927 of crossing the Atlantic and doing it for a $25,000 prize. And I was amazed at this man's determination and the way he thought about this, and took the risk out, and then made this epic journey. So, that's one. I love Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's something I've read multiple times to sort of get me in the mindset of not letting anything stand in my way, and really driven by passion, which I know is nothing, something that Tony knows nothing about.

• 7:55Tim Ferriss?

  So, no, definitely, sorry, intro, please continue.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  No, no, then there are two others that have been sort of, Man Who Sold the Moon, which is a science fiction book by Robert Heinlein, that talks about how this guy, Didi Harriman, commercializes the moon. And it's just a brilliant 50-year-old vision that's as relevant today. And then, a book by my good friend Ray Kurzweil called The Singularity is Near, which was the basis for the foundation of Singularity University. And it's funny because all of these books, each of them, in turn, were so purposeful to me. They were the drivers for me starting many of my companies.

• 8:39Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. No, that's, I'm going to go pick up all of this. And this is a side note for folks, Heinlein. For those of you who use the word grok, grok this, grok that, that is from Stranger in a Strange Land, also by Heinlein. A lot of techies don't realize the origins of that word. Tony, I'd love to, love to hear your, your selection.

• 9:00Tony Robbins?

  Well, I was, it tends to what people really want. Over the years, probably the most common books I've recommended are As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, because when you think about the quality of people's lives, it starts with what meaning we give things. Two people can have the same exact experience and one person thinks it's over and one person thinks the game has begun. And that is the difference that makes the difference in the quality of people's lives. It's not what happens to them, as we all know. And the other one, which is along the same theme that I've probably given out as well, I give As a Man Thinketh, it's a small book. It's, it's a book that people can read over and over again and get great value out of it. But Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, to me, is just one of the great books ever written. Because we all,

• 9:43Tony Robbins?

  in our lives, the one thing that's in common for all human beings, regardless of your background or your economic position, good, bad, or indifferent, we're all going to experience extreme stress in our life at some point. Everyone's going to have to face the loss of a loved one. Everyone's got to face the loss of a job or an opportunity, or a government change in policy that affects your business, or some health issue yourself, or a robbery, or the loss of your home, burglary, burning down. I mean, all these horrible things in your lifetime you're going to experience. And to be able to learn from someone who experienced the Holocaust directly, who not only experienced the Holocaust, but walked through, what was the difference between those who made it and those who didn't? And as most of us who've read the

• 10:25Tony Robbins?

  book know, it wasn't the strongest that survived. It was those that had a higher meaning for their pain, those that found a way to even take suffering and transform it into a meaningful experience. You know, most people today, we live in a society where people think happiness is what life's about. But you can get bored being happy. Some people, you know, they're so damn happy, they create a problem, just have variety in their life, because we have lots of needs as human beings. And they make up problems they don't even have. I deal with extremely wealthy clients and you should, you know, some people hear their problem and go, yeah, I'd love to help those problems. So meaning is what really matters and to, to witness, to go through the experience in an associated way. And see how this man not only transformed his own life, but then came back to help so many others, I think is one of the more invaluable components.

• 11:07Tony Robbins?

  But another book would be The Fourth Turning, uh, because I also believe you have to understand that life is seasons. And The Fourth Turning is written by two brilliant men who actually wrote an original book that, to person Clinton gave me when I worked with them 20 years ago called Generations, which goes through, you know, a hundred years of generations and walks through how basically we adapt to the way we've been brought up and bring up our children differently and how that creates gross patterns that affect history. Uh, but The Fourth Turning is just an incredibly in-depth experience that shows you that human beings go for periods of time, 10, 15, 20 years, usually from a 15-year range of the stage we are now, where we have a primary set of emotions. There are winters where people will tend to find what's wrong. There's the springtime of possibility.

• 11:52Tony Robbins?

  There's the hot summer and of course there's the fall where the rewards are very, very simple. And you can tie these to economics, you can tie them to emotions. Um, and it's just an extraordinary book to put your life in perspective. And so you learn, you know, uh, some people freak out in the winter, uh, you know, other people, you know, some people freeze to death. Some people ski and snowboard and how to take advantage of whatever season of life you're in and how to utilize that to anticipate in your business and your life. I find to be invaluable, but it depends on what somebody's looking for. I just recommended slow sex to somebody yesterday. That's probably needed it when they're cold, they don't. And another person, I was watching them deal with their kid and I said, you gotta go pick up mindset by the Stanford University. Cause you keep telling your kid how perfect they are and you're gonna run them because telling a kid that they're perfect creates a frame of reference

• 12:37Tony Robbins?

  where they have to be a certain way as opposed to, uh, you know, giving them the feedback because they put out the effort. Effort they can control. Who you are is a whole different component. So I'm always honestly seeing what's needed for that individual now, but if I'm going universal, I think it's understanding the seasons of life. It's understanding creating meaning and it's understanding how your thoughts are the ultimate control of your life.

• 13:00Tim Ferriss?

  No, I agree. And the, I think for those people curious to dig into also the parenting aspect that you mentioned, I think that Brain Rules and the author, I think his name is Professor Medina out of U. Washington also underscores that, as does Josh Waitzkin, actually, who I interviewed on this podcast, who was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, and he talked about the same thing, how emphasizing sort of effort over attributes is and continues to be increasingly important in raising children. The, the, what was it, sort of macro level aspect of both of you that jumps out most immediately to a lot of people is just the sheer scale of what you

• 13:42Tim Ferriss?

  do. And so, Tony, for instance, I mean, how many, how many people are you going to be feeding, or are you aiming to feed in 2015 through your...

• 13:54Tony Robbins?

  I'm not aiming. I'm not aiming. It started out with when I was 11, somebody fed my family. I don't even know who it was. I just met the man at the door who delivered the food, and it radically changed my life because the meaning I took out of it was that strangers care. And if strangers cared about my family, then regardless of what my father told me, I was going to care at a different level. It changed my entire life. So I fed, you know, when I, this happened when I was 11. When I'm 17, was the first time I fed two families, and then four the next year, then eight, and then it was getting a little tough, so I got some friends involved, and then my companies grew. So now for the last, you know, 37 years, I've fed 42 million people, but I feed about 4 million people, 2 million people each year through my foundation, and I do 2 million myself. I do

• 14:35Tony Robbins?

  matching funds for the last five years. So, but this year, you know, last year, I don't know if you saw, but a lot of people didn't even notice, but Congress cut food stamps by $8.2 billion, which is the equivalence, you understand, of the families they're supporting going without food one week out of the month, just arbitrarily without figuring out how to make up for it. And I obviously work pretty passionately with all these nonprofits because I help support them all, and they're being maxed out. And so I thought... You know what, I'm writing this book right now on finances and I'm fortunate enough to do quite well. What if I took all the money of that and I donated it? You know, how many meals could I donate? And that wasn't enough. So I said, well, I'll write a check above that. I thought if I could do as many meals as I've done in my lifetime in a year, that'd be a good start. So I said, you know, okay, I gotta find forty two million meals.

• 15:20Tony Robbins?

  Holy shit, that's a large drink of water. How about, how about I donate everything to the book? And I put up a big check and I feed twenty million people this year and I get matching donations. But as I've gone along, I've gotten more inspired and I've partnered with Feeding America, which is the largest domestic feeding organization, the best organization. And I've negotiated with them to cut out all of the costs. And I'm now, I've raised my game. My total number that I'm writing a check for in a few weeks, November eighteenth, is fifty five million meals. I'm personally going to deliver fifty five million people. And then they're going to partner with me to get that to a hundred million with matching funds. So I know for sure I'm going to feed fifty five million this year. That's not counting my foundation or the other work that I do. So I guess it'll be slightly.

• 16:00Tim Ferriss?

  And these numbers to most people are just almost unimaginable. And so just Peter, just to perhaps catch people up on a couple of examples of the work you've done with the X Prize. And of course, you've done many different things in addition to the X Prize. But what are some of the problems that you're attempting or are tackling or have tackled with the X Prize to date? And I know we're going to, certainly we all have sort of a secret agenda to talk about, one that we're particularly passionate about right now. But what are some of the others that you can mention?

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Sure. So people might know the work we do here for the original OnSari X Prize for Spaceflight modeled after Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic to win a twenty five thousand dollar prize. We put up ten million dollars back in nineteen ninety six for the first team to build a spaceship and carry three adults up into space and back. And the relevance here is that Individuals today can do extraordinary things and you need to give them guidance. You know, without a target, you'll miss it every time. And if you incentivize them, you can get entrepreneurs from any place, any walk of life, independent of what they've done before, to do extraordinary things. And I fundamentally believe that. So the question is, can you point entrepreneurs at the world's biggest problems and grand challenges?

• 17:13Speaker 03

  And that's what we're doing in oceans and health and learning and energy. One of the prizes, I think, that's relevant that we're in the midst of right now is called the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize. So anybody who's a fellow Trekkie knows from Star Trek, you know, Dr. McCoy Bones would have this device called the Tricorder. He'd pointed at somebody and be able to tell if they have Rigelium fever or if they're an alien or whatever the case might be. And it is sort of the vision of where we're going. So we partnered with Qualcomm, Paul Jacobs, who's the chairman there. They put up $20 million. And we have challenged teams around the world to build a handheld mobile device, not for a doctor or for a nurse, it's for a mom or dad at 2:00 in the morning when their kid is sick.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  And this is a device you can talk to, it's got AI, artificial intelligence on the cloud. You can cough on it, it can do the RNA and DNA analysis of the bacteria in your sputum. You do a blood prick and do your blood chemistries. It's meant to be able to diagnose you independent of the medical system, which is so broken right now. And, you know, we had 300 teams enter the competition, we're down to the top 10. We'll have a winner in 15 months. But, you know, people are saying, you put doctors and nurses out of business. And the answer is no, we've got a problem right now. There's going to be, we're going to be short, something on the order of 100,000 doctors in the US alone by 2020. And that's great compared to the rest of the world.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  You know, Africa's got 25% of the disease burden and 1.3% of the healthcare workers. We could not scale building hospitals or physicians fast enough. So can we use technology to touch the lives of a billion people? And so that's, that's one of them, the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize. And, you know, the way I think about it is imagine technology that a Maasai warrior in the middle of Kenya today has access to a smartphone with Google. They have access to more knowledge and information than President Clinton had 20 years ago. And they're paying a dollar a day. This democratization. And this demonetization is where we're heading.

• 19:19Tim Ferriss?

  And I think what I'd love to ask both of you, and Peter, perhaps we could start with you, is when did you leave this very incremental linear thinking? Because for a lot of people, they hear millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, and they immediately respond in their own head with, I could never do that. I could never raise that type of money, make that type of money, have that type of impact. And when I interviewed Peter Thiel on the podcast, some people may have heard it, but he's obviously known as a billionaire investor, first money into Facebook, co-founder of Palantir. But back in the day, he was on a very traditional track to becoming a lawyer.

• 20:00Tim Ferriss?

  And he ended up not getting a clerk, a clerking position. And that was sort of the redirection that sent him into what would later become PayPal. And now, of course, he poses questions like, why don't you take your 10-year plan and ask yourself, why can't I do this in six months? And it just, it turns out that sometimes you can actually formulate a plan that works based on asking better questions. But for him, there were a few moments that really shook him or showed him that the incremental approach was not the only approach. So Peter, I'm curious, at what point did you develop this thinking? Or who impacted you? What were the triggers that sort of led you to think this big?

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Great question. And it was probably, so I grew up passionate about space, you know, watching the tail end of Apollo, drinking all the Tang, got my hands on, watching Star Trek. And it was driven by this inner purpose and mission and passion. And I sort of attached that to becoming an astronaut and joining NASA. And that was my vision, my future. And as I got closer and closer to meeting astronauts and meeting and seeing what was really going on behind NASA, I realized it was never going to happen to the government. And honestly, NASA had become so risk averse that it was massively disappointing. And there was this disconnect between my vision- of where the world should be and the way it was and the way it was going.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  And I had this moment in time where I literally, when I was at grad school at MIT, I did not submit my astronaut application. And I said, screw it. Forget it. I'm gonna take, I'm gonna do this myself. And I made a commitment to myself to work to open up the private space frontier on my own, which is an insane concept to think about.

• 21:53Tim Ferriss?

  What was the, when did you, were you sitting, having a cup of coffee and just like looking across the cafe? Did some, I mean, what, what was, what was the moment when you were like, screw it?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  I was in, I was in the manned vehicle lab at MIT. I was doing research on human physiology and I had a bunch of shuttle astronauts in the lab and I was talking to them. Byron Lichtenberg and Owen Gariot and a number of folks. And I was listening to their stories of how, what they had to do to get into NASA and how they had to be a good boy and do what they were told, which is not me by any stretch of the imagination.

• 22:25Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  And, and, and then I was told, you know, your chance of being selected are one in a thousand. If you get selected, maybe you'll fly. And if you fly, you might fly once or twice in your career. I'm like, holy shit, that's ridiculous. I mean, this is not, this is bullshit. This is not my vision of way opening up space is gonna be. And it was so antithetical. And I had so much energy and emotion tied to this desire that I literally poured that all into a Brangio approach, which became Zero Gravity Corporation, X Prize, Space Adventures, Planetary Resources, a whole bunch of things. We're just beginning. And, and I just, I think it is now possible for an entrepreneur to do anything, to take on any grand challenge. And, and I think it's, it's an important message.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  You can stop complaining about problems and start solving them. That's what we're living in today.

• 23:15Tim Ferriss?

  And is there, just to look at, say, the N S A R E X Prize, so it's $10 million. Going from MIT to, say, the first X Prize, obviously there, there are a lot of, of different steps in between, but someone, I just, I know it's, this may seem like I'm beating a dead horse on this, like $10 million, but it's such an unfathomable number for a lot of people.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I didn't have $10 million, right?

• 23:38Tony Robbins?

  I was gonna say, I hope you're gonna share this part of the story.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean.

• 23:41Tony Robbins?

  I get sound you walked out with $10 million. Come on, Peter. You gotta tell the story. First time you told me this story, I was like, all right, you're my brother.

• 23:48Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, cool. Yeah, no, let's get into it.

• 23:50Tony Robbins?

  Come on, tell them, tell them.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  So, so listen, the fact of the matter is, I read this book, The Spirit of St. Louis, that my good friend Greg Marat gives me, and I hear about it, and I go, "Hey, if I can create a prize, maybe that's the, that's the means I get my ass into space," right? And so, I start noodling this as I'm reading the book, "10 million bucks is enough money." You know, I'm gonna call it the X Prize, 'cause I had no idea who was gonna put up the 10 million bucks. The X was gonna represent the name of the person who would eventually put up the money, right? As a variable to replace. So, long story short, I'm like scrambling for, back then, you know, 100 bucks here, 1,000 bucks there, getting the seed money to get this going. And I, I end up in St. Louis, where an amazing man, Al Kirk, says, "I will help you re-raise some seed money."

• 24:34Speaker 03

  And he was driven and connected by my passion, my commitment to this, and he helped me raise about a half a million dollars in 10 and 20K checks from the people. And people connect with your passion, with your heartfelt desire to do something bigger than yourself, and they're willing to back that to some extent. Long story short, over the course of a year, and a lot of, you know, worn-out kneepads, I raise, end up raising a half a million dollars, and then our fundraising stalls, and we make the very bold decision that we're gonna announce this 10 million dollar prize anyway, with no money in place. And we end up going out under the arch in St. Louis, and one of the things I teach entrepreneurs,

• 25:19Speaker 03

  in fact, I write about this in my, my next book called Bold, which is, how you announce a big, bold idea to the world really matters. If you announce it below a line of credibility, we all have a line of credibility around ideas. We judge them constantly. If you announce it below the line of credibility, people dismiss it out of hand. And then we had this line of super credibility, that if you announce it above the line of super credibility, people say, "Wow, when is it gonna happen? How can I be involved?" So for me, even though I didn't have 10 million dollars, I didn't have any teams, I got onstage to stand by my side, you know, 20 astronauts, from Buzz Aldrin and others, the head of NASA, the head of FAA, who had seen me over many years.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  And it took a lot of convincing. I mean, this is where the even getting to that point was a pinnacle of years of work, but driven by this commitment. So we announced this prize front page around the world and because I'm absolutely positively sure I'm going to raise the $10 million. Who wouldn't want to pay $10 million after a prize, after a person did it, right? It's paid only on success. Challenges 150 CEOs later, over the next five years, between 96 and 2001, everyone's turning me down. I finally meet the Ansari family. There's a lot more detail here. But listen, the fact of the matter is if I, there

• 26:41Speaker 03

  were many times at 3 a.m. in the morning, when I was tempted to give up, and it was only because I was being driven by my internally, my, you know, my own massively transformative purpose that kept me going. And we're here today having this conversation because I did not give up. So I'll leave it at that.

• 27:00Tim Ferriss?

  No, I love that story. And I think what's, what's, what I'd love to underscore as much for myself as anyone else, is that you also had the public accountability because you'd made that.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Oh, I burned my ships, dude.

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. You burned your ships. So that's a wonderful story. Tony, I, I know a lot about your story. And of course, we're going to have a follow up conversation to talk about many other things. But I've read all your books, listened to a lot of your material. And I know that you weren't always the Tony Robbins that people know of today. I mean, there was a point where you were sort of, well, there, there's a lot to the story, of course. But what were, what were the triggers for you? The influences, the moments where you sort of decided, okay, instead of helping an additional, you know, feeding an additional two people per year, or making an additional 10 K per year, or

• 27:54Tim Ferriss?

  whatever it might be in those sort of increments, where you went to really getting bold, as, as Peter might say.

• 28:02Tony Robbins?

  I think it's driven, I think it unfolds with time. There are moments along the way, but there are inevitable moments that come with growth. And growth only comes if there's something, as Peter said, that you're passionate about that's larger than yourself. Because it's very easy to become satisfied, you know, with a certain amount of money, a certain amount of food, a certain amount of sex, a certain amount of comfort, a certain amount of anything. But if you said to me, what is the difference in people's lives? And what's the difference between Peter, as I love dearly, and the average person? It's hunger. He's an incredibly intelligent man, you know, he understates who he is and his just pure level of intelligence. But you, truthfully, I've seen people that have one tenth the intelligence accomplish more because that hunger's there. My hunger from the earliest

• 28:43Tony Robbins?

  day was to light people up. And I think it's because I was surrounded by so much suffering. I mean, I hate to see people suffer. I love to light people up. And I found early that what would light people up was answers. Answers that could change the quality of their life immediately, where they could suddenly shift their body and their energy would change, their body would change. They could lose 20 or 30 pounds, that they could change their relationship and suddenly something was dead, was fully alive, and there was passion. Because I don't care who you are in the world, you can make $10 billion, and I know because I get the calls from these people, that's not the game. The game is your body, it's your emotions, it's your relationships. If everything else in your life is going great, and there's an area that isn't, inevitably it will bite you. Because we're designed as human beings to grow or die. That's just how it works spiritually, mentally, emotionally.

• 29:26Tony Robbins?

  So along the way, I wanted answers for myself to start with. I was short, I was fat, I grew up in a very tough environment, I had four different fathers, we had no food, no money. Those things kind of trigger you. And as a result, I couldn't get answers in my environment. I didn't have access to anybody. So for me, it was books. So I'm very passionate about the power of how self-learning can transform anybody, especially in the world we have today, where you have access to everything, literally at your fingertips, on your phone, anywhere you go. But I read 700 books in a period, I thought it was going to be a book a day, that was my goal. I took a speed reading class, but I didn't do that. I read 700 books over seven years. But I read anything I could on physiology, psychology, emotion, anything I could make the difference in the quality of people's lives. And then gradually, what

• 30:10Tony Robbins?

  happened was, I started, you know, going from Books to being able to use net time, no extra time. I want to listen to things. I started listening those days to cassette tapes. That's all I am. And as I went through the process, I then found myself at events and I went to an event that changed my life was the first real teacher was this man named Jim Rohn, who was a personal development teacher. It was a three hour event. I sat in this room and I watched this man who's just so eloquent in three hours, share with people principles that I knew would change the quality of my life or theirs. And I decided to go to work for him because I thought this is what I want my life to be about. This guy's the best at what he does. I want to live this stuff. And so I went to work for him. And the core essence that I got from being around him was the quality of your life is really comes down to your capacity to add value, that in life, the only thing that makes you feel fully

• 30:55Tony Robbins?

  alive is growing and giving. And that evolved to my language of it. That's what I pulled by being around him, not so much by what he said, but what he said that grabbed me in those early days that started to open my world was, you know, my mother wanted me to become a truck driver. There was this Truck Masters Driving School. He used to advertise on television and she was obsessed that I could make $24,000 a year, which was twice as much as my father, if I just go to truck driving school and then I'd have this open road and I bought, you know, I don't could drive that truck far enough, fast enough, long enough to change the world. That's not going to change the world. That's not what my passion is. And so I went to this event and I saw this man. I walked out of there and I said, it's about adding value. He showed me that at all levels, including economics,

• 31:37Tony Robbins?

  that if you found a way to do more for others than anybody else, you would have the opportunity to grow, expand, have impact, be economically free, have the choices you want. The next big chunk was when I got exposed, because I was always looking for new teachers, to a man named John Granger, who taught neuro-linguistic programming or NLP. And I watched this man take people in minutes and create changes they'd been working on in decades. And so I became obsessed. There was nobody in that community other than therapists in those early days. And I convinced him that, you know, 18, 19, I guess years old at the time, to let me come sit in this class because I was going to put my ear to the door anyway, no matter what. And I took notes like crazy at the end of the class. And then there was a day there where this person, he was out of the room and this person started going through this, this phobic exposure and started freaking out.

• 32:22Tony Robbins?

  Screaming and I'm in a room with seventy people and they're all therapists and nobody's doing anything. And so I just stood up and I just grabbed this person and I just, I, I, I wasn't gonna let him suffer. And then everything that I'd learned consciously and unconsciously came out and it was like magic. And you know, fifteen minutes later, it was gone and John walked in the room and everybody's like, did you see what this guy did? You know, he's a phenom, I don't know phenom, all he did was, I cared so much, I had so much intensity for the issue. It's like, I, you know, I don't know how to give, I didn't know how to give somebody mouth to mouth resuscitation. I was in a place with my father-in-law where he dropped. And I mean dropped and nothing that I'd learned made a difference. And somewhere in my head in milliseconds while he was dying and turning gray, my brain remembered having seen Sanjay Gupta talk about it's not mouth to mouth,

• 33:07Tony Robbins?

  it's press compressions to get blood into the brain. Where does your brain come up with that? It comes up because it's attuned to answers when you become in an altered state, a state of passion, a state of commitment, a state of must. When, when you listen to Peter, when he put himself on the line, when he, you know, the way you take the, as you said, you know, you take the island and you burn the boats. In those moments, the answer's there. So then I started making that my modus operandi. I went on, you know, uh, national radio in Canada and I challenged psychologists and psychiatrists after I had four days of training. And I said, I don't care what your problem is, I don't care if you, uh, if you have uncontrollable phobias, see me, I'll handle it. Literally in one hour or less. And you know, then I got challenged, psychiatrist called me on the phone and made my whole career by saying, you're a liar, you're a charlatan.

• 33:49Tony Robbins?

  People like you should not be allowed on the radio. And I said, sir, I said, have you ever met me? He said, of course not. I said, have you ever met my clients? He said, of course not. I said, so are you a scientist? He said, well, I'm a physician. I said, are you a scientist? I said, good, because a scientist would never make an assumption. What you're telling me is what you're proposing is your hypothesis. Your hypothesis is that I'm a charlatan liar, so let's prove it. I'm at the Holiday Inn tomorrow night, anyone listening, come, bring me your worst patient, bring me somebody you've never been able to cure. I said, I'm sure you've got plenty of those. And I enticed this guy to a point, we had nowhere to go. And so he brought me this woman he treated for seven years, had a snake phobia. When she dream about a snake in the middle of the night, wake up four or five times a night, treated for seven years and fifteen

• 34:32Tony Robbins?

  Minutes later, I wrapped a snake around her. So that became my modus operandi, results. And that's where I came up with the idea of coaching. I said, I'm not a motivator. No one was using the term. And so I built kind of the beginning of an industry. But my idea of coaching was not go get a certificate is you're paid for results. So I would go and say, you pay me nothing. I'll do one session. Give me the most impossible task on a turnaround. You're addicted to a drug. You're smoking the cigarettes. You're in this place. And I built it. I went to the United States Army and I said, give me a program. I'll take any training program you have. I'll cut the training time in half and increase the competency. You pay me nothing. He said, you're crazy. I said, no, I'm expensive and negotiated. And I took a four day pistol shooting program and turned it to one day program, qualified 100% of people. When before they'd only done 70%, the colonel wrote, the general says the first breakthrough since World War I in pistol shooting.

• 35:16Tony Robbins?

  I never shot a gun before. It was this driving force. Then I started with athletes. Then all of a sudden I'm working with Princess Diana, then President Clinton. Who, by the way, you're absolutely right because he didn't even have an AOL account back then. I remember when I first started working with him, I said, there's this new stuff called email. I got this thing called AOL. We will talk electronically. He goes, I've heard about that. He didn't have an account, an AOL account in those days. So, and it just grew to businesses and individuals. So every time you do something and you think you've done your best, if you're a growing human being, you find out it's not your best. There's a new level. When you get there, there's a new horizon. If there is a passion to serve something bigger than yourself, and if you're not limited to just your thinking. I believe the state people get in signifies what capacity of their brain they're going to be able to utilize.

• 35:59Tony Robbins?

  And I've become an expert in changing your state, changing the story that limits that state. And then finding the real strategies that work. Because I don't give a shit what state you're in. If you're running east, looking for a sunset, you're screwed. You've got to have the right strategy as well. Those three things are, I think, what can do it for anybody. Change your strategy, change your story, change your state, and you can pretty much change anything.

• 36:17Tim Ferriss?

  And Tony, the, what was the last name of the NLP teacher that you mentioned?

• 36:22Tony Robbins?

  Grinder, John Grinder, one of the co-founders.

• 36:25Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. And I think the commonality, at least, or one of the commonalities, if I'm trying to piece together the patterns, speaking to the two of you, is that you put your reputations where your mouth was, right? In both cases, in slightly different approaches, but it just gets me so amped up. My hands are like getting sweaty just thinking about big stuff, just listening to you guys. Speaking of big things, I want to make sure that we have ample time to cover. Something that we're all very excited about, and that is the Global Learning X Prize. And perhaps, Peter, you could chat about this. Before we jump into it, though, I want to mention a couple of things to people. Number one, first and foremost, very similar

• 37:06Tim Ferriss?

  to Tony in this respect, I've been a lifelong reader and autodidact. I've had many incredible teachers, but my most important teachers, in many cases, have come from books. They've come indirectly through words on a page. And I was actually going to be held back for kindergarten because I didn't learn to read, and my teacher was convinced I couldn't read, which was not the case. What ended up being... The problem is that she never explained why I should learn the alphabet. And then I got into first grade, and Mrs. Vinsky, I still remember her, she said, "Tim, I know you don't want to learn the alphabet, but if you learn the alphabet, you will be able to read books." And I was like, "Well, why didn't somebody tell me this?" And learned to read.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 37:54Tim Ferriss?

  And so, Mrs. Vinsky, to this day, I ended up being the valedictorian of my grade school because of her. And she had competitions. So just to bring it kind of full circle, she had these little paper race cars that we would make and put them on a wall. And there was a track with the number of books read, and there was a competition to get to the end. Love it. And I got to the end, like maybe a third of the way through the year. And then we had to sort of extend the race track. But it was all due to that passion she had for reading and her ability to explain the benefits of it. So, as a segue, Peter, maybe you could tell us a bit about the Global Learning X Prize, which I'm so excited about.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and thank you. Thank you, Tim. So, when I think about what are the world's biggest problems, the problems that if we, as society, could fix would really transform this planet, I mean, that every mother and father and every person watching should really care about, there's one that, when you pull that thread, topples others. And that's creating a world of literacy. There's a billion illiterate people on the planet. Two-thirds of them are women, and 250 million of them are kids. And they live in the parts of the world that will never build enough schools or teach enough teachers. And I'll tell you one thing, a population of people who are literate... Are more peaceful, more prosperous and less populous.

• 39:19Speaker 03

  In fact, it was Bill Gates has a great TED Talk in which he talks about the fact that the, you know, there's something you can do to stop population growth rates and it's make a population healthier and more literate and you do that, they, you know, growth stops. In fact, growth goes negative and it really is a key part of our world. So at X Prize, we every year pull together the smartest people on the planet and say, where should we be focusing our next X Prize? We call this thing visioneering. Tony's been a part of it. Tim, I would welcome your participation in the future. And we had this debate and discussion with the smartest and wealthiest people on the planet and literacy, learning became the focal point. So we set out to create something we call the Global Learning X Prize.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  And here's the question, can we, can we get entrepreneurs around the planet to build a piece of software that can operate on any, any tablet, any tablet and take a child where there is nothing, no literate adults, no schools, nothing, and on their own, take them to basic reading, writing and numeracy. And that's our, and we fundamentally believe it is possible. Got amazing support from Nicholas Negroponte, who created One Laptop Per Child, who he and Matt Keller, who's running this prize for us, actually did an experiment. They took tablets into Ethiopia, into villages that were 100 miles from any schools, any, anything.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  And they dropped the tablets off in a box and the kids opened the box, learned on their own how to turn on the tablet, how to use the apps and how to start learning to sound out words. The problem they had was that the software was so poor, it limited them. And so our question is, can we create? What Neal Stephenson, a great author in science fiction, would call the young lady's illustrator primer from Diamond Age. Can we create software that allows kids to teach themselves? That's our challenge. That's what the Global Learning Ex Prize is about.

• 41:22Tim Ferriss?

  And I think there are a couple of really important aspects to this that I'd love to underscore for people. Well, first, I'll second the Neal Stephenson recommendation. If you're going to start with one, I'm a huge fan of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, but coming back to the "Your Boldest Mission Yet," I think is what you called in an email that I received.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:46Tim Ferriss?

  And there are two things. I think that the, I think it's worth talking about the old way and the challenges of trying to meet the demands of, say, 250 million illiterate children. How many, at least based on what I've read, it looks like that would take 1.6 million new teachers by 2015. Needless to say, doesn't seem like there's any way that the old way would scale, right? And another thing I want to sort of point out to folks is that if you create a literate, numerate mother, or particularly younger women, children, you tend to, in many countries, create educated families.

• 42:31Tim Ferriss?

  So there's sort of a false multiplier effect by attacking this. And the other thing I'd love you to talk about is, maybe you could just obviously comment on how people can get involved, but the fact that it's not just using software to make people literate, but there's a time constraint.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:51Tim Ferriss?

  So I think it's 18 months, is that right?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It was a friend, Elon Musk, that challenged us to do it faster than we originally planned. It's 18 months. So literally, so the way this prize is going to work, we announced it at the United Nations General Assembly. If I can say Tony, Tony is one of our major benefactors, underwriting the purse. We raised $15 million of prize money for this. And we announced it at the UN G A, at the Social Good Summit, and at the Clinton Global Initiative, by the honor of closing out CGI with President Clinton talking about this. And we expect there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of teams competing for this. And teams can come from anywhere. It can be a high school team, it can be a team out of

• 43:35Speaker 03

  Microsoft, a team out of Mumbai, it doesn't matter. And you've got to build a piece of software. We're going to narrow it down from a thousand-plus teams down to a top five. And those five are going to deliver their software to us, and they're each going to win a million dollars of capital right there. And that software has got to engage the student, because if they, if it's not exciting for them to use this software, they're going to give up and put the tablet down and it's done, game over. It's got to actually be, you know, compelling enough and exciting enough to understand that child's favorite movie star, sports star, color, so it engages them and personalizes it in a way that makes them want to learn. And we're going to deliver that software, those five finalists are going

• 44:18Speaker 03

  to be delivered to 5,000 kids in Sub-Saharan Africa, and on 5,000 tablets. And we're going to measure over 18 months where they go from zero to how far they can go in terms of reading, writing, and numeracy. And we're going to crown a winner that has to meet a certain level, I won't go into detail now. But the cool thing about this prize, unlike any other X Prize, the winning technology wins, or the winning software wins 10 million bucks, that's great, but we also get the right to open source that software. So imagine if the best software on the planet for teaching a child reading, writing, and numeracy now became available for free on every tablet and every smartphone put out there. There'll

• 45:01Speaker 03

  be a billion handsets in Africa by 2016. I mean, imagine if every one of them became the type of compelling teaching capability that a billionaire used or a teenager Mumbai used the same. The same way that Google is the same for Eric Schmidt or for the poorest kid on the planet.

• 45:22Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's extremely exciting. And obviously, I want to direct people to a few places where they can learn more. But I'd be curious, Tony, to hear from you. There's so many places you could invest your time and resources. I'm sure you get asked to contribute to many, many, many, many different things. Why is this, why is this important to you? And why have you decided to take such a sort of a large position in supporting it?

• 45:49Tony Robbins?

  Well, you know, I look at the, how do you create the greatest impact on the quality of people's lives? And if you listen to the three of us in this conversation as a sampling, I believe the thing that affects that most is learning. I mean, we are growing learning machines. A person's ability to learn, to grow, to solve problems, to be able to expand, is what develops the quality of life for any human being. That's what we're made for. And it all starts in the world we live today. In order to access the resources, and reading, writing, arithmetic, right, numeracy, those three components, as basic as they are, and as boring as they sound to us, they open the door for all three of us. I mean, your story, Tim, about not learning the alphabet, but okay, but then I could read, because you understood at some level, even then, that reading would open another universe, as it did to me.

• 46:34Tony Robbins?

  I transported myself into other people's lives. I transported myself into new opportunities, and new concepts, new solutions. All three of us have done this. All three of us have got this benefit. Elon Musk has done that. And I believe that self-learning, self-directed learning is the most important of all, because what's going to happen in that environment is people's individual passions are going to let them hack their own lives. They're going to let them revamp, especially in the world we live today, where, I mean, think about it, 10 years ago, we had, what, 500 million people on the web? It's hard to even imagine. We got 2 billion today, and in six years, we're going to have 5 billion. 3 billion people are going to be joining that system. But be able to take advantage of that system fully, you've got to be able to have these fundamental skills. So, my whole thing is become a learning machine.

• 47:16Tony Robbins?

  We sure as hell can't do that when you have such a large population of our society and of our world, that doesn't even have the opportunity to start with. So, we all know that children's inventiveness is extraordinary. What we're really doing here is using tools and technology to literally open up the world so no matter where you live, you know, we're all lucky. I mean, but you look at how our lives have changed, I'll give you another thing that I believe a principle, and that's proximity. We change proximity. When Peter came up with this dream of his, he put himself in proximity with a different type of person, over and over and over again, and shared his passionate story, and that proximity opened up opportunities. You know, books were a way of getting proximity when I didn't have physical proximity.

• 47:58Tony Robbins?

  Some of those solutions, but that proximity for someone in South Africa, somebody in certain parts of India, some parts and parts of the third world to have there be no separation from your capacity, you have the same education that somebody has at MIT that somebody has at Stanford. That stuff is coming online, but it's worthless if you don't have the basic code, that alphabet you talked about in the very beginning. So I put my time, my energy and my money on the line in this area because I don't think there's a more important we can give back to society. I'll tell you another reason. When you look at society and you see the problems that we have, a lot of people think of these problems as somebody else's problems. These are our problems because if you look at the biggest challenges in the world, they come from the people in society that are forgotten.

• 48:40Tony Robbins?

  They come from people that become so frustrated, they don't have a way to come up with an empower meaning, they don't have a way to transport themselves, they don't have a way to change the quality of their life. And those are the individuals that turn to violence. You know, you think about it, somebody asked me a few years ago, I was in India and I literally left the hotel there in India, I think about two days before the big bombing and I literally saw the bombing two days after I'd been there. And I was talking with a friend and they were with a group of people and one of the persons was just saying, how is this possible? How is this type of violence possible? How could somebody kill men, women and children in this way? And I said, you know, it's really possible because I'll tell you what it's not possible for. It wasn't a happy person, it wasn't a growing person, it wasn't a fulfilled human being. A happy person is not trying to destroy somebody else's life.

• 49:23Tony Robbins?

  And if you want to know what makes human beings happy, it isn't money. Money will give you a certain level of happiness depending which study you read. It is one thing, one thing only, progress. Progress equals happiness. If you feel like you're growing, expanding in your psychology and your humanity and your emotion and your capacity and your economics, you feel alive. We grow or we die. And you put a giant limitation on that based on where you live in the world where you're born unless you have access to certain resources and the most fundamental resources, learning, but with technology now, it doesn't even matter where you live. If you know how to learn, the world is yours. And so on a zero to 10, to me, this is a one million of importance. And that's why I've committed the time, energy and capital to help make it work. And that's why all the other people are doing the same. They're a part of this team.

• 50:09Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. No, it's well said. And I want to point out something else also to those techies listening, because I know a lot of techies out there listening to this. And even those who are not necessarily technically trained, I am not, would find the fact that open source, there's an aspect of open source that we didn't really touch on. And that is, not only is it freely available to people to use in some way, in some interpretation, in some user interface, but people, it is then available to be improved upon. So I think it's very fascinating that, let's just say hypothetically, we have these teams, five teams are given a million each, they bust their asses, think big, create really innovative

• 50:51Tim Ferriss?

  software to try to solve this problem. Finally, you find the winner, the code is made available. People are becoming literate, who can then improve upon the software itself. It's just a very sort of virtuous recursive aspect to the whole thing. That is really, really, really cool. And so guys, everyone listening, those of you who followed me for a while, know that I don't get this excited about a lot of things, but I've been waiting to pick this shot for a long time. And I've talked about my passion for education and reforming education, improving education, which is really improving learning, since

• 51:33Tim Ferriss?

  my TED Talk in 2008. And there have been very few opportunities to really use an Archimedes lever to sort of move the world. And I think this is very legitimately one of them. So, Peter, maybe you could, well, there are two things. The first is, as we know, based on the results, the spectacular results of the X Prize, that people respond to incentives. And that's not being good or bad, it's being human. People respond to incentives. So we have, obviously, for those people who are interested in trying to develop this software and compete for the prize, where should they go? Where can they learn more?

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you go to just Xprize.org, our website, you can click On the Learning X Prize there and there's information about how to register as a team, how to preregister right now and it's pretty easy. Just tell us you're interested in forming a team and get involved. We'll take you through the process. You know, if you're a commercial company, great. If you're a nonprofit or a startup, whatever. I know that when we give people a very clear target, it drives them and focuses them and it's a great thing whether you enter the competition, the final result or not. So, xprize.org, you can register.

• 52:50Tim Ferriss?

  Excellent. And I should just mention to people, you know, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine recently who's made hundreds of millions of dollars and he's a very grounded, deep, soulful guy. And we went for a hike because I've been trying to decide on sort of my next chapters, so to speak, the next projects that I pick. And the way he encouraged me to think about it, he gave me a couple of questions to ask myself. And one of them was, you know, if your goal were to be remembered in the history books, you know, metaphorically, 200, 300 years from now, what could you do? And you sort of engineer it in reverse from that question. You know, if your goal is to have a big impact, let's get very specific. If you're going to be remembered 200, 300 years

• 53:31Tim Ferriss?

  from now or more, what could you do? And I would actually pose that to people listening to this. And I would say one of the answers is winning this competition. I really feel like it could have that great an impact. You could really go down in history for this one. So, that's point number one. Point number two, for those people who just want to perhaps look at some very, very fascinating prizes, if you'd like to support the Global Learning X Prize, there's an Indiegogo page. So, you can go to indiegogo.com and just search X Prize, no hyphen needed. And the first thing that'll pop up, and I'll also include this link in the show notes for people, the Global Learning X Prize. But there are a couple

• 54:13Tim Ferriss?

  of prizes. There are prizes for every price point, all the way from $25 or $10 even up. But Peter, maybe you could comment on, I thought you could, maybe you could elaborate on one of them, which is the 10th anniversary and sorry, X Prize ticket.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Well, actually, if I could, let me give a context of why this is important because it's really, it's really critical for people to realize, we do have amazing people like Tony Robbins, who I love dearly, who has put up a million dollars here. We've raised the capital and you can say, why would my $10 or $25 even make a difference here and why should I support this? And let me tell you why. As an organization, we have been dependent on a lot of extraordinary philanthropists. I want to change that. I really want the XPRIZE to become an organization where the public decides what the biggest problems in the world that need to be solved are, and then vote on those and capitalize those

• 55:12Speaker 03

  prizes and literally create the future. It's like, we want to solve this problem, great, we'll crowdsource the rules, we will raise the capital and we'll solve that problem. It's literally creating the future. It's throwing yourself a touchdown pass. And this Indiegogo campaign is a, is a means for me to prove to the XPRIZE board and to the world that the crowd wants to be involved in helping to capitalize these prizes and cares about this model for solving grand challenges. So it's not about the half a million dollars and the million dollars we'll make. Donate 10 bucks, I'm happy with that, but get involved because we want to open this up so that it's really the world solving its own problems, stopping complaining about problems and starting solving problems. That mindset is so critically

• 55:57Speaker 03

  important for society today. The, the second thing is where are we going to use this money that we raised? So we today are basically taking these, the software, these tablets out to 5,000 kids in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our goal is to double that number. And in success, we'll go to 10,000 kids, not in 100 villages, but 200 villages, to really statistically get the numbers working best and to really see the major impact of this global learning XPRIZE can have. And so, how can you be involved? Lots of ways. You know, like you said, Tim, it's from 10 bucks up to 10,000 bucks. Two of my favorite, if

• 56:35Speaker 03

  I could, is, is one of them is for, for, for 25 bucks, you can get actually access to the winning software for your kid, or your niece, or your friend, 18 months before it goes open source. So we're going to be actually taking the five finalists and making that, those finalists available to backers of this. So if you want to play with the software yourself, Twenty-five bucks means you care about this prize and we'll give you a download code. When the software is going out to kids in Africa, you'll get a chance to download it too.

• 57:10Tim Ferriss?

  And they don't have to be technical in order to use it.

• 57:12Speaker 03

  No, it's gonna be an Android app you download and use pretty instantly. In fact, you have to be as technical as the eight-year-olds in Africa that we're working with. And then another very cool one, if I could, is at fifty bucks, you get to be involved in visioneering. You know, visioneering is this thing that we do, one hundred and forty people, CEOs, top philanthropists, you can become a digital visionary. You get to vote on which X Prize we should focus on next year. So you get to help direct where the X Prize, what grand challenge on the planet we're working towards next. You care about climate, do you care about water, health? What is it? You get involved.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  So this is about really inclusion, and that's really why I want people involved here. Show you care, get involved, help us really change the world on a massive scale.

• 58:08Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. And for those of you who are interested in really doubling down in other ways, you can also, you have a chance to spend some time with Peter himself, Sir Richard Branson and others at the tenth anniversary, sorry, X Prize event. And then also, maybe Tony could talk a little bit about Date with Destiny. So this is an opportunity to spend some time with Tony himself, and that is also an option on the Indiegogo page. But perhaps, Tony, you could mention just a little bit about that.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  I didn't even know it was there.

• 58:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, well, then.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  I'm glad it is. I said I'll support it any way I can.

• 58:51Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there we go.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Date with Destiny is, I do it once a year, it's a six-day process, it's my most intensive program, and you have people from sports, entertainment, business, average people, we have people usually from, usually about forty to fifty countries, we translate six or seven languages.

• 59:10Tony Robbins?

  The outcome of those six days is most of us don't understand that there's a, you know, a software program, if you will, an operating system that really controls how you think, feel and experience every part of your life. We know of it generally. We know what we value, know what we believe generally, but we take that down to a level that's mind-boggling, where you will understand why you think the thoughts you think, feel the feelings you have. And more importantly, once you understand what's really the controlling force in your entire life, you rewire it because you can't change something you're unaware of. And then you just have a random life. And I don't care. Some people have had randomness that's brought a lot of greatness to their life. So you find what's great in your life, and you find out what's not, and you find out the real source and cause of it. And it's an experience that is, I mean,

• 59:55Tony Robbins?

  you laugh more, you cry more, you're entertained at level because it's raw and real, and you see changes that are unbelievable. You'll see a, you know, a guy that's just come back, you know, the last one we did from Afghanistan, who's shell-shocked, who, you know, has PTSD, can't sleep at night, he's got the shivers when he, you know, tries to hold the microphone, his hand is shaking out of control, and he just stands up. You never know who's gonna stand up. And, you know, you see him 45 minutes later, and he's not shaking, he no longer, literally, take his glasses off, there's a physiological change in him where he can have light sensitivity. I brought him on CNN to give you an example, just show people what's possible. You see a young woman whose face has been disfigured and thinks her life is horrific, and literally, there is a transformation. Hersch, you know, we saw her about six months ago, and she's got

• 1:00:38Tony Robbins?

  a relationship for the first time in her life. You see a person that has made more money than God, who's achieved more than they ever have, and they're bored out of their mind and frustrated with their life, and you find out that, guess what, you know, that solution's not the solution, and you see what they're transformed like afterwards. And you participate in these processes. So it's just the most intensive individual program that I do. And instead of doing it with five or 10,000 people, it's the most intimate thing I do. We do it with about 1,800 or 2,000 people, and you get to develop family with people and friends from all over the world. So it's the ultimate, if you want to transform, you want to learn what controls and shapes your life, it's the ultimate of that experience. And if you make some donation, I don't know what it is, you're in.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Tony, let me just tell you, you donated 10 seats at the 10K level. And that's actually being matched with another 10K. So if you donated 10,000, you get to come to Date with Destiny and Tony, you've said you'll you'll take a photo and spend a few moments with those individuals, which your time is the most precious thing. And I can say that having done Date with Destiny myself with you, I learned more in six days. I learned in four years and MIT. It's the most extraordinary experience in my life.

• 1:01:45Tony Robbins?

  Oh, that's very sweet of you. I love you dearly, buddy.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  I love you too, pal.

• 1:01:50Tim Ferriss?

  So guys, I know you you have worlds to conquer out there and the Global Learning X Prize is really something that has reinvigorated me in a way that has kind of been a long time coming for me, I feel. And I really feel like for those of you listening who are in any way passionate about education and you've been wondering how to pick your shot, how to throw that that one touchdown pass, I really feel like this is an excellent place and it's very time sensitive to focus your energy. And I'm going to be obviously getting behind it as I am and doing some things to help move the needle. And you can go to xprize.org if you want to

• 1:02:35Tim Ferriss?

  compete, plenty of money on the line and glory lasts forever, right? So that's one. And then if you want to check out the Indiegogo campaign, I will put the link in the show notes. So you can just go to the blog for our blog.com and click on podcast and you can find the show notes or you can just go to indiegogo.com and search for X price without a hyphen. Before we take off, do you gentlemen have any any parting comments, advice, recommendations, restaurant tips, anything at all that you'd like to leave with us before we go?

• 1:03:10Tony Robbins?

  Something because you see the combination in all three of us and I think you see it in anybody that's enjoying their life. You know, it's the game never ends. I mean, life is a game of mastery. It's about finding a way to do something and do it so well that goes beyond yourself that if you can find your passion, if you find anything you're passionate about, and if you don't know what it is, I think it's getting around people that are really Passion, it's getting around where it's better and letting something hit you. You can't get around a person like yourself or like Peter and not be touched. There's something inside of you is going to get ignited. So if you don't have that passion yet, you're listening, you know, listening to these podcasts is a way to get some of that proximity. But I'd go pursue putting myself in an environment where you're going to be stimulated. And if you know what your passion is, then the question is, how can you surround yourself with the best of the best?

• 1:03:53Tony Robbins?

  So you can be challenged because the idea of on the X prize really is it's not just the incentives. It's also the challenge. It's that competition to say, how can I do more in less time for more people than I've ever done in my life? And when that becomes your focus, something happens at the vibratory rate of the human brain and insights come. You start seeing things, the particular activating system of the brain starts finding answers because you have that focus on something larger. So if you don't have it, find it. And if you don't know how to find it, get yourself in environments consistently where people are living it and something will hit you.

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:04:27Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And that's, that's, that's part of the reason that people ask me why I live in Silicon Valley. If I could live anywhere and that's, it's, it's not the tech, it's the, it's being around the people who believe that they're

• 1:04:37Tony Robbins?

  The conversations.

• 1:04:38Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. Peter?

• 1:04:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it all begins with passion. There is no better teacher mentor on the planet than Tony Robbins when it comes down to that. For me, I'll just add on top of that, that there is no problem we cannot take on. You know, the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities. I mean, which is amazing to think about. You know, you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people, that convergence and the notion that a single individual today, I don't care who you are in the world, where you are in the world, you have access to extraordinary capabilities. You have access to, you know, the world's knowledge and information on Google. You have access to AI, to cloud printing, all these exponential technologies. And at the same time, you've got access to all the expertise you want through crowdsourcing.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  You have capital through crowdfunding. So my goal here is to say, you know, first and foremost, connect with your passion, let that drive that with you. And then take your moonshot. Where are you going to take and do something significant that gives meaning? I love that example you, you give Tim about how you can be remembered, you know, two, 300 years from today. So it's an amazing time to be alive. It's an amazing time to be an entrepreneur. I am thankful, Tim, for who you are in the world and Tony, and blessed to be on this conversation with you guys.

• 1:05:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time. It would be really fun to get together in person at some point. I know we're on different coasts and constantly flying, but this virtual proximity will do for now. And everybody, check out the X Prize. It is very worthwhile. And there are plenty of incentives for every player in the game. And if you're looking for that passion that Peter mentioned, and you don't know what that passion is.

• 1:06:27Tim Ferriss?

  As Tony mentioned, one of the best ways to get passionate is to be surrounded by people who are very passionate and thinking magnitudes of order above the average Joe or Jane you may be surrounded by. And a great way to do that, honestly, is just to check out even the page that describes this X Prize on Xprize.org or on Indiegogo. And you might just find that, as is the case with me, it's provided some intellectual gasoline and some passion that you might not have seen in a while. So I think that it's worth checking out, and I'll be doing a lot more related to it. So guys, for the time being, thanks so much for being on.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Peter. Great being with you guys.

• 1:07:12Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks, guys. Bye-bye. Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show. I've used them. I like them, and I think you will too. 99designs.com/tim. It's the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. You can see the projects that I've put up, the competitions that I've spearheaded, including the book cover of The Four Hour Body. And you can also get a $99 upgrade for free. So check it out at 99designs.com/tim. Of course, you can subscribe to this show on iTunes. You can also find every other episode in the show notes, links from this episode at fourhourblog.com. That's F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com. And just click on Podcast. There's all sorts of other cool stuff.

• 1:07:56Tim Ferriss?

  Including my interactions with people like Warren Buffett, Mike Schnodt of Lincoln Park, the list goes on and on and on. And I would love your feedback. Let me know what you thought of this show, who you'd like to hear on the show next, and any other thoughts, really. You can find me at Twitter at @tferriss, that's twitter.com/tferriss, and on Facebook at facebook.com/timferriss with two R's and two S's. Until next time, thank you for listening.