The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 35: Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis (XPRIZE) on the Magic of Thinking BIG

Episode Date: October 7, 2014

This conversation talks about doing HUGE things -- how do you even get started? How did Tony and Peter get started? Be sure to also check out the Global Learning XPRIZE at http://www.xpr...ize.org TONY ROBBINS Tony Robbins has consulted or advised international leaders including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, Princess Diana, and Mother Teresa. He has consulted members of two royal families, members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marines and three U.S. Presidents, including Bill Clinton. Other celebrity clients include Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, golf legend Greg Norman, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Robbins also has developed and produced five award-winning television infomercials that have continuously aired on average every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day somewhere in North America since their initial introduction in April 1989. PETER DIAMANDIS Dr. Peter Diamandis has been named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders" by Fortune Magazine. In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight. Today the X PRIZE leads the world in designing and operating large-scale global competitions to solve market failures.  Diamandis is also the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan.  He is also the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity’s grand challenges.  In the field of commercial space, Diamandis is Co-Founder/Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and mining of asteroid for precious materials. ### This episode is brought to you by 99Designs -- See what I've done there myself by visiting http://www.99designs.com/tim ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1,
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Starting point is 00:03:20 And siphoning down the bios of these two gents was very, very challenging. Both of them make me look like a real lazy bastard who hasn't done anything with his life, which is inspiring to me. So there are different ways to take it. But let's get started. Tony Robbins, for those of you who don't know, he's often called a motivational speaker. And I think that's a total misnomer because he is really a peak performance strategist. And his clientele is really astonishing. He has consulted or advised people including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher,
Starting point is 00:03:59 Princess Di, Mother Teresa. He's consulted members of two royal families, members of U.S. Congress, U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, three U.S. presidents, including Bill Clinton, and some of his other celebrity clients include Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, golf legend Greg Norman, Leonardo DiCaprio. The list goes on and on and on. He's been named by Accenture one of the top 50 business intellectuals in the world, by Harvard Business Press as one of the top 100 business gurus, by American Express as one of the top six business leaders in the world. And I should say, certainly last but not least, he is the creator of a product that many of you may have seen around, which is the number one personal and professional development system of all time called Personal Power. I have quite a background with this program. And in a future episode, Tony and I will be talking a lot about it. But Personal Power has sold more than 40 million audio tapes and CD copies worldwide. He himself has also developed and produced five award-winning television infomercials.
Starting point is 00:04:58 And here's the stat that might blow your mind. They have been continuously aired on average every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, somewhere in North America since April 1989. Okay. So for more than 20 years, I guess 25 years, every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, a Tony Robbins infomercial has been on television in North America. It's amazing. And that is just a small fraction of his bio. But I don't want to cut Peter short. Peter Diamandis, or I should say Dr. Peter Diamandis, has been named one of the world's 50 greatest leaders by Fortune magazine. In the world of innovation, Diamandis is chairman and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X Prize for private space flight. The X Prize is really intended to lead the world in designing and operating large-scale
Starting point is 00:05:51 global competitions to solve what Peter might call market failures. He's also the co-founder and vice chairman of Human Longevity Inc., a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. It goes on. He is the co-founder and exec chairman of Singularity University. I've actually spent time there as adjunct faculty, basically, in the entrepreneurship track. This is based at NASA Ames Center. It's a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity's grand challenges. Ray Kurzweil, some of you may know, also very involved with that. And in the field of commercial space, Diamandis is the co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources,
Starting point is 00:06:41 a company designing spacecraft, check this out, to enable the detection and mining of asteroids for precious materials. These two guys are amazing. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. And often what holds us back is not lack of resources. It's not lack of tools necessarily. It's lack of ambition. We don't have dreams, aspirations that are big enough to really catapult us to the next level of thinking, strategy, operation, and so on. Execution for that matter. So I wanted to bring these two guys on and talk about how on earth
Starting point is 00:07:20 they got to be where they are today in terms of just magnitude of impact and sheer sort of force of will. So I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, please meet Tony and Peter. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I am very excited to have two of my friends on the line, Peter Diamandis and Tony Robbins. Gentlemen, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm very well. I know that you're both very busy and I will want to dive into quite a few different subjects. So right off the bat, I think that the topic, the general topics, and I think there are two intertwined that I'd love to explore in this conversation are number
Starting point is 00:08:04 one, I think an aspect of your psychology is that'd love to explore in this conversation are number one, I think an aspect of your psychology is that both of you are very well known for, and that is thinking big. So I'm going to dive into that, but how you started thinking big and really big in many cases. And then secondly, how you learn and how you have learned. And so I thought a very perhaps tactical way to start off and just jump into it would be asking you each and maybe Peter, we could start with you. What book or books you've gifted to other people the most outside of your own? Sure. There's actually a few books that have changed my world that I've gifted. The first is Reading the Spirit of St. Louis by Lindbergh. And, you know, the setting is his story of this epic adventure in 1927 of crossing the Atlantic and doing it for a $25,000 prize.
Starting point is 00:08:56 And I was amazed at this man's determination and the way he thought about this and took the risk out and then made this epic journey. So that's one. I love Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's something I've read multiple times to sort of get me in the mindset of not letting anything stand in my way and really driven by passion, which, you know, is nothing, something that Tony knows nothing about. So, definitely. Sorry to interrupt. Please continue. No, no. Then there are two others that have been sort of the man who sold the moon, which is a science fiction book by Robert Heinlein that talks about how this guy, D.D. Harriman commercializes the moon. And it's just a brilliant 50 year old vision that's as
Starting point is 00:09:40 relevant today. And then a book by my good friend Ray Kurzweil called The Singularity is Near, which was the basis for the foundation of Singularity University. And it's funny because all of these books, each of them in turn, were so purposeful to me. They were the drivers for me starting many of my companies. Awesome. I'm going to go pick up all of this. Just as a side note for folks, Heinlein, for those of you who use the word grok, grok this, grok that, that is from Stranger in a Strange Land, also by Heinlein. A lot of techies don't realize the origins of that word.
Starting point is 00:10:28 Tony, I'd love to, to love to hear your, your selection. Well, I was, it depends on what people really want over the years. Probably the most common books I've recommended are as a man thinketh by James Allen, because when you think about the quality of people's lives, it starts with what meaning we give things to people can have the same exact experience. And one person thinks it's over and one person thinks the game has begun. And that is the difference that makes the difference in the quality of people's lives. It's not what happens to them as we all know. And the other one, which is along the same theme that I've probably given out as well, I give out, and I think it's a small book. It's a book that people can read over and over again and get great value
Starting point is 00:11:02 out of it. But Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, to me, is just one of the great books ever written. Because we all in our lives, the one thing that's in common for all human beings, regardless of your background or your economic position, good, bad, or indifferent, we're all going to experience extreme stress in our life at some point. Everyone's going to have to face the loss of a loved one. Everyone's going to have to face the loss of a job or an opportunity or a government change in policy that affects your business or some health issue yourself or a robbery or the loss of your home, burglary, burning down. I mean, all these horrible things in your lifetime you're going to experience. And to be able to learn from someone who experienced the Holocaust directly, who not only experienced the Holocaust, but
Starting point is 00:11:45 walked through what was the difference between those who made it and those who didn't. And as most of us who've read the book know, it wasn't the strongest that survived. It was those that had a higher meaning for their pain, those that found a way to even take suffering and transform it into a meaningful experience. You know, most people today, we live in a society where people think happiness is what life's about, but you can get bored being happy. Some people are, you know, they're so damn happy. They create a problem just to have variety in their life because we have lots of needs as human beings and they make up problems they don't even have. I deal with
Starting point is 00:12:14 extremely wealthy clients and you should, you know, some people hear their problem and go, yeah, I'd love to have those problems. So meaning is what really matters. And to, to witness, to go through the experience in an associated way and see how this man not only transformed his own life, but then came back to help so many others, I think is one of the more invaluable components. But another book would be The Fourth Turning, because I also believe you have to understand that life is seasons. And The Fourth Turning was written by two brilliant men who actually wrote an original book that President Clinton gave me when I worked with him 20 years ago called Generations, which goes through, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:47 a hundred years of generations and walks through how basically we adapt to the way we've been brought up and bring up our children differently and how that creates gross patterns that affect history. But the fourth turning is just an incredibly in-depth experience that shows you that human beings go for periods of time, 10, 15, 20 years, usually in 15-year range of the stage we are now, where we have a primary set of emotions. There are winters where people will tend to find what's wrong. There's the springtime of possibility. There's the hot summer. And of course, there's the fall where the rewards are very, very simple. And you can tie these to economics. You can tie them to emotions. And it's just an extraordinary book to put your life in perspective.
Starting point is 00:13:29 And so you learn, you know, some people freak out in the winter, you know, other people, you know, some people freeze to death, some people ski and snowboard and how to take advantage of whatever season of life you're in and how to utilize that to anticipate in your business, in your life, I find to be invaluable, But it depends on what somebody's looking for. I just recommended slow sex to somebody yesterday who desperately needed it, and they're cold they don't. And another person, I was watching them deal with their kid, and I said, you've got to go pick up Mindset by the Stanford University, because you keep telling your kid how perfect they are, and you're going to ruin them. Because telling a kid that they're perfect creates a frame of reference where they have
Starting point is 00:14:03 to be a certain way, as opposed to giving them the feedback because they put out the effort. Effort they can control. Who you are is a whole different component. So I'm always honestly seeing what's needed for that individual now. But if I'm going universal, I think it's understanding the seasons of life. It's understanding creating meaning. And it's understanding how your thoughts are the ultimate control of your life. No, I agree. And, uh, the, I think for, for those people curious to dig into also the, the parenting aspect that you meant, you mentioned, I think that brain,
Starting point is 00:14:35 uh, brain rules, uh, and the author, I think his name is, uh, professor Medina out of you, Washington also underscores that as does Josh Waitzkin, actually, who I interviewed on this podcast, who was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher. And he talked about the same thing, how emphasizing sort of effort over attributes is, is, and continues to be increasingly important in raising children. The, the, the sort of macro level aspect of both of you that, that jumps out most immediately to a lot of people. It's just the sheer scale of what you do. And, uh, so Tony, for instance, I mean, how many, how many people are you going to be feeding, uh, or are you aiming to feed in 2015? Uh, through your aiming, aiming, it started out, it started out with when I was 11, somebody fed
Starting point is 00:15:24 my family. I don't even know who it was. I just met the man at the door who delivered the food and it radically changed my life because it, the meaning I took out of it was that strangers care and strangers cared about my family. Then regardless of what my father told me, I was going to care at a different level. It changed my entire life. So I fed, you know, when I, this happened when I was 11, when I'm 17 was the first time I fed two families and then four the next year, then eight, and then it was getting a little tough. So I got some friends involved and then my companies grew. So now for the last 37 years, I've fed 42 million people, but I feed about 4 million, 2 million people each year through my foundation. And I do 2 million myself. I do matching funds for the last five years. So,
Starting point is 00:16:03 but this year, you know, last year, I don't know if you saw, but a lot of people didn't even notice, but Congress cut food stamps by $8.2 billion, which is the equivalence you understand of the families they're supporting going without food one week out of the month, just arbitrarily without figuring out how to make up for it. And I obviously work pretty passionately with all these nonprofits because I help support them all and they're being maxed out. And so I thought, you know what? I'm writing this book right now on finances, and I'm fortunate enough to do quite well. What if I took all the money of that and I donated it? How many meals could I donate? And that wasn't enough. So I said, well, I'll write a check above that. And I thought if I could do as many meals as I've done in my lifetime in a year, that'd be a
Starting point is 00:16:42 good start. So I said, you know, okay, I got to find 42 million meals. Holy shit, that's a large drink of water. How about I donate everything to the book and I put up a big check and I feed 20 million people this year and I get matching donations. But as I've gone along, I've gotten more inspired and I've partnered with Feeding America, which is the largest domestic feeding organization, the best organization. And I've negotiated with them to cut out all of the costs. And I'm now I've raised my game on my total number that I'm writing a check for in a few weeks, November 18th is 55 million meals. I'm personally
Starting point is 00:17:14 going to deliver 55 million people. And then they're going to partner with me to get that to a hundred million with matching funds. So I know for sure I'm going to feed 55 million this year. That's not counting my foundation or the other work that I do. So I guess it'll be slightly. And these numbers to most people are just almost unimaginable. And so just Peter, just to perhaps catch people up on a couple of examples of the work you've done with the XPRIZE. And of course, you've done many different things in addition to the XPRIZE. But what are some of the problems that you're attempting or are tackling or have tackled with the XPRIZE. But what are some of the problems that you're attempting
Starting point is 00:17:45 or are tackling or have tackled with the XPRIZE to date? And I know we're going to, certainly we all have sort of a secret agenda to talk about, one that we're particularly passionate about right now. But what are some of the others that you can mention? Sure. So people might know the work we do here for the original Ansari XPRIZE for spaceflight modeled after Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic to win a $25,000 prize, we put up $10 million back in 1996 for the first team to build a spaceship and carry three adults up into space and back. And the relevance here is that individuals today can do extraordinary things, and you need to give them guidance. Without a target, you'll miss it every time. And if you incentivize them, you can get entrepreneurs from any place, any walk of life, independent of what they've done before, to do extraordinary things. And I fundamentally believe that. So the question is, can you point entrepreneurs at the world's
Starting point is 00:18:37 biggest problems and grand challenges? And that's what we're doing in oceans and health and learning and energy. One of the prizes I think that's relevant that we're in the midst of right now is called the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE. So anybody who's a fellow Trekkie knows from Star Trek, Dr. McCoy Bones would have this device called the Tricorder. He'd point it at somebody and be able to tell if they have a gillian fever or if they're an alien or whatever the case might be. And it is sort the the vision of where we're going so we partnered with qualcom paul jacobs who's the chairman there they put up 20 million dollars uh and we have challenged teams around the world to build a handheld mobile device uh not for a doctor or for a nurse it's for a mom
Starting point is 00:19:20 or dad at two in the morning when their kid is sick. And it's a device you can talk to. It's got AI, artificial intelligence, on the cloud. You can cough on it. It can do the RNA and DNA analysis of the bacteria in your sputum. You do a blood prick and do your blood chemistries. It's meant to be able to diagnose you independent of the medical system, which is so broken right now. And we had 300 teams enter the competition. We're down to the top 10. We'll have a winner in 15 months. But people are starting to put doctors and nurses out of business. And the answer is no, we've got a problem right now. We're going to be short
Starting point is 00:19:56 something on the order of 100,000 doctors in the US alone by 2020. And that's great compared to the rest of the world. You know, Africa has got 25% of the disease burden and 1.3% of the healthcare workers. We could not scale building hospitals or physicians fast enough. So can we use technology to touch the lives of a billion people? And so that's one of them, the Qualcomm tricorder XPRIZE. And, you know, the way I think about it is imagine technology that a Masai warrior in the middle of Kenya today has access to a smartphone with Google. They have access to more knowledge and information than president Clinton had 20 years ago. Uh, and they're paying a dollar a day, this democratization, uh, and this demonetization is where we're heading.
Starting point is 00:20:51 And I think what I'd love to ask both of you and Peter, perhaps we could start with you, is when did you sort of leave this very incremental linear thinking? Because for a lot of people, they hear millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, and they immediately respond in their own head with, I could never do that. I could never raise that type of money, make that type of money, have that type of impact. And when I interviewed Peter Thiel on the podcast, some people may have heard it, but he's obviously known as a billionaire investor, first money into Facebook, co-founder of Palantir. But back in the day, he was on a very traditional track to becoming a lawyer, and he ended up not getting a just, it turns out that sometimes you can actually formulate a plan that works based on asking better questions. But for him, there were a few moments that really shook him or showed him that the incremental approach was not the only approach. So, so Peter, I'm curious, at what point
Starting point is 00:22:02 did you develop this thinking or who impacted you? What were the triggers that sort of led you to think this big? Great question. And, you know, it was probably so I grew up passionate about space, you know, watching the tail end of Apollo, drinking all the Tang, got my hands on watching Star Trek. And it was driven by this inner purpose and mission and passion. And I sort of attached that to becoming an astronaut and joining NASA. And that was my vision of my future. And as I got closer and closer to meeting astronauts and meeting and seeing what was really going on behind NASA,
Starting point is 00:22:39 I realized it was never going to happen to the government. And honestly, NASA had become so risk adverse that it was massively disappointing. And there was this disconnect between my vision of where the world should be and the way it was and the way it was going. And I had this moment in time where I literally, when I was at grad school at MIT, I did not submit my astronaut application. And I said, screw it. Forget it. I'm going to do this myself. And I made a commitment to myself to work to open up the private space frontier on my own, which is an insane concept to think about.
Starting point is 00:23:19 Were you sitting having a cup of coffee and just looking across the cafe? What was the moment when you were like, screw it? I was in the manned vehicle lab at MIT. I was doing research on human physiology and I had a bunch of shuttle astronauts in the lab and I was talking to them. There was Byron Lichtenberg and Owen Garriott and a number of folks. And I was listening to their stories of how, what they had to do to get into NASA and how they had to be a good boy and do what they were told, which is not me by any stretch of the imagination. And, and, and, and then I was told, you know, your chance of being selected are 100,000. If you get selected, maybe you'll fly. And if you fly, you might fly once or twice in your career. I'm like, holy shit, that's ridiculous. I mean, this is not, this is bullshit. This is not my vision of what opening up space is going to be.
Starting point is 00:24:08 And it was so antithetical. And I had so much energy and emotion tied to this desire that I literally poured that all into a brand new approach, which became Zero Gravity Corporation, XPRIZE, Space Adventures, Planetary Resources, a whole bunch of things. And we're just beginning. And I think it is now possible for an entrepreneur to do anything, to take on any grand challenge. And I think it's an important message. You can stop complaining about problems and start solving them.
Starting point is 00:24:39 That's what we're living in today. And is there, just to look at, say, the Ansari XPRIZE, so it's $10 million, going from MIT to, say, the first XPRIZE, obviously there are a lot of different steps in between, but someone, I know this may seem like I'm beating a dead horse on this $10 million, but it's such an unfathomable number for a lot of people. Yeah. So I didn't have $10 million, right? I was going to say, I hope you're going to share this part of the story. Yeah. I mean, it gets out. He walked out with 10 million. Come on, Peter. First time he told me this story is like, all right, you're my brother.
Starting point is 00:25:14 All right, cool. Yeah, no, let's let's tell him. So the fact of the matter is I read this book, the spirit of St. Louis and my good friend, Greg Maranac gives me, and I hear about it. I go, Hey, if I can create a prize, maybe that's the means I get my ass into space, right? And so I start noodling this as I'm reading the book. 10 million bucks is enough money. I'm going to call it the X Prize, because I had no idea who was going to put up the 10 million bucks. The X was going to represent the name of the person who would eventually put up the money. It was a variable to be replaced.
Starting point is 00:25:52 So long story short, I'm scrambling for back then, $100 here, $1,000 there, getting the seed money to get this going. And I end up in St. Louis where an amazing man, Al Kurth, says, I will help you raise some seed money. And he was driven and connected by my passion, my commitment to this. And he helped me raise about a half a million dollars in 10 and 20 K checks from the people. And people connect with your passion, with your heartfelt desire to do something bigger than yourself. And they're willing to back that to some extent. Long story short, over the course of a year and a lot of, you know, worn out knee pads, I end up raising a half a million dollars. And then our fundraising stalls. And we make the very bold decision that we're going to announce this $10 million prize anyway with no money in place. And we end up going out under the arch in St. Louis. And one of the things I teach entrepreneurs,
Starting point is 00:26:45 in fact, I write about this in my next book called Bold, which is how you announce a big, bold idea to the world really matters. If you announce it below a line of credibility, we all have a line of credibility around ideas. We judge them constantly. If you announce it below the line of credibility, people dismiss it out of hand. And then we have this line of super credibility that if you announce it above the line of super credibility, people say, wow, when is it going to happen? How can I be involved? So for me, even though I didn't have $10 million, I didn't have any teams, I got on stage to stand by my side 20 astronauts from Buzz Aldrin and others, the head of NASA, the head of the FAA, who had seen me over many years. And it took a lot of convincing. I mean, this is sort of the – even getting to that point was a pinnacle of years of work, but driven by this commitment.
Starting point is 00:27:36 So we announced this prize front page around the world. And because I'm absolutely positively sure I'm going to raise the $10 million. Who wouldn't want to pay $10 million after a person did it, right? You it's paid only on success challenges, 150 CEOs later over the next five years between 96 and 2001, everyone's turning me down. Um, I finally meet the unsorry family. There's a lot more detail here, but listen, the fact of the matter is if I, there were many times at 3am in the morning when, uh, I was tempted to give up and it was only because I was being driven by my internally, my, you know, my own massively transformative purpose that, uh, kept me going. And we're here today having this conversation
Starting point is 00:28:23 because I did not give up. So I'll leave it at that. No, I love that story. And we're here today having this conversation because I did not give up. So I'll leave it at that. No, I love that story. And I think what I'd love to underscore as much for myself as anyone else is that you also had the public accountability because you'd made that... Oh, I burned my ships, dude. Yeah, exactly. You burned your ships. So that's a wonderful story. Tony, I know a lot about your story. And of course, we're going to have a follow up conversation to talk about many other things. But I've read all your books, listened to a lot of your material. And I know that you weren't always the Tony Robbins that people know of today. I mean, there was a point where you were sort of, uh, well, there, there's a lots of the story of course, but what were, what were the triggers for you? The influences, the moments where you sort of decided, okay, instead of helping an additional,
Starting point is 00:29:14 you know, feeding an additional two people per year or making an additional 10 K per year or whatever it might be in those sort of increments where you went to really getting bold as, uh, as Peter might say, I think it's driven. I think it unfolds with time. There are moments along the way, but there are inevitable moments that come with growth. Um, and growth only comes if there's something, as Peter said, that you're passionate about, that's larger than yourself, because it's very easy to become satisfied, you know, with a certain amount of money, a certain amount of food, a certain amount of sex, a certain amount of comfort, a certain amount of anything. But if you said to me, what is the difference in people's lives? What's the difference between Peter, who I love dearly, and the average person? It's hunger.
Starting point is 00:29:57 He's an incredibly intelligent man. He understates who he is in his just pure level of intelligence. But you, truthfully, I've seen people that have one 10th the intelligence accomplished more because that hunger is there. My hunger from the earliest day was to light people up. And I think it's because I was surrounded by so much suffering. I mean, I hate to see people suffer. I love to light people up. And I found early that what would light people up was answers, answers that could change the quality of their life immediately, where they could suddenly shift their body and their energy would change, their body would change, they could lose 20 or 30 pounds, that they could change their relationship and suddenly something was dead, was fully alive, and there was passion. Because I don't care who you are in the world, you can make
Starting point is 00:30:35 10 billion dollars, and I know because I get the calls from these people, that's not the game. The game is your body, it's your emotions, it's your relationships. If everything else in your life is going great and there's an area that isn't, it inevitably will bite you because we're designed as human beings to grow or die. That's just how it works, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. So along the way, I wanted answers for myself to start with. I was short, I was fat. I grew up in a very tough environment. I had four different fathers. We had no food, no money. Those things kind of trigger you. And as a result, I couldn't get answers in my environment. I didn't have access to anybody. So for me, it was books. So I'm very passionate about the power of how self-learning can transform anybody, especially in the world we have today, where you have access to everything, literally at your fingertips, on your phone, anywhere you go. But I read 700 books in a period. I thought it was going to be a book a day. That was my goal. I took a speed reading class, but I didn't do that. I read 700 books over seven years,
Starting point is 00:31:28 but I read anything I could on physiology, psychology, emotion, anything I could make the difference in the quality of people's lives. And then gradually what happened was I started, you know, going from books to being able to use net time, no extra time. I want to listen to things. I started listening those days to cassette tapes. That's old. I am. And as I went through the process, I then found myself at events and I went to an event that changed my life was the first real teacher was this man named Jim Rohn, who was a personal development teacher was a three hour event. I sat in this room and I watched this man who's just so elegant in three hours, share with people principles that I knew would change the quality of my life or theirs. And I decided to go to work for him because I thought, this is what I want my life to be about. This guy's the
Starting point is 00:32:07 best at what he does. I want to live this stuff. And so I went to work for him. And the core essence that I got from being around him was the quality of your life is really comes down to your capacity to add value. That in life, the only thing that makes you feel fully alive is growing and giving. And that evolved to my language of it. That's what I pulled by being around him, not so much by what he said. But what he said that grabbed me in those early days that started to open my world was, you know, my mother wanted me to become a truck driver. There was this truck master's driving school used to advertise on television. And she was obsessed that I could make $24,000 a year, which was twice as much as my father, if I just go to truck driving
Starting point is 00:32:45 school. And then I'd have this open road. And I thought, you know, I don't could drive that truck far enough, fast enough, long enough to change the world. That's not going to change the world. That's not what my passion is. And so I went to this event and I saw this man. I walked out of there and I said, it's about adding value. He showed me that at all levels, including economics, that if you found a way to do more for others than anybody else, you would have the opportunity to grow, expand, have impact, be economically free, have the choices you want. The next big chunk was when I got exposed, because I was always looking for new teachers, to a man named John Gringer who taught neurolinguistic programming or NLP. And I watched this man take people in minutes and create changes they'd been working on in decades. And so I became obsessed.
Starting point is 00:33:26 There was nobody in that community other than therapists in those early days. And I convinced him that, you know, 18, 19, I guess years old at the time, to let me come sit in this class because I was going to put my ear to the door anyway, no matter what. And I took notes like crazy at the end of the class. And then there was a day there where this person, he was out of the room and this person started going through this, this phobic exposure and started freaking out and screaming. And I'm in a room with 70 people and they're all therapists and nobody's doing anything. And so I just stood up and I just grabbed this person and I just, I, I, I wasn't going to let him suffer. And then everything that I'd learned consciously and unconsciously came out and it was like magic. And, you you know 15 minutes later it was
Starting point is 00:34:05 gone and john walked in the room everybody's like did you see what this guy did you know he's a phenom i don't know phenom all he did was i cared so much i had so much intensity for the issue it's like i you know i don't know how to give i didn't know how to give somebody mouth-to-mouth resuscitation i was in a place with my father-in-law where he dropped and i mean dropped and nothing that i learned made a difference and somewhere in my head in milliseconds while he was dying and turning gray my brain remembered having seen sanjay gupta talk about it's not mouth to mouth it's press compressions to get blood into the brain where does your brain come up with that it comes up because it's attuned to answers when you become in an altered state a state of passion a state of commitment a state
Starting point is 00:34:43 of must when When you listen to Peter, when he put himself in line, the way you take the, as you said, you take the island and you burn the boats. In those moments, the answer's there. So then I started making that my modus operandi. I went on national radio in Canada and I challenged psychologists and psychiatrists after I had four days of training. And I said, I don't care what your problem is. I don't care if you have uncontrollable phobias. See me. I'll handle it literally in one hour or less.
Starting point is 00:35:10 And, you know, then I got challenged. Psychiatrist called me on the phone and made my whole career by saying, you're a liar. You're a charlatan. People like you should not be allowed on the radio. And I said, sir, I said, have you ever met me? I said, of course not. I said, have you ever met my clients? He said, of course not.
Starting point is 00:35:23 I said, so are you a scientist? He said, well, I'm a physician. I said, are course not. I said, have you ever met my clients? He said, of course not. I said, so are you a scientist? He said, well, I'm a physician. I said, are you a scientist? I said, good, because a scientist would never make an assumption. What you're telling me is what you're proposing is your hypothesis. Your hypothesis is that I'm a charlatan liar. So let's prove it. I'm at the Holiday Inn tomorrow night.
Starting point is 00:35:39 Anyone listening, come. Bring me your worst patient. Bring me somebody you've never been able to cure. I said, I'm sure you've got plenty of those. And I enticed this guy to a point we had nowhere to go and so he brought me this woman he treated for seven years about a snake phobia when she dream about a snake in the middle of the night wake up four or five times a night treat her for seven years and 15 minutes later i wrapped the snake around her so that became my modus operandi results and that's where
Starting point is 00:36:01 i came up with the idea of coaching i said i'm not a motivator one was using the term. And so I built kind of the beginning of an industry. But my idea of coaching was not go get a certificate is you're paid for results. So I would go and say, you pay me nothing. I'll do one session. Give me the most impossible task and a turnaround. You're addicted to a drug. You're smoking the cigarettes. You're in this place. And I built it. I went to the United States army and I said, give me a program. I'll take any training program you have. I'll cut the training time in half and increase the competency. You pay me nothing. He said, you're crazy. I said, no, I'm expensive and negotiated. And I took a four-day pistol shooting program and turned it a one-day program, qualified 100% of people when before
Starting point is 00:36:37 they'd only done 70%. The colonel wrote the general and says the first breakthrough since World War I in pistol shooting. I never shot a gun before. It was this driving force. Then I started with athletes. Then all of a sudden I'm working with Princess Diana, then President Clinton, who, by the way, you're absolutely right, because he didn't even have an AOL account back then. I remember when I first started working with him, I said, there's this new stuff called email. I got this thing called AOL. Maybe we'll talk electronically. He goes, I've heard about that. He didn't have an account, an AOL account in those days. So, and it just grew to businesses and individuals. So every time you do something and you think you've done your best, if you're a growing human being, you find out it's not your best. There's a new level. When you get there, there's a new
Starting point is 00:37:13 horizon. If there is a passion to serve something bigger than yourself, and if you're not limited just your thinking, I believe the state people get in signifies what capacity of their brain they're going to be able to utilize. And I've become an expert in changing your state, changing the story that limits that state, and then finding the real strategies that work. Because I don't give a shit what state you're in. If you're running east looking for a sunset, you're screwed. You've got to have the right strategy as well. Those three things are, I think, what can do it for anybody. Change your strategy, change your story, change your state, and you can pretty much change anything. And Tony, what was the last name of the NLP teacher that you mentioned?
Starting point is 00:37:48 Grinder, John Grinder, one of the co-founders. Got it. And I think the commonality, at least, or one of the commonalities, if I'm trying to piece together the patterns, speaking to the two of you, is that you put your reputations where your mouth was, right? In both cases. Yes. you is that you put your reputations where your mouth was, right? In both cases, in slightly different approaches, but it just gets me so amped up. My hands are like getting sweaty, just thinking about big stuff. Just listening to you guys. Speaking of big things, I want to make sure that we have ample time to cover something that we're all very excited about. And that is the Global Learning XPRIZE. And perhaps, Peter, you could
Starting point is 00:38:25 chat about this. Before we jump into it, though, I want to mention a couple things to people. Number one, first and foremost, very similar to Tony in this respect, I've been a lifelong reader and autodidact. I've had many incredible teachers, but my uh, I've, I've, my most important teachers in many cases have come from books. They've come, uh, indirectly through words on a page. And I, I was actually going to be held back my, uh, for kindergarten because I, I didn't learn to read. And my teacher was convinced I couldn't read, which was not the case. What, what, uh, what ended up being the problem is that she never explained why I should learn the alphabet. And then I got into first grade and Mrs. Vinsky, I still remember her. She said, Tim, I know you don't want to learn the alphabet, but if you learn the alphabet,
Starting point is 00:39:11 you will be able to read books. And I was like, well, why didn't somebody tell me this and learn to read? And that is, and so Mrs. Vinsky to this day, uh, you know, I ended up being the valedictorian of my, uh, my grade school because of her and she had competition. So just to bring it kind of full circle, she had these little paper race cars that we would make and put them on a wall. And there was a track with the number of books read, and there was a competition to get to the end. And, uh, and I, I got to the end, but like maybe a third of the way through the year, and then we had to extend the racetrack. But it was all due to that passion she had for reading and her ability to explain the benefits of it.
Starting point is 00:39:56 So as a segue, Peter, maybe you could tell us a bit about the Global Learning XPRIZE, which I'm so excited about. Yeah, and thank you. Thank you, Tim. So when I think about what are the world's biggest problems, the problems that if we as society could fix would really transform this planet, I mean, that every mother and father and every person watching should really care about, there's one that when you pull that thread topples others, and that's creating a world of literacy. There's a billion illiterate people on the planet. Two-thirds of them are women, and 250 million of them are kids. And they live in the parts of the world that will never build enough schools
Starting point is 00:40:36 or teach enough teachers. And I'll tell you one thing, a population of people who are illiterate are more peaceful, more prosperous, and less populous. In fact, Bill Gates has a great TED Talk in which he talks about the fact that there's something you can do to stop population growth rates, and it's make a population healthier and more literate. And you do that, growth stops. In fact, growth goes negative, and it really is a key part of our world. So at XPRIZE, we every year pull together the smartest people on the planet and say, where should we be focusing our next XPRIZE? We call this thing visioneering. Tony's been a part of it. Tim, I would welcome your participation in the future.
Starting point is 00:41:15 And we had this debate and discussion with the smartest and wealthiest people on the planet, and literacy, learning, became the focal point. So we set out to create something we call the global learning XPRIZE. And here's the question. Can we, can we get entrepreneurs around the planet to build a piece of software that can operate on any, any phablet, any tablet and take a child where there is nothing, no literate adults, no schools, nothing, and on their own, take them to basic reading, writing, and numeracy. And that's our challenge. And we fundamentally believe it is possible. Got amazing support from Nicholas Negroponte, who created One Laptop per Child, who he and Matt Keller, who's running this prize for us, actually did an experiment.
Starting point is 00:42:05 They took tablets into Ethiopia, into villages that were 100 miles from any schools, anything. And they dropped the tablets off in a box. And the kids opened the box, learned on their own how to turn on the tablet, how to use the apps, and how to start learning to sound out words. The problem they had was that the software was so poor, it limited them. And so our question is, can we create what Neil Stevenson, a great author in science fiction, would call the young lady's illustrator primer from Diamond Age? Can we create software that allows kids to teach themselves? That's our
Starting point is 00:42:46 challenge. That's what the Global Learning XPRIZE is about. And I think there are a couple of really important aspects to this that I'd love to underscore for people. Well, first, I'll second the Neil Stevenson recommendation. If you're going to start with one, I'm a huge fan of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. But coming back to your boldest mission yet, I think is what you called in an email that I received. Yeah. And there are two things. I think it's worth talking about the old way and the challenges of trying to meet the demands of, say, 250 million illiterate children. How many, at least based on what I've read, it looks like that would take 1.6 million new teachers by 2015. Needless to say, it doesn't seem like there's any way that the old way would scale, right? Another thing I want to sort of point out to folks is that if you create a literate, numerate mother, or particularly younger women, children, you tend to, in many countries, create educated families.
Starting point is 00:43:57 So there's sort of a false multiplier effect by attacking this. And the other thing I'd love you to talk about is maybe, maybe you could just, uh, obviously comment on how people can get involved, but the, the, the fact that it's not just using software to make people literate, but there's a time constraint. Yeah. So I think it's 18 months. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. It, it was a friend, uh, Elon Musk that challenged us to do it faster. Um, and we originally planned. It's 18 months. So literally, the way this prize is going to work, we announced it at the United Nations General Assembly. If I can say, Tony is one of our major benefactors
Starting point is 00:44:35 underwriting the purse. We raised $15 million of prize money for this. And we announced it at the UNGA, at the Social Goods Summit, and at the Clinton Global Initiative, I had the honor of closing out CGI with President Clinton talking about this. And we expect there will be hundreds, if not thousands of teams competing for this. A team can come from anywhere. It can be a high school team. It can be a team out of Microsoft, a team out of Mumbai. It doesn't matter. And you've got to build a piece of software. We're going to narrow it down from a thousand plus teams down to a top five. And those five are going to deliver their software to us.
Starting point is 00:45:14 And they're each going to win a million dollars of capital right there. And that software has got to engage the student because if it's not exciting for them to use this software, they're going to give up and put the tablet down and it's done. Game over. It's got to actually be compelling enough and exciting enough to understand that child's favorite movie star, sports star, color. So it engages them and personalizes it in a way that makes them want to learn. And we're going to deliver that software. Those five finalists are going to be delivered to 5,000 kids in sub-Saharan Africa and on 5,000 tablets. And we're going to measure over 18 months where they go from zero to how far they can go in terms of reading, writing, and numeracy. And we're going to crown a winner that has to meet a certain level.
Starting point is 00:46:01 I won't go into the detail now, but the cool thing about this prize, unlike any other XPRIZE, the winning technology wins or the winning software wins 10 million bucks. That's great, but we also get the right to open source that software. So imagine if the best software on the planet for teaching a child reading, writing, and numeracy now became available for free on every tablet and every smartphone put out there. There'll be a billion handsets in Africa by 2016. I mean, imagine if every one of them became the type of compelling teaching capability that a billionaire used or a teenager Mumbai used the same.
Starting point is 00:46:43 The same way that Google is the same for Eric Schmidt or for the poorest kid on the planet. No, it's extremely exciting. And obviously I want to direct people to a few places where they can learn more, but I'd be curious, Tony, to hear from you. You, there's so many places you could invest your time and resources. I'm sure you get asked to contribute to many, many, many, many different things. Why is this, why is this important to you and why have you decided to take such a sort of a large position in supporting it? Well, you know, I look at the, how do you create the greatest impact on the quality of people's lives? And if you listen to the three of us in this conversation
Starting point is 00:47:23 as a sampling, uh, I believe that the thing that affects that most is learning. I mean, we are growing learning machines. A person's ability to learn, to grow, to solve problems, to be able to expand is what develops the quality of life for any human being. That's what we're made for. And it all starts in the world we live today in order to access the resources and reading, writing, and arithmetic, numeracy, those three components, as basic as they are and as boring as they sound to us, they opened the door for all three of us. I mean, your story, Tim, about not only learning the alphabet, but okay, but then I could read because you understood at some level, even then, that reading would open another universe, as it did to me. I transported myself
Starting point is 00:48:01 into other people's lives. I transported myself into new opportunities and new concepts, new solutions. All three of us have done this. All three of us have got this benefit. Elon Musk has done that. And I believe that self-learning, self-directed learning is the most important of all because what's going to happen in that environment is people's individual passions are going to let them hack their own lives. They're going to let them revamp, especially in the world we live today where, I mean,
Starting point is 00:48:23 think about it. 10 years ago, we had, what, 500 million people on the web? It's hard to even imagine. We got 2 billion today, and in six years, we're going to have 5 billion. 3 billion people are going to be joining that system. But to be able to take advantage of that system fully, you've got to be able to have these fundamental skills. So my whole thing is become a learning machine.
Starting point is 00:48:42 You sure as hell can't do that when you have such a large population of our society and of our world that doesn't even have the opportunity to start with. So we all know that children's inventiveness is extraordinary. What we're really doing here is using tools and technology to literally open up the world. So no matter where you live, you know, we're all lucky. I mean, you look at how our lives have changed. I'll give you another thing that I believe a principle and that's proximity. We change proximity. When Peter came up with this dream of his, he put himself in proximity with a different type of person over and over and over again and shared his passion and story. And that proximity opened up opportunities. You know, books were a way of getting proximity when I didn't have physical proximity to some of those solutions. But that proximity for someone in South Africa, somebody in certain parts of India, some parts and parts of the third world to have there be no separation from your capacity to have the same education that somebody has at MIT, that somebody has at Stanford, that stuff is coming online, but it's worthless if you don't have the basic code, that alphabet you talked about in the very beginning. So I put my time, my energy, and my money on the line in this area because I don't think there's a more important Wheaton
Starting point is 00:49:52 gift back to society. I'll tell you another reason. When you look at society and you see the problems that we have, a lot of people think of these problems as somebody else's problems. These are our problems because if you look at the biggest challenges in the world, they come from the people in society that are forgotten. They come from people that become so frustrated. They don't have a way to come up with an empower meaning. They don't have a way to transport themselves. They don't have a way to change the quality of their life.
Starting point is 00:50:15 And those are the individuals that turn to violence. You know, you think about it. Somebody asked me a few years ago. I was in India, and I literally left the hotel there in India, I think about two days before the big bombing. And I literally saw the bombing two days after I'd been there. And I was talking with a friend and they were with a group of people. And one of the person was just saying, how is this possible? How is this type of violence possible? How could somebody kill men, women, and children in this way? And I said, you know, it's really possible because I'll tell you what it's not
Starting point is 00:50:41 possible for. It wasn't a happy person. It wasn't a growing person. It wasn't a fulfilled human being. A happy person is not trying to destroy somebody else's life. And if you want to know what makes human beings happy, it isn't money. Money will give you a certain level of happiness depending on which study you read. It is one thing and one thing only, progress. Progress equals happiness. If you feel like you're growing, expanding in your psychology and your humanity and your emotion and your capacity and your economics, you feel alive. We grow or we die. And you put a giant limitation on that based on where you live in the world where you're born, unless you have access to certain resources. And the most fundamental resource is learning. But with technology now, it doesn't matter where you live. If you know how to learn,
Starting point is 00:51:22 the world is yours. And so on a zero to 10, to me, this is a one million of importance. And that's why I've committed the time, energy and capital to help make it work. And that's why all the other people are doing the same. They're a part of this team. Absolutely. No, it's well said. And I want to point out something else also to those techies listening, because I know a lot of techies out there listening to this.
Starting point is 00:51:42 And even those who are not necessarily technically trained, I am not, would find the fact that there's an aspect of open source that we didn't really touch on. And that is, not only is it freely available to people to use in some way, in some interpretation, in some user interface, but it is then available to be improved upon. So I think it's, it's very fascinating that let's just say, hypothetically, we have these teams, five teams are given a million each. They, they, they bust their asses, think big, create really innovative software to try to solve this problem. Finally, you find, you find the winner. The code is made available. Uh. People are becoming literate who can then improve upon the software itself. It's just a very sort of virtuous, recursive aspect to the whole thing that is really, really, really cool. And so guys, everyone listening, those of you who follow me for a while know that I don't get this excited about a lot of things, but I've been waiting to pick this shot for a long time.
Starting point is 00:52:49 And I've talked about my passion for education and reforming education, improving education, which is really improving learning since my TED Talk in 2008. And there have been very few opportunities to really use an Archimedes lever to, to sort of move the world. And I think this is, this is very legitimately one of them. So, uh, Peter, maybe you could, um, well, there, there are two things. The first is, uh, as we know, based on the results of the spectacular results of the X prize, that people respond to incentives and, um, that's not, uh, being good or bad as being that people respond to incentives. And that's not being good or bad, it's being human. People respond to incentives. So we have, obviously, for those people who are interested in trying to develop this software and compete for the prize, where should they go?
Starting point is 00:53:37 Where can they learn more? Yeah, if you go to just XPRIZE.org, our website, you can click on the Learning XPRIZE there, and there's information about how to register as a team, how to pre-register right now. And it's pretty easy. Just tell us you're interested in forming a team and get involved. We'll take you through the process. If you're a commercial company, great. If you're a nonprofit or a startup, whatever. I know that when we give people a very clear target, it drives them and focuses them. And it's a great thing whether you enter the competition, the final result or not. So XPRIZE.org is how you can register.
Starting point is 00:54:16 Excellent. And I should just mention to people, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine recently who's made hundreds of millions of dollars. And he's a very grounded, deep, soulful guy. And we went for a hike because I've been trying to decide on sort of my next chapters, so to speak, the next projects that I pick. And the way he encouraged me to think about it, he gave me a couple of questions to ask myself. And one of them was, you know, if your goal were to be remembered in the history books, you know, metaphorically two, 300 years from now, what could you do? And you sort of engineer it in reverse from that question. You know, if your goal is to have a big impact, let's get very specific. If you're going to be remembered
Starting point is 00:54:55 two, 300 years from now or more, what could you do? And I would actually pose that to people listening to this. And I would say one of the answers is winning this competition. I really feel like it could have that great an impact. I mean, you could really go down in history for this one. So that's point number one. Point number two, for those people who just want to perhaps look at some very, very fascinating prizes, if you'd like to support the Global Learning XPRIZE, there's an Indiegogo page. So you can go to indiegogo.com and just search XPRIZE, no hyphen needed. And the first thing that'll pop up, and I'll also include this link in the
Starting point is 00:55:34 show notes for people in the Global Learning XPRIZE. But there are a couple of prizes. There are prizes for every price point, all the way from $25 or $10 even up. But Peter, maybe you could comment on, I thought maybe you could elaborate on one of them, which is the 10th anniversary Ansari XPRIZE ticket. Well, actually, if I could, let me give a context of why this is important. Because it's really critical for people to realize we do have amazing people like Tony Robbins, who I love dearly, who put up a million dollars here. We've raised the capital. And you can say, why would my $10 or $25 even make a difference here? And why should I support this?
Starting point is 00:56:17 And let me tell you why. As an organization, we have been dependent on a lot of extraordinary philanthropists. I want to change that. I really want the XPRIZE to become an organization where the public decides what the biggest problems in the world that need to be solved are, and then vote on those and capitalize those prizes and literally create the future. It's like, we want to solve this problem. Great. We'll crowdsource the rules. We will raise the capital and we'll solve that problem. It's like, we want to solve this problem? Great. We'll crowdsource the rules, we will raise the capital, and we'll solve that problem. It's literally creating the future. It's throwing yourself a touchdown pass. And this Indiegogo campaign is a means for me to prove to the XPRIZE board and to the world that the crowd wants to be involved in helping to capitalize these prizes and cares about this model for solving
Starting point is 00:57:05 grand challenges. So it's not about the half a million dollars or the million dollars we'll make, you know, donate 10 bucks. I'm happy with that, but get involved because we want to open this up so that it's really the world solving its own problems, stopping complaining about problems and starting solving problems. That mindset is so critically important for society today. The second thing is where we're going to use this money that we raise. So we today are basically taking the software, these tablets out to 5,000 kids in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our goal is to double that number. And in success, we'll go to 10,000 kids, not in 100 villages, but 200 villages, to really statistically get the numbers working best and to really see the major impact of this global learning XPRIZE can have. And so how can you be involved? Lots of ways.
Starting point is 00:57:55 You know, like you said, Tim, it's one of them is for $25, you can get actually access to the winning software for your kid or your niece or your friend 18 months before it goes open source. So we're going to be actually taking the five finalists and making those finalists available to backers of this. So if you want to play with the software yourself, $25 means you care about this prize and we'll give you a download code when the software is going out to kids in Africa, you'll get a chance to download it too. And they don't have to be technical in order to use it. No, it's going to be an Android app
Starting point is 00:58:40 you download and use pretty instantly. In fact, you have to be as technical as the eight-year-olds in Africa that we're working with. And another very cool one, if I could, is at $50, you get to be involved in visioneering. Visioneering is this thing that we do, 140 people, CEOs, top philanthropists. You can become a digital visioneering. You know, visioneering is this thing that we do, 140 people, CEOs, top philanthropists. You can become a digital visioneer. You get to vote on which XPRIZE we should focus on next year.
Starting point is 00:59:12 So you get to help direct where the XPRIZE, what grand challenge on the planet we're working towards next. You care about climate. Do you care about water, health? What is it? You get involved. So this is about really inclusion. And that's really why I want people involved here. Show you care, get involved, help us really change the world on a massive scale. Definitely. And for those of you who are interested in really doubling down in other ways, you can also, you have a chance to spend some time with Peter himself, Sir Richard Branson and others at the 10th anniversary Ansari X Prize event. And then also, maybe Tony could talk a little bit about a date with destiny. So this is an opportunity
Starting point is 00:59:59 to spend some time with Tony himself., that is also an option on the, on the Indiegogo page, but perhaps Tony, you could mention just a little bit about that. I didn't even know it was there. Oh, well, I'm glad it is. I said, I'll support it any way I can. Well, you know, there we go. So I do once a year, it's a six-day process. It's my most intensive program. You have people from sports, entertainment, business, average people. We have people usually from about 40 to 50 countries. We translate six or seven languages. The outcome of those six days is most of us don't understand that there is a software program, if you will,
Starting point is 01:00:43 an operating system that really controls how you think, feel, and experience every part of your life. We know of it generally. We know what we value. We know what we believe generally. But we take that down to a level that's mind-boggling, where you will understand why you think the thoughts you think, feel the feelings you have, and more importantly, once you understand what's really the controlling force in your entire life, you rewire it because you can't change something you're unaware of and then you just have a random life and i don't care some people have had randomness that's brought a lot of greatness to their life so you find what's
Starting point is 01:01:13 great in your life and you find out what's not and you find out the real source and cause of it and it's an experience that is i mean you laugh more you cry more you're entertained at level because it's raw and real and you see changes that are unbelievable. You'll see a guy that's just come back, the last one we did from Afghanistan, who's shell shocked, who has PTSD, can't sleep at night. He's got the shivers when he tries to hold the microphone, his hand is shaking out of control. He just stands up. You never know who's going to stand up. And you see him 45 minutes later and he's not shaking.
Starting point is 01:01:46 He no longer literally take his glasses off. There's a physiological change in him where he can have light sensitivity. I brought him on CNN to give you an example, just show people what's possible. You see a young woman whose face has been disfigured and thinks her life is horrific. And literally there is a transformation in her. You know, we saw her about six months ago and she's got a relationship for the first time in her life. You see a person that has made more money than God, who's achieved more than they ever have, and they're bored out of their mind and frustrated
Starting point is 01:02:11 with their life. And you find out that guess what, you know, that solution is not the solution. And you see what they're transformed like afterwards and you participate in these processes. So it's just the most intensive individual program that I do. And instead of doing it with five or 10,000 people, it's the most intimate thing I do. We do it with about 1,800 or 2,000 people and you get to develop family with people and friends from all over the world. So it's the ultimate, if you want to transform, you want to learn what controls and shapes your life, it's the ultimate of that experience. And if you make some donation, I don't know what it is. You're in. Tony, let me just tell you, you donated 10 seats at the 10K level, and that's actually being matched with another 10K. So if you donate a 10,000, you get to come to Date with Destiny. And, Tony, you've said you'll take a photo and spend a few moments with those individuals, which your time is the most precious thing. And I can say that having done Date with Destiny myself with you, I learned more in six days. I learned in four years at MIT. It's the most extraordinary experience of my life. Oh, that's very sweet of you. I love you dearly, buddy.
Starting point is 01:03:15 I love you too, pal. So guys, I know you have worlds to conquer out there. And the Global Learning Enterprise is really something that has reinvigorated me in a way that has kind of been a long time coming for me, I feel. And I really feel like for those of you listening who are in any way passionate about education and you've been wondering how to pick your shot, how to throw that one touchdown pass. I really feel like this is a, an excellent place and it's very time sensitive to focus your energy. And, uh, I'm going to be obviously getting behind it as I am and, uh, doing some things to, to help move the needle. And, uh, you can go to XPRIZE.org, uh, if, if you want to compete plenty of money on the line and, uh, glory lasts forever. Right. So, so that's one. And then if you want to compete plenty of money on the line and, uh, glory lasts forever, right? So, so that's one. And then if you want to check out the Indiegogo, uh, campaign, I will put the
Starting point is 01:04:12 link in the show notes. So you can just go to the blog for our blog.com and click on podcast and find the show notes. Uh, or you can just go to Indiegogo.com and search for X price without a hyphen before we take off. do you gentlemen have any parting comments, advice, recommendations, restaurant tips, anything at all that you'd like to leave with us before we go? I'll just say something because you see the combination in all three of us and I think you'll see it in anybody that's enjoying their life. The game never ends. I mean, life is a game of mastery. It's about finding a way to do something and do it so well that goes beyond yourself, that if you can find your passion, if you find anything you're passionate about, and if you don't
Starting point is 01:04:53 know what it is, I think it's getting around people that are really passionate. It's getting around where it's better and letting something hit you. You can't get around a person like yourself or like Peter and not be touched or something inside of you is going to get ignited. So if you don't have that passion yet, you're listening, you know, listening to these podcasts as a way to get some of that proximity, but I'd go pursue putting myself in an environment where you're going to be stimulated. And if you know what your passion is, then the question is, how can you surround yourself with the best of the best so you can be challenged? Because the idea behind the X prize really is it's not just the incentives. It's also the challenge. It's that competition to say, how can I do more and less time for more people than I've
Starting point is 01:05:30 ever done in my life? And when that becomes your focus, something happens, the vibratory rate of the human brain and insights come. You start seeing things. The reticular activating system of the brain starts finding answers because you have that focus on something larger. So if you don't have it, find it. And if you don't know how to find it, get yourself in environments consistently where people are living it and something will hit you. Wow. Absolutely. And that's, that's, that's part of the reason that, you know, people ask me why I live in Silicon Valley, if I could live anywhere. And that's, it's, it's not the tech, it's the, it's being around the people who believe that they're going to change the world. Absolutely.
Starting point is 01:06:06 Peter? Yeah, I mean, it all begins with passion. There is no better teacher, mentor on the planet than Tony Robbins when it comes down to that. For me, I'll just add on top of that that there is no problem we cannot take on. You know, the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities, which is amazing to think about. You want to become a billionaire, help a billion people. That convergence and the notion that a single individual today, I don't care who you are in the world, where you are in the world, you have access to extraordinary capabilities. You have access to the world's knowledge and information on Google. You have access to AI, to cloud printing, all these exponential technologies.
Starting point is 01:06:48 And at the same time, you've got access to all the expertise you want through crowdsourcing. You have capital through crowdfunding. So my goal here is to say, first and foremost, connect with your passion. Let that drive that with you. And then take your moonshot. Where are you going to take and do something significant that gives meaning? I love that example you give, Tim, about how you can be remembered 200, 300 years from today. So it's an amazing time to be alive. It's an amazing time to be an entrepreneur. I am
Starting point is 01:07:17 thankful, Tim, for who you are in the world and Tony, and blessed to be on this conversation with you guys. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time. Uh, would, would be really fun to get together in person at some point. I know we're on different coasts and constantly flying, but, uh, the, the, the, uh, this virtual proximity we'll do for now and, uh, everybody check out the X prize. It is, uh, it is very worthwhile and there are plenty of incentives for every player in the game. And, uh, if you're looking for that passion that, that Peter mentioned, and there are plenty of incentives for every player in the game. And if you're looking for that passion that Peter mentioned, and you don't know what that passion is, as Tony mentioned, one of the best ways to get passionate is to be surrounded by people who are very passionate and thinking magnitudes of order above the average Joe or Jane you may be surrounded by. And a great way to do that, honestly, is just to check out even the page that describes this XPRIZE on XPRIZE.org or on Indiegogo.
Starting point is 01:08:13 And you might just find that, as is the case with me, it's provided some intellectual gasoline and some passion that you might that, uh, that you might not have seen in a while. So I think that it's, it's worth checking out and I'll be doing a lot more related to it. So guys, for the time being, thanks so much for being on. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Peter. Great being with you guys. Bye-bye. Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show. I've used them. I like them. And I think you will too. 99designs.com forward slash 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
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Starting point is 01:09:33 and any other thoughts really you can find me at twitter at at t ferris that's twitter.com forward slash t-f-e-r-r-i-s-s and on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash Tim Ferriss with two R's and two S's. Until next time, thank you for listening.

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