In this episode, Sam Parr interviews Tony Robbins about his journey from a difficult childhood to becoming a world-renowned performance coach and entrepreneur. They discuss the power of immersion, the importance of proximity to successful people, and the “holy grail” of investing, while also touching on the value of giving back and maintaining a high-energy state.
Topics: Tony Robbins, Performance Coaching, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Personal Development, Giving Back, Mindset
Introduction [00:00]
Sam Parr: I cannot believe who we have here today. Tony Robbins is coming on the podcast. Tony Robbins is the number one life coach, performance coach in the world. He’s the highest-paid public speaker of all time. This guy’s built a business empire that does 7 billion a year in revenue. Incredible entrepreneur and coach. I mean, this guy’s customers, his clients, the guys who pay him to coach them are like, you know, top athletes, you know, Serena Williams and Tom Brady and Conor McGregor, you know, politicians, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, the top traders and investors in the world, Ray Dalio, Paul Tudor Jones. They pay him because they know that Tony is can help be their edge, right? He can help them level up. So if he can help them level up, I think we can learn a lot from him. I’m going to ask about three specific things. The first is, I actually went to a Tony Robbins event eight years ago. This is my notebook from that event. I still have it eight years ago, eight years later, and the reason why is because I hate to be that guy who’s like, I went to a self-help seminar and it changed my life. But it did. I really came out a different guy. I came out a happier guy. I ended up, you know, at the time, I, you know, this podcast called My First Million, I didn’t have my first million then, and I came up with a plan, I came up with a strategy, and I stuck to it after that event. And I made, I did it because I made three specific shifts. And so, I know most of you will never go to one of his events. You’ll never go to the seminar, it’s a four-day thing, it’s kind of weird. It’s not as cool as just going to Coachella or whatever. But I want to ask Tony about those specific three shifts so that you can hear from him exactly what I heard in that event that changed my life. That’s what we’re going to do on this podcast today. Those same exact things that changed my life, I’m going to have him explain on the pod today. It’s kind of like a live coaching session, which is people pay this guy a million bucks to do this, and we’re going to get it for free. Also, at the end of this, Tony doesn’t know this, but I’m going to actually give away just under $100,000 worth of tickets to his seminar. So for people who are listening to this, there’ll be directions at the end of how you can actually get a free ticket to go to one of his things if you so choose, so that money is not your limitation. So the least I can do, this guy has helped me out so much in my life, I would love to pay it forward to the next person and send them to the seminar. Lastly, we talk about his new book, which he’s been interviewing all these billionaires, right? The they have this championship mindset, right? He works with the top 1% of the 1%. And I want to know what’s different. What are they doing differently? He tells the story about an investor who bought 40 million nickels, like literally the coin, the nickels. Why they did that and why that was such a good idea. I wanted to hear some of these stories from him hanging out with these billionaire investors because he doesn’t talk about that a lot and I nerd out about that kind of thing. So enjoy this episode with Tony Robbins. This is a real cool moment for me with this podcast to be able to do this. I thank Tony for coming on and I hope you enjoy.
Tony’s Origin Story [02:50]
Sam Parr: Pulled this one out today to just do a little refresher. Where’d you go? When’d you go?
Tony Robbins: I went to New Jersey. It’s actually a funny story. I had heard, oh, Tony Robbins is a motivational speaker and I kind of was like, do I need motivation? I don’t need motivation. I don’t either. But there was something inside me that because when you, when I had watched your videos, I thought, well, it’s not just that. I mean, he’s a he’s an entrepreneur, he’s doing his company’s doing billions in revenue. He’s clearly a leader. And when I went to this event, I knew that it wasn’t just like, it wasn’t just some generic self-help BS. And I go and a couple of things stood out right away. And I just want to tell you about this, my experience at your event. So I go and the very first thing that happens is I planned to just sit back. I’m here to learn, okay? I’m not going to jump, I’m not going to do all that dancing and jumping around stuff. This is my mentality. 15 minutes later, that’s out the window. I’m into it. I’m having a great time. The second thing is, I notice, I see these celebrities up front. These are some of the most successful people I know, right? They’re, I hear this scream that almost sounds familiar. I look over and it’s Gerard Butler, the guy from 300, like the Spartan. I’m like, all right, if he’s into this, I I think I could be into this. You know, like, you have this thing, like, give your neighbor a high five. I turn, it’s Vanessa Hudgens. I’m like, giving her a hug. I had this amazing experience and when I was there, there was one guy who turned and looked at me and he said, first time, huh? Because he just see this grin on my face. And I was like, yeah, is this not your first time? And he goes, no, I’ve been to five of these. And honestly, I was like, a little discouraged. I was like, you had to come to this thing five times? Like, I don’t know, is that how this works? And I go, why’d you come five times? He goes, because when Michael Jordan’s in his prime and he comes to your town, you go watch him play. And I thought that was one of the best compliments. I said, Michael Jordan, he said, yeah, he’s, this is the Michael Jordan, he’s like, he does many things, but he’s the Michael Jordan of public speaking. And after that, I started looking at what you were doing differently. You work with billionaires and presidents and athletes and all this stuff. But every superhero has an origin story, right? Like Spider-Man got bit by the spider and that’s, you know, that’s where he got his powers from. I think your origin story is amazing and not a lot of people know the full story. Can you take me back? You’re 17 years old, I think you’re a part-time janitor, and you’d never been to a seminar in your life. How did you, what was your spider bite? How did you stumble into this?
Tony Robbins: Well, it’s an interesting question. I was already interested in personal development because I had a kind of a rough background. I had four different fathers, we had no money for food. I had to work two jobs, I worked as a janitor and my mom had a friend and dad had a friend that had a friend that had been, my dad, my dad’s description was, he used to be such a loser and now he’s really successful. And so he called and said, listen, I hear your son’s gotten big. I was, I was 5’1” in high school and I, I was 6’2” by my senior year, I grew 10 inches in a year. I tell people the difference is personal growth, by the way. But the bottom line is, he said, you know, I, I got to move some furniture and things and I heard he’s big, you know, could he come work for the weekend for some extra money? So I did. I worked really hard and the guy really was impressed by my work ethic. So he said, I’m going to take you to lunch. We go to this lunch and, you know, and he’s saying, you know, I, I really think you go places, you got a lot of drive. And I said, well, I’d like to ask you some questions. And he said, okay. And I said, my dad used to say you used to be such a loser and now you’re so successful. How’d you do that? You know, only a kid can say this, right? I wasn’t trying to be cute. I just literally repeated it. He goes, you just said what? And then he’s like, well, it’s kind of true. And he said, well, I went to this seminar. And I said, what is this seminar? I’ve never heard of such thing. He said, well, man, who has really become accomplished takes 20 years of his life and teaches you in three and a half hours the best of what you need to know to make your life work. I said, wow, that sounds really interesting. I said, could you get me in? And he said, yeah. And there was no follow-up. So I said, well, well, will you? And he said, no. I said, well, why not? He said, well, because if you don’t pay for it, you won’t value it. And at the time, I was working as a janitor making 40 bucks a week. So I said, uh, how much is it? He said, $35. It’d be like $250 in in you today’s dollars to give you an idea. But it was a week’s pay. It was all I knew and I was like, are you kidding me? For three hours? I said, no wonder the guy’s rich. He goes, no, that’s not it. He said, he really has these tools, but he said, if you think it’s too much, then you go learn your own experience and take 10 or 20 or 30 years and maybe never learn it at all. And so long story short, I made what I thought was the biggest decision of my life to take a week’s pay and I went and heard Jim Rohn speak and I was deeply moved and I left there going, okay, I’m going to become president of the United States, I’m going to start with a plan of running for junior in high school, I’m going to run for student body president, then I’m going to be a state assembly. I was just looking to have the most impact. But what it led to was me just really digging in and learning everything I could about human development. And then very quickly, because I was studying everything I could get my hands on, I came across neuro-linguistic programming, NLP, which at the time was a breakthrough new technology of how to use language to change human emotion and behavior. And I talked my way into this, you know, six-month class. I was the only non-therapist in the class. And um, and after the first weekend, I was just out using it. I wouldn’t stop. I’d go to literally, I was this the program I went to was at the airport, all at the inn in LAX, and I’d go to the Denny’s that was right next door afterwards and look for people to help. You know, it’s like, come here, son, I’m going to change your life. But and then gradually, I started modeling and I started figuring out other skills and I started challenging traditional psychologists and psychiatrists saying, give me your worst patient, I’ll handle them in an hour. And I took people with lifetime phobias, you know, been in therapy seven years and turned them around in an hour and that built my reputation. So then I started working with athletes and then I started working with Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Gorbachev and, you know, President Clinton and it just grew and grew. And then along the way, I used the same skills called modeling, finding out what is makes the difference in performance around businesses and I started building companies. So today, you know, now I have 111 companies, we do over $7 billion in business across radically different industries. And uh, but this is my mission. This what I do on a daily basis here, my education company is what I value most. But that’s kind of the journey and I’ve had lots of ups and downs along the way, obviously. It wasn’t like a straight up experience by any stretch. It’s not a straight line. But I’ve learned a hell of a lot and I’ve been surrounded by a lot of great people along the way.
Hubspot Ad [08:48]
Sam Parr: All right everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot and this one’s easy because I’m going to show you an example of how I’m doing this at my company. When I say I, I mean not my team, I mean I’m the one who actually made this. So I’ve got this company called Hampton, you can check it out, joinhampton.com. It’s a community for founders. And one of the ways that we’ve grown is we’ve created these surveys where we’ll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people, a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these like interesting questions, and then we’ll put it in a survey and I went and made a landing page so you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. And the hard part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a a higher-end customer, sort of like like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates, that’s what we use. We just change the colors a little bit to match our brand, very easy. They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder and it’s super simple. I’m not technical and I’m the one who actually made it. And once it’s made, I then shared it on social media and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information and I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn, whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, oh well, that worked, that didn’t work, do more of that, do less of that. And if you’re interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I’m actually doing it, but you can check it out, go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. All right, now back to MFM.
Jim Rohn’s Influence [10:18]
Sam Parr: I don’t know if you’ve seen this. Have you seen this little clip of Jim Rohn talking about you?
Tony Robbins: No, I have not.
Sam Parr: Let’s play this. All right, can you play that clip?
Jim Rohn: Tony Robbins sat in my seminar when he was 17. 17. He was on the outs with his parents and he was sleeping in his car. And someone got him to come to my seminar, age 17. So you don’t, you never know who’s in the audience. And he worked for me for three and a half years promoting my seminars, back then called Adventures in Achievement. Three and a half years. Finally ran one of my offices at age 20 in Los Angeles. Tony Robbins. Now he’s a big-time superstar, bigger superstar than I am around the world. Unbelievable. And he mastered all the stuff. You know, I didn’t teach him the firewalk and all that stuff, but that’s Tony style. You know, he can get by with that. I couldn’t do that. I did say to him one time, Tony, you got to do water instead of fire. They’ll come from all over the world. And knowing Tony, guess what? He’ll probably try it. It kids unbelievable. He’s unbelievable.
Sam Parr: So, what’s it like? I mean, hearing your mentor, you know, somebody who became a friend but but started off as a you were the student, he was the teacher in a way. How does it feel hearing that?
Tony Robbins: No, he he was the teacher for sure. He taught me some of the most important things. I think the most important thing he taught me, um, was when I was, you know, I had all these different fathers and we were always broke and so he said, change your mindset. Change it from, can I earn twice as much in the same amount of time, 10 times as much, 50 times, 100 times, a thousand times? Yes, if you become more valuable. So you have to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. And he said, you’ve got to understand, whatever you do, do add more value than anybody else in the marketplace of what you do. And that really, it it it sung to me because I always tried to over-deliver in anything I did, even at that stage of my life. And um, that’s been the basis of every company that I built across all these different industries. I mean, there’s no way I’d be who I am without that piece. So I’m indebted to Jim as my first mentor.
Asymmetrical Risk/Reward [12:19]
Sam Parr: One of the questions I wanted to ask you is, you can’t ask Steph Curry, how do you make a jump shot? It’s too complicated, right? I can’t ask you how do you be a good public speaker, but I can ask you, how did you get good? Because my sense is, yes, you had some natural gifts. However, I want to bet, and you tell me if I’m right or wrong, that from the ages of kind of like 17 when you went to that first seminar to maybe 25, 26, 27, I would bet that you probably got more reps in than anybody else in your field. Is that, I could be wrong. Tell me if I’m wrong.
Tony Robbins: Well, I went to work for Jim Rohn, the personal development speaker. So you would go out and make two talks, maybe three talks in a month, where you would go to a real estate office or a stock brokerage or some place where you would do a talk and show them by improving themselves, they could also improve their income. That’s usually what they were interested in. And so what I did different was, I went out and said, I remember the guy that was number one in the in the whole company. We were about a thousand employees in that company. And I went up to him the first day because he was such a jerk to people. I mean, it was like total jerk. And so I, you know, I’ve always been a kind of protective of the little guy. I was a little guy, I was 5’1”, I was protected back then, right? When I was in high school. So I went up to him and I just said, you know what? I said, you’re an absolute idiot and that you better remember my name. I said, because it’ll only be a few months before I’ll dwarf you. And I said, I’ll tell you why, you’re lazy. You do three talks a month. I’m going to do three talks a day. So it doesn’t matter how good as you are, I’m going to destroy you, right? And I did. I booked myself uh to every kind of group you can imagine. But yes, you know, if you know, if you know, uh I I got to move some furniture and things. I heard he’s big, you know, could he come work for the weekend for some extra money? So I did. I worked really hard and the guy really was impressed by my work ethic. So he said, I’m going to take you to lunch. We go to this lunch and, you know, and he’s saying, you know, I, I really think you go places, you got a lot of drive. And I said, well, I’d like to ask you some questions. And he said, okay. And I said, my dad used to say you used to be such a loser and now you’re so successful. How’d you do that? You know, only a kid can say this, right? I wasn’t trying to be cute. I just literally repeated it. He goes, you just said what? And then he’s like, well, it’s kind of true. And he said, well, I went to this seminar. And I said, what is this seminar? I’ve never heard of such thing. He said, well, man, who has really become accomplished takes 20 years of his life and teaches you in three and a half hours the best of what you need to know to make your life work. I said, wow, that sounds really interesting. I said, could you get me in? And he said, yeah. And there was no follow-up. So I said, well, well, will you? And he said, no. I said, well, why not? He said, well, because if you don’t pay for it, you won’t value it. And at the time, I was working as a janitor making 40 bucks a week. So I said, uh, how much is it? He said, $35. It’d be like $250 in in you today’s dollars to give you an idea. But it was a week’s pay. It was all I knew and I was like, are you kidding me? For three hours? I said, no wonder the guy’s rich. He goes, no, that’s not it. He said, he really has these tools, but he said, if you think it’s too much, then you go learn your own experience and take 10 or 20 or 30 years and maybe never learn it at all. And so long story short, I made what I thought was the biggest decision of my life to take a week’s pay and I went and heard Jim Rohn speak and I was deeply moved and I left there going, okay, I’m going to become president of the United States, I’m going to start with a plan of running for junior in high school, I’m going to run for student body president, then I’m going to be a state assembly. I was just looking to have the most impact. But what it led to was me just really digging in and learning everything I could about human development. And then very quickly, because I was studying everything I could get my hands on, I came across neuro-linguistic programming, NLP, which at the time was a breakthrough new technology of how to use language to change human emotion and behavior. And I talked my way into this, you know, six-month class. I was the only non-therapist in the class. And um, and after the first weekend, I was just out using it. I wouldn’t stop. I’d go to literally, I was this the program I went to was at the airport, all at the inn in LAX, and I’d go to the Denny’s that was right next door afterwards and look for people to help. You know, it’s like, come here, son, I’m going to change your life. But and then gradually, I started modeling and I started figuring out other skills and I started challenging traditional psychologists and psychiatrists saying, give me your worst patient, I’ll handle them in an hour. And I took people with lifetime phobias, you know, been in therapy seven years and turned them around in an hour and that built my reputation. So then I started working with athletes and then I started working with Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Gorbachev and, you know, President Clinton and it just grew and grew. And then along the way, I used the same skills called modeling, finding out what is makes the difference in performance around businesses and I started building companies. So today, you know, now I have 111 companies, we do over $7 billion in business across radically different industries. And uh, but this is my mission. This what I do on a daily basis here, my education company is what I value most. But that’s kind of the journey and I’ve had lots of ups and downs along the way, obviously. It wasn’t like a straight up experience by any stretch. It’s not a straight line. But I’ve learned a hell of a lot and I’ve been surrounded by a lot of great people along the way.
The “Holy Grail” of Investing [17:34]
Sam Parr: What’s something you learned from Peter? Because he’s a fascinating guy that I think most people don’t, you know of his work, but you don’t know him necessarily. He’s not super out there publicly talking all the time and trying to share knowledge. Do you have any good Peter Gruber stories or uh or lessons learned you’ve had now that you partner with him on some things? How he thinks?
Tony Robbins: I’ll tell you one of the most valuable principles I learned from him, him and a and a friend of his. When we became friends at one stage, you know, he said, change my life. I want to do some do some more things with you and he had a small group of men, uh about eight to 10 that had been getting together twice a year, sometimes three times a year and they go on these amazing trips and they just brainstorm, but everybody there was a master of their universe, right? So it’d be like Pat Riley, you know, who was at the time, you know, the winningest coach in NBA basketball, uh you’d have the richest man in Canada, like this amazing who’s who group. And so he invited me to come on this trip with him and he said, look, we’ve never brought anybody in before. You’re 18 years younger than just about everybody in the room, but you have so much dad, I convinced the guys to let you come on the trip and if they like you, maybe you come part of the group and come on a regular basis. Now, this is I’m just starting my businesses, I’m early on in my career, 30, 31 years old, and I’m in a place where he wants me to go off on this 12-day trip. Well, I couldn’t leave my business for 12 days in those days. I was a business operator, I wasn’t an owner like I am today. So I had to go on the trip and on the trip though, it was such a push, I didn’t want to miss it. I did it. I was so stressed out because I felt like I didn’t belong there. So, uh he then had this conversation with me about what I want to do with my life and then he said, well, let me tell you the most important principle to get you there. He said, proximity is power. And he and Peter both started nodding and saying, this is what makes everything work. And I said, what do you mean proximity is power? What do you mean by that? He said to me at the time, you know, how many investment bankers do you know? I said, no, I don’t know, maybe a dozen. He goes, how do you spend time with? I said, none. He goes, that’s a huge mistake. You must go spend time with them because as you spend time, they will think of you and they will come up with deals that will help you generate the economics you want to generate if you want to run for office or do something of that nature. And I said, okay, and so I started doing it. I felt really uncomfortable and then I saw him again and he really gave me stuff and so then I did it deliberately, ongoingly. And for a year and a half, I’d go meet people. I I’m not I’m not a networker per se, um because I felt like I I don’t know, I’m not asking for something and I don’t know what I can do for them. I try to always be a giver. And but nothing came out of it. I mean, some good friendships and so forth, no business came out of it. And one day I got a phone call that led to a $50 million deal for me and then another day, about a year later, converted that into making in one single day $400 million dollars, taking a company public. So I always tell people, if you think about the important principles, one of the most important ones I learned from Peter and his friends was, you’ve got to get in the environment where the best people in the world are on a regular basis and add value and then things will start to happen. Nothing accelerates more than that other than your own skills and development.
The “Honey, I’m Home” Energy [21:34]
Sam Parr: One of the things I got from being in proximity with you at your events, immersion, going there for four days and and and really soaking it all in was when you came on stage, there was an energy shift every time. And you you mentioned Mark Benioff. I know you’ve talked at the Salesforce conference and I watched the video and he he said something great. He goes, the next guy who’s coming out here, he doesn’t come I mean Salesforce is like, you know, a bunch of sales reps in the audience. It’s a white collar crew. They’re all sitting down, they’ve been at a thing all day. He says, he doesn’t come out to a cold room. He goes, so if you want if Tony’s going to come out here, we better warm up right now. And immediately everybody raised their standard of how they were going to show up for you and you came out and you had a certain energy with you. I stole that and I started using that. I said, I don’t come out to cold rooms anymore. I raised my own standard in that way. That’s great. But I it’s not just in the work context because um even though I went to your event because I wanted to be more successful and more ambitious, whatever and I had these goals, I wanted to have, you know, $10 million by the time I was 30 and then, you know, today it’s like our company this year will do like $50 million in revenue, right? It’s it’s it’s continued to grow. But the thing I took away the most wasn’t any of the work stuff. It was how you show up at home. You had this thing that I want you to talk about called the Honey, I’m Home energy. I’ve been doing this now for like eight straight years since I I went to your event. People don’t know this. Explain what coming home with the Honey, I’m Home energy.
Tony Robbins: No, you’re asking me about that. Yeah, that’s uh it’s just really simple. It’s just I remember my father used to come home, my fourth father especially, when the door closed, there was this pause and we waited to see what kind of state he was going to be in. And you could tell if he was an unhappy state, he wanted to kind of avoid the environment or if he’d say, monkey gurus, he used to say this for monkey gurus, they make no sense, but he had so much enthusiasm and excitement in his voice that we knew it was a good day. So I thought, when I come home, I want to make a difference. So my wife and I have this little thing that we do is I come home, honey, I’m home. And then we look for each other and we run towards each other. And we just hug each other and kiss. But it’s a it’s a beautiful ritual that we’ve, you know, we’ve been together 24 years and we still have this aliveness and passion for each other because we still put ourselves in those high energy states. It’s easy because of being worn down by work or environment or kids or someone in your family’s ill or financial pressure in your business, let’s say, to let your state drop. And then when you’re around your partner, that’s what they experience all the time and then their state’s low and then you’re both filtering life through that. So I think it’s really important, just like if you’re going to get up and be a performer in a piece, they if you’re going to produce peak results, you got to be in a peak state. You got to train yourself to do it at home and then after a while, it’s not phony, it’s just like if you see an athlete, they have muscles, you know? Why do they have the muscle? Because they work out regularly. Well, when you push yourself into a great state regularly, it becomes your standard and it becomes how you feel all the time. You kind of wire yourself for that. It’s not to say you don’t have down times or frustrating times or sad times or whatever. I have all those things, but they’re not the majority of the time and if they happen, you can snap out of it fast because you know how to. I mean, that’s a huge part of what I try to teach people is that you don’t have to accept how you feel. And people all the time say, well, I don’t feel like it. Well, if if I waited until I felt like it, I wouldn’t do 90% of the stuff I’ve done in my life. I’ve learned how to make myself feel like it. Um, because if you don’t do that, you’re you’re not going to accomplish or achieve or enjoy your life at the level that you deserve and probably desire.
The 90 Seconds of Suffering [23:40]
Sam Parr: You said something about the 90 seconds of suffering. Can you explain this concept? Because I stole this I stole this like it’s Oceans 11 and I came into you I stole this framework from you and I have been using it since then.
Tony Robbins: Oh, why did you steal it? That’s that’s a word I think is still stealing. Life is too short to suffer. I I’m not going to suffer. I know how to change my state, but I want to create a rule that within 90 seconds, if I start to suffer, I’m going to snap out of it. Now, don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean you don’t get angry or frustrated or pissed off or worried or any of those things. I can have all those feelings. But if you train yourself to snap out of it in 90 seconds, and by the way, in the beginning, no problem, 90 seconds is easy things. But then life gives you some big tests, right? You get something that feels more like 90 days than 90 seconds. But you get it’s like any skill, like like shooting the basket. You do it again and again and again, you get better and better and better. And it’s changed my life because no matter what’s going on, I can still find the beauty in that and in a beautiful state of mind, you’ll come up with the answers much quicker than a pissed off state or a fearful state or a lousy state. Plus, it gives a gift to everybody else. Who wants to be around somebody who’s in a crappy state?
The Holy Grail of Investing [24:44]
Sam Parr: And people can get it get the book. It’s at the the Holy Grail of Investing.com. I think there’s like a free chapter. So you can go download the free chapter and check it out. Yeah, you’re listening to there’s a free audio chapter you can listen to and then you can pre-order the book. It comes out in a few weeks. I know we’re over, but I got to ask you for one thing. Sure. The one thing is we talked a lot about money and making it and all that stuff. One of the things I pulled away from you was about giving. And I think, you know, when you when I was at the event, you were talking about, oh, I’ve given I give this many meals every year. I think now it’s like a billion meals, some insane number of because, you know, you remembered what it was like to not have food. And a part of me was like, I’m going to do that someday. I should do that. I should hit myself again. I should do that in the future. When I, you know, when I’m rich, I’m going to do that too. And I think this is probably a pretty common thing. Easy for him, he’s rich. What does it mean what does it matter to him to write a $5 million check, right?
Tony Robbins: Honestly, it was just 5 million. Until well, right, fair enough. Until you told a story about giving early on and give I and I I I just want you to tell this one story because I think for most people, if they’ve made it to this part, this will make a bigger difference in their lives than anything else that you tell them because I know it did for me. You told the story about going to the salad bar. Oh, yeah. Going to a salad bar, you’re 21 years old, you’re broke and you had a giving moment that sort of shifted you. Would you please just tell that one because I think giving is not something you got to wait till you’re rich to do, which is I think the common misconception.
Tony Robbins: I tell people if you don’t give a dime out of a dollar, you’re not going to give 10 million out of 100 million or, you know, 100 million out of a billion, don’t kid yourself, right? And also the value of giving transforms you out of scarcity. But the background on it is I was working for Jim Rohn, this personal development speaker, and I really did well and then I did poorly for a while and I was really frustrated. I was working hard, I wasn’t getting the return, I was totally broke. You know, you’re in business, you make some mistakes and I found myself totally broke again and I’m in this 400 square foot bachelor apartment in Venice, California, feeling sorry for myself and watching Luke and Laura on General Hospital. It was just terrible. And um, I’m down to my final, you know, 19, 20, 21, $22, I don’t know what it was in some change. I haven’t paid my rent and I got to figure out what to do and what to eat. So my focus was, okay, I’m going to go to this all you can eat salad bar, taco bar and I’m going to load up for the for the winter, um, and you know, spend five bucks and then, you know, and then I didn’t drive there because it was only about three miles, but I couldn’t pay three bucks for parking too. It was just I couldn’t do that. So, anyway, long story short, I get to the place, it’s on the water in Marina Del Rey, so I went there, there’s boats going by and I I can’t I don’t have a pot to pee in, right? But I’m visualizing and then uh my my I had a stack of food this high and then the I could see the front door because of where I was sitting and the front door opens and this beautiful woman walks in. She was just absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t help but look and then I waited to see if there was a guy with him as if I had any shot at this, right? And she had a guy with him, unfortunately, and he was about three feet tall and he had a little vested suit on, a little tie and you know, he opens the door for her and he pulled out the chair for her and I was just I was mesmerized and I was moved and I got emotional. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s thinking of my own mom, I don’t know what it was at the time, but anyway, the bottom line is, when I was done eating, I went and paid it and I was $5.95 or something like that. And I had the rest of the money in my pocket and I had no plan for this. And as I was walking out the door, there’s that little boy with his mom and her back to me. So I didn’t talk to her, I wasn’t going to her. I just went up to him because I was so moved and I just said, hey, I said, my name’s Tony, what’s your name? And I kept remembering his name anymore. It was, you know, Johnny or whatever it was. And he goes, uh, he said, Johnny, I said, Johnny, I said, you are a class act. I said, I just want you to know, I have so much respect. I saw you hold the door for your lady. I saw you pull the chair out for her. You’re so present with her. And I said, taking her to lunch like this, he goes, well, she’s my mom. And I said, well, that’s even more impressive. He goes, well, I can’t take her to lunch because, you know, I’m just 11 and and I said, yes, you can. I had no plan for it. I just reached in my pocket, took all the money I had in the world, $19, whatever was left over, and dumped it on him with the change and everything right in front of him. And his eyes got big and you know, the environment can covers and he goes, I can’t take that. I said, sure you can. He said, how come? I said, because I’m bigger than you are. And then I smiled and he laughed and I didn’t even look at the woman. I didn’t do it for the acknowledgement. I just walked out that door to get my car and then realized I didn’t have my car there because I walked. So I I I looked like a stupid white guy skipping my house, I’m sure, all the way home. I mean, I was high as a kite and I had no money. And I got home and I was still cool about it and I was full because I ate so much and I woke up the next morning with no plan, no idea, no nothing and no money. And it’s like, I mean, no money, not a dollar. And no one to call to get money from and it was a guy I loaned $1,000 to about two and a half years before when I really didn’t have it, but he needed it more than I did. I loaned it to him. So I’ve been for months been calling and sending, you know, regular mail to him here because he wasn’t answering the phone, there wasn’t email in those days. And um, and that morning I get my mail and no no call, no response. And that morning I get my mail and there’s all the bills and there’s a handwritten note and I open the note and it’s from this guy apologizing to me and telling me that he was so sorry I was there for him when he really needed it and he had not been there for me and he had put in, you know, an extra $200 for interest and so forth. So it was $1,200. $1,200 is more money than I could live on that for a month in those days, right? And I just started crying uncontrollably. I was like, you know, why am I crying? This is beautiful. This is beautiful, you know, and it’s like, and then I realized, wow, you know, when I had nothing, I gave everything. And here this is. What does this mean? I said, I don’t know what it means, but I’m going to decide it means because I didn’t give to get and I didn’t give what was easy. That’s why I’m receiving. And it’s like, that day on, I can tell you I’ve had ups and downs, I have so many companies, the early days, I had a couple of companies on the verge of bankruptcy and they didn’t go bankrupt, thank God. I hung on and made it through it. But I never felt that scarcity. I never felt that scarcity again since that day. Because if you get to that point, your brain realizes there’s more than enough. And you can give when you feel like there’s nothing there. That’s that’s what transforms you. When I interviewed Sir John Templeton, who’s the first billionaire investor, started with nothing, he said to me that the secret to wealth is gratitude, right? Because it doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you’re not grateful, you’re not rich. Um, but then he said also, I’ve never met anybody that tithed for at least 10 years who didn’t become wealthy. He said, tithe, it doesn’t have to be a church. It’s just taking 10% of what you’re earning and giving it away and I’m proud to say I’ve given away 17% and I’ve done quite well. Um, but I did it when I had nothing and it’s it’s there. Um, I want to play one more seed with the audience though, and that is if they’d like to have an experience, you know, not they can’t come for the, you know, three or four days yet for an event, but they like to have an experience. Since COVID started four years ago, everybody was trapped at home and I was doing stadiums, you know, and they started shutting down the stadiums. I told them I could put 100 people in the stadium. So I decided I’d build a studio and I built these 20-foot high, you know, walls, .67 resolution, I could see everything and I went to the guys, you know, who built Zoom and I said, look, you know, I need you to help me get to 20,000, 30,000 people, not a thousand. I built software so that people could instead of clapping, could shake their phone and it would send electric signal and if one person did it, you hear nothing, when 20,000 people do it, it’s like thunder. And it allowed me to literally explode in the number of people I reached. So now I do a free seminar once a year for three days. It’s coming up January 25th through the 27th, just in about a week and a half. If you want to go, there’s zero charge. It’s not partially free, it’s totally free. And it’s about two and a half hours, three hours a day of immersion for three days in a row. And it’s really designed to help you get a plan and make the changes necessary in your energy, in your emotions, in your business, in your finances, in your career. And we just we put the most we can in those three days and create huge momentum. And last year we had over a million people again from 195 countries in the world and then you’re part of a community of people helping each other. So if anyone likes to go, you’re welcome to. You can do it from your home or your office, you can bring friends or family, again, there’s no charge. You just go to what is that what is the highlight? It’s the uh it’s the timetorise summit.com. Timetorisesummit.com and it starts January 25th through the 27th and I’d love to serve you guys and go deeper.
Sam Parr: Amazing. Tony, I don’t know if you know this, but at that event when you told some of these stories, I on the moment I in that moment I was like, you know what? Uh I’m going to start giving and I the the idea I came up with I go, you know, this was a pretty crazy experience I had. I just got lucky. I bought some Black Friday tickets. Uh I I don’t know how I stumbled into this, but this was cool and I’ve I’m a different guy right now and I decided, all right, I’m going to start giving. And what I did was I said, all right, next year, I’m going to send one person to this. I’m going to gift somebody an experience to go to UPW. And then I was like, every year, I’m going to gift more people than the year before. So I’ve sent 44 people now to your events. You know, my my mom, my dad, I people anybody, anybody who, you know, other entrepreneurs who I thought, you know, might like it. Yes. And uh And how they responded as a result? How did they react at these events?
Tony Robbins: 15% of people are um like me. They’re like, they come back and they it’s like, did somebody plug you in? You’re like electric now. What happened to you? So 15% of people their new person never looked back. I would say 70% of people were like, that was a great experience. I loved it. And they’re like, you know, but they they didn’t fully get like, you know, for me, it was like a a full transformation, just being totally honest. So 70% of people say Oh, you want to install the poll experience. Yeah, exactly. And then I would say 15% of people were like, what the hell is this? Uh you know, this was I I don’t know what this is and they often, you know, a lot of people I send are like successful tech people and they come in almost like they want to be the smart guy in the Reddit comments almost and they’re like, uh you know, they’re so worried about he said this and is that the real statistic? Is it 54% or 51%? I’m like, you’re missing the point trying to be so, you know, you’re you’re being so smart, you’re being dumb right now. And so people have everybody has their own experience. I think it’s uh you know, what I tell them is just go have the experience, right? Go go decide for yourself. Uh so you know, for people who listen to this, I’m going to put a thing in the in the description. I want to send people who actually listen to the podcast because I’ve been sending people I know, but now uh you know, this year I’ll send I want to double it. So I think I’ve sent 44 people lifetime on to send another 44 people this year. So I’ll put a thing in the comments for people who go to the four-day UPW that’s the kind of like starter event. Uh that’s the one I’ve been to a couple times and uh I think you’ll really like it. So. Okay, I’m on it. Since you’re going to do that, I’ll match it. So we’ll make it 88 in total. You do your 40 and I’ll give you 40 uh to match it since uh we’ll we’ll we’ll invest in these people’s lives together.
Sam Parr: Amazing. Thanks so much Tony. I really appreciate it.
Tony Robbins: Great talk with you and and congratulations on what you built.
Sam Parr: Yeah, likewise.