The School of Greatness - 794 Tony Robbins: The Icon
Episode Date: May 8, 2019THE SECRET TO WEALTH IS GRATITUDE. Money is not a bad thing. Money is portable power. It allows you to make the impact you want to make. It allows you to build your legacy. You have the power to take ...control of your money and start hoping for a better future. It’s all within your grasp. However, it doesn’t matter how much money you have if you’re not enjoying life. That’s why you need gratitude. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about mastering your money with a man who needs no introduction: Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, philanthropist and the nation’s #1 Life and Business Strategist. Author of six internationally bestselling books, including the recent New York Times #1 best-seller MONEY: Master the Game and UNSHAKEABLE, Tony has empowered more than 50 million people from 100 countries through his audio, video, and life training programs. Tony uses his money to help others and give back. Once he got rid of the scarcity mindset he was able to become the man we know him as today. So get ready to learn how to gain wealth and how to use that wealth to make the world better on Episode 794. Some Questions I Ask: If you could only use one strategy, what would that be? (5:10) How does someone continue to stay hungry? (7:30) How do you stay grounded in your relationships? (10:30) How do we invest without fear? (17:00) What are you the most grateful for right now? (32:00) What are some things people can do to stop living in scarcity? (40:00) In This Episode You Will Learn: Why Tony’s mom thought his ego was too big when he was younger (11:50) How Tony views failure (8:45) Tony’s key to financial success (15:00) The difference between a correction and a crash in the stock market (22:00) How gratitude is an important part of building wealth (30:00) Tony’s system for strengthening your mind (40:00)
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This is episode number 794 with number one New York Times best-selling author Tony Robbins.
Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned
lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message
to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
Now let the class begin.
The secret to living is giving.
Tony Robbins said that,
and it's something that I live by every single day.
How much are you giving?
Not how much are you taking and receiving,
but how much are you giving on a daily basis with your smile, with your energy, with your heart,
with your hugs, with your generosity? How much are you giving? Today, we've got a special episode
with the icon, Tony Robbins. Now, for those who don't know who he is,
he is an author of a number of best-selling books,
including the number one New York Times bestseller,
Money, Master the Game, and Unshakeable.
He has empowered more than 50 million people from 100 countries through his audio, video,
and life training programs.
He created the number one personal
and professional development program
of all time, and more than 4 million people have attended his live seminars. This guy is the king
of personal growth. And in this interview, we talk about how money is not an enemy,
but a magnifying glass. Why diversifying is key for success in business, the power of gratitude,
and why it's the secret to wealth, and how to feed your mind and strengthen your body for success.
Now, I took the best clips of three different interviews I've had with Tony Robbins on,
and we put them together for this special episode. The reason I'm doing this is because
Tony is now a part of the biggest online marketing
launch in internet history.
He partnered up with my buddy, Dean Graziosi, who we had on about a month ago.
And it's been amazing to watch them launch this program and to see the results and the
impact that people have had by this course.
It's unbelievable.
You guys can check the replay and
watch more at greatnesslink.com. A full training on how you can extract the information in your
mind, your skillset, and how you can sell that information online. It doesn't matter what
profession you're in. If you want to earn more with your passion, they're teaching you how
at greatnesslink.com.
Make sure to check that out.
For me, Tony always taught me about the power of mentors.
He was one of the few people that I wanted on early in my podcast, and we've had him
on three times now.
And he always talks about the power of having an inner circle.
You are like the people you surround yourself with the most.
So make sure you evaluate the people that surround yourself with the most. So make sure you evaluate
the people that you're spending the most time with. So many things we're to cover in this
interview. I think you're going to love this. Make sure to share with your friends,
lewishouse.com slash 794. This one's going to be a big one. All right, guys, big thank you to our
sponsor. And without further ado, let me introduce to you to the one, the only, the icon,
Tony Robbins. You've been doing the work for 40 years, right? Well, not quite. Almost 40 years.
39. It's my 39th year. 39 years. This is a question a friend of mine, Ed O'Keefe, asked. He said,
with all the tools you've learned and the wealth of information over 39 years, almost four decades, the strategies to break people through, to help them overcome their
challenges. If you can only have, if you had to strip them all away, you can only use one strategy
or one thing to use. What would that be? I wouldn't. Part of why I'm effective is because
I don't buy that. I'm always looking for more strategy. Because one strategy will work with one person, not with another.
But philosophically, I would say that the capacity to strengthen and increase your hunger
is the one common denominator amongst the most successful people.
You know, Richard Branson's a good friend of mine.
And Peter Guber, Steve Wynn, all these
guys, they've never lost their hunger. Most people are hungry to achieve a certain amount, make a
certain amount of money, and then they get comfortable and relax or to get a certain level
of fitness and then they relax. But Richard is as driven today as when he was 16 years old starting.
I mean, he's like on fire and he's 65 years old. Warren Buffett is 85 years old. He's as driven today as when,
you know, he began the journey, right? And so people that have that hunger, I believe intelligence,
I love people that are wickedly smart and I work to be wickedly smart by educating and training
myself and so forth and training my brain. But there's a lot of intelligent people can't fight
their way out of a paper bag, right? hunger is the ultimate driver because if you're hungry you can get the strategy you can
get the answer if you can't model it you can find it so hunger modeling would be maybe the next best
skill knowing that success leaves clues like why reinvent the wheel if someone took the this plane
was uh mickey's plane who owns the miami heat and owns carnival you can learn so
much from me like mickey blow your mind what this man has been able to do in his life and so why
would i go learn by trial and error and maybe take 10 or 20 years when i could learn from somebody
in a few weeks or a few months or a few hours something that could save me a decade that's
what it is that's why that's why I read 700 books in the first seven years
because I was like, if somebody takes 10 years of their life,
they pour into a book, and I can read that in an hour or two or three or four,
why wouldn't I?
So how does someone continue to stay hungry
or rediscover what they're hungry about?
The best way is get around where it's better and things will hit you.
Say it again?
Get around where it's better and things will hit you.
Who you spend time with is who you become. So, you know, when I started coaching all these billionaires, you know,
there's a part of me that said, I, you know, I'm as smart in certain areas as they are. I got to
step my game up. It's not about the money. It's about how can I take the invisible and make it
visible? How can I find a way to add more value to other people to such an extent where economics are not a question whatsoever?
And then I can take those economics and do even more where I'm not there.
I look at money as portable power.
I can leverage my money to do things for people even when I sleep.
But I love doing these for people, and I work 18, 20-hour days still.
But it's really nice to have the leverage of that as well.
Sure, sure.
In a few sentences, what would you say is your current vision for life? What's the vision you have and what's the legacy that you want to leave behind?
I saw, have you seen Hamilton, the play in New York? I hear it's incredible. Everyone's raving
about it. You've seen it, right, Nick? Yeah, it's amazing. Isn't it extraordinary? It's amazing.
Yeah, I loved it. I thought it might be a lot of hype, but it was as good as the promise. Really?
There's a line in Hamilton that I thought was really interesting. It says,
as good as the promise.
There's a line in Hamilton that I thought was really interesting.
It says,
legacy is planting seeds in a garden
that you'll never see.
And that was really interesting.
But so for me,
I don't know.
What's the garden you want to create
you'll never see?
Yeah.
For me, it's human lives.
For me, it's,
I love,
my life is about being a blessing
in the lives of the people I meet.
I hope that whoever decides
to watch your video,
I hope something here will strike them
and they can say, you know, I got to get in proximity
or I got to raise my standard
or I'm going to go master my damn money.
I'm not going to dabble.
I hope that it stimulates someone in a way
where it becomes a blessing in their life.
And my legacy is the lives that I've touched.
And my legacy is the institutions
that I'm building right now.
But when I'm gone, we'll continue to touch people.
My foundation, the work that I'm doing with mentoring with kids.
I mean, the ability to touch another generation.
But my heartfelt prayer every day is be a blessing.
And, you know, it's interesting.
Sometimes you're a blessing just by giving somebody a few moments, just by loving on them, just being with them.
Sometimes you're being a blessing because you coach them or you intervene with them.
You can be a blessing in so many ways.
But that's my daily focus. And it's not what I'm going to build for the long-term. It's really,
what am I going to do right now? Why is that? Why do you want to create that legacy?
Again, it's less about legacy than it is about doing what I'm made for while I'm here and
maximizing. I want the end to have me, I want to be climbing them out when I die, not sliding.
So to me, it's about growth and them out when I die, not sliding.
So to me, it's about growth and it's about giving.
Those are the only things that fulfill human beings.
I always tell people, if you want to be happy, it's one word, progress.
If you can make progress, and if your progress is not only within yourself,
but it's actually doing something of value for more than yourself,
you're going to be a damn fulfilled person.
How do you stay grounded in your personal and intimate relationships when
everyone wants a piece of you? You know, you sell out events, 10, 20, 30,000 people come to your
conferences, pay tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone wants to interview you. You're coaching
presidents, billionaires, world-class athletes. They call you, they want you to help them break
through the next level. How do you stay grounded in your marriage or with your kids or with friends?
My mom's craziness gave me a great gift.
I wanted to be a professional athlete and I wanted to be a professional baseball player.
And when I got cut from the junior high school team, I figured out I'm in trouble.
So I decided to become a sportscaster, a sports writer.
And so I took typing when I was in junior high school.
I was the only boy in an all girl shorthand class. So I could capture everything because I wanted to be the best
reporter, best sportscaster. I interviewed Howard Cosell and Woody Hayes and Dodgers and Rams. I got
a job working for a daily newspaper when I was 13. And then I got this huge break, which was,
I got these interviews. No one had like Joe Namath when he was so famous. I got these interviews and
here in LA, KTTV channel 11, it's now Fox Channel,
they were trying to get viewership.
And so they kept trying different kinds of sportscasters.
They even tried Fanny Fox, the stripper.
And somebody watched some interviews I did and went,
holy shit, this 14-year-old kid, I was about to be 15,
he's brilliant.
He's getting interviews nobody else is getting, you know?
So they called me up and they offered me the job to be the nightly sportscaster as I was turning 15.
Wow.
And I was out of my mind.
Like the dream I was going to have when I was like 25 or 30 was happening.
You know, I'm going to be 15.
And my mom said to me, your ego's too big.
And if I let you do this, you're going to get even bigger.
And she not only would
not let me take the job, she made me quit my job working for the Parker's Bolton, which was a daily
newspaper in Pomona, California doing sports. And I hated her and I was devastated, but it created
a sensitivity inside of me that, that, that along with, I think watching athletes who would not sign
a card for a kid, cause they were making money selling cards would make me so angry that I with, I think, watching athletes who would not sign a card for a kid because they were making money selling cards would make me so angry that I said, I'm never going to be one of those
people. And so I'm not, you know, I've certainly have plenty of pride in what I've been able to
accomplish and people I've been to help, but I always know I'm just a guy. And while I've worked
my ass off, I've also had grace in my life, you know, and I think when you achieve things, it
comes from incredible obsessive focus,
massive action and figuring out how to execute and do things effectively.
And it's grace.
And I never forget that that's a part of the formula for where my life is today.
Do you think people need a little bit of ego to have that kind of drive and insanity or
obsession?
Or is it more just belief in a bigger vision?
I think ego can produce drive, but that kind of ego will make you not be
fulfilled. Yes. And we all have it until we get a few hammers. Because in the beginning, when you're
young, especially a young man, I think even more so than a woman, you know, you're trying to find
yourself. You're trying to prove yourself to the world. And really, you're trying to prove it to
yourself. Like in the very beginning for me, I used to attack psychiatrists and psychologists
because I care about people so much. And because, cause I learned how to handle them in an
hour and they're working with someone for seven years and I would just go crazy. But I was also
attacking them because I was also defensive because I didn't have a degree. And so I figured
I'm going to be on the offense. I'm going to show them. But as I grew up, I realized, holy shit,
these people care just as much as I do. Now I've trained 100,000
therapists around the world with my partner, Chloe Madonis. We make films of people's lives,
like suicidal people, people who've been through hell. And you get to watch how I do it as I do it.
And then you get to see them two years later and know it really worked.
Right, right. Do you ever question choices or decisions you make today?
And does everything you touch turn into what you want it to be? No, of course not.
No. Failure is part of life. I mean, the difference for me though, is I look at failure as a stepping
stone to success. It's a speed bump. I know I'm going to fail, but it's not failure if you learn
something. And so, gosh, I've made so many mistakes. I've screwed so many things up, but
every time I do, it just becomes a way for me
to explain to someone else what it takes. Here's what I've done. I think I have the ability to
influence people because I talk about my failures. I talk about all the things that mess me up.
But I show people that I didn't let it stop me, and you don't need to stop you. And I think that's
really the secret in that area. And if everything you touch was successful, you probably wouldn't
be able to relate to people as much. No, you wouldn't be able to relate. And also, it would be total bullshit.
And everyone would know it's bullshit.
And also, you'd be bored silly.
I mean, think about it.
If you just said, I want this to happen, I want this to happen, you know, people don't value what they don't fight for.
You know, it's like you see kids sometimes, you know, your parents will say, you're not going to value this if you don't work for it.
And you're a kid going, I'll value it.
Just give it to me.
But it's true.
You know, the things we've worked the hardest for,
we value the most.
So I think the purpose of a goal is not getting it anyway.
The purpose of a goal, you know, is who you become.
Who you become is going to make you happier.
It's going to make you sad.
So I'm not looking for an effortless approach.
There's no such thing.
Now, I'm curious about relationships and building wealth.
How important is it to have the right partner in a marriage or an intimate relationship
in relating to building wealth?
Does it matter who you choose, their mindset?
Does any of that play an effect on how much you're going to make?
It won't affect how much you make, but it'll affect your relationship a lot, right?
Getting on the same page is really, really important.
But when my wife and I met, my wife, we both grew up very poor, but I decided that I was going to find a way to add so
much value that money would never be a question for my family. And, and, you know, it would never
stop me from giving or doing or sharing anything. And I made that decision early on. So I became an
earner, ways of earning. She became a negotiator, a cost manager. Her mom's number one thing is somebody comes in,
she goes, sharpen your pencil. That's not a good enough deal. And so when we first met, I remember
we were in New York City and this dates me how old I am, but I remember when they first came out
with digital cameras, the very first digital cameras from Sony. And it was like such a cool
thing. You could take 12 pictures or whatever it was in those days. But we were down in New York City. We're in Times Square. And we went into one of those camera shops. And it was
Christmas time. And I saw the camera. And I was like so excited about this camera. And I said,
you know what? I'm going to get one for my brother, my sister, my mom. And I came up with,
I don't know, it was like 12 cameras. And they were very expensive then. I think they were like
$1,200 or $2,000 each. They were really crazy. That was like $200 for the same.
Yeah, I know. Not even. It's a million really crazy. Now they're like $200 for the same. Yeah, not even.
It's a million times better.
But I went to the counter, and the guy goes, oh, my God, Tony Robbins,
can I take a picture with you?
I'll put it on the wall.
And so I said, sure.
And she goes, hey.
She goes, sharpen your pencil.
We're going to deal you.
You're going to get my boyfriend here. Oh, my gosh.
And I wanted to grab her by the throat and just go, what are you doing here?
It's like, what are you doing?
And she's like, no, no, what's the deal here?
And he goes, oh, well, I'll give you 10% off. She goes, sharpen your pencil, 10%. You're not
taking a picture of my boyfriend. And I wanted to murder her, right? And I was so mad. I mean,
I was so mad. And so she got like 15% off and free camera cases and all this stuff. And I'm
shaking my head. We left. I was like, I'm like, we have this big fight. Today, I just call her Squeaky.
She's my Squeaky girl.
She wants to go to Walmart as if we'd ever need to go to Walmart.
And what I do is I'm delighted by the difference.
And I go, you know what?
What a beautiful gift.
I've been in relationships before where I gave everything and people were totally unconscious
with money.
So to answer your question, it's nice to be on the same page.
But one day day I told my
wife I was coaching someone and a person gave me a quarter of a million dollar bonus. I don't care
who you are. It's mind boggling. It was like, he didn't have to. It wasn't part of the deal. He
pays me a million dollars a year plus a piece of the upside. And he just said, Tony, you did so
much for me. I just want to give you this additional quarter million dollar bonus. And it wasn't the
money. It was the generosity that just knocked me off my seat.
And so I called my wife. I said, honey, Paul just gave me a quarter million dollar bonus. I mean,
he's like, he's so generous. And she goes, oh, that's nice, honey. Hey, do you know what I'm
making for lunch? And I'm like, wow. So I used to get upset about it. Now I'm like,
that's my squeaky little girls. I'm thrilled she doesn't have to think about it. I'm in charge.
I don't think your partner has to. One of you has to master it and you have to have some alignment. Okay.
But you don't want them to be against you essentially. Well, sometimes they're going to be,
we were against each other in some ways. We're having fights, but what you eventually decide
is do I want to be right or do I want to be in love? I'd rather be in love personally, right?
That's a good quote. And then also I just said, her, I said, listen, honey, I understand your intent.
I had to go to her intent.
Instead of being frustrated with her, saying, this is really actually a cool quality.
And she's my opposite in that area.
And we're a good balance together.
Right, right, right.
You know, there's a lot of people that I grew up with who were poor, who had a negative mindset around money.
They thought it was evil, that it was bad.
What would you say to someone who has that mindset where they just have a story around money that They thought it was evil, they thought it was bad. What would you say to someone
who has that mindset
where they just,
they have a story around money
that isn't a positive one.
They think of money,
they think of evil, bad, corruption,
whatever it may be.
How does someone shift it?
Like what's,
is it a daily practice?
Is it something they can do right away?
It's the truth.
Get to the truth.
The truth is simple.
Money does not change people.
Money makes you more of what you are.
It's a magnifying tool.
So what I show people is what you really want to do is create an income for life without working.
The goal, if you own a business, and I would assume a lot of your viewers are business owners or getting started in business,
no matter how good you are in business, think about this. The one universal rule that idiots
in finance know is diversification. It's the only free lunch. You've got to diversify.
Because if you put all your eggs in one basket, no matter how good the basket is,
one day that real estate market, that stock market, that bond market, that collectibles
market, whatever you invest in, Ray Dalio showed me statistically, it'll drop 50% to 70% on a day.
Now, if you're later in life when that happens, it's over for you.
So you have to diversify.
And yet most people, they know real estate, so they do it.
Or they know stocks, they do it.
Or they grew up with their parents flipping things.
And it's the wrong thing to do.
So you've got to diversify in order for you to be able to truly succeed.
And that's why when you own a business, if you put all your money in your business, which is what
most of us do naturally, you put all your eggs in one basket and there's things that can happen.
I mean, you know, you're, let's say you spend 20 years and you figured out how to put together the
ultimate map, you know, and you remember Garmin came out with this thing
called the TomTom, I don't know if you remember,
you used to put on your, are you old enough to remember that?
You used to put it on your phone?
Or you used to put it on your dash?
Cost 100 bucks, it was a breakthrough.
They were making like 100 million or something.
They were, six months later, what happened?
The iPhone came out with Google Maps.
These little bastards, excuse my French,
came out with it, put Google Maps, put their
own map on here, and it costs how much?
Zero.
What's that going to do to your business when someone takes your product or service and
gives it away for free?
So I always tell people, competition happens, technology happens.
What you must do is have a second business with no moving parts, no people, no time.
Maybe it takes you two, three days a year for two or three hours
after you've read the book. You put it in place and you measure it two or three times a year.
That's it. Go on with your life. Now, if there's a trouble in your business, you're financially set.
I, in my life, have 31 companies now. We have 1,200 employees, seven different industries.
We do $5 billion in sales. I mean, that used to be me and my seminar business.
It's grown geometrically. But with all those moving parts, the only way I've been able to
succeed is because I've taken every one of those businesses and I've diversified my assets so that
when things were in trouble, I still had enough economics to take care of myself and keep the
business going. So everybody needs to create a money machine that works while you sleep,
that doesn't have moving parts. And that's what this is really about.
You have a great cartoon in the book where there's a kid asking his father something about how do you invest your money or how does the stock market work?
He says, you put your money in at the peak.
It starts to go down and lose money, and so you get scared and you take take it out and then someone smarter than you makes all the money.
Something like that.
So how do we, and I've done that in the past where I put my money in somewhere high, it
went down and I was like, oh, I just lost a bunch of money.
Let me take it out.
And then I put it back in another time and I'm like, what am I doing?
So how do we invest without fear of, oh, it's going down, I need to take it out or like trying to time it.
How do we do that? Great question. It's one of the main reasons I wrote the book. I always tell
people, if you just read the second chapter of the book and nothing else, it'll change your life.
You can do that with multiple chapters, but that chapter is really about teaching people
that winter is coming. We all know winter's coming, right? To coin a phrase, but that winter
is the best time on earth. And I know that's counterintuitive. I don't mean like being a
positive thinker. I mean pure facts. So in the book, I take you through 10 facts. I'll give you
a couple of them right now. The first fact I give people is why do people not invest? They're afraid
of failing. You're a millennial, right? So you grew up witnessing 2008 when you were still relatively young. How old are you now?
33.
Okay.
So you were, what, 27?
What were you?
2008.
Yeah, 27.
Yeah, 27, 28 years old.
So you're a young man, and you're watching the world melting down in front of you.
For most millennials, they are the first generation since the generation that went through the Depression
that is not investing at the ratio they need to, even close.
And they have more debt than everyone probably, right?
With all the-
They have more college debt than everyone.
Absolutely true.
I have a friend that has $400,000 in debt.
Dental school.
President Obama just paid off his debt five years ago
while he was still president.
What? No.
I swear to God.
Oh my gosh.
It's mind boggling.
And he had a bunch of scholarships,
but the last bit, it took him that long.
So what I tell them is, listen, paying off your debt's not enough. You've got to become an owner
or you're always going to be in that place. So yes, pay off your debt. But here's what you need
to know. You got to become an owner. You got to get in the game, but you got to understand the
rules of the game. You don't know the rules of the game. The old phrase is, when a person with
experience meets a person with money, we know the phrase, the person with the money ends up with
the experience. The person with experience ends up with your money, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I teach people the rules of the game so they don't get screwed.
But the most important thing is this.
Winter's coming, but people react.
So let's take last year.
Last January, 2016, we had the worst stock market opening in the history of the stock market.
Worst, first, I think it was 10 days.
Yeah.
There was a drop of $2.3 trillion with a T. Everybody's freaking thinking the bear market's here, the market's
over, the crash is here. I think the market dropped 800 points one day. And on that day,
all the richest people in the world were in Davos, Switzerland, you know, for the big conference that
they do every year. And they went there, MSNBC went there and everybody's freaking, what's happening?
What are we going to do? And they said, let's go ask Ray Dalio.
Now, your listeners may or may not know Ray Dalio as,
if you're not in the financial business,
probably never heard of him.
You've probably heard of Warren Buffett,
but Ray Dalio's done more.
You have to have a $5 billion net worth
and $100 million to give him
or he wouldn't talk to you 10 years ago.
Now he doesn't give a shit how much money you have
he won't talk to you because he's got a closed fund.
But they go and they put Dalalu on television, CNBC.
He's the king.
What do we do?
And he says, well, you don't need to panic.
Corrections happen all the time.
But you need a strategy that when markets go up and down, you don't go up and down.
And he said, I spent 15 years of my life to perfect such a strategy.
All of my money is in that plan.
And he said, it's called All Seasons.
And I've never revealed it before. But I gave it to Tony Robbins. He extracted from me,
and it's his book. So you got to go read his book. This is what he says on national television,
the day the markets are crashing. And that day, to give you an idea, which is the beginning of
February, I think it was nine days into February, the market was down 9% in the first five weeks of the year. His strategy, which he gave me,
which is made money 85% of the time
for the last 75 years.
It's averaged a 10% return, just under,
and the average loss, when it 15% loss, was 1.6.
So if you go to Vegas and you could spend
85% of the time make money,
and when you made money it was 10%,
your loss is 1.6, you can go forever. His plan made 2% while the time make money, and when you made money, it was 10%, your loss is 1.6,
you can go forever.
His plan made 2% while the market was down 9%.
So it was up 11% difference.
Now, I'm not suggesting that's the only strategy to do.
There's many.
His is the smoothest ride with the least risk.
But what it did was a combination of that, and then right after that, I interviewed Fed
Chair Alan Greenspan.
He was the head of our economy, the most powerful man in finance for 19 years, four presidents.
He was there running.
I was just with President Clinton this last week.
He was the Fed Chair for him.
And I interviewed him for like two hours, you know, three hours off stage, two hours in front.
And I asked him, in the very beginning of this thing, I said to him, I said, look, if you could be put in the Fed today, what would you do?
And he looks at me, and as I said, he leans forward and he says, resign.
So I look at that and go, oh, my God, I need to write a book that'll free people.
So here's what will free you.
Everybody's afraid of the crash.
So here's what you need to know, two terms you should understand.
Correction versus crash.
Anytime the market drops from its high by 10% or more up to 20, it's called a correction.
Right.
If it drops 20% or more up to 80%, like in the Great Depression,
then it's called a crash or called a bear market.
Okay.
So how often does a correction happen?
How often do we have to be prepared for it?
Since 1900, we've had a correction on average every year for 116 years. So when is
winter coming? This year on average. It's like, how often does winter come? You wouldn't be
surprised if it stormed and rained. Now, some winters are long, some are short, some are harsh,
some are light, but winter always comes. So I wasn't panicked when this happened last year.
I'm not panicked whenever it happens because I know it's supposed to be.
How long does it last?
Average, 56 days.
Okay, so just under two months.
What's the average drop during that time?
14% over the last 30 years, 13.5 of last 100 years.
So I use the more recent one.
14% gets your attention, right?
14%, you get a little gut check.
But here's what you need to know.
80% of all corrections never become a bear market.
80%.
So all this fear, and what people do is what you said you did,
is they see it, it's freaking out, I'm losing money,
I'm the hell out of here, and they get out.
The stock market never took a dime from anybody,
only you can take it from it.
You sold, that's why you lost, right?
So if you look
back and say, what was it like in 2008? I can remember vividly being with my platinum partners
and saying, you see these $80 stocks? This is six months before the crash. I told them in April,
I brought them to Dubai and I said, these stocks are going to go to eight and some are going to go
to a buck. And by October, and I told them what to do, so they were able to get out.
October, I go on the Today Show in October of 2008,
and they go, Tony, there's been $3 trillion meltdown.
Pump the country up.
You got four minutes.
Ready, go.
That's not what I do, first of all.
And I said, that'd be a lie.
I'm not going to put money.
At that point, the $80 stocks were eight.
I said, some of those, I said, I'm not a market forecaster,
but I work with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest investors in the history of the world. In the
biggest market crash in history, you know, 1987, he made 200% when everybody else was losing their
entire life. I've been coaching him continuously now for 24 years, every single day. So I said,
I work with the best in the world. And they're telling me based on history in the 30s and history in the 70s, this $8 stock is somewhere going to be a buck.
And I remember the day in March of 2009, Citibank, which had been, I think, $70, sold for $0.97.
You could go and take your money out of the ATM.
It cost you more to take your money up than to own the bank. And then I told people it'll jump from $0.99 to $6, $10, $12 in a month or two, and it's
exactly what it did.
So what you got to know is corrections happen every year.
You got another couple months, got to know it's 14%, and you won't lose because 80% of
the time it doesn't go to a bear.
Now, what about the bear?
The bear market, it happens, to give you an idea, in the last 100
years, every three to five years. You've gone eight without one. We're way overdue. In modern
years, last 30 years, it's about every five years. The average length of a bear is one year. The
average drop is 33%. A third of those drops go 40% or above. That, I don't care how well prepared you are,
that's a scary thing.
Yeah.
But it is the greatest opportunity in your lifetime
to go from wherever you are financially
to where you want to be.
I hope your audience is listening right now.
Hear me.
If you want to leapfrog,
and you're a millennial and you think there's no future,
or you're a baby boomer
and you think you're too old and it's too late,
the greatest gift you have is coming.
I know it doesn't sound like it.
This is not positive thinking bullshit.
This is the truth.
Wall Street, the stock market, is the only place that when things go on sale, people
freak out.
If I said, you like Ferraris?
Sure.
If I said to you, Ferraris go on sale for 50% off.
Awesome.
But when I tell you Apple's on sale for 50% off,
you go,
oh,
what am I going to do here?
What's wrong?
The world's coming to a dead.
If you think about it,
how old are you?
33.
33.
So let's assume
if you were 35
and you lived to 85,
you got 50,
52 years ahead of you.
That means you have
52 more corrections
to live through.
Right.
That means you're probably
in those 50 years
going to have
10 more bear markets to live through. If you're going to have those 50 years going to have 10 more bear markets
to live through. If you're going to have gut checks every time or you're going to leave out of it,
if you didn't participate because you thought, oh, the market's too volatile, I can't trust it,
all that stuff, you missed 250% return in the last eight years. I mean, you've missed out on
everything while you're waiting for things to be better. And if you won't do it when it's like this,
when it crashes, you're not going to get in.
So here's the good news about the bear.
Good news about the bear, average once a year.
It could be longer, but that's the average.
It could be shorter.
But here's what's cool.
Every single bear market in the history of the United States has led to a bull market, meaning right afterwards.
So 2008, this plummeting.
What happened in 2009?
Up 67% in a year.
I can show you every single bear market
and the next year when it comes out,
it's this explosion.
Now that's not true in every market in the world.
It's true for two centuries in the United States.
So that's why Warren Buffet says,
I wanna be greedy when people are afraid.
And I wanna be afraid when people are greedy.
If you remember 2008, he was telling everybody,
buy, he was having the time of his life.
Buy, buy, buy, everything's on sale.
So what you have to do to become unshakable
is turn, the metaphor I use is turn the snake into the rope,
meaning we all know the story.
It's the middle of the night.
You're walking through the yard or someplace
and you see a snake and you're freaked out.
You pull back, you come in the morning and it's a rope.
Once you know it's a rope, you're never afraid again. I want to take for people investing and show them how to
turn that snake into the rope it really is. And I'll tell you one final stat on all this.
People always say, and you started to bring it up, timing. How do I time it? Like right now,
things are too expensive. I want to wait. People have been saying that for eight years. Is there
going to be correction? Yes. But when it corrects, you want to invest again.
You'll get dollar cost averaging.
If you paid a little too much here, you'll pay paying less here.
It'll bring the average price to a reasonable place.
It's going to allow you to succeed.
But here's what people need to know about timing.
If you are not in the market, it's the most dangerous thing.
This is so counterintuitive, so I hope your audience is listening.
Let me show you.
There's two different research projects.
One was done by J.P. Morgan.
I just spoke to them the other day at their Alternative Investments Conference.
And to be in the room, there are 400 people.
You have to have a billion-dollar network to get in the room.
Crazy.
It was mind-boggling, right?
So J.P. Morgan did a study, and also Schwab did a separate study.
20-year studies.
In the last 20 years, to give you an idea, the average S&P 500, that index has produced
8.2%. Over 30 years, it was 10.28. But in the last 20 years, a little bit less. Still great.
You double your money. Roughly, you're in a position where you double the money a little
more than every, what is it now, 7.2. So it'd be like a little more than 10 years.
But here's what they found out. If you miss the 10 best trading days in 20 years,
because you're trying to time the market
and you're not in it during one of those days,
you went from 8.2% return over that period per annum,
per year, it dropped down almost half, 4.5.
What are the chances of you knowing
the past 10 days to trade in 20 years?
None, right?
Warren Buffett said, market timers
and market forecasters are only there to make fortune tellers look good because no one can do
it successfully. Even if they do it for a while, it doesn't last. It's luck. Jack Bogle told me,
he started Vanguard, a $3 trillion company. He said, we took gorillas, a thousand in a room,
and had them flip coins. And we said, how many times have you got heads, how many have you got tails?
Just gorillas flipping them randomly.
And he said one gorilla in that set of those turns flipped heads 21 times in a row.
Now, when you look at that and see all these gorillas doing it, you look at it and say, what a lucky gorilla.
He said, but in the hedge fund industry, in the mutual fund industry, when somebody does 10 in a row, you go, what a brilliant investor.
What a genius. But in the hedge fund industry, in the mutual fund industry, when somebody does 10 a row, you go, what a brilliant investor. Right.
What a genius.
In the book, I was really excited to hear you talk about, you say, the secret to wealth is gratitude.
Somewhere in the book it says that.
And I think maybe it was someone else you were referencing.
Yes.
It came from Sir John Templeton.
And every day I practice gratitude.
When I wake up and every night I always try to say to my girlfriend or someone I'm talking to before I go to sleep, three things I'm most grateful for.
That's great.
So I was pleased to see that.
I was like, I'm on the right track if I'm living in gratitude.
But why is that the secret to wealth?
Well, Sir John Templeton is probably one of the greatest investors in history.
People don't know his name.
He started out with nothing.
He wasn't Sir.
He wasn't from another country.
He came from the U.S.
And he decided that he wanted to understand wealth.
And so he saved $10,000, a huge amount of money in those days.
And when Hitler invaded Poland, he developed a belief.
His belief was you make your money in times of maximum pessimism.
Like if you were around in 2008, 2009, you remember what it was like, right?
You could have bought the Sands in Las Vegas.
You could have bought their stock for $2.28.
Today it's $67.
It's a 3,000% return.
It's not bad.
You could have bought Citibank for less than a buck, right?
So people in those times, he understood that.
And so what he did was, and everybody thought the world was going to end, he took $10,000.
He bought every stock on New York Stock Exchange that was a dollar or less, including companies everybody thought were going bankrupt.
But when things are bad, people think it's going to be bad forever.
When things are good, they think it's going to be good forever.
And they're always wrong.
Life's cyclical.
So there's a season for everything.
So once we got through World War II and went a few years later, guess what?
Those same stocks made him a billionaire.
So when I asked him, I said, what's the secret to wealth?
His response when he touched me goes, you know it.
You teach it. I said, what's that? He said? His response when he touched me goes, you know it. You teach it. I said, what's that?
He said, gratitude.
And I said, why do you say that?
He said, because if you got a billion dollars and every day you live pissed off and frustrated,
the quality of your life is called pissed off and frustrated.
But if you have nothing but you're euphorically grateful for whatever you have,
you're the richest person that you're going to know.
He said, so it doesn't matter how much money you got if you don't have gratitude.
So I do the same thing, by the way.
I have a process I call priming
where I get up every morning.
I do mine in the morning.
I do this radical change to my body,
kind of alter my state.
And then I do 10 minutes I never miss.
And my first three and a half minutes
is what I'm really grateful for.
And I make myself think of
at least one of those three
that's something really simplistic
instead of something giant.
You know, the wind on my face,
the look in one of my kid's eyes,
you know, something of that nature.
And then I do three minutes of strengthening and healing. healing and i do three minutes of when i'm going
to create my world and i do that for a minimum of 10 minutes every day because i believe you
have to condition it you don't just hope that stuff shows up you set your intention each morning
every day yeah very cool so what are you most grateful for recently in your life so many things
um well it's thanksgiving so one piece well one is my daughter is 40 years old, and she's been with me as a child forever,
and she's going to bring me a grandson.
Wow.
Congratulations.
Thank you very much.
That's cool.
But also, it's Thanksgiving, so for me, it's a very emotional time
because my family was fed when I was 11, and we had no food at Thanksgiving.
And it touched me so deeply, and I decided I was going to give back.
So when I was 17, I fed two families and then four and then eight.
And then I didn't tell them I was doing it.
And then I got my friends to do it and my companies grew.
And, you know, I've fed 42 million people now over 37 years.
But you have a challenge for this, right?
A hundred million.
Well, this one, what I did is I decided, you know, I'm writing this book.
And in the middle of writing it, last summer, most people didn't even notice,
Congress cut food stamps.
They don't call them food stamps anymore, but I lived on them, so I know what they are, food stamps.
My family lived on them.
But they cut it by $8.7 billion,
which means you eliminate 2 million people from the rolls overnight,
and they still need to eat.
So I support all these nonprofit organizations,
and Feeding America is the largest in the country.
And so I thought, I want to call attention to this.
So if I donated all the profits to this book in advance,
how many people could I feed? Because I normally feed 2 million through my foundation, and I match it, so want to call attention to this. So if I donated all the profits to this book in advance, how many people could I feed?
Because I normally feed 2 million through my foundation, and I match it.
So we feed 4 million a year.
And they said you could feed 10 million people.
I was like, wow.
I mean, and then as the years gone by, I got more and more inspired.
And so now I'm going to feed 50 million people personally.
I'm not just with the book.
I'm writing a larger check on top of it.
But also I'm working with Feeding America to get matching funds to feed 100 million people.
Incredible.
So to go from my family not being able to eat to feeding 100 million people is a pretty amazing sense of gratitude and a sense of grace.
And I've done my part, but there's been grace in that as well.
That's amazing.
It's incredible what you're doing and very inspiring.
So thank you for doing that.
So anybody who gets the book, I'm not giving them prominence for you.
Yeah, yeah.
But it'll also feed on average 50 families every book.
100% is being donated.
100%.
Not only 100%.
More than that.
That's amazing.
Now, I think I also read in the book,
I don't know if you said this or someone else said this,
but the key to living is giving.
Yes.
Now, I think I might have heard you say this actually
back when I first saw you when I was 16 at an event.
And I remember thinking,
I don't have anything to give. I don't have any money. How am I supposed to invest my money?
10, 20% every month. And then how can I give on top of that? But I really understood that
it's so valuable and important to give. And I work with a lot of nonprofits myself,
building schools for kids around the world. And I've seen a big impact in my life and the way I'm able to serve people.
Sir John Templeton told me that he's never seen anyone tithe, which, you know, tithing
is usually 10% of what you earn, for at least a decade.
He didn't become incredibly financially free.
Wow.
And I think the reason is I had a moment, like, when my whole life changed.
It was kind of twofold.
I was really young, like yourself back then, right?
Working my tail off, trying to build a business. I mean, big goals, you know, you don't always
succeed to start with. They don't just come together, right? You know, it was hard. And
I remember I was so frustrated because I was working 18-hour days and nothing was working
and I was broke and I felt embarrassed, you know, I should be doing better than this.
And so I was driving home from Orange County on the 57th freeway in San Gabriel Valley out near Pomona, California.
It probably doesn't matter to anybody else, but I remember it so vividly because it was almost midnight.
And I was at this breaking point.
And then I was like, why am I not doing better?
And then I just pulled over the road.
And I used to keep these journals.
I still have them, written journals.
And I wrote in big lines, you know, the secret to living is giving.
And I started to cry.
And I realized I am so focused on what am I not getting.
I'm not focusing on
what I'm giving.
So for six months, man,
it turned me around.
But then, you know,
something else
that got in your body.
It was in my head.
It was in my heart.
But it had to get in there to stay.
And I started getting
through some really tough times.
And I lost everything financially.
And I was mad at everybody
because, like,
I'd loaned a friend
a thousand bucks.
And, you know,
I had them doing well.
And he didn't even
return my phone call.
What changed me was I was down to, I don't know,
$22, $23, something like that.
I don't know, it was $24.
Enough that I knew that I didn't have money for food
for the next week, clearly.
I didn't have any prospects.
I was living in Venice in this 400 square foot
bachelor apartment feeling sorry for myself.
I thought, you know what?
I got to eat.
I'm not going to drive my car because I'm not going to spend the gas. I'm not going to pay for parking. I'm going
to go to an all-you-can-eat place and load up for the winter, right? So I can get more
like one meal a day. And so there's a place called Marina del Rey, not far from Venice.
And it's a beautiful community and it's right on the water. And there's a place called El
Torito. It's still there. It's a little restaurant. It had a taco bar and all that kind of stuff.
So I walked there for the three miles.
And I go, okay, I'm going to go and load up.
And it was all about myself and getting through this.
And this little woman walked through the door.
Actually, very attractive lady.
That's probably why I got my jacket.
And I'm waiting to see who her boyfriend is.
And there's nobody up there.
There's a little guy down here.
It was obviously her son.
And he's wearing this three-piece suit, you know, a little vest.
He opens the door for her. he pulls out the chair for her and it was just he stared in his mother's eyes i
mean it was just pierced into her eyes i don't know what it was but something about him was just
so moving it was such a sweet caring loving young man to his mother that moved me so i i paid for
my meal i don't know what's left 17 18 bucks put it back in my pocket was left walked up this young man and introduced myself and i said hi i don't remember his was left, 17, 18 bucks. Put it back in my pocket, what was left. Walked up to this young man,
introduced myself, and I said, hi, I don't remember his name.
I think his name was Ronnie. And I said, Ronnie,
I said, you're really, I said, you're a class
actor. I saw you open the door for your lady.
I saw you hold up the chair for your lady. He goes,
she's my mom. I said, that's
even more classy. And I
said, so cool that you're taking her out to lunch
like this. And he goes, well, I'm not really taking her to lunch
because I'm just 11 and I don't have a job. I said, yes's so cool that you're taking that to lunch like this. He goes, well, I'm not really taking a lunch because I'm just 11 and I don't have a job.
I said, yes, you are.
And I had no plan.
Literally, I just reached in my pocket, took all the money I had, changed dollar bills, and threw it right there in front of him.
You look at me like this.
He goes, I can't take that.
I said, sure you can.
He said, well, why?
I said, because I'm bigger than you are.
And he got this big grin on his face.
His eyes got this big.
And I just shook his hand.
I didn't even look at his mom.
And I just walked out the door.
But the reason I tell you the story is I had no car.
I had no money.
I did not.
I was euphoric.
I was like flying home.
I was like, you know, I probably looked like an idiot, probably skipping or something.
I was just.
And what I felt was I should have been like, what the hell did you just do?
I have no meal.
What are we going to eat?
I went home that night.
I laid out a plan.
And the plan was going to take me 10 days, two weeks.
So I thought, well, people fast for a week.
I can fast for a week.
You know, that type of thing.
And I have this great mindset about it.
And I woke up the next morning.
And I get the old regular snail mail shows up.
And it's this guy I've called a zillion times.
He wouldn't return my call.
I open it up.
There's a check, $1,000 plus interest and an apology.
So I'm sitting there. And I started to car, I open it up, there's a check, a thousand bucks plus interest and an apology. So I'm sitting there and I started to cry, honestly.
And I was just like, why did this happen?
And I don't know if it's true, but I decided that day
this happened because I did the right thing.
Because I didn't have a plan.
It wasn't a strategy.
I just felt this little soul beside me.
I knew it was right and I did it.
And I didn't do it because I thought I could or I couldn't.
I didn't even think about it.
And that's the day I became a wealthy man because I didn't have any money, but scarcity left my body. And I have
plenty of ups and downs since that time and various times in my life, but I never went back
to that, oh my God, how's it going to happen? It's like breathing. Do you stop and say, God,
is there going to be any air before you take a breath? You know it's going to be there. You
don't run your life by that aspect. And so that to me is
what it's about, is showing people, if you won't give a dime out of a dollar, don't bullshit
yourself. You'll never give a million out of 10 million or 10 million out of 100 million. It's
just not going to happen. But if you can do that now, you don't ever get beyond scarcity. You start
behind it. You make a decision to get beyond it. So how does someone, when they're living in
scarcity, living in fear, and it's
like this emotional feeling, it's in your body, like you say, when you're like, I can't
even pay for my meal, how am I going to like start giving?
What are some things that people can do to start overcoming that mindset or start strengthening
it or shifting it?
I'll tell you a couple things.
I'll tell you what I did when I was first on my own.
You know, I got my dad, my mom kicked my dad out when I was 17.
She's a very powerful one
of my forefathers so they all learned how to get the boot she thought it was an aside so she kicked
me out next i was 17 she chased me out with a knife she wouldn't hurt me but i wasn't going
back in the room wow and um i decided to figure out what to do and i didn't play stay and you
know i'm staying in somebody's laundry room for a while and then i started reading and feeding my
mind and then i developed this little system and And the system is really simple. And I tell people now, as I say, number
one, every single day, you got to feed and strengthen your mind. Until you do that, you're
always going to be in fear. Because fear is automatic. The human brain is designed for
survival. It's not designed for success. Your brain is not designed to make you happy. That's
your job. And the only way you're going to do it is if you feed your mind. Because otherwise,
weeds grow automatically. My coach and mentor, Jim R ronnie's tummy so tony every day you got to stand guard at the
door of your mind you got to watch what's going in because if you're not careful stuff will go
in and he said all the times it's somebody who cares about you he said you know if you're your
family yeah if your worst enemy puts sugar in your coffee you said what happens i said you got sweet
coffee it was one of your best friend by accident or your family don't mean to they drop one drop of strychnine in your coffee, you're dead. He said, so life, sugar, and
strychnine, and watch your coffee. Right, right. So every day, I decided, I'm old enough,
honestly, there was no internet those days, and pretty ancient, I used to go to the library,
because it was the only place you could go. And I would read biographies, I'd read people's
lives, and it would make me go, wait a second, as bad as I think it is, the greatest people
in the world had it worse. Sure. So there's something here.
So you feed your mind.
Jim Rohn used to say to me,
skip a meal, but don't skip reading.
He said, read 30 minutes a day.
I don't give a damn what it is.
And today, I don't mean internet crap.
I mean, read something, a biography.
Read something that's a strategy.
Read something that's going to change your life.
And the second thing I tell people is,
feeding your mind's great,
but you've got to also strengthen your body.
And you do that as an athlete.
Naturally, I learned to do that because fear is physical.
You know where you feel it.
And if you go work out, if you go lift, if you go run, even if you're out of shape,
you just go for an intense walk, that experience alone changes you.
Every day of my life, the first thing I do before I do my priming, if I'm at one of my homes,
I jump in some hot water for fun and then I jump in freezing water.
And I have a river in one of my homes in Sun Valley and I've got cold plungers everywhere else.
So I go in 57 degree water, boom. And what it does is like, it's teaching my brain, I do,
I tell my brain what to do and it does it. It doesn't feel like it, it doesn't want to do it.
And every cell in your body is alive, right? So it doesn't have to be like two hours with
something. It can be something you do for 30 seconds, but it's training your body to be strong,
because a strong body gets a strong mind and vice versa.
The third thing I tell people is find a role model.
It seems impossible until you see somebody who's done it.
So Ray Dalio is one of the greatest investors in history.
The guy was a caddy, right?
His dad was a jazz musician, his mom was a homemaker.
He's worth $14 billion.
How'd he do that? He found someone to mentor him.
He found multiple people to
model. You don't always
find a mentor, but you find somebody you can model.
And when you start seeing that
somebody else can do it, and you see they really did,
you start to believe. You start to get
certainty. And then the fourth thing I tell people is it's
massive action and constantly change your approach.
And then it's find somebody worse off than you are and help
them. Because when you do that, it gets you out of yourself.
And that's what I really have people do.
That's what we do at Thanksgiving.
We have our basket brigade where two million people get fed.
Amazing.
Not the one I do, the one that I get people to do.
And it's amazing.
People go in there and they see, my God, I thought my life was tough.
But look at this person's life.
It makes you appreciative.
It puts life in perspective.
Yeah, very cool.
And there you have it.
Mind blown.
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From three different interviews that I've done with him, we brought the best information.
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tag me and tag at Tony Robbins as well. I know he checks out some of his stories,
so make sure to tag him to send him some love. And again, Tony said that the secret to living is giving. What are you doing
right now with your life? Every single day, are you complaining or are you upset that you're not
receiving more than you want to receive, that you haven't accomplished everything you want to
accomplish? The key to accomplishing more is to give more. The more you give, the more you will
receive. It's a law, guys. This is a principle. It will happen. You just have to learn how to receive
after you give. Some people are hard at receiving. I know that took me a long time because I was
really good at giving, but I didn't know how to receive that well. If that's you, just nod your
head. And again, if you want to be a giver today, you can just share this link with a friend. That's a way to give inspiration, to give insights,
to give tools, to help someone improve their life. So share this with a friend,
lewishouse.com slash 794. And thank you guys so much for all you do to make this podcast great.
We are almost at 800 episodes. It's crazy how much it's grown over
the last six plus years. So thank you so much. And as always, you know what time it is. It's
time to go out there and do something great. សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Bye.