Huge Lies Financial Experts Are Telling You! | Tony Robbins Unveils the Truth

Introduction

What’s up, Believe Nation? Welcome to another YouTube Hangout. I am extremely honored to have a very special guest with me, somebody who’s had a huge impact not just on the world but on my life as well, the one and only Mister Tony Robbins. Tony, welcome aboard, man.

• Thanks, Evan, great to be with you.

Gratitude

Now before getting started, I just want to express my gratitude to you. I know you’ve done so much for the planet, for humanity, but also for me personally, my family. This book was one that changed not just my life but my mom’s, she bought this when I was six years old.

• Oh my gosh. Still has her phone number and her name is in here, and it really touched her life, and it was one of the first books that I read that was kind of an adult book. And so, I just want to thank you for the impact you’ve had on me personally and my family. It really has meant a lot.
• Oh that’s very kind of you. How old are you now, may I ask?
• What year is it? It’s 2018, I’m 38.
• Oh my God, since you were six. (laughing) I’ve been doin’ this a little while. Well thank you, I’m very complimented, and give my best to your mom.
• I will, thank you.

Discussing “Unshakeable”

We’re here to talk about your new book Unshakeable, and what I found super interesting about this, it kind of feels like it’s your life strategies just applied to the financial markets.

• [Tony] Yes.
• You open up the first page and it says, when you’re truly unshakeable, you have unwavering confidence even amidst a storm, which is what you’ve been teaching mindset-wise forever but now applied to the financial markets. Is that a fair assessment?
• Yeah, I think so except it’s really about the strategies of how to do that. It’s not just about being confident. What makes you unshakeable is that you understand the immutable patterns of the marketplace. There are patterns just like seasons that come about. And what happens for people, humanity transformed from basically traveling constantly from place to place. We built communities once we understood the seasons ’cause we can know when’s the right time to plant. Most people do the right thing at the wrong time. And if you do the right thing at the wrong time,

Understanding Market Corrections

you get no rewards whatsoever. In 2008, when I saw the markets just crashing everywhere, and I was working with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest, top 10 investors in the history of the world, I’ve been working with him for 24 years. He warned me, he showed me it was coming. And during that time, I did incredibly well, and I was trying to tell everybody what’s happening, and I was so angry about the abuses that happened that put us in that place. And I thought within six months or a year, something will be done. And two years later, I saw this documentary. It was all about how the meltdown happened, and I realized nothing had changed. And so, I said, you know what, I have a unique gift. I have access to some of the smartest financial minds on Earth. What if I interviewed 50 of the smartest people, put it in a book? So I did that over five years, and I did MONEY Master the Game, which was 675 pages.

Preparing for Market Corrections

Then I wrote this book because I knew, look, this is the longest running bull market we’ve had in our history now. We have a correction that’s coming. And most people make stupid mistakes in a correction that affect their whole life. And I wanted to write a book that whether you’re a millennial just getting started or you are a baby boomer and think you have no time left to show you how you can still win in any marketplace. And the unshakeability comes from the fact of understanding facts. So for example, Evan, every single year we have a correction on average for the last 100 years. A correction is a change that’s less than 20%, usually 10 to 20%.

The average has been 14% during that time. Now 14% drop gets people’s attention. You probably even remember two years ago in 2016 in January we had the worst opening in the history of the stock market for January, and we ended up having this amazing year in the end. People were freaked out. I remember they were reaching out to Davos, Ray Dalio was there and CNBC went there and said, what do we do?

The market’s lost $2 trillion, now down 9%. He said, pick up Tony Robbins’ book, I did and interview and I shared with him my strategy, how to make money in any season, it’s called all seasons, and the truth of the matter is, if you practice what he did you’re up 2% at that point. So, I wanted to write a book that would show anybody how to go from where you are to where you want to be in the shortest time, make you unshakeable, not based on enthusiasm or confidence, but based on understanding the real patterns.

Market Statistics and Overreactions

One other pattern and then I’ll throw it back to you for your question but, 80% of those corrections, 80% never become a bear market. So the market makes money 77% of the time. That means three out of four years, you’re up. That’s a pretty great deal. But because of people’s fear, their lack of understanding of patterns, they overreact and make dumb decisions. I mean, the market’s up more than 300% since 2009. If you got in on the worst day of 2009, you got in on the day of the crash, you’re up 300% today. But statistics show in people’s 401(k)s for example,

Becoming an Owner

more than 30% of the people stopped putting money in back then and 2/3rds of the people reduced what they put in their 401(k) because of the fear of what happened 10 years ago. So, you got to understand that you got to be in the marketplace.

Message on Control

There’s a lot of talk about control in the book, Control what is the one thing that you want people to understand about control, when they feel out of control, they feel they don’t understand the stock market, what’s the one message you want people to take home around control?

• I think it’s that you have to become an owner, and not just a consumer, you have to take a percentage of what you earn, as simplistic as it sounds, and automate it so it comes off the top of what you earn. There’s a gentleman that worked for UPS, his name’s Theodore, and Theodore Robinson was this guy who never made more than $14,000 a year and yet he retired with $70 million and gave away 35 million while he was alive. How did he do it? He became an owner, his best friend said to him, “Listen to me, the most important thing in your life is, “we’re going to put a wealth tax on you.” He goes, “A wealth tax, I make 14,000 a year.” He goes, “We’re going to make you wealthy with this tax, “it’s not a government tax, it’s a tax to yourself. “So we’re going to take 20% of what you earn, “and put it in an investment account, let it build up.” He said, “I can’t afford that.” He goes, “Once it’s automated, you won’t notice.” That’s all he did that made him $70 million. So it’s like, people have to understand that no matter how good you are in business, we all need a second business with no employees, and that takes very little time. Something that, once you do your homework, should take you 15 minutes to an hour twice a year to rebalance, perhaps. But outside of that, that’s what this is, this is setting up a business that’ll make you do well. When I was, how old was I, when I was 24 years old, 25 years old, I worked with a man named Ken Blanchard, who wrote those One Minute Manager books. You probably remember him, Evan.
• [Evan] Yeah, I do.
• Really great guy, and I helped him take five strokes off his golf game and that made me God to him. And then he would say, I want to return the favor. And he goes, the best advice I got growing my business was, I was about to come out with my first book, and he said, a friend of mine who’s very wealthy said, do not put that money in your company. Let the leads go to your company, do not let the profits go, and do not spend those profits. Put that in a separate account that nothing ever touches, ’cause your business will eat whatever resources you have. A growing business does that. And he said, “Tony, I put that aside,

Financial Security and Back-Up Plan

“and during the tough times that’s what made me safe.” Well, I did the same thing with that in my original infomercials. That alone made me a wealthy man, so when tough times came, I could withstand it. So I see so many business owners go, yeah, but I have control of my business. Bullshit, you have influence over your business. Yes you have more influence, but there are better entrepreneurs than you perhaps out there as well.

Or businesses that get greater valuations than your business will. And so your ability to grow, you want to grow your own business. I always tell people, you want to build two businesses, the business you’re in and the business you’re becoming. And that you want to have the business that you’re in and becoming, and an investment business, it’s really simple once you set it up and I think everybody’s got to do that if they really want to have financial freedom, because look, the marketplace changes, competition changes, IBM was the head of the pack forever and then some little kid from Microsoft comes along and buys MS-DOS for $50,000 and then leases it to them, and makes themself 3 billion on that little move alone. He didn’t even write the software, right? But you know, he’s doing great and all of a sudden this little company comes along, a couple of guys at Stanford called Google, you know. And Apple comes along, so there’s always disruption. And the disruption could be competition, it can be new technology, it can be a change in the culture. So even if you do everything right you could lose. I want people to have a back up plan, this in the back up plan.

Perspective on Control and Influence

Well, I look at control as a delusion, right, that’s the first thing. It’s your desire for the illusion of control that’s pushing you, what you want is certainty. You want certainty you can avoid pain, you want certainty you can have pleasure, you want certainty you can have a significant and meaningful life, we all want certainty. But, learning ways to control what you can control is wonderful, but you can’t control most things. What you can do is influence them. And so the way I look at it and say is, don’t give myself the delusion I have control, ’cause then I’ll feel like I’ve lost it at some point. I never had control, I have influence. I can influence my kids, I can’t control them. I can influence myself, I can influence what happens to me financially, can’t control it completely. And so I think if you give up the illusion of control, that loosens things up a little bit, but I think the second thing is, is to focus on what you can control, which is what you think, feel, and what you do. And if I focus on the things I can control, I’m going to feel better. I mean, all the research shows that human beings, when they feel out of control, freak out inside. And the more they feel they’re in control, the greater their self-esteem.

Utilizing Control and Understanding Market Dynamics

And the way to have that additional control is to say, okay, what I can control is what I do within the seasons. You can say, I don’t like gravity and step off the side here, but you’re going to pay the price. There’re certain things that are outside your control. But you can use gravity. I can fly a helicopter or an airplane ’cause I understand the dynamics of how to do that. If you understand the dynamics of the marketplace, you use the marketplace, the marketplace doesn’t use you. And that’s why I wrote Unshakeable. I want people to have no more fear, and when you start understanding some of these statistics, like, what’s everybody afraid of, a bear market, a bear market is when market corrects 20% or more.

Over the last 80 years they’ve happened about every three to five years, to give you an idea. Later years, more five years. Well, not we’ve gone the longest period in history without one. And yet, people are still afraid. After every single bear market we’ve had in the history of the United States, it’s led immediately into a bull market. If you remember 2008, 2009, 50% drop. In the next 12 months, the S&P was up 69%. That’s almost 70%, I can show you every turn down. So when you start seeing that, it’s immutable. It’s like winter comes, but winter isn’t forever. And winter is a great time to take advantage ’cause some people freeze to death in winter, other people ski and snowboard and get by the fire. Well winter, is when things are on sale. If somebody said to you, I got a $400,000 Ferrari that you can buy for $70,000, you’d probably grab in a heartbeat. But if somebody takes you a stock that was $400 and then 70 bucks, you’re like, oh my god, I can’t do this. You have to look at the cycles of history. And when you do it, you become unshakeable and more importantly, you become wealthy.

Advice for Start-up Entrepreneurs

So you talked about Ken Blanchard and selling the business and having money, and investing it back into the stock market, what would you tell the start up entrepreneur who, maybe is just getting started, or maybe still has a full time job, and it feels like every dollar that they’re making they’re just trying to build their business at the moment, they haven’t cashed out yet.

Diversifying Investments

I think you have to put something outside your business because what’s the number one rule of investing that even idiots understand? Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, right. And what do 90% of entrepreneurs do? Because of the illusion of control, they go, I’m going to put all my money in my business. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great place for your money and for your time and for your energy.

But you got to take a piece of what you earn and you got to bet on some other entrepreneurs and get outside yourself specifically. And if you look at, you know, somebody like Warren Buffet’ll tell you, look, he said, “All my wealth is a result of a couple things, “some good genes and compound interest “and living in America.” So, if all you do is get compound interest on your side, the game changes, you don’t have to have a lot of money.

What Ken Blanchard told me to do, that wasn’t when I sold the business, I was in the business, it was requiring so much cash from me and he was saying, no matter how much cash you have the business will demand it. You got to take this percentage and set it aside and not give it to the business.

The Power of Automation

I had a situation at one point where I went through a divorce, I initiated it, but it was a brutal divorce, quiet frankly, and when I married this woman she had no money and I lived in Delmar Castle. When I got divorced, she got an eight times multiple on my businesses, and I had to pay her a million dollars a year, for 18 years, and I was only married to her for 14 years, plus $42 million. So, I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that I woke up every day before I could feed my own family and had to pay this woman a million bucks. And I had to pay the taxes on it. And the only way you can do that is automate it, and forget about it, and add value, focus on how to add value in your business. So I took it as a tax, off the top, I never looked at it again, and I just automated it, and I got to be honest, the first six to 12 months it made me a little crazy, ’cause I’m workin’ my guts out, and she’s not, but what happened was, after awhile, my skill increased. And what I’ve found is anybody who’s done this in business,

The Power of Compounding

even the very beginning and say, look, if the government came in right now and put a 15% additional tax on your business, you’d scream, you’d yell, you’d say, I can’t pay it, and you’d f’in pay it. But the difference is, the compounding here’s what’s different. I tried to explain compounding like, think about if you want to tell a kid this. If you take a 19-year-old kid, that’s got a little job and you say look, I want you, it sounds like a lot, but I want you to put aside $300 a month but let me show you why. 300 bucks a month set aside, thrown in the market, average market return’s been 8%, it’s been 10% over 100 years, but most recent 30 years, 8%. So, let’s say you get the average return, and it compounds.

That kid who starts at 19 with 300 a month can stop at 27, he’s only done it for eight years, never put another dime in, and he’s only put in 24 or $28,000, but that’ll grow to 1.8 million without putting another dime in. That’s the power of compounding. 28 grand, 1.8 million. If his best friend starts at 27 when he quits, and invests every single year, all the way to 65, and he puts in the same $300 a month, he puts in 140 grand, and in that time he’s got $400,000 less money. So, it’s not the amount of money, it’s the amount of time. Time is your greatest friend here, and if you get in the game, you’re going to win. An you need to get in the game now, not wait ’till your business is successful.

Allocating Investments

• How do you decide what percentage you want to allocate to investing?
• That’s a great question, if you look at what you want to have in the end, you hear very often financial advisors today still use this crazy number, they’ll go, well you need like, if you make $100,000 a year, you need a million bucks. And that’s the biggest lie on the planet. That was for the days when you might be able to get a 10% return, I don’t what days you could do that totally secure, maybe back when interest rates were 18%. But, there’s no way that you’re going to get a secure environment, the whole idea is to build your money up, build your assets up, and eventually have the income take care of you for the rest of your life. The only reason you invest is for income. Income’ll buy you your trips, it’ll put your kids through college, it’ll pay for your home, it’ll give you food. People think they want assets, assets can go up and down for any period of time, so you want put in a secure place at some point, where the income provides all you need

Savings Percentage

Well to specifically answer your question, I would do as much as you could, but I would say 10% would be the minimum, and you ideally want to build to 15 or 20. And they did a study for people who said they had no ability to invest, they had no money whatsoever, and it was done by this group of professors that were eventually nominated for a Nobel Prize. And what they found was, if they got them to put aside 3%, and anyone can do 3%, and then with every additional increase in salary, they put another 3% aside, within 15 years, the average person was saving 15%. 65% were saving 19%. These are workers in middle class America, making $35,000 a year, to give you an idea. And at 19 or 20% you become wealthy.

You’d have to screw up to not make it at that point. But if you think about it, today most people are going to retire, based on actuarial statistics for no less than 20 years, some of them 30 or 35 years, well they only worked for 40 years. And most people did not set aside the money to make that happen, so that’s why I wrote this book.

I want to do something so simple you can read in a weekend and say, okay, here’s where I’m being screwed and I’m going to save all that money alone. Just the savings you can make on not overpaying in fees, every 1% in fees you pay more than you should, is 10 years of income you give up in retirement. Because they’re compounding. We know that compounding works on appreciation, but compounding also works on fees. So you got to understand that. In Unshakeable I walk you through it. ‘Cause you cannot believe the abuses that happen in this system.

Next Steps

• You talk a lot about the house and how you’re bettin’ against the house and the house always makes money. So if somebody’s now listening to you and they say, okay great, 10, 15%, 20 maybe, I’m going to save, what’s my next step?
• Your next step is to educate yourself. This book is going to be the fastest way to do it, but it’s not just this book. You should be reading a couple of books, and they should be books that are focused on teaching you about this. And one of the fastest ways is to go to one of the largest firms that’s in this industry, called Vanguard. And you can go to Vanguard, and they’re not paying me to say this, I don’t make a dime from Vanguard, I wish I did, I’d have a whole different lifestyle. But Vanguard is known as the house that Jack built. And Jack Bogle was the founder, and Jack had a totally different approach to this business. Most people in this business make money whether you win or lose. If you buy or sell something, you pay a commission, whether it goes up or goes down. That’s one way they make money. The second way is they manage your money and they charge you a fee based on the amount of money you have, so even if they lose your money, they make money. And so Jack’s idea was, let’s create an investment firm where nobody makes money except the customer. So, what he created is called index funds. And the idea is, instead of having to hire a stock picker and pay him millions of dollars to try to outsmart all these other stock pickers, ’cause the average stock picker does not outperform the market. And the stock pickers try, they got all these fancy names like large cap and small cap and international. Jack said, look, what if we created a fund that just said, we’re going to buy every stock in America. So you could buy an S&P 500 fund, for example, which buys the top 500 companies in America. So, there’s no stock picking, they buy all 500. And what happens then is, it’s almost impossible to beat, because if you have all 500, when one company goes up, it’s offset by one company that goes down. So, the stock picker can’t keep up, and he’s charging you a fortune. So what happens with Vanguard, it’s amazing. It’s like, the average fee in this industry is about 3%. And Vanguard on average charges 0.1%. So it’s one-tenth of 1%. So, you keep 99.9% of what you earn.

Asset Allocation and Risk Tolerance

Your age is number one because how much time do you need before you need this money is huge. If I’m in a position, and let’s say I got two buckets, a secure bucket, low risk, you know, low returns, a risk growth bucket, more risk, more growth, or more loss. What percentage, do I put like 60% secure, 40% here, do I do, 20% secure, 80% at risk? And that has to do with number one, how much time do you need? So, if you need the money in five years, you can’t afford to take giant risks, ’cause if you screw up, you got no room. If you’re 20 years old, hell, you can screw up many times and still win the game. So, that’s number one. Number two is, what’s your risk tolerance? And in the book we have some tests for you, ’cause what people think their risk tolerance is and what it really is are two different things.

We play a game at one of my seminars where I say, I put some music on and say, make change with people around you. And they go, what? I go, make change, so they reach in their pockets and start making change. And it ends after one song, four or five minutes and I go on to the next subject and inevitably somebody stands up and goes, I want my money back, this f’er over here took a hundred bucks and gave me five bucks. And I go first of all, what makes you think it’s your money? And I said, second of all, what makes you think the game is over? And if somebody’s stressed about a hundred bucks, and you’re going to be an investor, you’re going to be in trouble. So you got to know your risk tolerance. And then last, what’s your access to cash flow? If you have a lot of extra access cash flow, you’ve got room to take more risks. If you don’t have much cash flow, you’re going to have to be more selective in what you’re going to put at risk.

Importance of Education

Education is extremely important when it comes to investing. While investing in low-cost index funds like the S&P 500 can be a good strategy for many people, it’s still crucial to have a basic understanding of how the stock market works and what you’re investing in. Here’s why education matters:

1. Risk Awareness: Understanding the level of risk associated with different investments is essential. It helps you make informed decisions and assess whether you’re comfortable with the potential ups and downs of your investments.
2. Diversification: Even if you primarily invest in index funds, knowing the importance of diversification and asset allocation can help you build a well-balanced portfolio. You should be aware of how different asset classes (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.) can work together to reduce risk.
3. Long-Term Perspective: Education can help you adopt a long-term perspective, which is crucial for successful investing. Knowing how markets historically behave and having confidence in your strategy during downturns can prevent panic selling.
4. Goal Setting: Understanding your financial goals and the time horizon for your investments is key. Education can help you set realistic goals and create an investment plan that aligns with them.
5. Avoiding Costly Mistakes: Without proper education, you may be prone to making costly investment mistakes, such as trying to time the market, chasing hot stocks, or reacting emotionally to market fluctuations.

Diversification and Investing

I don’t think you want to just do the Index because you want to have different asset classes. If you look at the best investors in the world, they all understand that they’re going to be wrong. You talk to Ray Dalio, the greatest hedge fund investor in the history of the world, guy made a fortune in 2008 when everyone else was losing money, and what does he tell you? He says, “Tony, you have to have money “in each different asset class because “different environments, the environments will change, “no matter how smart people think they are, “they’re going to be wrong. “And you got to structure yourself “so you’re able to make money no matter what.” So you don’t want just the Index.

But, what you do want to do, is you do not want to be probably somebody who’s trying to evaluate individual stocks. That’s really somebody who’s going to try and be a trader, and in most cases that’s not going to work. Now if you’re Warren Buffet, that’s a different piece. But it may be better to invest with Warren Buffet, who’s better at selection than you are, than you trying to do it. Stock picking, nobody wins at it. The best in the world don’t win. You got people that are supposed to be the best hedge fund guys on Earth, and what’s their track record over the last seven years? It’s pathetic, they’ve not even matched the market. And so that’s why you’ve seen this shake up in the hedge fund industry. ‘Cause after you pay for fees, even with their brilliant minds, you end up lower than if you just own the market itself.

So the answer to your question is you need to diversify. Let me give you the four things if I may, that are the four most important things that I found, they were the only things in common, I interviewed 50 of the smartest financial people in the world but they all have different approaches. You look at Warren Buffet, he has a very different approach than say, Ray Dalio does, right? One’s looking at trends in the market, the other’s looking at individual companies and trying to take advantage of the best possible valuations that he possibly can. But here’s what they all agree on, number one, and I know this sounds basic, they’re obsessed with not losing money. Most investors are obsessed with trying to make money. But because they know that if I lose $100,000, and I want to grow it back, I can’t just go and grow at a small rate to make that happen. Let’s say I lose 50% of it, I have $50,000. How much do I got to grow to get even? Most people say, well you lost 50%, you got to grow 50%. They don’t realize, if you had $100,000, it’s only worth 50 now, you got to grow 100% to get even.

Smart Investing Strategies

So the smartest investors know they’re going to be wrong, and they have an asset allocation, they’ve broken up their assets in a way that even if they’re wrong, it’s not going to hurt them severely.

Second, this is the one that’s more interesting, they all are obsessed with this idea of, how do I have the least amount of risk, with the most amount of return? They call it asymmetrical risk reward. And what they look at is, when I started working with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the 10 best investors in history, he had lost money for some time. He had been the most successful investor, and the meltdown that happened, you know, the largest stock market in history meltdown that we had, where you lost 20% in a day, he made 200% that year for his guys, and made I think, if I remember right, 40% that month. I mean, this is a brilliant, brilliant guy, but here’s how he does it.

He doesn’t invest like most investors. He doesn’t say like, where can I get a nice return? He’s lookin’ for a five to one. Where if he risks a dollar, he believes he’ll make five. Now he’s going to be wrong, he knows he’s going to be wrong. So if I risk a dollar, try to make five and I’m wrong, okay, I can risk another dollar. He can risk four out of five dollars and still make money. So, that puts you in a very different position than most people.

If you look at somebody like, Richard Branson’s a friend and Richard is just a genius as you know, but what most people don’t have a clue is when he started Virgin Airlines, he only started with five airplanes, giant investments, right, these Boeing business jets. But what people don’t know is he spent a year negotiating so he had no downside. If he didn’t succeed in the first three years, he negotiated a deal to give back the planes with no credit lost, nothing lost to him. So it was all upside, and no downside, that’s called asymmetrical risk reward.

Kyle Bass is a friend of mine. He is well known during the 2008 crisis because he took $20 million and turned it into four billion, in the worst economic environment we’ve had in 80 years. And how’d he do it? Well I could explain the details, but he bet against real estate when everybody else was betting on it, he looked at the facts. But here’s the secret, every time he invested six cents, and in order to risk six cents, his upside was a dollar. So if you risk six cents, you can be wrong 15 times and still make money. Well he wasn’t wrong 15 times, thus he made two billion out of 20 million in 3 1/2 years. So, asymmetrical risk reward is what they’re looking for. You can’t always get a five to one, a three to one, but you want to be looking for it, and you want to think differently than the average person.

Third, they’re all completely obsessed with tax efficiency, but not until they first have done the first two. If you just try to do something based on taxes, it’s not the right investment. But if it’s something where you can feel relatively certain you won’t lose money, and you’ve set up the asset allocation that if you’re wrong you’re still okay, Is there anything else from the video you’d like me to transcribe or any other questions you have?

Smart Investing Strategies (Continued)

and then you’ve got tremendous risk reward, small risk, big reward, then you want to make sure it’s tax efficient, ’cause as I’ve trained all the people that work for me, don’t tell me the return, tell me the net return, tell me after taxes, after fees, after everything, ’cause it’s very different than what people do.

And so, if you take a dollar, and you know compounding, and you double it 20 times, it’s a million and 48,000. But if you just paid 33% in tax, which is less than most of what your viewers probably are, I should say more than what, less than probably what most of your viewers or listeners probably pay, most would probably be more in the 50% tax range. And you think about it, that 33% taken out, after 20 turns, you think well, how much is that, it was a million and 48, you take out 33%, well that’s only 330,000, roughly, around 300 grand. No, no, no, that math doesn’t work, this is compounding. Instead of a million and 48,000, if you pay 33% tax each year, you have $28,000, instead of a million and 48. So tax efficiency baby, is huge.

And then the last one is, what I talked to you about from the beginning, which is, every investor believes in diversification across multiple elements. In other words, you don’t want to just buy real estate, you want different assets, or just the Index, like you described, that’s a disaster. ‘Cause there’ll be times when the Index will get hit, and you need something to balance it out. If you’re only in one place you’re going to get hurt, and the pain will be so strong you’ll probably sell and then have a permanent wound or a permanent problem. You don’t want that to happen. So you need diversity across different assets. You don’t want just one giant piece of real estate. You want diversity within asset classes, so multiple pieces of real estate, or owning the Index as the example. You want diversification across different economies, and you want diversification across time, which is what dollar cost averaging can do.

Giving Back and Entrepreneurship

and if you do pick up, 50 meals will get paid for. I donate 100% of this book’s revenues, everything, to Feeding America, and if you want to join me and go to Feeding America, every dollar you donate I will duplicate, meaning if you put in $100, I’ll put in 100, if you put in a million, I’ll put in a million, up to four million each year, to give you an idea. So, love it if you take advantage of this, change your own life with Unshakeable, you can read it in a weekend, but you’ll also be helping those in need. And right now, we’re the richest country in the world, we got 49 million people who don’t know where their next meal’s going to come from. 17 million are children, I was one of them so it’s not a stat to me, and that’s why I’m doin’ this. So, hope people will pick up the book, hope it will help them touch their lives, but also it’ll change other lives while they’re doin’ it.

I would just say look if you’re, you have a lot of entrepreneurs in your audience and I have 54 companies myself, we do about six billion in business, a little more than that now, and I can tell you, I had no background in business. What made me as effective was that I wouldn’t get involved in a business just to make money. I’m involved with a business ’cause it’s a mission, it’s something that I think can change somebody’s life. And whether it’s something as simple as the stem cell business, or whether it’s LAFC, a soccer team I own, or whether it’s a resort in Fiji, I try to do something that’s going to change their lives, and the whole focus in business is add more value. There is no other rule. If you do more for others than anybody else does in the marketplace, you’ll build a brand. People get on their knees and reach behind a soda pop to get a Coca-Cola, even though Coke doesn’t win most of the taste tests, it is the brand. You’ll become the brand if you can do more for others than anybody else does, and I hope that your audience, the reason they’re listening to you, is to figure out how to add more and more value to the marketplace.

Building Your Business

and build your business around that. The customer that’s going to do the most with you, the customer that’s going to refer the most, the customer that when winter does come, will still buy from you. Find out who that is and over-service them and you will have no difficulty growing your business.

• Tony Robbins, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much, man, I’ll see you in November, and I really appreciate you taking the time today.