Ep 38: Tony Robbins (Part 2) on Morning Routines, Peak Performance, and Mastering Money

Part 2 of 2. Tony Robbins is the world's most famous performance coach. He's advised everyone from Bill Clinton to Serena Williams, and from Leonardo DiCaprio to Oprah (who calls him "superhuman"). For years, you've also asked me to interview him in-depth -- so here it is! I flew to Florida to spend time with Tony in his home, and what ensued was an epic two-part conversation. It covers just about everything I've ever wanted to ask him, ranging from his breakfast and morning routines, all the way to who he'd most like to punch in the face (it's a hilarious story). My visit also coincided with his first new book in 20 years: Money--Master the Game http://www.amazon.com/MONEY-Master-Game-Financial-Freedom/dp/1476757801/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs http://www.99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover http://www.99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results http://www.99designs.com/tim. Last, how would you like to join me and Sir Richard Branson on his private island for mentoring? It's coming up soon, and it's all-expenses-paid. Click here to learn more http://www.shopify.com/build-a-business?ref=4hww. It's worth checking out. QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What is the best piece of investment advice you ever received or read? Please let me know in the comments http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog.

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now, what is an appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:25Tim Ferriss?

  Why, hello there, my dear little munchkins. This is Tim Ferriss. I've had some caffeine since you last heard from me. What you're about to hear is part two of a multi-part conversation with Tony Robbins. To put it briefly, Tony Robbins is a performance strategist with clients, including presidents like Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa, not making this up, Andre Agassi, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Oprah Winfrey, who calls him "superhuman." This guy is a force of nature. If you didn't catch the first part, you might want to do that before venturing in. But, really, we jump around a lot, cover a lot of different topics. So if you don't mind your stories as more of a jigsaw puzzle, then, by all means, keep on listening from this point on.

• 1:10Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs.com, the largest marketplace of graphic designers in the world. Here's how it works. You go to 99designs.com, I suggest forward slash "tim" for reasons I'll explain, and whether you need to create a logo, a website, a car wrap, a bumper sticker, whatever it might be, a t-shirt, you can put up what you need, a description, then designers around the world compete for your business by submitting ideas and designs and so on, and in less than a week, you have an original design that you love, or you get all your money back. And I have used 99designs for years, including for some very big projects like the book cover,

• 1:55Tim Ferriss?

  or at least brainstorming, book cover ideas for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller and is in, I don't know, a dozen-plus languages and has sold a gajillion copies. So, I have used it when time... And money has been of the essence. It is a fantastic tool. And if you go to 99designs.com/tim, you can actually see some of the campaigns, some of the competitions that I've run. So, actual submissions for the book covers and things like that. You can also get a $99 upgrade for free, which gets you more submissions. So, check it out, 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:36Tim Ferriss?

  And now, without further ado, please enjoy part two, the final part, of The Tim Ferriss Show with Tony Robbins.

• 2:47Tim Ferriss?

  And to touch on a few things that you mentioned, for those people asking themselves, as I'm sure a lot of people would, how can I apply what these guys do to what I do? And I think that you present a number of observations articulated very, very well that most people will never be exposed to. For instance, number one, asset allocation does not mean choosing if you are going to be a stock picker or invest in an index fund for the S&P 500 because those are both, you're in one bucket right there. That's right. You're in a correlated class. That's right. There's no diversification in that. Right, there's more to it. Well, there's some, there's riskation of maybe more companies, but it's all within the same asset class. Yeah.

• 3:26Tim Ferriss?

  And the other thing is that there are ways, there are ways to look at the problem that are not obvious right off the bat. For instance, you mentioned something that's so simple, but a lot of people miss. If you invest and you lose 50%, you have to now have 100% gain to get back to break even. Put another way, and this is also straight from the book, if you, let's just say, you, I think it was investing over, it was either five or 10 years, the exact number is in the book, but, and you had, you'd invested in the stock market through a, let's just call it sort of off-the-shelf mutual fund that charges typical fees. Yeah. And the market moves up and down, up and down, up and down.

• 4:09Tim Ferriss?

  At the end of that period of time, you're back at the same market levels. Yes. You would think, if you put in 100 grand, you'd be, you'd have 100 grand at the end of that period of time. And it ends up that you're, what, 47%?

• 4:20Tony Robbins?

  Something of seen. It's the idea of average rates of return. So if a lot of people look at their, what they've invested and their, their broker or their whoever represents them will show them the portfolio and go look. You know, you went up, you started here, you went up 50%, you went down 50, but you went up 50, you went down 50. So your average rate of return is zero. But when I put real dollars in there, a hundred thousand dollars and you go up 50 or 150, you go down 50. You're at 75, you go up 50, oops. And then you go down and you end up at 37,000 dollars instead of a hundred thousand dollars. Cause your principal is moving up and down. So there are all these ways we could do it. The biggest one, the biggest lie, in the book, I want you to do seven steps.

• 5:00Tony Robbins?

  So one of those steps is frankly, you got to do what most of us guys, probably people listening on your team already do. And that is you've got to become an investor, you've got to be an owner, not a consumer. Right? And, and the way to do that, frankly, we all know, but very few people do. And that's you take a percentage, you lock it down, you never see it, it's automated. And you put it aside for investment and that just occurs. And I showed the people some of the tools that Nobel prize winners have come up with. So if you say I have no money. You can invest more for tomorrow by committing when you get a raise or your company gets the next level. You automatically have that percentage go there. So it's money you've never seen, it's not taking away money from you, so you're willing to commit to it, right? And there are ways to automate that. Totally automate, which is fantastic. So you know, they took, they took a group of blue collar workers who couldn't save more than 3%.

• 5:41Tony Robbins?

  And they showed in 12 years, they had them up to 16% with absolutely no sense of loss. Because you know, once, if I, they showed this with example, and the behaviorist showed me that if you, if you give a monkey an apple, they go crazy. You give them two apples and they go crazy. And if you take one of the two apples back, they're angry as hell. They still have the same first apple. What happens is if you don't give them that second apple, but it gets invested for them. You know, that changes your world. You don't feel a sense of loss, there's no drop. And yet you set yourself up saving 15, 16, 17% at a totally different world than three or nothing, obviously. Second piece that I got through that brought this up for is. You gotta, it's great to get in the game, but oh my God, don't get in the game till you understand the rules till you're an insider.

• 6:21Tony Robbins?

  And so I go through the nine biggest lies, and they're, they're investment lies, they're Wall Street lies, however you want to call them, but they're marketed lies. There's a reason you believe them. Very heavily marketed. Very heavily marketed to the advantage, right? And one of those is this idea that they're going to beat the market. And now here's the real facts. Ninety-six percent, check it out, ninety-six percent of all mutual funds in a 10-year period will never even match the market. Now, you're paying a premium. You could have owned an index that cost you 20 basis points, right, at Vanguard? Or 14 basis points, depending on what index you're dealing with. Instead, you're paying, they say 1%. You ask people, what are all just 1%? In reality, if you go through Forbes has shown the average mutual fund, when you put all fees in, if you read the prospectus, and there's all these 21B trading,

• 7:07Tony Robbins?

  all these things that don't, they don't call fees very often, but they're money out of your pocket. The average is 3.1%. Now, when you do that, here's the problem. Number one, only 4%. What's your chance of picking the 4% of mutual funds that are going to be succeed? If you go for Morningstar, you're screwed because I can show you statistically, Morningstar's own statistics that show in a 10-year period, out of 250 people that made it to five-star Morningstar, four are left. It doesn't work that way, right? So if you could pick the 4%, if you were magically able to do that, you could do all right, but the 4% is always changing. So your chances of picking the right mutual fund are 96% against you. And the average person's following can't work. They don't know how to evaluate this. They try and pick it, so they're screwed.

• 7:47Tony Robbins?

  And then you get poor performance and you pay somewhere between 10 and 30 times more for the same investment you could have got for 30 times, 10 to 30 times less. It's like the ultimate insert injury and go, why does that matter? Well, first, let me give you this. So people understand what 96% means or getting a 4% possible success rate. If you and I play blackjack, most people don't play, right? 21. You get two face cards, that's worth 20 points. If your inner idiot says, hit me, when you got two face cards, you go 21, you have an 8% chance of success. You have a greater chance of success there than you did if you're trying to find the right mutual fund. Now, what's your chance of success in getting financially free when, here's what's unbelievable.

• 8:30Tony Robbins?

  If I said to you, here's an investment I want you to try, Tim. Here's how it works. You put up all the money. You put up all the risk. And I will put up no money and I put up no risk. And if you win, I get up to 60% of your entire growth of what you have over the lifetime of your investing. You put up all the money, I take no risk, I put no money in. And if you lose, you lose, but I don't lose anything. That's a deal that most people said, I'd never taken a million years. That's the average mutual fund. Because for every 1% you pay, it's 20% over the lifetime of your investments of growth. Because just like there's compounded growth, there's compounded fees.

• 9:07Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 9:07Tony Robbins?

  So Bogle showed me 60%. I'm saying, Jack, how is this possible? How could people be doing this? Like, he goes, Tony, it's a $13 trillion lie and it's called one thing, marketing.

• 9:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Tony Robbins?

  It's marketing. So I've been in the business 64 years. It makes me crazy and people still do it. The vast majority of people put their money in a mutual fund. They had an index fund and now, now, he's come to, you know, be the largest mutual fund in the world with an index fund now with two and a half trillion. I mean, Jack has been modified, but most of the smart money is there. It's not the average person's money that's in the index today. So I go through these lies and what you don't know in the financial world will hurt you. And the one you're talking about is just the average rate of return. You want to be seduced. When you look at the rate of return, Bogle said to me, Tony, whenever you see what the rate of return was, you're trying to evaluate that mutual fund based on its past performance. Just know that number's not accurate. Dalbar did a gradable study, 20-year study.

• 9:55Tony Robbins?

  He found the average mutual fund owner over 20-year period of time made 2.5% net. The market was 9.7%. That ought to give you a sense. So, you know, I, I went to go do this book and I won't mention the person's name. Like all these incredible endorsements from everybody, Nobel Prize winners, right? Self-made billionaires, all these guys. There's a particular person that I have a really good friend, if I won't mention the name, but it was ironic. He wrote me back and said, well, my team's right and they really don't think it's that, you know, that, that's special. And I'm like, well, I'm not insulted by that, but it doesn't make sense to me. And then I found out this person has six mutual funds. So it's like, okay, I get it, dude.

• 10:32Tim Ferriss?

  Don't ask a barber if you need a haircut.

• 10:34Tony Robbins?

  That's my fault. I'm so sorry. Never should have asked that question.

• 10:37Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry about that one. So I should point out to folks also that it's, some people are very math phobic. Part of the reason I went to Princeton, and it's funny, I was reading Carl Icahn's story and how he was, he was just, he was told, he was told he would never get into any Ivy League schools. And he chose Princeton. Same thing happened to me. I was told I would never get in.

• 10:58Tony Robbins?

  Wow.

• 10:58Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, to a whole host of schools because, and this is kind of like your, your mutual fund guy. Humans respond to incentives.

• 11:04Tony Robbins?

  Yes.

• 11:05Tim Ferriss?

  And this particular guidance counselor is incentivized for what? To optimize to be able to say X number, X percentage of students got into their first choice school. So how do you do that most easily?

• 11:15Tony Robbins?

  Lower their expectations.

• 11:16Tim Ferriss?

  Lower their expectations. But the, I am intrinsically not someone with a lot of math background. Part of the reason I chose Princeton over other schools is because they didn't have a math requirement. And I think for a lot of people listening, they may be like, oh my God, percentages and compounding, it's very overwhelming. And I think that part of the reason your book had to be as long as it is, and a book should be as long as it needs to be.

• 11:38Tony Robbins?

  Yes.

• 11:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is that if you were to try to compress it into 100 pages, it would be like watching a three-hour action movie, but getting a frame every five minutes.

• 11:47Tony Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:48Tim Ferriss?

  You wouldn't, it would be too much in too little space. But when people read the book, when I read the book, you're leading people in a logical progression from building block to building block to building block so that by the end, people are very, very savvy. And so people who are, who might be thinking, oh my God, this is, this is really a lot for me to absorb.

• 12:07Tony Robbins?

  I was probably talking 100 miles an hour. In the book, I'm telling you stories too, and I think the stories take it away so it's not numbered, you go, holy shit. If, if me, if me and three of my friends all put aside the same amount of money and we both get a 7% return, but my buddy's getting fees of 3%, my other buddy's two and I'm one, and we both put in, all three of us put a million bucks in or 100,000, however you want to do it, the person with 3% of fees ends up with 65% less money and they got the same rate of return. They start with the same amount of money over the same period of time. And I think when you see that with real people's lives, you start to go, I don't have to know the math, I just know one thing, fees matter, and I'm going to cut those babies to the absolute base.

• 12:48Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. And I'd love to talk, you, you brought it up a little earlier, Ray Dalio and asset allocation. Because this is something I've been thinking about a lot, considering that due to paper gains, I'd say I have very, very, very, very high double digits of my entire net worth in tech. And it's hard unfortunately to rebalance when you have a lot of private stock.

• 13:10Tony Robbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 13:10Tim Ferriss?

  That can't be traded.

• 13:11Tony Robbins?

  In there.

• 13:12Tim Ferriss?

  But you know how it is. So the, but Dalio is someone I've been fascinated by for so long. Maybe you could talk about the, the all seasons. And what some of the stuff that you that you chatted with him about as it relates to asset allocation.

• 13:26Tony Robbins?

  It might be helpful for people to take a second and give people his background. I mean, Ray is not the guy you would think of as master of the universe. He comes from Queens. His dad was a jazz musician. His mom was a homemaker, really lovely lady. He went from, you know, very lower middle class family and decided that he wanted to go work at a golf course. He bumped into, you know, one of the things I talk about is proximity affects your life, who you're in proximity with. And he's around with proximity with the very wealthy people and they're talking about stocks and he got fascinated by it. And got hooked on the process and then, you know, got involved in the stock business. And but he got involved in a time period when the world was incredibly volatile, the 1970s. And we're all shaped by our time periods, right? And so if you can imagine, you know, that's a time we had this massive inflation where Nixon goes on television and says,

• 14:10Tony Robbins?

  we're going off the gold standard, that money, as you know it called the US dollar, we're not going to back up with anything. And he thought for sure the markets would just be destroyed. The American dollar is going to be worthless. And instead they had what was called the Nixon rally. And it's like it shook him to his core that as much as you think you know, you don't know. And it gave him a lifelong focus that says, I always want to be asking, what do I not know? And how do I find, understand the system as a whole, not just my perspective on the system? And so he started Bridgewater. And in fact, my friend Paul Tudor Jones gave him some of his initial capital to do this. And he's wishing he didn't loan it to him, but would have kept it as an investment, I think, at this stage. Because Bridgewater became so gigantic. But what happened was, he's the guy the US government went to when they're trying to figure out how to design tips.

• 14:55Tony Robbins?

  I mean, this is the level of design. He's the guy that when McDonald's trying to come out with McNuggets. And they're trying to figure out, how can we make sure we have enough supply of chicken? He's the one who figured out the math of futures and what to do so McDonald's could even do that. That's the way this man's brain works. So over the years, he built this alpha fund and it's very intensive. And he's lost money in 23 years, three times on that fund. And the fund has returned 21% compounded for 23 years, just mind boggling before fees.

• 15:26Tony Robbins?

  And then turn around and after all these years, he said, you know, everybody talks about, you know, at different stages of your life, you want to protect yourself. So you do a balanced portfolio, 50%, 60% in stocks, maybe, and 40 or 50%, you know, here in bonds because, you know, when the stocks are more volatile, the bonds are going to balance you out. And then he says, you know, but didn't look that way in 2000, didn't look that way in 2000, it all went down in 2008, right? So over the years, he said, this is a story everybody buys, but it's not reality in a whole segments of time. So he began to pursue what he said, what if I wasn't around? I need a passive, almost passive form of investment. I need something that wouldn't take 1,500 people, that my kids could use, that, you know, that would support all my philanthropic efforts if I wasn't here. And he questioned everything about asset allocation

• 16:11Tony Robbins?

  that everybody's ever been taught, and came up with a different way of looking at it, where he basically said, there are four things that move the price of any investment. It's inflation and deflation, and whether the economy is growing or shrinking. And that creates four different seasons in which every, every type of investment, stocks, commodities, gold, real estate, it has an ideal environment in which it grows, and it has environments in which it will absolutely slam. And so he figured out, what's the right combination of these things, so that I can reduce the risk to the lowest level of loss possible? Which, you know, Warren Buffett's rules, everybody talks about the rule, right? It isn't Warren Buffett's rule, it actually comes from his teacher, which was, you know, rule number one to investing, don't lose money. Rule number two, see rule number one,

• 16:53Tony Robbins?

  right? So how do I make that happen, but also maximize the amount of upside, as much upside as possible? He called his all-weather fund, because it works in all-weather, and he did all his own investing in for 10 years, and he backtested it all the way to 1925, and said, oh my God, I have discovered something unbelievable. So, the only people got to use this is he, and then finally, his clients, the $5 billion net worth, the governments, the pension funds. So, I've read about it, you know, read his very few interviews, I'm sure you know, you go online, you won't find a whole lot, you know, in front of the Congress, you know, maybe at Davos every now and then. He kind of avoids any publicity and so forth. And I did all my homework on him, I, you know, Paul Tudor's one of his dearest friends, arranged to go see him, sited all out, and I was prepared. And then I go into this meeting,

• 17:36Tony Robbins?

  and I start asking him, I asked him a question, I ask everybody, which was, if you can't, if you couldn't pass on any of your money to your children, none, all you could pass on was a set of principles, an investment strategy, and a portfolio, what would it be for your kids, that they don't have your skill? Everybody gave me different answers, but his answer was, well, it'll be my all, you know, all-weather approach. So explain to him how it works, explain. At the all end of it, just like me telling it to you right now, real fast, you know, people are probably going, I don't have a clue what he just said, it seems logical. But the one thing he said is, Tony, is when people think they've got a balanced portfolio, stocks are three times more volatile than bonds. So when you're 50/50, you're really 90/10. Yep. You really are massively at risk, and that's why when the markets go down,

• 18:20Tony Robbins?

  you get eaten alive. So he has this portfolio, and he describes principles. I said, you know what, Ray? I said, this is spectacular, I understand it. But I said, the only way you really get the result from this is if you know the exact percentages. It's like, if you've got somebody's recipe, and you put in a gallon, when they put in a teaspoon of a particular ingredient, you're messed up. So I said, I need the secret sauce. Yeah. And he looks at me and laughs. He goes, Tony, that's my business. And that's when he gave me the whole $5 billion net worth, and you know, gotta have 100 million. I said, yeah, Ray, but you just got to tell them, you haven't taken anybody's money for 10 years, and you're not gonna take anybody's money. He goes, yeah, but you know, it's really complex. And I said, I know it is, but give me a simple version. And he said, no, you know, it's always changing. I said, give me a version with no leverage that the average person could do. You just got them telling me, they go into their broker,

• 19:03Tony Robbins?

  go into their wealth manager, and you know, going to their mutual fund's not gonna work. So help a little guy out. I know you care. And I started teasing him. I said, come on, you know, give me the juice. He started laughing, he goes, well, he said, I could give you something, it wouldn't be perfect. I said, I don't want perfect. Your worst design will be the best design anybody else ever come up with, right? So I got him going, he said, well, we might do. And he lays out this simple strategy. And I was vibrating, I mean, I was like vibrating, I just, I could, I knew what his generosity level was, it was unbelievable. He's never revealed it to anyone in history. And I ran as fast as I could, I got in the helicopter, flew back, went to the guys at Hightower, went to the guys at two of the firms, and I said, I want you to run these numbers, show me the modern period, show me the last 30 years, what really happened with this formula, every single year for

• 19:47Tony Robbins?

  30 years, what's the overall for the 30 years? Because that's, I look at 30 years, 1940, you know, that's when we finally had cell phones even, right? That's when the world started to shift. Show me 40 years, and show me 75 years, take me back right before the depression even, right? And the guy, the guy texted me, I'm in the middle of the night, and he never texts me, and he says, have you seen the numbers? And so I never got it. I get up, I call him on the phone, I said, what? No, I haven't seen him. He emails them to me. And Ray was right, eighty-five to eighty-six percent of the time, every time period we look at, between eighty-five and eighty-six, thirty years, forty years, seventy-five years. What that mean, and by the way, that's being liberal because the fifteen percent where he lost money, the most he ever lost is three point nine five percent in seventy-five years.

• 20:30Tony Robbins?

  And that was two thousand eight, when the market was from peak to trough was down fifty-one percent. The average loss, including that, was one point nine percent. So like, for example, you know, one of his losses is point zero three. I mean, really, it was break even, but we called it a loss because technically it's a loss. If you could go to Vegas and you knew that for seventy-five years, the strategy you used had been successful eighty-five percent of the time, and that when you lost, the most you lost was one point nine percent, how much would you bet? How long would you, you know, continue to gamble? And it's hard to figure it out. So, I mean, I mismatched, I took it, I took it to some very large institutions, and they're like, I've never seen anything like this. So a couple of people said to me, you know, this, let's just, don't put this in the book. This is, this is a business, man. This is a business.

• 21:15Tony Robbins?

  This'll, this'll give you the lowest of volatility, the highest level of return. It averages just under ten percent return with that little volatility. It's mind-boggling. So I said, you know what? That's not the spirit it was shared in. I said, you know, we can do this for people if they want to do it, we give that option, but I'm putting the book so anybody can do it, and it's in the book, right then and there. And, you know, it's not the only one. There's strategies for everybody, but it's one of the more exciting ones that you'll see.

• 21:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is there anything, totally up to you, but just, is there anything you can share from what, what he told you about the, the all-weather?

• 21:44Tony Robbins?

  Well, the, I don't.

• 21:46Tim Ferriss?

  And I will just say, as a preface, look, there, there's so much in this book. Number one, I've had also people say to me, for instance, I'm not going to name any of my close friends, but, you know, like, yeah, four hour, blah, blah, blah, that's fine, give me the index card.

• 21:57Tony Robbins?

  I know, I know.

• 21:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I give them the index card, and there's, there's context missing.

• 22:01Tony Robbins?

  Exactly.

• 22:02Tim Ferriss?

  And they also, it's not just because they, they can't, in some cases, do it because they're missing the detail, they won't do it. So get the book, do yourself a favor.

• 22:09Tony Robbins?

  I'm not holding back on that. I don't think I made a damn book, anyway. The reason, the reason I wouldn't share that is because it'll be out of context, but even in the book, I tell people, the first chapter, I tell them this result, I give them one example, I say, I know the first thing you're going to want to do is turn back to that section of the book, look, and I said, you can do it, but I caution you. There's a syntax. Yeah. There's a sequence, the dog, the giant job of the dog. And if you will go through this sequence, it's gonna be more. If you know that portfolio, but you don't know truthfully what your risk tolerance is, you don't know truly what your personal goals are, you don't know what you need to avoid on the fee structure and the tax structures, then that return won't be very great for you. Yeah. And more importantly, you won't go through the psychology that'll make you actually follow through for a while. But if people want to do it, by the way, I then went to Hightower, which is the fifth largest registered investment advisory in the United States, 30 billion in assets,

• 22:54Tony Robbins?

  13 fastest-growing Inc. magazine company, fastest-growing company. Amazing. Elliot is the CEO. Blown away by this man. I did an interview with him and I left there going, "This man is committed to total transparency. This man blows out all those fees, all this, to say it in the nicest way possible, screwing over what happens to most clients. He eliminates that. He's a former litigator. He's got a moral code that's pretty intense. I loved him." So I came back and I called him up and so let's meet again, I met again and I said, "You know, I got a challenge for you." I said, "How about you do this for everybody else?" "What are you talking about?" I said, "How about for the average man that really needs it?" "So what are you talking about?" I said, "Bring that ultra-wealthy advice to them. Show them on a small scale how they can do what your ultra-wealthy client does." He goes, "Tony, you can't make money doing that."

• 23:38Tony Robbins?

  I said, "You don't need to make money doing it." And I'm doing a book, I'm not making money doing it. I said, "A part of our life has to be for something more." And I said, "I know that's what you're about." I said, "But I'm not taking it up putting your business at risk." I said, "Let's use technology. Technology with live people, the balance." And so we built together a site. I put them together with this group called Stronghold, which is brilliant. They've been managing my money for me for the last seven years. A.J. Gupta, he's actually the person that Charles Schwab put on the cover of most magazines for the last year as kind of the face of the 10,000 registered investment advisory fiduciaries around the world and around the country. And the two of them got together, created a site. It's kind of like Check Your Broker. So now you can go online and you can put in all your accounts, it'll aggregate them. It's a patented technology. You get to see, A, what your real costs are on everything, all in one picture.

• 24:23Tony Robbins?

  There's no BS. Versus what you could have the same investments for. Right. Right? It's like, why would I pay more? Second thing it does, it shows you what your real returns have been combined, first what you think they are. And third, it shows you what your volatility levels have been, the amount of risk you're taking, so you know. And then fourthly, it does a comparison to that versus other portfolios, including the one designed by Ray Dalio. And you can go, "Wow, do I want to do this?" If you're a person like half the US, less than 25,000 of vessel assets, you get to do the whole thing for free. It's given to you, go do it. If you are not, you have more money, you can still do it for free. You can do it yourself, or you can push a button and say, I'd like you to become my registered investment advisor and somebody can do it. So I got them to do it saying, mostly people you're never gonna see anything from, but wealthy people started not wealthy, right?

• 25:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 25:04Tony Robbins?

  And so, it's really cool. It's one of those few, according to the sounds, win-wins, right? These guys are adding value. I got them to do it, and now they're proud of it and excited about it. So it's a cool thing. So-

• 25:14Tim Ferriss?

  What is the URL?

• 25:15Tony Robbins?

  The URL is, uh, it's, what is it? Strongholdfinancial.com. I gotta double check, but I appreciate it.

• 25:21Tim Ferriss?

  We'll double check that and also go in the show notes, guys.

• 25:23Tony Robbins?

  You got it.

• 25:25Tim Ferriss?

  You were saying, to answer my question. I don't wanna cut you off.

• 25:28Tony Robbins?

  Oh, which one?

• 25:29Tim Ferriss?

  I've got a lot of questions.

• 25:30Tony Robbins?

  Yeah, yeah. Which one?

• 25:31Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, you know what? Well, let me highlight a couple of things-

• 25:34Tony Robbins?

  Oh, you'll answer your question. I said, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna come here, because even the book I don't do, it'll get there, it won't mean anything to you. I'm not holding anything back. You go to the bookstore and open up and read it, not pay anything, I don't give a shit. But I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice. What you really wanna do is take yourself to the process, so that when you get to that point, you can decide, do I want that value to be 20% of what I do? 5%, 10%, none, 50? Because there are many different strategies in the book, including, as you said, David Swensen. David Swensen is the most successful institutional investor of all time from Yale. He went from 1 billion, took their monies from 1 billion to 23.9 billion, 24 billion now in two decades. He's a rock star, nicest human being you'll ever meet in your life, and doesn't get paid 1/10th the rest of these guys. It's his dedication to Yale is why he's there. I mean, he could leave there and be at a totally different place.

• 26:19Tony Robbins?

  When he had cancer, the man said, listen, I'm not going anywhere. This is my bucket list, is to be here and to continue to serve at Yale. A man of such unbelievable integrity, and he gave me his exact portfolio. It's in the book also, and he actually gets a higher return to even I did than Ray does. But you have to go through a hell of a lot more volatility, obviously. So that's why your risk, you see why you gotta know what your real, what you think your risk reward is in your mindset versus what it really is, you'll know when you go through the book.

• 26:44Tim Ferriss?

  If I can make a request-

• 26:45Tony Robbins?

  Yes.

• 26:45Tim Ferriss?

  I would love for you to interview the guy who hired Swensen for Yale, because talk about the best hire of all time.

• 26:51Tony Robbins?

  No kidding.

• 26:52Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, just the psychological profile on the guy is so unique.

• 26:55Tony Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Tim Ferriss?

  So a couple of things I'd love to just underscore for folks. The first is, and again, this is pulling stuff from the book. I'm gonna paraphrase some of it, but- I think it was Dalio who said something along the lines of like losers react, winners anticipate. It's actually me, but that's okay. It's you. I'll give it to me. Take that as a compliment. No, but but the point being that the and I guess Mark Twain quote is also in there, which was what history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Yeah. So there are going to be crashes. There are going to be black swan events and you want to have a plan in place for when that happens. Exactly right. And the more you can automate your many of your financial decisions, you know, know

• 27:41Tim Ferriss?

  when to hold them, know when to fold them and actually have a plan going in. So if you buy something and have no plan for selling it, you're going to be subject to sort of impulse reactions that will cause you to do what the vast majority of people do. They they buy high and they sell low. So what is in this, what we're talking about, when we talk about asset allocation, among other things, just to sort of try to try to distill it for people as a concept, is that you have uncorrelated or inversely correlated buckets so that if if if one portion of your investments goes down because of inflation, deflation, fill in the blank, there are others that go up, which mitigate your risk. That's correct.

• 28:22Tim Ferriss?

  And what you notice, and I live in Silicon Valley, I'm very involved with tech, that's that's sort of been my sandbox for the last, you know, close to 10 years, I guess. And what you notice about the best, okay, 95% to talk about venture capital is very similar to mutual funds. So it's the vast majority are horrible as a as a class, they're terrible. However, if you've if you pick the unicorns and you use the same term, there are. Reid Hoffman or. Yeah, yeah, there are a handful who are very, very consistent. And so what I've tried to do, just like you did with a lot of these hedge fund managers is look at what separates them. And what separates them is you have the vast majority of tech investors who think.

• 29:06Tim Ferriss?

  High risk, high return. I've got to swing for the fences. I'll be okay as long as a third of my startups lose money, a third break even, and a third make money.

• 29:16Tony Robbins?

  Wouldn't be nice if life worked that way.

• 29:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it doesn't work that way. Whereas the guys who are really good realize that there's a power law distribution. One or two of their investments are going to make up for all of the losses. And the very top of the top, even though they don't talk about it publicly, if they have a lot of their personal money at play, have thought a lot about asset allocation. So if they're heavily vested in tech and it might have an IPO, blah, blah, blah, they have an entire basket of shorts on the NASDAQ or whatever it might be. So that, by the way, it's not always high risk, high reward. If their tech goes to hell, they have enough money that is betting it's going to go to hell, that they don't lose a lot of money, if at all, or maybe they even make money.

• 29:59Tony Robbins?

  That's absolutely true.

• 30:00Tim Ferriss?

  And so I think the...

• 30:03Tony Robbins?

  It's a way of doing it that you mentioned. I think your brain may have been going this direction. Maybe I'm wrong, but Ray Dalio actually said something in there that stuck with me brutally. He said, "I don't care what it is that you think you're great at investing in or you like." Most people invest in what they like, real estate, or stocks, or bonds, or what they think they're good at, or what they've raised with. He said, "Whatever asset class you invest in, I promise you in your lifetime, it will drop no less than 50 and more likely 70% at some point." And he said, "That is why you absolutely must diversify." Because you're saying, "But I can make so much more in this side." You know, I've had people throughout the years, I teach this bucket theory, this idea that if you want to do is make asset allocation simple, it sounds like such a big word. It's just buckets. Some of my money is going to go in a secure bucket.

• 30:47Tony Robbins?

  That bucket is like a church people, I'm gonna, it's not going away. It's very secure type investments. Its upside is not gigantic in terms of speed. But you know what? The compounding process, if you give it enough time, those low returns are giant returns still, but you're not gonna lose. And then there's this bucket called, what most people call growth bucket. I call it risk growth because it's really risk first. And on that, I'm taking bigger risks for potentially greater rewards. And now the question is, how do I balance these? Am I 60/40, 50/50, 80/20? And that's designed really by three things. Number one, what's your real risk tolerance, not what you think it is.

• 31:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and they're never the same.

• 31:23Tony Robbins?

  They're never the same. You know, I do these wealth mastery programs in the years and invariably I'll do some crazy thing like I'll say, "Every stand-up, make change." They look at me and go, "Make change," and they start reaching their pockets and making change. And so somebody will pull out five bucks and 10 bucks. Somebody pull out a hundred dollars and they'll, someone will come up and they'll take it and give them five bucks. And they're like, you know, they don't know how to react. So this goes on for three or four minutes, the music's going on. I go, okay, stop, right, sit down. And then they go on like I'm talking about something else. And invariably, somebody's like, hey, wait a second. I want my, I want my hundred dollars back. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I want my hundred dollars back. The game's over. I said, what did you, what did you think the game was over? Did you think the game had ever gone over? Right? And who said it was your hundred dollars? Right?

• 32:04Tony Robbins?

  And it's like, it takes a while for them to finally get, you know, I'm stressed about a hundred dollars. What do you think is going to happen when you lose a million or half a million or a hundred thousand or 10 grand? I mean, your risk tolerance is not what we think it is. So when you find out what your risk tolerance is, and we've got great ways to do that in the book. And then you figure out really, how much time do you have? If you're younger, you've got more time to make mistakes and so you can take bigger risks. You know, you've got timeline on your part, your risk part. And then the next piece is how much is your cash flow? What's, what's going to be the real flow? If you look at those three things, now you can decide how much goes in my secure bucket, how much goes in my growth. And if you don't make that decision, it's the most important investment decision of your life, according to everybody I interviewed. Like what percentage secure, what percentage growth and risk? Then when things come up, you're always going to go for the growth risks. It looks so sexy and exciting. And I can't tell you how many people over the years have done this.

• 32:49Tony Robbins?

  They're telling me, why would I put money over here when I've got this real estate and I'm making 120%? I have a friend that built some of the first big condos in Vegas back in the boom time. And he, he actually went to my programs, sold the business he had, made 200 million dollars, invested in these condos, started building the panorama towers and places of that nature. And he was up to like three quarters of a billion. I kept saying to him, dude, take some of your growth money and put it in the secure bucket, right? And how many times I told you this? He goes, Tone, I love you. I made 200 million dollars because you, but now, you know, I'm really, like what I touch goes in the gold. I'm listening to this ego and I'm going, I love your brother. But I said, you know how many times I have this conversation? And then guess what happens in 2008? How much you think he was worth? He was worth three quarters of a billion dollars.

• 33:32Tony Robbins?

  He'd grown that rapidly in those short years. What do you think happened to his net worth?

• 33:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'm guessing it went down according to the Ray Dalio prediction.

• 33:40Tony Robbins?

  How about minus 400 million?

• 33:42Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 33:43Tony Robbins?

  He didn't just lose what he had, he lost everything at and beyond. So then he's trying to negotiate.

• 33:48Tim Ferriss?

  So he was leveraged.

• 33:49Tony Robbins?

  He was leveraged out, wiped himself out. So, most people don't put enough in the security bucket is the lesson. And a guy like Dalio provides you a strategy that's got great sustainability, but there are many approaches in the book. But you do have to decide how much is secure, how much is growth, and I show you how to do that in the book.

• 34:04Tim Ferriss?

  And I would emphasize, at least, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, Tony, but for me, it took me a long time to think, to realize what investing represents for me. And it's not maximizing return, it's maximizing quality of life.

• 34:18Tony Robbins?

  Yes.

• 34:19Tim Ferriss?

  And there's a big difference.

• 34:20Tony Robbins?

  Yes.

• 34:21Tim Ferriss?

  And for me at least, I have a very kind of barbell strategy where I have super, super safe stuff and then the startup stuff. But I need to modify that, I want to modify that because it's not currently all seasons at all. And the, so for people out there, I think, who might say, ah, you know, I don't want to think about it. I would just emphasize that you're making decisions every day about where you allocate your time, your money, your resources. So whether or not you want to call yourself an investor, you are an investor.

• 34:54Tony Robbins?

  Totally true.

• 34:55Tim Ferriss?

  And if you make no decision, that's also a decision. So it's important to become literate, I think, with a lot of these basic concepts, which is not difficult.

• 35:03Tony Robbins?

  I want to put much say about that. People need to remember that everybody's a financial trader, but most people are making a bad trade. Because they're trading time for money.

• 35:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 35:12Tony Robbins?

  Worst trade of your life because you can't get more time, we all know it. So what this book will do, if you're willing to just give yourself a chapter a day for a month, or go crazy on a weekend, you'll go from maybe not even knowing what these terms sound so complex to being juiced because you'll be an insider. You will look at the world in a totally different way. You'll go, that is the biggest rip off on earth, that'll never happen to me, that is where I want to go. And you'll make some decisions, and then it's not an everyday thing. Literally, you might do rebalancing. Once a year for 15 minutes. I mean, unless you're going to be a trader every day, this shouldn't dominate your life. But when did you give yourself the initial education about one of the most important areas of your life? There's only a few areas that really impact the quality of your life. Your body, your emotions, your relationships, your finances, your career, your business,

• 35:56Tony Robbins?

  the spiritual side of your life. How you use your time. About a half dozen or so, maybe seven areas that really affect you. But most people, major and minor things. They know so much more about shit that doesn't matter. So I'm saying to people, give yourself the gift of just a short burst of time so that you can truly look at life and be good at this area. And if you want someone to do it for you, you can, but at least then you lead them. You're not being led by them.

• 36:21Tim Ferriss?

  No, definitely. And I think that, just like, one of the things that sort of changed my world in startup investing was, you know, any company you invest in should be able to return the fund. Just as like a general amount of money that you're investing over X number of years. And just like the sort of $1 to $5

• 36:38Tony Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:39Tim Ferriss?

  principle with Tudor Jones. And there are a couple of pithy heuristics, like rules of thumb, that I think will change how you view not just money or stocks, but the world in general, such as assume in the Dalio case, that, you know, your favorite area, your kind of pet investment bucket is going to decrease by at least 50% in the next, you know, X period.

• 37:02Tony Robbins?

  50 to 70.

• 37:03Tim Ferriss?

  50 to 70, even better.

• 37:05Tony Robbins?

  70 will get your attention.

• 37:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that'll get your attention. And plan accordingly. And I think that, yeah, it's been a very, very fun process to read this and also to connect with you over it. Let me ask if I could, because I know you've got a lot planned. And I also want to finish up the last few interviews in the book, reading the ones that you did. I'm curious if there are any particular funny stories or what was the funniest story or interaction you had while researching or writing this book that comes to mind?

• 37:35Tony Robbins?

  Well, I think to share one of them already, I think is the, it's funny now. It wasn't so funny in the moment, is walking into Carl Icahn's office, so excited, so prepared, ready to rip open. Because this guy, he's got the greatest returns of anybody out there. And very few people know that. Kiplinger did the first review that really showed all the numbers. If you'd invested in him in 1968, you'd have a 31% compounded return within his firm versus at Buffett's firm, you'd have a 20% return. People think of Buffett as the ultimate guy. So I got these tax figures, I'm excited, and to have him literally throwing my video crew out the door and then telling me no audio, and I'm like, how the hell am I gonna keep up with this guy capturing the notes? So that'd be one. A fun moment was introducing Carl Icahn to Jack Bogle. They didn't know each other, and they're fans of each other.

• 38:20Tony Robbins?

  So it's like, I came from being an outsider to now introducing them. But most of the time with these guys wasn't as much funny as it was fascinating. It was just seeing the level of the, they play the games, like with a great poker player. You know, they know the psychology, they know the numbers, they know the probability, and you just realize why most people are never gonna win, because, you know, they're not gonna win gold medals against these guys that are playing this game day and night, night and day, you know? So, and some of that isn't new to me, just because Paul's been my dearest friend for, you know, 21 years now. But it's fascinating to see that in every, in every industry, in every sport, there are a few players that play at the highest level, and they have one thing in common above all else, hunger. But it's an unquenchable hunger. You have

• 39:05Tony Robbins?

  that hunger, I see that in you, that's why I'm a fan of your work. It's like, you're gonna keep finding the answers, no matter what answer, you gotta wanna know more. And every one of these people has that, and it's fun to be around them because there's energy in every one of these people. They have different styles, but there's an energy, and that energy is driven by that desire, that hunger to know more.

• 39:22Tim Ferriss?

  And the other observation that was reinforced by reading the book was that they also, they have principles. They have operating systems that they use, and whether you are trying to lose weight, trying to quit smoking, trying to improve your investment returns, you can ensure against your lesser instincts by having a system.

• 39:45Tony Robbins?

  That's right.

• 39:45Tim Ferriss?

  And putting systems in place so that when you have the impulses that are going to lead to your destruction, or eating the cupcake when you shouldn't eat it, that you can mitigate against that. And it's possible, you can set these things up in advance. I would love to, before we wrap up, just ask a couple of rapid-fire questions.

• 40:02Tony Robbins?

  Sure, go for it.

• 40:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. When you think of the word "successful," who's the first person that comes to mind?

• 40:09Tony Robbins?

  Gosh. I like Richard Branson. I know why that's the first thing popped in my head when you said that, only because I think he lives so passionately. He lives life on his terms. There's no bullshit with him. He's having a good time. He's close to his family. Lives on an island like I do. But he's an extraordinary leverage and very conscious man about society and what to do. His elders program and things like that. He's very socially conscious and yet still has a great time. So he'd be one of the first people I think of probably.

• 40:38Tim Ferriss?

  What have you changed your mind about over the years? Any positions you've taken that you've reversed since?

• 40:44Tony Robbins?

  You don't have to be perfect in everything you do, including not eating anything enjoyable. That'd probably be a big one. My wife would tell you. Gosh, you know, over the years, you're always updating. I mean, I don't look at it as changing as much as updating and informing myself, you know? If you thought of it as changing, I think you'd find resistance within your own consciousness or your own identity. And, you know, identity plays such a strong role. The need to be consistent with what you believe. And that's why the political system is so messed up. You know, somebody can actually grow and they're seen as inconsistent.

• 41:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, oh, it's a mess.

• 41:15Tony Robbins?

  It makes the political system not grow. It makes the system locked in place. So I don't think there's anything that comes to mind just real directly, but I think there's a constant upgrading. And sometimes it's those two millimeter upgrades that provide the biggest impact.

• 41:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Side note for folks, it's also common among the top venture capitalist investors. Marc Andreessen, who created the graphical web browser, one of his mottos for Andreessen Horowitz is "strong opinions weakly held." So he's ready to be corrected or update, as you mentioned. What would people be surprised to know about you?

• 41:51Tony Robbins?

  Oh, gosh. You should ask my wife that question.

• 41:55Tony Robbins?

  I don't know. Some people would not be surprised at all. People at my events would know. I'm a love bug. I'm the kind of guy that I can be brought to tears by seeing someone do the right thing. And yet, I run through that wall, shake the building with 10,000 people in it. I'm a softie, really, truly underneath it all. That's what drives all this in me.

• 42:12Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 42:12Tony Robbins?

  I love to see people lit up. I love to see people happy. I love to see people freed.

• 42:16Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm gonna ask an unusual one, given that answer. What's the first face that comes to mind when you think punchable?

• 42:22Tony Robbins?

  Punchable? Oh, my gosh. Well, I had an interesting meeting with President Obama.

• 42:31Tony Robbins?

  It was actually interesting, it was, I was invited by Marc Benioff to come. It was for, I don't know, 15 billionaires there in Silicon Valley. I was in San Jose and it was for the president. It was before the second election, his reelection. And I voted for the president, you know, so I've been a fan of the president. But I was getting more and more frustrated by watching the style of politics, which was, you know, creating greater and greater division. And there seemed to me a great level inaccuracy and the promises are being made that very hard not to see. And at that time, it was the whole thing, we're going to raise taxes on the rich and that's going to balance the budget. And I've done the numbers, I did a whole video on it, shows you can kill every rich person in the United States and take all their money and take all the corporations and all the advertising from the Super Bowl.

• 43:16Tony Robbins?

  I mean, I do this whole long gig that came from some statistics another man put together for me, but I did it together and you can't cover the budget for one year and then what do you do next year, right? And so, I said to Marc, I said, listen, I support the president, but I said, honestly, I don't know I can support the other side, but I don't know that I'm a guy to be there. I don't know that I'm a fan. And Marc, and I said, Marc, you and I are so aligned in so much, but, you know, the way in which, you know, how Simpson Bowles was this close and he let it pass. We had both sides willing to make some tough decisions is beyond me. That just, it lacks the leadership that fundamentally the president of the United States, in my mind, has to have. That's my judgment, I'm just a person, but it's like, I don't understand. Taking the easy route is not something that's going to sustain or grow this economy long

• 44:01Tony Robbins?

  term. And I said, and using the political capital, even though I'm supportive of healthcare, using that healthcare where half the country is upset about it and pushing it down their throat and trying to say it's going to cost less money, I mean, it's just like, there's certain things. So Marc says, I agree with you, I agree with you. And Marc is the second largest fundraiser for the president. So I said, well then, how the hell you raise all the money? He goes, well, because I feel stronger about him than the other guy. And he said, and you and I are aligned with him on so many other things about, you know, the environment and, you know, people's right to marriage regardless of their sexual preference. And I said, of course we are. So he said, come, come and be there. I said, I said, you know me, I'm totally respectful, but I'm honest. He goes, come. He said, I'll sit you right next to the president. He said, and we'll have a great conversation.

• 44:43Tony Robbins?

  So I went to this, to this meeting and it was crazy. I've, you know, I've worked with so many presidents over the years, but I've not been with Obama. And it's downtown San Jose, they locked everybody in their buildings. And literally, you know, it looked like one of those movies, you know, where everybody's died and there's nothing left but the buildings. It was the wildest thing for several blocks. Took us up in this room, there's nobody else seeing, there's these 16 people, many of which you'd know from Silicon Valley. And I listened, and President came in, it was really wonderful, and he shared, you know, some comments and said, "I'm not here to give a speech, I'm here, you guys have built the biggest companies in the world." I'm thinking, "Not me, I don't fit that category." And so I wasn't gonna say anything. And he said, "But I really wanna hear from you guys." So, Mark turned to him and says, "Well, are you ready for some, you know, real give and take?" Mr. President, he said, "Yeah."

• 45:27Tony Robbins?

  And he goes, "Okay, who wants to go first?" And he points straight at me. That's what friends are for. So I said, "Mr. President," I said, "I've paused, I literally paused, I shouldn't do this, I'm not here, they both paid a quarter million bucks to be here." I actually, I never knows where I went, thousand one, thousand, trying to see if somebody else is gonna say something. That was really, I finally said, "Okay." So, "Well, Mr. President," I said, "I really, I want you to know I voted for you. I know you're a man of tremendous integrity, I share the same values you do, I believe." But I said, "I'm really confused about two things. Number one, how you think you'll be able to have a, you know, a second four-year run and get anything done, when you have taken the other side and demonized them to a point that they're never gonna work with you?

• 46:12Tony Robbins?

  And my second question, if I ever get one, would be, why didn't you support Simpson Bowles? Right? I said, "It was right there, it needed to be done." And he, you know, he's long paused, and he said, "Well, those are fair questions." And he said, "First of all, I don't think I've ever demonized the other party, ever." And I just sat there, and I watched him say it, and I was like, "Are you kidding me? I'm not a Republican, but come on." Right, you know, both sides have demonized, you're kidding me? And he goes, "And they've been really unfair to me," and he went through this piece, and I said, "Mr. President, that's happened with every president, to be fair." You know, that's what they both do, and it's gotten worse throughout the years, for sure. I said, "But what about Simpson Bowles?" And he said, "Well, Tony," and he, you know, everybody does their research about who's in the room, the president knew. He goes, "Well, Tony, you know, your friends, your hedge fund friends," he said, "you know,

• 46:56Tony Robbins?

  they wouldn't like it if we got rid of, you know, the 15% tax they do." And they wouldn't, and he goes, "And, you know, most Americans wouldn't like it if they got rid of their mortgage deduction, and, you know, all those things." And he said, "I got a better plan." And I said, "The better plan is you're gonna raise taxes back to Bush on the wealthy." And I said, "It takes $4 billion a day to run this country." And you know as well as I do, the estimates of all that money in won't even cover three months of this government spending, so it won't solve it any. You're gonna have to raise taxes on everyone to cover this. I said, so how do you deal with that? And so he and I went back and forth. And to be fair, I'm telling my version of the story. I'm sure he'd give you a different version of the story, but there's a point where I felt I'm losing rapport with every person in this room. But I had to be honest.

• 47:38Tony Robbins?

  And finally, at one point, the signature gentleman came over and grabbed my wrist. He said, I think that's enough. And the president's, I didn't raise my voice, the president's, you know, to honor him. He said, no, Tony's created some creative tension here. And he said, I'm not used to that in these rooms. But he said, it's a fair question. I said, you know, first of all, I just want to know, because I voted for you and a lot of people I know that voted for you. I don't know if they will again. I don't know if they need to, you're gonna win anyway. But I'd really love to know what to tell them about how you're gonna govern with this level of division. And so at the end, I just said, well, thank you for your time. And then everybody else got up and asked the questions like, will you give a shout to the Jews? And things like that. There was no hardballs in there at all, but you know, it's a political environment. So afterwards, I thought, oh my God, everybody's gonna hate me.

• 48:21Tony Robbins?

  And then Reid Hoffman walks up to me, you know, from LinkedIn and says, I can't believe you asked him that question. I can't believe you asked him that. He said, I've been wanting to ask him that question forever. He said, that was good on you. And I go, there's people coming up to me, giving me a boo. And then the president came around, and when he came back around, he wants to shake everybody's hand, shakes my hand. I shook his hand, and I grabbed him with both hands. And I pulled him close to me, I said, Mr. President. I said, I'm not some stupid Republican who's just looking for some tax break. I said, you know, this week, I've had a quarter of a million people in San Jose. I don't live here. I came to do an event, this is what I do wherever I go. I came from nothing, and I don't forget where I've come from. I care as much as you care. But I said, I'm really concerned about your ability to get your agenda done in the next season of your career if you don't find a way to bridge your communication style with these people.

• 49:06Tony Robbins?

  Intelligence is not enough. You've got to build relationship. And he stared at me, and he said, how about you, we're in my chief of staff, and you come, visit me in the White House, you and I one-on-one for an hour? And I was like, blown away. I thought, you know, I didn't reach him at all. It was mind-boggling. So Mark was right there, he goes, that was unbelievable. That was, I love that, you know, Mark, I love seeing that, that energy back and forth. And you can really help. So then about a week later, they were getting ready for these debates, and the other side called me and asked me if I would work with their particular candidate privately. And I'm not one side of the aisle. I want to see a debate that's real. I worked with Mr. Romney, and that's the first debate they went in, and he did pretty well. And my invitation was no longer extended.

• 49:52Tony Robbins?

  So I wouldn't say punch in the mouth, but I'd say frustrated because here's a man who has such integrity, the President of the United States, and I think a classic human being who cares deeply, smart as a whip, but it's, you know, the failure to find a way to bridge compromise is both sides' responsibility. But in my mind, as a citizen, I think the President of the United States has got to make that happen. And their presidents have done that, and presidents have it. And I think it's not his fault. But we're at an impasse politically that is not allowing us to do the things that I think are necessary for our, you know, put our house in order in this country. Easy for an outsider to see it, but as a citizen, we all have a right to opinions. So I don't know if they punch, but I'd say shake him.

• 50:30Tim Ferriss?

  Metaphorically, yeah.

• 50:32Tony Robbins?

  That might be a better one.

• 50:33Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, that's a hell of a story. I, uh, one last question, and, uh, I think people are really going to enjoy this, and I can't wait to see the comments and the questions also.

• 50:43Tim Ferriss?

  I have my moments of doubt, dark moments. I don't know if you have those, those, those moments of doubt yourself anymore?

• 50:50Tony Robbins?

  No, never.

• 50:51Tim Ferriss?

  Never? What do you, what do you do when you have those, those dips? When you have those, those down moments and doubts?

• 51:01Tony Robbins?

  Those moments, those moments I've experienced primarily when I've found an inner conflict that's hard to resolve. And that has been in the past when I'm traveling around the world. You know, I feel like I'm made to do what I do as a human being. I'm certainly not the only human being that can help people, but I'm able to help a lot of people. And I feel that it's a privilege, and it's a, it's a gift, and it's something that's earned, and something that is part of grace. And, um, and yet, the greatest thing in my life, outside of my work and my family, is my wife. And ironically...

• 51:33Tony Robbins?

  When I met her, she had extreme motion sickness since birth. And I spent almost a decade going everywhere because she would throw up on, we never want to be apart. And she would throw up on the flight up and on the flight down. And she literally lost, I don't know, it was nineteen pounds, which she couldn't lose. She was size zero. I took her to every type of physician. I took her to every kind of natural healer, acupuncturist. I took her to NASA, take expert there. Nobody's able to help her. I took her to the guy who works the top gun pilots. Because if they lose their vestibular system, you know, they're dead. So he had this system. And he was the only one who could help her like maybe ten percent of the time not throw up. But the process she did, this tightening of her body, created a constriction of lymph fluid, and she developed a tumor.

• 52:13Tony Robbins?

  And so the darkest days are, you know, what I think I'm made here to do is hurting the person I love most, or I've got to be apart. And, you know, corny as it sounds, I just, I just believed that there was a larger lesson that I need to find a way to break through. And we finally did. And she no longer, she doesn't love motion, but she no longer throws up on any flight. It was ironically an experience in India, which sounds so bogus to me. But I experienced it. She's never thrown up since that time. It's mind boggling. It's this man who's, he doesn't, he's not of any particular faith. It's called oneness. And he does this form of meditation work where it basically primes your brain to a certain way of being. And it balanced her body out, just amazing.

• 52:56Tony Robbins?

  But the point of the matter is, I went through all this pain, all this questioning, all this doubt. But I kept asking what's right, what's real. And I trusted my gut, even when it was painful to trust my gut. And I found that that's probably the most useful thing. The other thing you got to do is, it sounds stupid, hydrate your ass off. Make sure you rest because in a lowered state of energy, you'll doubt everything. And the worst thing can happen, if you are what I call energy rich. If you are physiologically at a peak, you can slam anything against you and you'll know. And so that's not to say you won't have those downs. But that's what I try to do. Put my body back in the strongest place. That'll put your mind back there. Your heart is always there. And then ask what's right and live it. And you're going to still make mistakes.

• 53:41Tony Robbins?

  And when you do, I think it's being, forgiving yourself and learning from it. And moving hell on to what's next as quickly as you can so that that experience allows you to help other people. And for me, the worst events I've ever gone through in my life have always been the best events because I've figured if I'm experiencing this, someone else is too. And if I figure it out, I can help millions of people. And that's given me sanity, so I'm not just dealing with my pain or bullshit or whatever the case may be, and that's a big part of my life is ending suffering, which is impossible. But ending it in areas of people's life is possible. And, you know, as I always say, it's corny, you know, you know, suffering is optional, pain, pain, you know, everybody's got pain in their life, but suffering is optional. And I really believe I can help people get out of that. And more importantly than get out of the suffering is to give them an experience of more of the joy that's already inside them.

• 54:24Tony Robbins?

  And I live to see that light in their eyes, and I'm gonna look forward to seeing it, you at some point at an event, because you'll have an experience of it, and it won't be this discussion. Discussion's wonderful. Experience is 10 times better. I always tell people, you know, a belief is a poor substitute for an experience. Right? You can believe all you want about what you think something is, or this thing is, or what China's like, but go to China, get in the experience, go to the event, then you'll know. And I'm a big guy on put people in the experience as quick as they can and let their spirit and their heart and their soul kind of take over, and that's what my life's about.

• 54:53Tim Ferriss?

  It's a good mission. It's an amazing mission. Where can people learn more about the book, more about you? Where would you like them to visit you?

• 55:02Tony Robbins?

  I'll give you the address, but you can go to TonyRobbins.com, that's the easiest way. And the book, again, is called Money: Master of the Game, Seven Simple Steps to Financial Freedom. And what I'll do is I'll give you a site, and if people decide to do this, and they go to Amazon, if they'll send me their receipt, I will give them something I did for people during the pre-publication period, which is I've made three videos that are kind of a fast track. So if somebody's going like 600 pages, seems like a lot to me, well, here's, this'll get you going. I think for a lot of people, the audio/video approach is a good approach to them, and then they'll take them deeper in the book. But I do want you to know that most people, I don't know if you've experienced this, most people who read the book are entertained, because it isn't just like some heavy factual piece, it's take, it takes you on a journey.

• 55:45Tony Robbins?

  And it's a journey through the financial world, which is wild, weird, crazy stuff happening. It's a journey into the lives of people that started with nothing, that are the wealthiest people in the world, how they did it. And your own journey about where you're gonna take yourself from this point on, and how you want to live that life, and the experiences that you want to not only have for yourself, but what you really want to give. And that's the greatest thing. I look back, and you think about money. Money is nothing but a tool that you either use for a life of service and a life, increase the quality of life for yourself and the people you love, or it's used on you as a weapon. And I'm big on saying, time for it to no longer be a weapon used against you. And the only way to do that is educate yourself and you can do it in a way that's really fun. And that's what this is.

• 56:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, absolutely. So guys, check out the book. Check out Tony. Tony, you've had a huge impact on my life. And just to the entertainment aspect of the book, I have tons of books sent to me. I mean, dozens a week, as I'm sure you do. Huge stack. A lot of the questions that I asked did not require me to read the book. And I ended up pushing off probably a half dozen important projects of mine because I got pulled into the book. And I remember I emailed you and I said, you know, it's been 20 years, you still have it. Hot damn. Like I, that feeling, the sort of the Tony Robbins response that I had reading your material back in high school. And I remember you emailed me, you're like, "High school? How old are you?" It's, it's a really fascinating read. And I know some of you listening are my friends who are deep in the world of finance.

• 57:12Tim Ferriss?

  You will find things, whether it's in the interviews at the back, the profiles of the, you know, the top performers over the last several decades or within. It's, it's a really fascinating romp with lots of good stories. So Tony, thank you so much for taking the time.

• 57:26Tony Robbins?

  Thanks for coming down. Great to meet you in person, finally.

• 57:28Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. I hope it's not the last.

• 57:29Tony Robbins?

  You're welcome, brother.

• 57:30Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks.

• 57:30Tony Robbins?

  Thank you.

• 57:34Tim Ferriss?

  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 dot com. And just click on Podcast. There's all sorts of other cool stuff, including my interactions with people like Warren

• 58:18Tim Ferriss?

  Buffett, Mike Schnote of Linkin 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 @Tferres. That's twitter.com/TFERRISS. And on Facebook at facebook.com/TinFerriss with two Rs and two S's. Until next time, thank you for listening.