519: In Retrospect - Tony Robbins

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode. Today we're actually going to mix it up. We're going to look at the past. We're going to go known Tony Robbins. This guy is absolutely incredible. And from understanding your market, how best to serve them, the metrics that actually matter, and really how to create a mindset of success and get breakthroughs. This is an amazing interview. I know you guys are going to love it. So sit back and relax. This was truly a valuable interview.

1:23All right, now let's jump into the show. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. Today we're speaking with the one and only Tony Robbins, number one New York Times bestselling author, number one life and business strategy coach. And we're going to talk to him today about his latest book, Unshakeable. Thank you so much for taking the time, Tony. Nice to see you in person. We talked on the phone once before. I know. It's great to connect. And I have to say, I read the book yesterday.

2:02Yes. Nice short book. Amazing. Like so much gold in there. I'm so glad you love it. Yes, it's much shorter. My last book was 700 pages. It was also New York Times, number one best. So we're number one New York Times seller today, number one on Amazon, number one on Barnes & Noble. And by the way, if you get the book, we'll talk to you about the book today, but we're going to feed another 100 million people. I fed a hundred million people out of the first book. Wow. I fed a hundred million people last year. We're going to do it again this year. We're going to feed a billion people over the next seven years.

2:29That's insane. It's really cool. Yeah. That's amazing. The secret to living. It's giving. You got it, man. That's what you told me. That was the best piece of advice you gave me when we last spoke. I'm really glad. Yeah. It sounds corny, but it's really true. If you look at what makes people happy, it's really two things. It's progress. Like even, you know, you achieve your goals and oftentimes people achieve a goal and then they go, is this all there is? It's because it didn't meet their deeper needs. Our need is to keep growing. You know, business is growing or it's dying. A relationship's growing or it's dying.

2:58So if you're feeling like you're not even there, but you're making progress, it feels alive because we all grow or die. And then when you make progress, when you grow, you got something to give. And I really think that's what makes people most happy. I even talk about it in the book at the end. After showing how to make all this money and from the best investors in the history of the world, right? 50 of the best. I said, you know, I don't want to be remiss if we tell them that because money just makes you more of what you are. So if you're mean, you got more to be mean with. If you're giving, you have more to be giving with.

3:24And I wanted people to have that emotional wealth besides the financial. So the last chapter teaches you the tools to let go of the things that stress you out. Because, you know, you can be a billionaire and still have a lousy life. I've interviewed some of them, quite frankly, that I wouldn't want their life. And it's because they live in a state of stress or pissed off or frustrated. I always say, there's nothing worse than an angry rich man or angry rich woman. You just want to smack them because they have so many opportunities. So this book will show you how to make the money and how to become financially free, but it also, and eliminate the fears, but it also really shows you what does it take so you have extraordinary life, life on your terms.

4:01Gotcha. So let's talk about the book. What does it mean to be unshakable? To me, that's really a place where you have such certainty about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, that no matter what shows up, it doesn't stop you. It's not that you don't feel any fear, you fear less. and fearless doesn't mean you don't have any fear. You feel the fear, but you do it anyway because it's not overwhelming fear. And what stops the fear is the truth. Truth sets you free. So the metaphor I use in the book, many people I might have heard the old Sufi metaphor. You know, the guy's walking down the path at nighttime.

4:32He sees a snake and runs the other way, comes back the next morning and sees it's a rope. Once you know it's a rope day or night, you don't get scared. That's what I wanted to do for investing because most people around the world, most individuals are not benefiting from the greatest economic opportunity of their life. And I wrote this book specifically because I wanted people to feel like it doesn't matter what the economy does. It doesn't matter what happens to real estate or stocks. My family is going to be prosperous, not based on enthusiasm, but based on a plan that works. Because here's what you need to know.

5:01Here in America, this is the eighth today, is the anniversary of the bull market. It's the eighth birthday of it. It's the second largest bull market in history. There's only one gone longer. It went nine and a half years. So you don't have to be an idiot to figure out that we're in unique territory. And at some point, this thing is going to take a crash. But here's what's true. It's your opportunity to clean up when it crashes because things go on sale. What I teach in the book is if you're feeling worried about the market, you're going to be worried the rest of your life because every year since 1900, 116 years, we've had a correction.

5:35Now, a correction is from the peak, a drop of 10 to 20%, which is a gut check, right? But 80 % of them never become a crash. They just correct and come back. Like last January, we had the worst January opening of the stock market in its history. We lost$2.2 trillion. The market was down 90 % that fast. People are freaking out. Is this the end one? What's happening here? And Ray Dalio, the single greatest hedge fund manager in the history of the world, provided more returns for investors than any human alive, dear friend of mine. He was at Davos. And people in the financial world know him because he manages country's money.

6:09So he went to him, CNBC, and said, what do we do? And he said, look, I don't know this is a crash. It looks like a correction to me. But if you want to know what to do so you don't worry, he goes, read Tony Robbins' book. Because I taught in these key principles. I've taught no one else. And things went crazy. So corrections happen. 80 % don't become a crash. When does a crash happen? About every five years. Crashes usually last a year on average. Some are longer, some are shorter, just like winter. Some are long, some are short. Crashes usually drop 33 % on average, but they can go 40 or 50. But you don't lose a dime if you don't sell.

6:43Like the market has never taken a penny from anybody. Your fear is taking money from you. So if you remember 2008, here's what I want you to know. So every single bear market, so everybody's clear, becomes a bull in the history of the United States. Every single one. So 2008, gut check. Oh my God, worse since the Depression. You know, market dropped 50 % from deep to trough. But what happened on starting on this date, March 9th, for the next 12 months, right? Explosion upward. 69%, not five, not 10, not 15, 70%. So if you didn't sell, you're in great shape. And if you stayed in the market, everybody's like, oh, the market's too high.

7:20It's up 250 % since that time. It's up 14 % since Donald Trump got in office two and a half months ago. So the secret is get in the game. Now, why don't they? Fear. So here's all, tell your viewers right now, they might start to help them. I just recently spoke at the JP Morgan Alternative Investments Conference, where you got to be a billionaire to get in, 400 billionaires, richest, smartest people in the world. And I got to speak there. And I found JP Morgan did a cool study. And here's what it was. Over the last 20 years, the stock market has produced in the United States an 8.2 % compounded return, the S &P 500.

7:55If you missed, because you're trying to time the market, you're saying, oh, it's kind of high right now. The valuations are high. We're overdue for a crash. And I'm going to hang on to my cash Should we do that? If you miss just the 10 best days, trading days, in the last 20 years, instead of 8.2, it's cut and half. You only made 4.5. If you miss the 20 best days, that means only one day a year that you're out of the market thinking, oh, I don't know if I want to do this right now. I'm not really comfortable. One day a year in 20 years, and it's the best trading days, you made 2%. 2.1. You might as well have a bond with no risk.

8:26And if you miss the top three trading days, one and a half days out of each of those 20 years, you made no money even though you were in the market for 20 years. And you know what's crazy? Six of the 10 best trading days happen within 10 days of the worst trading days, where everybody gets scared and gets out. When Donald Trump won the stock market, no one expected him to win, and boom, it dropped 900 points that night, I immediately called my RAA and said, we're going to put this big additional chunk in right now because this is an overreaction and it'll crack. So I made a fortune in the last two and a half months because I was on JCO, because I wasn't fearful because I understood the real patterns of the market.

9:01And you don't have to be a genius. You can read this in four hours, get a game plan. And then all you have to do, then you go back to your life. Because once you put the game plan in place, you don't want to look at it every day. This is long-term. You'll make a balancing, you'll rebalance your accounts. I show you how to do that once a year. Or my co-author is a guy named Peter Malouk. And Peter is, I decided to partner with him because he's a genius. He's the only man in history here in America to be named by Bloomberg or by Barron's to be the number one wealth manager for three years in a row.

9:31No one's done that in history. He did it two years in a row now at CNBC and Forbes came out with their first list this year and he's number one. I got to know him because I was interviewing all the best of the best. I asked him if he'd co-write this, a couple of chapters in this book for me and I became his partner in business because this is a guy who in 2008 did something so brilliant. Had this little$500 million business. He grew up to$2 billion in two years during the worst market with no advertising. Because he did such a job for his clients, they went and got all their friends who were losing money.

10:00They're like, how are you making money and I'm losing? And the way he did it was, same way we do in the book, he told all his clients in advance, he educated them. Here's what happens with corrections. Here's what bear markets are. I don't know when, but it's going to crash. But we're going to diversify you so it drops 50, you won't drop 50. And it is going to be the best opportunity in your life. We're going to sell some of your bonds and we're going to buy stocks cheaper than they've ever been in your life. And then they'll burst back up just like they've done for two and a half centuries. He made so much money for his clients.

10:29He now does$23 billion in assets. And the man is not an advertiser marketer. It's all word of mouth. So I joined him a year ago. So again, if you decide to do something with him, know that I'll benefit from it as well. I'm not looking to benefit, but I will. But the bottom line is he had 17 billion assets. In the last year, we burned to 23. He's the best of the best. So you get the best of what I know, the best of what Peter knows. And if you want, you can go to getasecondopinion.com. He normally provides all these resources for billionaires and millionaires. I got him and said, if I'm going to partner with you, I want to help the average person.

11:02Now, I know you can't help somebody who has nothing, but at least$100 ,000 instead of a million. And that's what he does now. And he'll make a plan for you. And if you want to be a client, they'll charge you, I think it's 1 % or less. It's average is 85 basis points. Or you can go do it yourself. It's our way of giving back. Most people want someone to be able to do it for them. but you can do it for yourself just as easily as well.

11:48taught by real multi-million dollar e-commerce founders to help you start and scale your own e-commerce brand. And for this week only, you can join Founder Plus for just$299 a year. It's normally$499 and you can lock in that price for life. That's$200 off every single year backed by our 90-day money-back guarantee. Picture this, with the help of Founder Plus, you could be running your own Black Friday sale this time next year, or you could be smashing it out of the park, smashing all-time records. So don't miss out. This deal closes soon. Start building your business today at founder.com forward slash plus.

12:24That's P-L-U-S or click the link in the show notes. All right, now let's jump back in the show. So after reading the book, one thing that I've been dying to ask you is, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. I put pretty much all of my funds into my business, what should I be, you know, going all in on should, as you know, millennials that are starting businesses, like many people in our community, uh, they've, you know, going all in on their business and, you know, they're sacrificing profit for growth, you know, so they don't have that much spare change. What, what's your advice there? What are your thoughts?

12:59What do you really glad you asked me that question? Because every entrepreneur I meet, I have this conversation with one-on-one people that are my friends. Um, and I do it in my businesses seminars too. When I I show people I do business boot camps and I spend five days showing them how to grow their business 100 % plus. And then I take a half a day and show them what to do to have a second business. Here's what I'd say to you if you're a founder out there, if you're somebody starting an organization. The amount of money that you get, whatever cash you have, if it's a growing business, will always be eaten up by the organization.

13:27So a friend of mine, Ken Blanchard, he wrote the One Minute Manager books you may have read years ago. I met him 30 years ago and I helped him take five strokes off his golf game. So he thought I was gone and I don't play golf. I just know what to do here and here with somebody. And so afterwards, he goes, I want to do something for you. I said, look, you don't want to do anything. About two months later, he calls me up and says, I want to have lunch with you. I want to give you a gift. He said, I want to share with you the best financial advice that changed my life. I said, what is it? He said, this very wealthy friend of mine saw I was writing a book.

13:55And he saw I was growing my business. And he said, I want to tell you something. A business, he said what I told you earlier, will take whatever cash is there. Because a growing business, there's always needs. He said, you have to draw a line in the sand. And he said, your book should be the first line in the sand. You should put none of that money in your company. The clients that like the book will become clients of the company. And you shouldn't take that money. You should put an investment account that you don't touch. And it continues to compound to create financial freedom. He said, Tony, I took his advice.

14:23And then I went through three different stages where we almost went bankrupt in the business because I had so much cash and money. I wasn't stressed. So I was there to keep my head straight and run my business better. Because if you think about it, I did that too. I did my first books. Now I give away all the profits of my books, my first books and my first infomercials. Yes. And I work, you know, 275 days a year on the road. I never earned as much as I did by compounding because compounding changes the game. So what you have to do if you're a business owner, you have to get yourself where you say, I'm going to put a tax on my business.

14:54Yep. Not the government tax, my tax. My future self is going to be free forever. Because look, in business, 96 % of businesses don't make it in 10 years. I'm sure all of yours will, but even the 4 % that make it aren't necessarily profitable. So, and the reason is because government can change the rules, right? Taxes can shift radically affected. Clients shift their preferences, technology, new competition. So I tell everybody, I believe you'll make your business succeed, but everybody should have a business on the side with no employees, no moving parts, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes a year to rebalance it.

15:29So that if anything happens here, you're still strong and you can make this stronger or if this goes well and this goes well as well, you have twice as much money and you're there. But you got to understand what this compounding does, right? This compounding, you don't need a lot of money to get really, really wealthy. You know, the example of, one of the examples I put in the book here was the example of a man who talks to his son, he's 18 years old, and the man understands finance and understands the power of compounding. So he says to his son, you got your first job, you're 18. I'm going to require that you take$300 every month, 150 bucks a paycheck and we're going to automate it to the separate account and it sounds like i can't do that he goes let me tell you why do you want to do it it'll be up to you if you promise to do that you really do it you automate it so you don't see it and you do that for eight years you'll never have to invest again and you'll be financially set for life this thing goes come on dad eight years a million dollars a month what is that if he does the math he goes that's 28 000 you know over eight years 28 800 dollars 28 800 how's that going to do anything especially if i don't have any more money after 27 years old.

16:32He goes, let me show you something. The market's gone up 10 % over 30 years. Let's apply a lower number. Let's do 8%. Be conservative. Let me show you what the numbers are when they compound. You know how much he has when he retires? $1.8 million. And all he put in was$28 ,800. See, people think they want to get rich by doing this big hit. Look at all the actors, all the athletes, all the movie stars that you've seen that made more money than God and now they're bankrupt because they made money and income working, but they never figured out how to make money work for them while they slept. They never made money their slaves.

17:08So if you look at like 50 cent, he made a hundred million dollars on vitamin water. Someone gave him a tip and he went bankrupt. Or right now, I don't know if it's really going to happen, but the newspapers are speculating now, you know, Johnny Depp is going through this divorce. He made three quarters of a billion dollars, seven or$50 million. and they're saying he may go bankrupt now because he's going to have to give up half in his cash position and he spends$30 ,000 a month on wine and he took Hunter Thompson, the reporter, and burned his body and paid$3 million to blow his ashes into the atmosphere.

17:39So you can mess up no matter what you do or you can take a small amount of money and just consistently invest it and you'll get where you want to be financially. There's one thing I like that you said about in the book, you can always, you said something around you can always raise your income. you're not going to get ahead. That's correct. Can you rephrase it? Well, yeah, because you grow your income and what do most people do when they grow their income? They spend more. Yeah. Oh, I'll get a cannon, you know, I'll get all this, I'll get more wine. And you know, me, I bought an Island when I was really young.

18:10Like, yeah, you want to, I thought I was making a lot of money buying Island. Suddenly you got financial pressure again. Right. So it's the nature of people with income they earn to spend it. But when you develop the discipline of a part of your life, where you say, there's a portion of my income that no one's going to get. Not Kate Spade, not Tesla, not The Gap, nobody. That money's staying here for my family to grow. When you lock that in place, and again, the key is automating it. If you have to do it manually, you won't. But if you never see it, it'll become a pattern and you'll be able to build.

18:39And that's really what it's really all about. Hey guys, I really hope you're feeling inspired from today's interview. Now, the truth is, all successful e-commerce founders started from zero. with a spark of an idea and a whole lot of determination. But let's be real, building or growing an e-commerce business is no walk in the park. And that's where Founder Plus comes in, in which I'm really excited to share with you. If you're feeling stuck in your e-commerce business, lacking the confidence to move forward, or worrying about making costly mistakes, Founder Plus is here to support you on your journey.

19:12You get access to a customized learning pathway with proven frameworks from super successful e-commerce founders for fast results, a supportive community, weekly live mentorship, exclusive savings on startup tools, and 24-7 real human support. So you can try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days so you can accelerate your business goals. Visit founder.com forward slash founder plus trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. All right, now let's jump back in the show. So founders, how can you give a percentage on, you know? Yeah, I really, the ideal number is in the 20 % range.

19:51Now, most founders are going to look at me like, are you insane? I take every dime I got. So the minimum ideally would be 10 to start and then build it to 15. But there's a cool, you know, I interviewed all these Nobel Prize guys as well as all these self-made billionaires. And one of them was a man named Shlomo. It was really brilliant. He said, you know what? People don't invest because, A, they say, I can't. I don't have the money. You know, we're all good at dieting tomorrow. I'm going to go on a diet tomorrow. We all believe it. Or we're all good at saving tomorrow. We're not going to save today because we want to spend the money, but we'll save in the future.

20:23So he said, I took that pattern and figured out a strategy. And he proved it worked in the Midwest of the United States with blue-collar workers who'd never saved a diet. He went to them and said, I know you, so you have no money. I do like you to save at least 5%, but minimum promise me 3.5 % because no one's going to miss 3.5%. You'll have adjusted that easily. But here's what we're going to do. We're going to do this plan called save more for tomorrow. We're going to go to your employer and you're going to tell them whenever you're going to raise, whenever it is, next year, two years, 10 years, doesn't matter when, 5%, whatever, the first 5 % of money goes straight into this account.

20:55Well, within 15 years, these blue collar workers were saving an average of 15 % and the top 40 % were saving 20. When you save 20, you know, I mean, that's the example of the guy who goes and he's got$70 million. He saved 20 % over time. So anyone can do it. But what I would say to you is, you know, I went through a divorce. I decided I met a woman, fell in love with her and fell in love with her kids. She'd been married twice before me. She was 12 years my senior. So I was 24 and had a 17-year-old son instantly, an 11-year-old, a 5-year-old, and then went on the way. Really great lady, but we're completely different.

21:30No one tells you how to pick your partner. But I fell in love with the children. So I was like, I don't want to lose these kids, you know. So I eventually decided to get a divorce and I got the divorce. divorce, it was a not happy divorce from the standpoint, if I try to give her half of everything, but they got a 10 times, yeah, eight times and a 10 times multiple on all my companies. In those days I didn't have 31, I had like seven. And they were small companies, they weren't billion dollar companies, they were like less than a hundred million, most of them. And some of them were only dependent upon me, like a doctor, if I don't show up, the whole thing falls apart.

22:01And so I'm looking at this, I got to pay her eight and 10 times, I got to pay her$50 million, and I didn't have$50 million. So I settled in$42 million. I had to pay her$42 million when I didn't have it. And I started over at 39 years old. And I had to pay her not only$42 million, but I had to pay her a million dollars a year for 17 years. I was only married to her for 14 years. Wow. So I just paid that off a couple of years ago. And the reason I tell you the story is in the beginning, I had to pay her a million dollars a year. Plus I had to pay the taxes on it before I ate. It was, and when I met her, she was broke.