Tony Robbins & Marie Forleo: Money Master The Game

Marie Forleo: Hey, it’s Marie Forleo, and you are watching Marie TV, the place to be to create a business and life you love and I am so excited I can barely contain myself, because today’s guest is someone that I’ve admired for so long. He’s impacted tens of millions of lives all around the world and he’s written an incredible new book, which we’re going to talk about today.

Marie Forleo: Tony Robbins is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. For more than 37 years, millions of people have enjoyed the warmth, humor, and the transformational power of Mr. Robbins’ business and personal development events. He’s the nation’s number one life and business strategist. He’s called upon to consult and coach with some of the world’s finest athletes, entertainers, Fortune 500 CEOs, and even presidents of nations. Robbins is a founder of or partner in more than a dozen companies in industries as diverse as a five-star island resort in Fiji to custom 3-D printed prosthetic limbs.

Marie Forleo: Through the Anthony Robbins Foundation and his matching funds, Tony feeds four million people per year in 56 countries. He’s also initiated programs in more than 1,500 schools, 700 prisons and 50,000 service organizations and shelters. He lives in Palm Beach, Florida.

Marie Forleo: Tony, it is so amazing to have you here. Thank you so much for making the time.

Tony Robbins: Thanks for having me.

Marie Forleo: I think I told you this way back when you interviewed me for The New Money Masters, I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. When I was in my early 20s, I went to Unleash the Power Within, and you made such an impact on me and it’s influenced everything I’ve done personally and everything in my business and I just want you to hear who you are, what you do, how you serve. It makes such a huge difference and it means the world to me to have you here today.

Tony Robbins: Oh, that’s sweet of you. Thank you for that.

Marie Forleo: Let’s get started, because one of the things I admire so much about you is your energy and your passion and your stamina. I mean, you’ve been doing this for over three decades and I know everybody watching-

Tony Robbins: Actually getting closer to four.

Marie Forleo: Which is awesome. It’s so incredible.

Tony Robbins: Yeah.

Marie Forleo: And one of the things that I so admire is I feel like you keep getting better, you keep doing more, you keep serving on a higher level. And from a personal just stamina standpoint, tell us a little bit about what you do every day. What are your habits? How do you keep yourself at this high level of service?

Tony Robbins: Well I think there’s the physical side of it, which I do the equivalent of an ultra-marathon every weekend. I do 52 hours. On the last day I did 26 and a half miles, the previous days, 22 miles. So just the physical side, you have to be in incredible shape and I’m in better shape physically today, both my endurance and my muscular strength and so forth than when I was 25, which is wonderful. I do certain things for that, but I think I should mention first what’s even more important is the psychological, spiritual side of things. Because I think energy comes first, not from your body. It doesn’t come from eating. It doesn’t come from sleeping, because I’ve gone without those things for long periods of time and still been able to deliver. It comes from having a mission. It comes from something that you’re being pulled by, not something you’re pushing on.

Tony Robbins: Those are two forms of motivation. You can push yourself to do things and there’s only so much you can push yourself to do. But if you’re pulled, if there’s something that you want to serve that’s greater than yourself, there’s something that excites you, there’s something that you’re about, something you’re made for, then there’s a level of energy that most people would never dream of. We all have that, but most of us don’t connect to it and unleash it. So every day I connect and unleash that every single day. I don’t hope it’s going to be there, even though I know it will be. Even though it’s there, I just, I don’t take it for granted.

Tony Robbins: I start out with my day by a process I do call priming. What priming is, it’s not a meditation, but it has meditative qualities. And what I do is I sit down. The first thing I do in the morning, I go and I jump in a hot tub or a hot water type of experience, and then I go to freezing water. All my homes, unfortunately, I have to have multiple homes that I go, one of them, I have a river I get to jump in. You’ve been there.

Marie Forleo: Yeah.

Tony Robbins: There are other places I have these cold plunges, and I do that to train my nervous system to go from zero to 60 like that. Every muscle, every nerve in your body, every organ gets when you hit 57 degree water, it hits, and so it’s just my mental discipline. Then the second thing I do is I prime and priming as I sit down and I do a minimum of 10 minutes because my mindset is if you don’t have 10 minutes, you don’t have a life, so there’s no excuse.

Tony Robbins: So every day, sit down and what do I do? I do three and a half minutes where I do an explosive breathing pattern, a pattern that changes my biochemistry, and after I’ve done that, 30 of these intense breaths three times. I close my eyes and I’m kind of in altered state and I focus first for three and a half minutes on just everything in my life, at least three things that I’m really truly grateful for and I don’t do that in a hokey way. I don’t do it in a mental way. I step into my body and feel it and I make sure at least one of those things is something really simple: the wind against my skin, the look on my son’s eyes or daughter’s eyes, something that is just very fundamental, but I really, I cultivate that feeling of gratitude, of appreciation for those feelings and I do it for three and half minutes.

Tony Robbins: Then I do three and a half minutes where I do this process of focusing on healing, strengthening, and serving. I start in a circle starting with myself, and then I go through all the people in my life and associates and I just send love to them. Again, it may sound corny, but to me, it’s a part of what I’m here for and it’s a part of cultivating that energy, that healing and strength and energy, and strengthening my passion, my appreciation, my insights, my capacity, my endurance.

Tony Robbins: And then I do the last three minutes are what I call three to thrive, which is what is it that I really want to make happen? And it’s sometimes I do that over what I’m going to do for the next six months or month and sometimes it’s today. I shake it up, but I see and feel and own that those things are done. And that starts pretty much my day between those two items and then I have my workouts and things that I do of that nature.

Marie Forleo: Yeah, and how about eating-wise? Has that changed for you a lot over the years?

Tony Robbins: It’s pretty simplistic. I’m very simple. I eat a salad and I have some protein. I have fish or I’ll have turkey bacon. I don’t eat red meat or chicken, but those are things that I have usually in the morning and my afternoon, evening meals are pretty simple as well. But before I met my wife, Sage, she’s been the greatest gift of my life, when we first met, she’s a phlebotomist and an nutritionist and acupuncturist, so I thought this is to be the easiest thing in the world. I’ll never forget. We went out on this date and she had a wheat grass juice and it’s like, “Wow, this is going to be so easy, man. This is awesome.” And then she had a hot fudge sundae and I was like, “What in the hell are you doing?” And she goes, “Eating, you bastard.” I wish I could give some term around bastard that I was like too rules-driven.

Tony Robbins: And so she had this whole thing, you zig and then you zag. I do that with her now. I do enjoy other aspects of life, but when I first met her, I know she zigged a lot more than she zagged or the other way around, which one it was. But it’s been a nice balance in my life. So I enjoy food and things of that nature. But I use food mostly as fuel because life gives me so much juice. I am not looking to get out of food usually.

Marie Forleo: And how about, because I know for me, my mind can go and I have so much excitement and so much passion that at night sometimes winding down, do you have a wind-down process?

Tony Robbins: My wife would say no. I say yes. She would say no. My wife loves sleep. My wife can sleep eight hours. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. To me, it’s like sleep when you die. So that was one of the first things in our relationship that was a bit challenging because I’d want to get up and just go. I’ll never forget we were in Fiji and it’s like even there where we’re supposed to be on vacation. It’s our home, I jump up at 6:00 in the morning and she’s like, “Where the hell are you going?” “I’m going to start my day, run up the mountain do [inaudible 00:07:27],” and she goes, “Get in bed. I’ll show you how to start your day.” I was like, “Okay, now that’s a better way to start my day.”

Marie Forleo: Totally.

Tony Robbins: But now what I’ve done is I get in bed with her, because she’s a lady. If you get up in the middle of the night, “Where are you going?” “China. Where do you think I’m going? It’s 3:00 in the morning. I’m going to the bathroom.” I’ve learned to get my work done in bed beside her and then she goes to sleep.

Tony Robbins: But I watch silly movies. I watch things to let my brain disappear. Reading does not slow me down, because then I start incorporating and using it. My mind goes crazy. I’m underlining everything. But I’ll watch cartoon-type movies like Family Guy or something to knock my brain out quite frankly, or I’ll watch some silly series like I don’t know. I’m thinking of now the different ones, the what is it, Revenge or something of that nature.

Marie Forleo: Yeah, yeah.

Tony Robbins: Something that my brain can just truly let go and that’s how I do it for the most part.

Marie Forleo: Awesome. So, I mean, you’ve worked with presidents, you’ve worked with people like Serena Williams, and one of the greatest investors in the world, Paul Tudor Jones. When you’re called in to work with these incredible folks, how do you start to prepare yourself? What are the questions that you ask to start to go into serve at that level?

Tony Robbins: Well, they’re different for everybody, obviously, but what I’ve tried to do, if I was trying to look at it from a universal perspective, I guess what I really want to know before I get there as much as I can is everything I can about the person. I do that because I really want to know what do they want? What do they want in their life, what’s their mission, what are they after, and what do they fear? What are their concerns? Because I believe life is found in the dance between what you desire most and what you fear most. And if I know those two edges of a person, I know a lot, and then then I dig under and try to learn as much as I can from other people about whatever the challenge may be. And then I go prepared to just learn from the person directly. But I want to know as much as I can before I go in there.

Tony Robbins: Then I take all that I think I know and then I see what’s really real when I meet him, and I’m digging in to discover what’s the challenge, what do they perceive it is, and usually if I were to grossly generalize, if you’re going to help somebody create a breakthrough, you really, it all comes down to three areas. Either they’ve altered their strategy. We all have strategies, a specific way of succeeding and sometimes we alter it, whether it be in sports or whether it be in finance or any other area. We just, we forget something, we lose a little edge, we drop something out and then it becomes a bad habit.

Tony Robbins: Or sometimes it’s a change in our beliefs. Like you may have done something for decades and been really successful. But now I know one gentleman who’s a good friend of mine that had 52 Academy Award nominations, and he said to me one day, he said, “If I make one more fricking movie, I’ll kill myself.” He’s just like, “I don’t want to make a movie, I don’t want an Academy Award. I don’t want to be these things.” It’s just he’s satiated and so sometimes when people get satiated, they lose their hunger, they shift their beliefs, and when you change a belief, you change your biochemistry.

Tony Robbins: When you change your belief, you change the way you execute, you change everything. And we all develop a stories. And sometimes stories are empowering and sometimes the mental stories are disempowering. So I’m listening for those, I’m digging for those, and then I also look at their state, because you could do the same exact action from a place of being pissed off or from a place of playfulness and the same action’s not going to get you the same result. And so I’m looking for that quality of what’s going on in them.

Tony Robbins: And then I look and try to find out what it was like before. So with Paul Tudor Jones, I went back and I watched videos of him when he was at his best and I saw how he used his body and the way he moved and I saw him now, sitting still and kind of slumped over and he’d broken his leg and he had talked through the different tempo. I look at biochemically what’s happening, physiologically. I look at psychological, what’s going on, and then look at structurally what they’re doing. And then I develop a plan to help them get back to where they were and beyond to better performance than they had before.

Marie Forleo: Incredible. The other thing that I was fascinated for, I wanted to ask you so bad. You probably accomplish more than most people do in, I can’t even, I don’t even know what timeframe, and of course you get to talk with people who are at the highest level of their game. When it comes to productivity, what do top performers know that a lot of people just don’t? What are we missing?

Tony Robbins: Well, I think that the best performers are focused on outcomes and not activities. If you try to manage your to-do list in the world we live in today where most of us have multiple roles, we’re trying to be a great business person, a great husband or wife, great father, great community member, whatever, there’s just so many roles you can never get all your to-do’s done. And what helped me and my wife was I started at one point saying, “I’m not going to let myself fail every day. I’m not going to forget a to-do list and I’m not going to not write a list so that I don’t fail.” I need to focus on what matters most. I needed to organize my life into categories where I say these are the most important outcomes. And then I know why I’m going to do it. If you know what really want, the target, and you know why, you have the focus and you have the fuel, then how to get there, there’s so many ways to get there.

Tony Robbins: And then the most important thing I think that the most productive people do is we leverage what we do. We don’t delegate. Delegation is I give it to you and then when it doesn’t work out I’m pissed at you. Leverage is I empower you. If I’m leveraged, I’m still part of that and I want to make sure you succeed. I’m going to follow up. I want to make sure before the deadline I touch base with you. I’m going to make sure you have the resources to succeed.

Tony Robbins: But what I do is empower people, go, “Here’s the outcome, here’s the why.” I get you and I aligned with the outcome and the why. You figure out how you want to do it. I’m open. You want brainstorm with me? I’ll do it. You’ll probably come up with better ideas than I do, and when you empower people to come up with their own how and they know what and why, you can get the job done a hundred times faster, especially if you get a group of people. I’m a big believer that early in my life I thought I was such a smart person. I’m going to solve all this stuff. Part of it was being responsible and part of it is ego that we all have inside ourselves if we’ve succeeded to a certain extent.

Tony Robbins: I said, “This is bullshit. You know what? Instead of one person solving 12 problems, I want 12 people to solve one problem.” And I developed that practice and I began to find that people that many people thought weren’t going to contribute had insights nobody else had. I really got it from Steve Winn. Steve Winn’s a dear friend of mine and he’s rebuilt Las Vegas. One of the most brilliant men I know, multi-billionaire, and Steve really learns the most from the bellman, from the people that would never make it into the C-suite. He learns what customers are feeling, what they’re experiencing, how to have an impact, what needs to be changed. Because those people are on the front lines.

Tony Robbins: I’m a big believer that you need leverage and if you’re just starting out in business, I know a lot of people that were probably watching your shows are watching you because you’re a successful businesswoman who’s built your own entrepreneurship. You’ve done so many great things. I think in the very beginning, the hard thing is you think you can only do it yourself and then there’s only so many hours and you’ve got kids and family and friends that, how do I do it all? The answer is you hire someone, you trade with someone, you trade him for two hours. That’s what I did in the beginning, because I remember I’ll never forget, I was just really young in my career, very early days and I was running to get to the dry cleaner so I could get my only two suits because if I didn’t get them then the place closes then I can’t get on the plane. Running to the airport, sweating like crazy. I’m a sweater anyway, it’s like-

Marie Forleo: You and me both.

Tony Robbins: … sweat like this, try and get in the door. And I was like, “What is wrong with this picture? I could be doing something that’s so productive and I’m standing in line at the dry cleaning place. I mean, this is nuts.” I was really young. I was like 17, 18, 19, I don’t know what I was. And I said, “I’m going to hire somebody. Two hours a day that’s ready to start with.” And then it was four hours. And so my view is I don’t do anything that someone else can do better.

Tony Robbins: And I don’t do anything that isn’t the highest and best use of my time. Now when I say that, that’s gross generalization. There are things that I still do, but for the most part, by finding people and getting clear on outcomes and the why, what I call RPM, you got to know the result, you got know the purpose, and then you got to have a massive action plan, The plan can change, but that RPM, the stronger the RPMs, the faster that car is going to move. And I try to do that, not just through myself, but through other people.

Marie Forleo: Beautiful. So, last thing I want to talk about before we dive into the monster book, which I can’t wait to get to, is this idea of slumps. I know a lot of times you’re called in when someone’s either hit a plateau or they’re having a tough time, so two questions. A lot of folks that write in, they’ll ask me questions or they’ll just comment on the blog and they find themselves in a tough spot. Maybe they’ve experienced a certain level of success and like you said with your friend Peter, it’s just like, “I don’t want this anymore. I don’t know what I want next.” Any common patterns or things that you can share about slumps and how we can support ourselves to get out of them?

Tony Robbins: Well, most people hit plateaus and the most important thing when you hit a plateau is not to be pissed off and stressed out about it because stress won’t make it better. It’s also not to take it lightly and go, “Oh my God, this doesn’t matter.” It’s that delicate balance where you say, “Okay, how do I get from where I am to where I really want to be?” And if you don’t put the emotional charge on it, it’s easier. But that’s easier to say and harder to do. The pattern I see in slumps, whether it be an athlete or a financial trader or an actor or any of that nature is number one thing that causes a slump usually is you get too comfortable. When you start doing something and you’re really successful, a lot of people lose their hunger.

Tony Robbins: If you asked me what is the single most important element of any human being that separates their level of success from the rest of the world, it’s hunger. It isn’t intelligence. As valuable as that is, there are people that are incredibly intelligent can’t fight their way out of a paper bag. You show me somebody who’s not only hungry but doesn’t lose their hunger, they will dominate everything. And you see that in the greatest sports stars, the greatest entertainers, the ones that just, it’s they’re insatiable. And because of that, you like being around them because there’s this energy about them, this passion about them, and very few people maintain that. You lose your hunger, you go into a slump, you get over confident.

Tony Robbins: Another pattern that happens that gives people a slump is when something changes in their world that they’re not prepared for. Like, “Oh I’ve been doing this forever, and Oh my God now my relationship’s messed up,” or, “I’ve been working hard on being a lawyer and now my wife says her husband’s upset with me. What am I going to do here?” And what it does is it throws people off their rhythm. And so I try to figure out what’s happening in their environment and show them how they can win in both categories simultaneously.

Tony Robbins: A third one is when people do something where they get mad at themselves, kind of like a Tiger Woods, and then they … He’s got all the skill in the world. Nothing changed in his skill, but for that year and a half or whatever it was, I mean, he was beating himself up. And in that state, it’s kind of a self sabotage. And so depending on what form I find, I enter in and make the changes and they’re almost always changes again in the psychology of that person, the emotion of that person. Because we all, we have these great minds. Everybody’s got a great mind or at least available of a great mind. But we’re emotional creatures and we forget that, because we live in a society that tries to value thought much more than emotion because emotion is scary for us. Emotion can come really fast. And so some people try to avoid it at all costs. Other people overwhelmed by it.

Tony Robbins: My view is that emotional intelligence is a wonderful thing, but I much prefer emotional fitness. Intelligence is a capability, fitness is a state of readiness. And what I do is I train myself to always be ready and that makes you execute. I think too many people settle for, “I know this,” as opposed to, “I’m doing this,” and I to train myself and others to be in that state of readiness all the time because that’s where life is really fulfilled at the highest level, I think.

Marie Forleo: I do too. Agreed 100%. so let’s move on to this monster book, which it is a monster in the best way. It’s the most beautiful thing. Do we have a copy that we can bring in? I just want to hold this thing up because it is so awesome. Tony, I got the galley from your team, which it’s like … All right y’all. You’re seeing it right here. We’re going to talk about this now. I truly believe in my heart of hearts that every human being needs to get this book. They need to read it for their family, for their friends, and most importantly, the last couple chapters about service, I was in tears. I loved every bit of it. My copy is highlighted cover to cover. I’ve already taken action on a lot that’s in the book.

Tony Robbins: Yes.

Marie Forleo: This is your first book in 20 years.

Tony Robbins: Yes.

Marie Forleo: Why this topic? Why now and what makes it different than all the other money books that are out there?

Tony Robbins: Well, one reason I haven’t written a book is I hate writing. Just being honest. I’m on a plane about every four or five days. I go to 15 countries. I see a quarter million people a year. I love the live event. I love the spontaneity. You get to do something new constantly. You get to see what’s really going on with a human being, and writing is an isolated, by yourself process that God bless the people that do that stuff. But I got pushed over the edge because there’s only a few subjects in life that really affect the quality of your life. There’s your body, there’s clearly your relationships, your emotions, and money is one of those places. And I’ve shared with people a lot about this and I grew up in a very tough environment financially. We had no money. There are times that our car was repossessed, the times we had no food. It didn’t last, but it was one of those places where you had that uncertainty all the time.

Tony Robbins: When 2008 happened, that’s what pushed me over the edge, because when I started seeing so many people losing their homes, losing half of what they’d saved for their whole life, then I kept thinking, well the government’s going to do something because this is a raw, horrific situation that’s been brought about by a small number of people. By 2010 when nothing had been done, I was mad and I was reading every article, I was watching every documentary, and the final one that just pushed me over the edge was called Inside Job. I don’t know if you saw it, but-

Marie Forleo: I have it ordered on Netflix [crosstalk 00:19:57], yeah.

Tony Robbins: Okay, yes. It’s won the Academy Award and Matt Damon did the voiceover. But what’s amazing is they systematically showed who specifically virtually destroyed the world economy and then showed that the punishment they got is not only all of us bailing them out, but they were put in charge of turning the economy back around and getting more money to spend again. So at the end of this film, you understand what happened, but you have one or two emotional responses depending upon your personality. Either you want to kill somebody you’re so angry or you’re depressed because there wasn’t one solution. The whole thing is a beautiful documentary, but not one solution. I’m a solution guy, so I was like, something’s got to be done. I know I’m not the only solution, but I have a unique gift. I have access, because most people don’t know. They think of me in the motivational, positive thinking guy. That’s never what I’ve been.

Tony Robbins: I’ve been a strategist my whole life, and Paul Tudor Jones, one of the top 10 traders in the history of the world has been my client for 21 years. Literally every single day he emails me. I measure him a variety of things. I see him face to face. I’ve been with him side by side. When the tech crashed in 2000 and 9-11, when we went through the subprime crisis, 2008, the falling gold and he’s made money every single year for 21 years. And even beyond me, his firm has made money for 28 years. So it isn’t just me, it’s Paul. And I’ve learned from him so much over those decades and I just thought if I didn’t just interview him, what if I interviewed 50 of the most brilliant financial minds that in the history of the world, they’re alive today? Let me interview them. Let me find out can the average person really still win?

Tony Robbins: And if so, how? Let me get not some talking head on television telling you the same BS about go put your money on some 12% per annum mutual fund that’s never existed for 10, 15 years, but the truth. And so I began this four-year journey and I mean I was blown away. My average interview was scheduled for 45 minutes. They went three hours, some of them three and a half hours, one four hours, and people became incredibly generous in what they shared and they shared things that they have never shared before, and I put them into a seven-step process so that whether you’re a millennial that just got out of college and got a bunch of college debt saying, “How will I ever get around this?” I’ll show you how to get financially free. You’re a baby boomer and you lost a bunch of money in 2008 and you didn’t get back in the market. I’ll show you what you can do. You’re a very sophisticated investor and you want to know what Ray Dalio does that it’s never been revealed about him, I’ll show you what he does.

Tony Robbins: I’m real proud of it, and you’ve seen the level of endorsement I have from the highest level of people in finance and the earth is pretty extraordinary. It’s because it’s really their work. It’s not mine.

Marie Forleo: I had so much fun reading it and honestly, I was intimidated by a 600-plus book, because I knew we were doing this interview and I prepare as much as I humanly … I’m like, “All right, I’m going to speed read but digest everything.”

Tony Robbins: Yes.

Marie Forleo: And one of the things in the beginning when you start breaking down the myths, I just kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker-

Tony Robbins: I know, me too. Me too.

Marie Forleo: … with how much the general public, how much people don’t know and how they’re taken advantage of. So I wanted to ask you, was there one in particular that just totally pissed you off? There was a ton. I know there’s nine myths in the book. One-

Tony Robbins: I put the nine most abusive ones in there. I mean they’re there. Here’s what I’d say. I want to mention one of the myths though to start with that’s not a myth but a step. I want everybody who’s watching to remember one thing, the biggest myth you have, not the one that’s been sold to you that hurts you, is the average person thinks finance is so complex because frankly the industry tries to make it sound complex. They use words that you don’t know, so you don’t know what to do. What does this mean? And so what happens is we just give them our money and say, “Deal with it,” and we don’t realize that system has been set up. It’s not an evil system. It’s set up by corporations. They’re looking to maximize profit for those corporations. They’re not looking out for the investor because investor second, and we think we’re first and we’re not.

Tony Robbins: So the first piece is you got to know that you can’t wait till you have a ton of money to start investing and think, “I’m not an investor.” What you got to do is say, rather than my Apple phone, let me own Apple stock. Let me own a piece of all the best companies, not just Apple. I’ve got to become an owner, or I’ll always be in scarcity. If you can invest in business, even a small amount, you can grow> I don’t care how small it is, but you’ve got to automate it.

Tony Robbins: There’s a gentleman named Theodore Johnson who is amazing. Worked for UPS. Started as a driver. Never made more than 14,000 total in a year. That was his highest salary in a year. In his old age, he’s worth $70 million. And how did he do it? All he did was what I teach is the first step is you got to take a percentage of what you earn and pretend it’s a tax. You’re never going to see that money again. You automate it. It goes straight to the investment account and you never see it as money you can spend.

Tony Robbins: He did that with 20%. He said, “I can’t save five.” Somebody in his family said, “If there was a tax, you’d pay it, and they made it 20%.” When you save 20% and you compound it, its numbers are incredible. I show people how to do that. But then the problem is if you do that first step, but you don’t do the second step, which is become an insider and understand the rules of the game, then the old adage is, “A person with money meets a person with experience, the person with experience ends up with your money,” but that’s how it works. So I’ll give you two or three of the myths real fast.

Tony Robbins: One, this myth that someone says, “Give me your money and I’m going to beat the market.” It’s just a lie. Warren Buffett made it clear it’s a lie. Ray Dalio, one of the greatest investors in history. David Swensen, who has taken Yale’s money, a billion dollars and converted to 24 billion in two decades, the greatest institutional investor in the world. They’ve all said it. Warren Buffett flat out said today, so listen, “In my will, 90% of my money, all that money does not go with any mutual fund to go straight into the index,” What the index is, is you get a piece of all the largest companies in the world, but it costs almost nothing to get in because over any 10-year period of time, 96% of mutual funds will not even match the market. Now you’re paying for a mutual fund. What this means is you hire someone because you say, “I have a family. I have a business. I have a life. I’m not an investor. I’m going to hire someone who’s a professional. It makes sense. They would do better than me.”

Tony Robbins: Unfortunately that’s wrong, because what happens is 4% of them will beat the market, but it’s not the same 4%, so your chances of finding the right one … Have you ever played blackjack?

Marie Forleo: Yes.

Tony Robbins: So if you play blackjack, everybody knows you play for 21. If you go above 21 you’re gone. If you get two face cards and they’re sitting in front of you and you’ve got a 20 out of 21 and you got the chance to stay or say, hit me, if you hit, there’s only one card that’ll get you together. It’s an ace. If your inner idiot says hit me, you have an 8% chance of winning. You have a 4% chance if I’m the right mutual fund. It’s not going to happen. So what happens for people is they think they’ve been sold, we’re going to do better, and they might for a year or two but what matters, you live off the long term. You don’t live off the year or two and they just don’t do it.

Tony Robbins: Warren Buffett has a bet right now with Protege Partners, which is a group that does hedge funds and he said, “You can pick five hedge funds. You can mold the best of them together. I’m going to own the market, which costs me next to nothing. You’re going to get the hedge funds, which cost a lot, 10 year bet. Who’s going to win?” Put up a million bucks. Right now they’re six years into it. Warren Buffett’s at 42%, they’re at 12%. Just crazy.

Tony Robbins: The second thing is after getting terrible performance, people say, “Well, fees don’t really matter,” or they’ll tell you, “It’s only 1%.” I ask people all time, “How much are you paying?” And they go, “Oh, I don’t know.” Or they’ll say 1%. 1% is called the expense ratio. That’s like the edge of the sticker price. If you read that 50-page prospectus in your mutual fund, even one of them is 50 pages, which you won’t, you’d have a hard time with a Ph.D. figuring it out. In fact, there’s a man named Hilton Smith I quote in the book who spent two weeks. He’s got a doctorate as an economist. Took him two weeks to go through them all and figure out there are 17 different fees and Forbes says the average fee is 3.12. Now if you’re watching right now, I’m sure I’ve lost your brain wit all these numbers, so let me make it real for you. 1% versus 3%, big difference.

Marie Forleo: Huge.

Tony Robbins: Right? Here’s the difference. Just like you grow by compounding like Theodore Johnson did, your fees also compound, and people don’t know that when they hear that little number, so if you have three people and the one gets 1% in fees, 2% the other, and 3%, they all get the same return. They start out with $100,000 at 35 for 30 years, they accumulate to 65 years old, 7% compounded, they all get 7%. The only difference is the fees, and when they go to retire, the person had 1% of fees is going to have $574,000. 100,000 to 574, not a bad … If they added not another dime. Pretty amazing. The person had 3% in fees will have $224,000. 77% less money. If you want to win a race, and you have a 100-pound jockey on the back of your horse or you want a 300-pound jockey on the back of your horse? Fees at 3% are that.

Tony Robbins: If I said to you, “Here’s a deal. Let’s do an investment and here’s how I want it to work. You give me the money, you put up all the money, you put up all the risk, I’ll put up no money, I’ll put up no risk. If you lose, I win and if you win, I win, and if you win over the life of the time, I’ll get 60% of what you earn,” you’d say, “I’ll never do that in a million years.” That’s a mutual fund with 3%. it’s one of the only industries on earth where they’ve confused us enough that we don’t understand we’re overpaying by thousands of percent.

Tony Robbins: You could own the stock market, the S&P 500. You can own a piece of all 500 big companies through the Vanguard 500 and you get the best of all of the business, Apple, Exxon, all these companies, and it costs you .17. That means less than two-tenths of a percent. And you went to a normal mutual fund, you might own the same companies for 3.17. That’s like buying a Honda car for 20,000 or 350,000 for the same car. If you paid 350,000 and you figure the person next door paid 20,000, you’d go crazy. That happens every day with finances because people don’t know how to look at this, so when they read the book, that’ll never happen to them again.

Marie Forleo: Yeah, and this is, I mean there’s so much. I could talk to you forever and I know your team is like, “Oh my God, we’ve got to get him out of here.” But a couple things before we wrap up. First, what we discovered with the all-season strategy and what you were able to inspire Ray, the leader of what, the largest head fund-

Tony Robbins: Hedge fund in the world.

Marie Forleo: Hedge fund in the world.

Tony Robbins: Yes.

Marie Forleo: It’s absolutely incredible.

Tony Robbins: He’s an amazing man. Let me just give it to you really quick. Ray Dalio is his name. Ray heads Bridgewater, which is the largest hedge fund in the world. Hedge fund is where wealthy people often put their money, because they can bet up on the market or down and be able to do a lot of things as a hedge fund, and a large hedge fund, a good-sized one might be 15 billion. Ray’s 160 billion, so he’s 10 times the size. To give money to Ray 10 years ago you had to have a $5 billion net worth and a minimum 100 million on the first day or he wouldn’t even talk to you. That was 10 years ago. Now I don’t know how much money you have and he won’t do it because he manages money for China, for countries, for giant pension funds.

Tony Robbins: I get a chance to meet Ray and I did 15 hours of prep for that. Just like every, I want to be all pitch and catch with him. I was very fortunate, found out that he’d listened to my tapes and was a fan of my work from years before. And so our 45 minutes went close to that three hour mark again. And at the end I said to him, we went back and forth, back and forth, and he really enjoyed it and I enjoyed it, obviously learned so much. I said, “Ray,” I ask this to all these people, “If you could never give any of your money to your children and all you could give them was be a strategy, a plan, a portfolio that they could not only succeed with but they wouldn’t have all the ups and downs that make people get out of the market and lose,” I said, “what would it be?” And he said, “My all-weather portfolio, I’ve already designed it. All my money’s in it, my kids money, all the money that I have for contribution to society is in it.” And he said, “Because I know I’m not going to be here forever and I need something that’s going to work in any market.”

Tony Robbins: And he said, “I’ve worked it all the way back to 1925. I’ve tested it and it makes money.” And he said, “I did it for myself for years and now I do it for my clients.” I said, “Explain it to me.” So he explained it to me and I’d done my homework. I knew a lot about it already, but at the end I said, “Okay, Ray, you’ve really explained this brilliant. You’re showing me why in 2008 people that have their money in stocks and they thought they were safe, half the money in bonds like everybody tells you a balanced portfolio, they both lost money.” He explained why. He explained how you can avoid that.

Tony Robbins: And I said, “Ray, you told me everything but the percentages.” “So it’s like bake this perfect chocolate cake,” and he says, “Bring some chocolate, bring some sugar, use some dairy products.” “But you’re not telling me the amounts,” I said. He goes, “Tony, that’s my secret sauce.” And then he gave me the whole 5 billion, 100 million. I go, “I know, I know, but you said you haven’t taken money in 10 years, you’re not going to take any money. You know the average person can’t do it on their own. Help the average guy out.” I was teasing him, pushing him. And he goes, “Well, it’s complex.” I said, “But I’ll simplify it.” He goes, “Well, there’s leverage.” I said, “Right, design one without leverage. The average person could do 15 minutes a year.” And he goes, “Well, it wouldn’t be perfect.” I said, “Your idea of not perfectly better than anybody else on Earth.”

Marie Forleo: Totally.

Tony Robbins: So he sits there and he starts scratching this thing out for me and I’m feeling this vibration in my body. It was just incredible. At the end, it was incredibly generous. We went and tested it, back tested it. That means you compare it year by year what it did. In reality, not hoping what it’d do, but back testing something for a year or two years or five years is one thing. We back-tested it 75 years, the worst and the most volatile times in our history. And interestingly enough, it’s right 85% of the time it made money, and the few times it didn’t, the average loss was 1.6%.

Marie Forleo: Jeez.

Tony Robbins: The largest loss in 75 years was less than 4% minus 3.5, and that 2008 when the market from top to bottom was down 51%, and that’s the most it had lost in 75 years, and the average return is just under 10%. This is something … A bunch of my friends were like, “Bake this into a business, dude. This is incredible.” I was like, “You know what? I’d love to do that, but this was given in the spirit of free to anybody.”

Marie Forleo: Yes.

Tony Robbins: So out there. Somebody go to the library and get my book and they can just copy the thing down. But it’s available to any human being and anybody can put it there. Now that’s not the only strategy there. I have David Swensen’s strategies. I have all the best.

Marie Forleo: Tons.

Tony Robbins: But his strategy is the smoothest ride.

Marie Forleo: Yeah.

Tony Robbins: Because the biggest challenge, if you look at the last 30 years or 20 years, 1993 to 2003, the average investor in mutual funds over the market did 9.2% per year. Really nice on average. The average mutual fund investor did 2.5% and that’s before taxes. You’re going to double your money every 36 years doing something like that. It’s just not going to happen.

Marie Forleo: Getting killed, no.

Tony Robbins: You’re getting killed.

Marie Forleo: Okay. As we wrap. So you’re not earning a dime off of this book.

Tony Robbins: No.

Marie Forleo: No. Tell us all about your passion for making a difference and what happens each and every time someone purchases a copy of this incredible thing, which everyone needs.

Tony Robbins: Thank you. I’m really proud. I didn’t start out to do that quite frankly, but I was writing the book and as I mentioned, when I was a kid, we had a Thanksgiving, no money and no food, and somebody came to the door and knocked on the door and delivered this food and it was life changing for me, because it wasn’t the food, it was that my father had always said, “Nobody cares about anybody else.” He built that belief system into us and then and I saw that strangers really care. And so I swore some day I’d do something to give back. So when I was 17 I fed two families and the next year four families and next eight. I didn’t tell anybody, but after the third, fourth year, I was like, “I could use some help.” So I got my friends involved and then my companies and then it built to a million people then two million people, and the last four or five years I’ve been matching the two million my foundation does personally with another two million, so we feed four million people a year.

Tony Robbins: But while I was writing this, Congress last year passed a new budget that nobody seemed to pay attention to where they cut food stamps, they don’t call it food stamps anymore, but it’s food stamps, by 8.7 billion. It basically limited two million people from having food. I work with all these nonprofit organizations that are already struggling and it just made me crazy and I thought, “Okay, what if I … I’m working my ass off on this book, but you know what? I could donate all the profits of this book, not a percentage.” And then I thought, “What have I donate it all in advance? Whether I make money in the book, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to do it in advance. How many people can I feed?” And it was 10 million. And I was like, “Wow.” That excited me.

Tony Robbins: It just grew a life of its own. As time went by, I started thinking, “How could I really get people’s attention about it?” and so I finally decided that I’m going to feed 50 million. I’m writing the check actually next week. Personally, I’m going to feed 50 million people up front, and in addition to that, I’m working with Feeding America. They’re the best hunger relief organization in the United States and they’re going to partner with me to get matching funds so we can feed 100 million people. And it just exciting. I’ve fed 42 million people in my life. I’m going to feed more people this year. And so for anybody who gets a book, if I sell a million books, 50 meals for every person that’s there, if I sell a hundred books, it’ll be 500,000 meals for … It’s there. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve done it up front.

Tony Robbins: I’m not doing it because I’m a good guy. I’m just paying it forward. People forget what a little bit of caring can do to inspire to move somebody. I don’t even know to this day who fed my family that day. But if they’re out there, if they’re still alive, I hope they see and hear the story and know what’s going on. My guess is they passed, because I’ve shared the story many times and no one’s volunteered to share what it is, but that person made a giant difference. It wasn’t just feeding, it was caring, and that’s what I think changes people’s lives.

Marie Forleo: I think that’s the thing that I so admire about you. I’ve been to so many of your events. I will continue to be a supporter, a fan, a friend.

Tony Robbins: Oh, thank you.

Marie Forleo: I think you’re one of the most incredible human beings in the world, and your heart and your soul shows through in everything that you do.

Tony Robbins: Thank you. You’re very sweet.

Marie Forleo: Thank you so much for being here.

Tony Robbins: I appreciate it.

Marie Forleo: And for everybody, you have got to get your hands on this book. We’re going to have links below. We’re going to be tweeting and sharing about it. It will change your life, the life of your family, and like I said at the end, there’s a beautiful piece about why it’s so important for all of us to make a difference. Tony, thank you so much. I love you. Thank you for everything.

Tony Robbins: Thanks for having me on. So beautiful to see you again.

Marie Forleo: Thank you.

Tony Robbins: Thank you.

Marie Forleo: Now Tony and I would love to hear from you. What’s the single biggest insight that you’re taking away from today’s episode and more importantly, what’s the biggest action you’re going to take as a result of all of this goodness? Now as always, the best conversations happen after the episode over at marieforleo.com, so go there and leave a comment now.

Marie Forleo: Did you like this video? If so, subscribe to our channel and I would be so appreciative, especially for this one, if you shared it with all your friends, and if you want even more awesome resources to create a business and life that you love, plus some personal insights from me that I only get to talk about in email, come on over to marieforleo.com and make sure you sign up for email updates.

Marie Forleo: Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams, because the world really needs that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time on Marie TV.

Marie Forleo: Can I get a what what?

Speaker 3: [crosstalk 00:37:41].

Marie Forleo: Woo woo. You’re getting thumbs up.

Tony Robbins: Thank you, sweetheart. I appreciate that. I’m starting to feel better about myself already.