Tucker Carlson - Ep. 66 A spirit of sadness has descended on the country. You see it everywhere. That's not surprising, says Tony Robbins, and it's not forever.
Tony Robbins joins Tucker Carlson to dissect America’s current "spirit of sadness," tracing it to fear-driven media cycles and political division, while framing economic struggles as a cyclical "winter" phase—like past eras with 18% interest rates—that builds resilience. He dismisses nuclear war fears as irrelevant, instead advocating seven actionable steps: clarifying goals, confronting gaps, crushing limiting beliefs, and executing measurable daily habits, citing his pivot from in-person events to global virtual seminars during COVID-19 as a model for adaptation. Robbins debunks the "rigged system" myth, crediting his own rise from poverty to 114 companies on value creation, and pushes private equity and sports team investments as inflation-resistant opportunities, warning that compounding—not income—builds wealth. His five-step turnaround plan—daily learning, physical discipline, studying role models, massive action, and helping others—transformed his abusive upbringing into a blueprint for others, from a 700-pound man’s weight loss to a prisoner regaining custody, all while rejecting fatalism as a self-fulfilling trap. [Automatically generated summary]
There's a spirit of sadness and discouragement that has descended on the country.
You can feel it.
You could see it in the New Year's celebrations that weren't very celebratory.
And you certainly notice it when you talk to people, people you know well, people who are paying some attention, even those who aren't.
They seem down.
They're anxious, of course, about this year, which is going to transform the world.
There's no question about that.
But they also seem a little defeated and sad.
What is that, exactly?
You don't need to be a...
A guru to sense it.
It's real.
And how should you respond to it?
And so that's a question we've been thinking about a lot this week.
And one of the people we want to pose it to is a very smart man, one of the most famous people in the world, Tony Robbins, a life strategist, obviously one of the best-selling authors in the country.
You can't travel without seeing it with people on airlines.
It's pretty extreme.
People have lost their patience after COVID. But anger usually comes from fear.
And there's a lot of fear about the future because there's not a compelling future.
If you ask people, what's the vision for the future for this country?
I mean, for the days of John F. Kennedy, he would talk about where we're going to go.
We're going to go to the moon.
We're going to transform the world.
We're going to bring freedom everywhere.
Reagan had his view of the city on the hill, and here's what we're going to become.
But if you ask today, I don't think most people have a clear...
And without a vision, people perish.
It says in a really good book.
I call it a good book.
But what's missing is a compelling future.
What I mean by a compelling future is anybody can deal with the difficult today if they know they have a really amazing tomorrow they're moving towards.
But when people start thinking, young people today, I'm not going to have a kid because in 12 years the whole world's going to end, you know, because the environment, which is obviously not true, or there is no future because every party says the other party is going to destroy the world, destroy the country.
People without a vision just have no direction.
And so it's up to us to become more emotionally fit.
Summertime, there's inner conflict within the country.
Fall, everybody's reaping again.
Not everybody, but certain people.
Winter, it looks like it's never going to happen.
It looks like...
Here's the truth.
No war lasts forever.
No pandemic lasts forever.
No economy lasts forever.
And if you were God, if you were the universe, how would you set up?
After the really rough night, you'd have a great day.
And that's pretty much the season.
So we're in winter, and we have to retool ourselves for this time.
Because right now, people have more fear.
It's exaggerated.
And the media helps.
The media is not bad people, as you well know.
It's good people doing their job.
Their job is take care of their shareholders.
How do you do that?
You get attention.
How do you get attention?
Fear and anger get it more than anything else.
That's why we have clickbait.
The minute you click on it, even though it's not true, the group gets paid.
So we live in a world where fear sells and we're being hit on it everywhere.
You don't have to go get it.
It comes to your pocket.
So we have to rewire ourselves.
It's like if I said to you, take your car and go on a 24-hour Le Mans ride, you could have a really nice Mercedes, Ferrari, whatever you think it is.
It's not going to last.
You've got to retool it.
Desert races, 1,000 miles.
If you don't have the right sprockets in there, if you don't have something that when you drop down to the sand can still bring the air into the car, you're not there.
So my view is you've got to retool yourself.
You've got to train yourself this time.
And you also have to know it's not forever.
The other side of this is going to be a new springtime.
But we're going to have to go through some challenges first.
And they could be severe.
And most of these...
Extended winters.
We've had some kind of war.
This might be a cyber war with China or something of that nature.
But there is another side.
And it requires faith and determination to move forward.
And it requires you focus on what you can control versus what you can't.
I mean, some people freeze to death, other people snowboard.
Some people, you know, have more time with their family.
Some people get together and say, hey, it's time to really redevelop my career, maybe retool myself right now for what's coming so I can take advantage because AI and robotics and nanotechnology are all coming faster than people think.
It's going to massively disrupt some jobs.
There'll be new jobs, but you're going to have to retool for them or otherwise you'll be left behind.
I gotta say, you're just reminding me that you mentioned COVID at the outset, which was, I think, by any measure, no matter what side you're on, was a disaster.
But it was also, for some people, some small percentage of us, a really, really happy time.
I'll speak for myself.
It was one of the happiest times of my whole life.
At least have a group and a small group of people on big screens and music.
And they shut down the theaters.
So I had to figure out how to serve people.
So the first thing I did was I built a studio.
25,000 square feet and I built these screens 20 feet high and LED 0.67 so I can see every pen better than if you are not here in person because you're bigger too and I can see all these people at once swipe and see another group and so I grew my seminars from the 15,000 people to 40,000 people because now I have people from 195 countries attending and they were in their homes and I didn't think it could convert that but By bringing him on, I worked with the founder of Zoom, and I made it so that we could bring people up on screen, not just 1,000, but bring 25 and 30 and 40,000.
I made some software so when people, instead of clapping, they'd shake their phone, sends an electric signal.
So if it's one person, you don't hear it, but 25,000, 30,000, it shakes the building.
And it's just two and a half to three hours a day.
Instead of going to a movie, come with me at, you know, two o'clock in the afternoon, Eastern.
But I have people from 195 countries attending.
So, and they'll have a pathway.
And what I mean by a pathway is this.
What we're being called to by all these problems is if you let the sadness or depression or fear overwhelm you or anger, you're going to make no progress.
It'll blow you up.
But you need to understand that all this disruption is a call.
You went through a call when Fox made a change with you.
A call is something disrupts your life.
This is the hero's journey, right?
You look at all the stories of mankind, and you look back, and you see there's this same path.
And you can make it really complex.
I like a simpler version.
First simple version is your life is seeming good or bad, and then something disrupts it.
You go through a divorce.
You suddenly have a health problem.
Somebody in your family has a health problem.
You lose your job, or something happens to the economy, or COVID, or whatever.
It doesn't have to be within your control.
And what does that require?
It means you've got to be called on a new adventure.
Out of your comfort zone.
That's where we are right now.
You either fall back and freak out or you discipline your disappointment and you move forward.
And what happens?
You go on a journey and on that journey, you're going to face all kinds of demons and challenge and dragons.
You're going to meet some new mentors.
You're going to develop some new skills.
And if you do the hard work and push through, you'll make the side, you'll be transformed.
You'll be the hero of your own life and you can bring back what you've learned and help other people.
And it's not that hard.
I mean, I'll give you seven steps real fast.
I'll get to members of the first four because the other three kind of take care of themselves.
Step one, what makes somebody go on a journey is when they unleash or awaken their deeper desires.
So for you...
And I don't know for sure, but my bet is the Fox situation was disruptive, but it also unleashed within you new possibilities.
I could do this on my own terms.
I could do things more international.
I'm not going to be limited to what someone else tells me I can or cannot do.
And I know you weren't limited very much before, but you have total freedom now to do it.
But as you go on that journey, you've got to build a business.
You used to work for someone else.
And you've got to bring people in, and they're not all going to perform.
And then you discover some people you've been so loyal to are not quite as committed as you are.
They're not doing the job.
And you have to take on things you probably didn't want to take on.
You're spending your time looking at the big issues and dealing with things, but at some level, you've got to deal with the business.
And so along the way, you'll have to deal with those challenges.
You'll find new people.
You'll find new mentors.
You'll develop new skills.
And the other side, you'll be better off than ever before and be able to come back and help more people.
But you have to know what is it you want and why do you want it.
Because it's like New Year's resolutions.
Why don't they work?
Because when you do New Year's resolution, you're just saying what you want to have happen, right?
It's not really a resolution.
When you resolve something, that means you cut off anything except what you've committed to.
People don't resolve.
They go, I kind of like this.
Most people don't have much of a plan.
But if you know what you want with real clarity and why you want it, now you're on the path.
So for example, someone says, how do I know I'm going to get where I want to be financially?
How do I know I'm going to get where I want to be in a relationship or in my business or career?
First step is, what do you want?
If you don't know what you want, you're not even on the path.
If you know exactly what you want, you get really clear and you know why you want it.
You got enough reasons to push you through.
Now the second step is you got to find and face the truth.
And that's what has to happen for everybody.
Find and face the truth means see the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
There's always a gap if you're honest.
Instead of, well, I'm big-boned is what I used to tell myself when I was 38 pounds heavier.
No, I was freaking fat.
That's what I was, right?
But I'd say I was big-boned.
I have the same bones and I'm 38 pounds lighter and stayed this way for 35 years, right?
But when I had that mindset, it got in the way.
So you have to say, here's where I am, here's where I want to be, and you have to be honest.
It's not where I want to be.
It's uncomfortable.
But then the second part is you've got to uncover, face the truth, what has gotten in the way in the past.
And there's only five things usually.
Fear.
Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of unknown, fear of not looking good, fear of all those things.
Or two, a limiting belief.
Like, I've tried everything.
Once you believe that, you don't even try anything anymore.
Someone's trying to lose weight.
That's the common one they'll say.
Because they've tried a bunch of things that didn't work.
Or all the good ones are gone.
Or they're gay and I'm not.
Or I'm gay and they're not.
Or whatever the story is.
There's a story, a belief system that limits them.
And so it keeps them from maximizing their ability.
Third thing that could have gotten in the way?
Some other emotion.
Overwhelm.
Stress, anger, resentment, those things just shut down your progress.
So you have to make a change.
Fourth thing that it could be for you, well, it could really be that you just got some bad habits.
It's like people, about 52% of what most people do in a day, and I don't know where they come up with these stats, some say 48, some say 52, roughly half, is all automated.
And what's good about that is you don't think about driving your car.
What's bad about that is you get stuck doing the same things over and over, thinking the same thoughts, having the same feelings, not really changing.
So you have to say, oh, there's some habits that need to change.
I want to lose 24 pounds, and my first thing in the morning is go to Starbucks and have a mocha, smoke, or whatever, and you're not going to get there.
You have to have a different set of habits.
And then the fifth one is, or were you missing a skill?
Like, for example, some people don't know what to do financially.
They don't have to invest, and so they don't do anything.
And then you wake up, figuring out, why am I so broke?
Well, you're broke because you're a consumer.
You're not an owner, you know?
So you have to look at what skills you need to get.
Is there a skill for running your business?
When I started my business, I had no skills.
I had passion.
I had desire.
I had hunger.
I had great abilities, but I didn't know how to run a business.
So I learned those skills.
Now I've got 114 companies.
We do $7 billion in business across all kinds of different industries you can imagine.
It's the most fun thing in the world because I know how to do it.
So if you know what you really want...
And you face the truth and find the real truth, then you've got to put a massive action plan together.
And that just means not a perfect plan, but just what are some things you do immediately start making progress?
Because as you make progress, new insights will come to you.
And then the fourth one, and I'll finish with that, the others are quick, is just you have to then do the hard work.
You've got to slay your dragons.
You've got to slay that limiting belief or that anger or that hurt or that sadness.
You've got to create that compelling future.
You've got to go get that skill.
After those first four steps, you'll have momentum.
Now you just need a daily practice, something that puts you in the place of doing the right thing each day, so it becomes a habit.
You need to measure.
Measure more often.
When I take over a company, the first thing I do is measure more often.
And I find the things that matter, and I'll measure them not once a year, then you have a bad year.
Measure once a month, you're not going to have bad years.
You've got 12 times to make it better.
Measure it once a week.
You won't have bad months.
Measure it once a day.
And some companies, when I take over, I'll measure some things three or four times a day because where focus goes, energy flows.
And so now, all of a sudden, you're measuring and improving.
You're doing a daily practice.
You'll then get to a point where you can celebrate.
And once you celebrate, it starts all over again because you'll be called on another journey because we're meant to grow.
If you ask, people ask me, what does it take to be happy?
You met millions of people.
What does it take?
So many people are unhappy.
Well, relationships are one of the keys to that, but there is one key even within relationship.
Progress.
Progress equals happiness.
If you go and achieve some huge goal, I don't know if you've ever done this, and then you achieve it, you have one or two experiences.
Most people are in the 20 to 30 minutes to maybe...
Two months max, right?
Why?
Because we're not meant to just sit at the table of success and get fat and feel bored.
We're meant to grow.
And when we grow, when we make progress, we feel alive.
And what makes us feel most alive, I know in your life and in mine too, knowing you as a person, is when you grow, you have something to give.
And what makes life meaningful is not just a happy life.
It's not always happy.
But a meaningful life is a life where you serve something more than yourself.
Something that gives you the energy and excitement, whether it be serving your kids and family or your business or something in your community or something in the world.
That's what makes it work.
But we all need you on the path.
And you can do this within the air.
Where are you unhappy about?
My body.
Well, first step, do you know exactly what you want and why you want it?
Okay, let's start there.
Okay, second, you know what you want and why you want it?
Tell me.
Have you faced the truth?
How big a gap is it specifically?
How far off are you?
Let's measure it.
And then what's gotten in the way?
Is it fear?
Is it limiting beliefs?
Is it some form of emotion that gets in the way?
Frustration, anger, overwhelm?
Is it some kind of habit you got or is there a skill you need to get?
Okay, great.
Let's get a plan and let's go do the hard work.
Those first four things will get anybody going.
Once you do, you'll get the momentum that makes you successful.
And so that's not an evidence that's open to some people, maybe most people.
And so how, you know, like...
You just have a book out, Holy Grail of Investing, in which you talk to people who have been successful in investing, very successful.
But if you could just lower the bore a little bit for the average person who doesn't have a ton of money to invest, who's really worried about what's coming, what would you recommend?
Before I even talk about investment, the most important one is understanding what allows someone to have abundance in their life.
And I grew up dirt poor, I think you know, and I had four different fathers, and they were good men.
And we had no money and no food.
And the reason, you know, I know you know, I don't know if I told you, but two years ago, I think I last saw you, and we've now completed the Billion Meals Challenge.
I decided...
I want to feed a billion meals, and we did it two years early.
We just completed it last year.
Now I'm doing a hundred billion meal challenge.
But why?
Not because I'm such a good person, because I grew up poor and we had no food.
And so I look back at those days and go, why were my fathers good men?
Why were we broke no matter what?
Good times or bad.
And why did they lose their jobs at various times?
And my original teacher was a man named Jim Rohn.
He was a personal development.
Kind of a business philosopher.
And one day I sat down with him and I said, I got to ask you a burning question.
Like, how is it so unjust that here's a teacher who can barely survive, and then this hedge fund manager over here makes a billion dollars a year?
And he said, Tony, that's a good question.
He said, think of it this way.
We're all equal as souls, but we're not equal in the marketplace.
I said, what do you mean?
He said, well, I'm not...
Being negative, but if somebody works for McDonald's, that's not designed to be your long-term job.
It's designed to get you as a starter job, and it doesn't pay very much because anyone can do it.
Today, they got pictures.
You don't even have to speak the language 100%, and you can do that job and learn it within a few hours.
So it's not very valuable.
So it doesn't make a lot.
In fact, now it'll be replaced by machines.
Lots of companies are working on that now in the fast food industry.
There's not a lot of value.
Now, the guy that did the billion dollars that you have judged about, Tony, he said, those teachers you're talking about, some are great.
I'm sure you've had some great ones.
Some are not so great.
And he said, and there's no standard, and there's a limited number of people they affect.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's beautiful.
But this guy that made a billion dollars made $25 billion for his investors, which include people's pensions, their backgrounds.
When other people are making 4% and 5%, he made 38%.
So they're doubling their money every two and a half, three years, versus doubling their money, let's say, every 10 or 12. So he's adding massive value.
And I'm not saying you need to be one of those people.
But what you do need to do is what's missing in our culture.
Everybody's trying to figure out, what am I going to get from the government?
What am I going to support?
Why isn't things that I want?
Looking at the system instead of myself.
And he said, Instead, work harder on yourself than you do your job.
Find a way to become more valuable than anybody else in the marketplace.
And if you continually do more for others, if your focus is, how can I do more for others than anybody else, you'll win.
That formula I got at 19 years old, and I've lived it.
It felt real to me, meaning the way I kind of live anyway.
But I made that the basis of every company I've ever built in.
The companies have become successful because everybody in that culture is, how do we do more for anybody else in the industry?
And you do that over and over for years, you build a brand, and then people seek you out, and you succeed.
So the first thing is, what can I do to become more valuable?
In the marketplace.
They asked Warren Buffett the other day.
They asked him, how do you think about inflation?
And what should we do about inflation?
And I remember when I interviewed him, I asked him, what was the best investment you could ever make?
And I thought, the best investment he'd ever make.
And I thought he'd say Coca-Cola or, you know, Geico.
I know what the company's invested in.
He goes, Tony, it's what you teach.
I said, well, I teach a lot of things.
Which one?
And he said, well, he said, I have all these ideas, but they would have died on my lips, but I learned how to communicate.
He went through Dale Carnegie.
He said, that skill was the most valuable skill.
And he said, I tell people, if you want to do well on inflation, and inflation's 8%, 5%, 10%, all you got to do is be 8%, 10%, 12%, 14%, 15%, 20% more effective, more productive.
How do you do that?
You invest in yourself.
He said, that's the first investment you do.
No one can tax it, and it grows.
If the dollar goes down and we go to shekels, if you're a great doctor, you're a great web designer, you're a great whatever, you will be paid extremely well.
But you have to be focused on adding value, and you've got to become more valuable yourself.
So that's where it starts.
Second step, I've written three number one bestsellers, and two of them, the last two were financial ones.
This would be my final third one in the trilogy.
And the first one, I interviewed 50 of the most successful financial people in the world, the Ray Dalius, the Warren Buffetts, the Carl Icons, to find out what do they do different and to find out, is the game winnable?
Because after 2008, it feels like the game is rigged against people.
But let me talk to people that started with nothing and have become the most successful in the world in their section, in their business.
And so I got a chance to have access to those people.
And one led to another.
And wow, it was a four and a half year journey.
And I wrote Money Master the Game out of that.
And I was able to show, yeah, you absolutely can win the game.
First step, answer your earlier question, you've got to start becoming an owner instead of being a consumer.
Our entire society makes you a consumer.
So you buy an Apple phone every year, two or three, but you don't want Apple stock.
What are you thinking?
Right?
The only way you're going to become wealthy is either start a business or become an owner of businesses.
You don't have to be a great entrepreneur then.
You just have to invest in some smart people in that area.
And so the process of learning how to do that by just doing two things, taking a percentage of what you earn, no matter how little it is, and locking and automating that to go in an account where you don't see it, that's the first discipline.
There's a guy I wrote about in my first book, Theodore Johnson, worked for UPS. Never made more than $14,000 in a single year, retired with $70 million.
He was a driver.
Everybody loved him.
He'd lift everybody's state.
If he was sick, where is Theodore?
But a friend of his said, we're going to take 20% of what you earn and we're going to make you wealthy.
I'm going to tax you 20%.
He said, I can't live in 14,000 years.
He goes, we're going to automate it.
It's going to disappear.
You're going to adjust.
But that money is going to be your future.
That money compounded through just investments in the stock market and UPS to $70 million.
He gave away $35 million while he was alive.
So you don't have to be a superstar business person.
You've got to be an owner.
So that's number one.
Two, I wrote Unshakeable because I knew, I didn't know when.
Nobody knows when.
Obviously, the markets are going to crack.
Obviously, there's going to be a crash, as there was in 2020. I wrote it before that.
And I just showed people how to be unshakable that time, how to win during that time.
This book, though, I got really excited because when I wrote those first two books, I learned four things that every great investor does.
Really, I'd like...
Ray Dalio is a macro investor.
Somebody else might be a value investor like, you know, Warren Buffett.
There's all different types of investors.
They all, 50 of them agreed on four things.
First, this sounds stupid, they're all obsessed with not losing money, which is the opposite of most investors.
We're trying to figure out how to make money because they know if I lose 50% on a stock, I don't need to make 50% to get even.
I'm going to make 100%.
At $100,000, it drops to 50%.
I can't just go up 50%.
I gotta go up a little higher than that to get back there.
So they're obsessed with that.
But how do you do that?
Well, Warren Buffett has a philosophy.
He says, rule number one, investing, don't lose money.
Rule number two, see rule number one.
Well, that sounds really nice.
How the hell are you going to do that?
Second principle.
They all agreed on something that sounds complex.
The most important part of your investment future, you don't have to be a genius, is what's called asset allocation.
Big words.
All it means is you have a certain amount of money to invest.
A thousand dollars, a million dollars.
Doesn't matter.
You have to have a pre-designed way you're going to do that that says, I'm going to take some of this, some percentage, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and put it in something that's secure, meaning low risk, probably low return, but over time it'll compound.
It looks like grass growing until it's the tortoise and the hare.
Another percentage of my money I want to put in areas that are more high risk, potentially higher return.
But if I lose it all, I need to make sure my security bucket kind of takes care of me.
And so they laid this thing out.
Each one of them laid it out for me.
And they never bet the whole farm on one thing.
That's why they succeed.
Pretty simple.
Third, and I'm going to show you what I got in this book that blew my mind why I wrote this book in a second.
It relates to asset allocation.
Third principle was you've got to look for what they call asymmetrical risk reward.
These words are so big.
All it means is where can I invest with the least amount of risk with the most amount of upside?
So if you look at really wealthy people, you think they take giant risks and they look like it.
Like, I don't know if you've met Richard Branson, but he's a friend of mine.
And Richard, he's risked his life in so many ways, going into space, going across the ocean, going in balloons.
But if you look about how he invests, his whole thing is, what's the downside?
How do we protect the downside?
How do we make this asymmetrical?
So when he decided to take on the fight with British Airways and start his own airways, what was the biggest risk?
You know, Paul Tudor Jones is one of the greatest investors in history.
I've coached him for 24 years.
Unbelievable guy.
He made back in 1987 when the stock market dropped 20% in a day.
Still the largest percentage in a day.
He made people 100% that year.
He made more money than anybody could imagine.
Brilliant guy.
Coached him constantly.
His whole thing is, I'm going to make an investment.
I want to risk a dollar thinking I'm going to make five.
I might be wrong, but I don't want to invest until I feel like I've got that kind of upside.
If I'm wrong, I can invest another dollar and I still can make four.
He can be wrong four times and still be okay.
So that idea is huge.
And then finally, one is diversification, which everybody knows.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket, one piece of real estate, one anything.
Oh, that's great.
Those four are pretty useful.
I wrote this book called The Holy Grail Investing because as I'm sitting down with Ray Dalio, one of the greatest investors in history, he has $195 billion that he manages for even countries and pension funds.
He's got the greatest returns ever.
In 2008, when things were down 35%, 38%, he made 8% to give you an idea.
Just genius.
Ray and I have become good friends over the last 13, 14 years.
And one of the times when I first asked questions of him, I spent 10 hours preparing for what was supposed to be a 45 minute interview, which went for three hours, you know?
And Ray was great because he goes, I get it.
We bounced off each other.
But one of the questions I asked him then was, what's the single most important investment principle if you knew nothing else that would make you successful?
He goes, Tony, I struggled with that for 22 years.
And I can tell you the answer.
He said, I call it the holy grail of investing.
That's why the book's titled that.
It's after what Ray taught me.
And here's what he said.
I finally figured out that the biggest challenge is loss and risk.
Everybody wants upside, but to get more upside, take more risk.
It's not right for everybody.
He said, but I've discovered if you have 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments, you'll reduce your risk by 80% and increase your upside.
Now, what does that mean?
Uncorrelated.
Most people know.
Most people invest in stocks when they think the economy's going great.
If it's going not so great, they invest a little bit more in bonds.
One's doing great, the other tends to do it.
They're usually uncorrelated.
But in 2008, in 2020, that wasn't true.
They all dropped, right?
And if you go to your broker, he goes, I don't know what happened.
It's predictable.
It happens all the time.
So he explained to me lots of depth.
I won't explain here about why that happens.
But he said, here's what's unbelievable, Tony.
He goes, if you have 8 to 12 that are uncorrelated investments, he said...
You can sleep so nicely at night and still have great returns.
So I went to go apply that.
Well, it's hard because so many things are correlated today.
And if you go to the average person, they're investing in stocks and bonds and maybe real estate investment trusts, REITs.
But they often get very correlated.
And then nothing works.
But there is another asset class that most people know nothing about called private equity, private credit, and private real estate.
And if you go to the Fortune 400 and say, Most billionaires in the world, one industry.
Tech?
No.
Real estate?
No.
Financial services yet.
But it's not hedge funds that go up and down.
It's these guys of private equity.
They're the kings of the financial world.
It's mind-boggling.
And one of the reasons is they go out.
Right now, there used to be 8,000 companies you could invest in the stock market.
There's only 3,700 now.
They've dropped, dropped, dropped, dropped.
If you, the S&P 500 people are familiar with, 24% of that is five companies.
It's all concentrated in a small place.
Not a lot of ways to be uncorrelated.
So these guys go out and buy companies.
In the old days, they try to leverage them.
But now they actually do something cool.
They find a better CEO. They find better marketing.
They put better technology in.
They put in AI. They build a company up.
They buy it, build it up, and they sell it.
And they have time.
Because when you invest with them, your money's tied up for about five years in most of them.
They have a great business model.
They're making 2% a year, whether they make your money or not, and 20% of the upside.
Why do people invest with them?
For the last 35 years, I want your audience to hear this is mind-boggling.
Private equity around the world has outstripped every stock market in the world in its returns.
So we'll take the S&P 500 that people are familiar with probably here in the US. Over the last 35 years, it's produced 9.2% compounded on average a year.
That's amazing.
If you're getting 5%, your money's going to...
Double every 14 years.
When you're at 9%, it only takes 8 years to double your money.
But private equity, average private equity, did 14.2 for those 35 years.
And what does that mean?
That means you're compounding 50% faster.
So I wrote this book because I want to answer the question, how could people get...
How can they get to their goals faster with less risk?
And I know the people in the world that do it.
So I started interviewing 13 of the biggest guys in the world running $100 billion funds who have produced 20% or more compounded, not 14.2.
Here's the last part.
I'm going to throw all the numbers at you, just so you get the picture of everyone at home.
If you put $1 million 35 years ago in the stock market, S&P, at 9.2%, that's worth $26 million today if you never did a thing with it.
If you put it in the same private equity at 14.2, it's $139 million for the same time and the same amount of money.
So that's why when you go to wealthy people, remember I said asset allocation, the latest studies show ultra high net worth people have 46% of the money in private assets, private equity, private credit, you know, all of those pieces and only 29% in public markets.
It always annoyed me that the richest people in the world, the government actually regulates and won't give the average person the opportunity.
You have to be an accredited investor.
You're familiar.
A million dollar net worth or $200,000 in income is the minimum to be able to do that.
Then you get these doors open to you.
There's a new law that the Congress, the House just passed it, and Senate's now taking it up.
It was bipartisan.
It passed the House already just a couple months ago.
They're taking it up now.
That allows anyone to not have to have their money, just simply take a test.
And then all of a sudden, you have the same quality investments that have these huge returns available to you, potentially, anyway, than you've never had access to before.
A lot of people built a business and sold it, made money.
They don't know how to invest.
So once you take the test, you can do this.
And the best part of it all is...
There are opportunities, and we can talk about them, I know I've been talking forever here, but that allow you to do things that only the wealthiest people in the world will do.
Because when I saw this, I said, okay, now I can find my 8 to 12. I got a broader audience, different types of investments that aren't correlated.
This is exciting.
But then I went to go make investments, and it's kind of like, you know, going to the best club in New York, and you got the money, but...
If you don't know the right people, you're not super attractive, you're not getting in, right?
Or you have a Ferrari, the new Ferraris are all sold in advance to people that already own a Ferrari, right?
You just can't even get one.
So I would get little pieces here and there because I was Tony Robbins or I had a friend or something, but not huge, not the amount I want to invest.
One day I'm sitting down with this friend of mine, Paul Tudor Jones, he's a former partner who has started his own firm, and I said, I'm so frustrated.
I see private equity as the best investments in the world.
The best guys, it's impossible to get in, or you get a little tiny sliver.
He said, Tony, can I tell you where I make the majority of my investments?
And this guy's super successful, so I'm leaning in.
Yes, tell me.
He goes, there's this place in Houston, a group called Kaz, that taught me something.
I said, Houston?
I'm expecting to say New York, London, Singapore.
He goes, that's off the beaten path, but they're the best at this.
He goes, there's a way for you where you don't have to try to get in, where you can buy a tiny sliver of the ownership.
of the companies that own all those funds and then you get the 2 in 20. You get cash flow and the growth like you're an owner right side by side with them.
I said, what?
And he started explaining to me how that happens and so now I own A piece of 65 different private equity firms, like Vista, $100 billion firm, written by one of the smartest people I know, Robert Smith.
He built things in the SaaS industry.
I have them across different industries.
They're all multi-billion dollar, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 billion dollar firms, and I have a sliver of each of them as an owner.
And then I don't just get one fund, I get all the funds, the ones they did in the past, the ones they're doing now, the ones they do in the future.
So that's just one example.
Another example is...
People were trying to get returns on bonds forever.
Now they've gone up, you know, four or five percent.
They're reasonable.
But forever they were at zero because of interest rates, right?
So people started looking for, you know, how do I get a better return?
And they started investing in junk bonds back in 2021. Junk bond market went like this.
You know, they call it the high yield return market.
Because the banks aren't loaning money to a lot of those companies.
Do you know how many companies are from $100 million to $3 billion?
It's this giant market, and they have a real rough time.
Now, if you're...
Going to J.P. Morgan, your Apple is easy to get money.
And they don't need it anyway, but it's easy to get that.
But if you're one of those smaller companies, under $3 billion, tough to do at banks.
Extremely tough to do at banks.
So guess what?
They open the market for them, and they develop a relationship.
They want to borrow again.
Private credit guys know you're good.
They make another loan for you.
So it's great for them.
But I'm not just making those higher returns.
I'm also making the $2 and $20 along the way.
It's mind-blowing.
I'll give you a third one.
I always wanted, I grew up totally poor, and I always wanted to own a sports team because I wanted to be a professional baseball player.
I used to go to the Dodger Stadium, way back in the stadium, back there, the cheapest seats, and I always wanted that.
And so at one point, I finally made enough money that I could participate in the building of the LAFC Football Club.
I got to be one of the early investors and help design the club, and it was fun, stadium, the whole thing.
But the microscope I went through for a year to get qualified, besides your money, it was insane.
A new law was passed over the last three years that a few firms have been able to participate in because they don't use leverage.
And you can now invest in companies and get a little slice of teams, multiple teams.
I worked so hard to have the LAFC now.
I have a piece of the Golden State Warriors.
I have a piece of the LA Dodgers.
I have a piece of the Boston Red Sox.
I have a piece of the Pittsburgh hockey team.
I mean, it's amazing.
And what's amazing is this used to be putting butts in seats.
But what this is is something not correlated to the stock market.
Nothing at all.
When we have inflation, they charge more for the hot dog than people pay it.
Because they have fanatics.
That's what fan means.
Fanatics are people that...
First of all, you've got legal monopoly.
No one else can compete with you in that city.
That's pretty amazing.
Second of all, you've got fanatic fans.
Third of all, you have a business that does well even in inflationary times.
And if you know, Michael Jordan paid $238 million for his piece of his team, NBA team.
He just sold it 12 years later for $3 billion and kept some of it.
That's the kind of growth.
In the last 10 years, the growth across Major League Baseball.
NBA, hockey, and soccer, which are the ones I own together, have averaged 18% compounded per year.
So to give you a sense, at 20%, your money's doubling every three and a half years.
At 14%, about every five years.
So if you want to get to your goals quicker, these are fun ways to do it, and they never were available before.
You won't find this in any of the book.
That I'm aware of anywhere in the world because it's kind of part of this network of people.
But you can become that now because you'll be able to tap into this just by either being qualified or getting the education to qualify yourself and taking the test.
You've got a spending plan and or find a way to earn more by finding a way to add value.
Some new skill, new ability, some new business, some new hustle that you're going to do on the side.
But I think the biggest thing you've got to realize is if you take money and you borrow money to buy a flat screen TV, that's pretty idiotic because that's going to depreciate.
It's going to give no value.
But if you borrowed some money to buy a tractor for your farm...
That's going to make you more productive.
You'll be able to pay back the loan and be more productive and your business grow.
So the question is, are you using it just to survive or get things, or are you using it to get more resources?
When you use it for more resources, then debt can be really valuable for people.
But too much debt will stress anybody out, and too much debt will take any company down if they're imbalanced.
And it's for not only the times, it's what's it for.
Is it for increased productivity?
Is it for something that's going to expand your capacity, your skill, your ability, tools for your business, tools for your career?
Or is it just for a purchase of something that you probably should just wait on because once you spend that money, you're paying interest on it, now high interest.
I mean, credit cards are now just insane.
They were insane before, but I don't know.
I saw the other day, I don't know if it's accurate, I saw that the average was over 20% now.
I mean, that's insane to borrow money at that level for some consumer item.
I'd opt out of that, and I'd start paying that down, and then I'd start to take a percentage of my income, even if it's super small, and say, I'm going to use this to be an owner.
I'm going to take it off the top, and then I'll figure out how to invest it, but I'm going to have that automated by my bank or by my investment company, so I don't see it, and I'll start to adjust.
The richest people in the world don't do it by getting rich.
How many athletes have you interviewed?
How many movie stars have you interviewed?
That were rich, they made $10 million a year.
Kim Basinger, she was the highest paid actress of the 90s, won Academy Awards, was getting $10 million a picture, went bankrupt.
We both know Mike Tyson, a good friend of ours, right?
And Mike, I love Mike to death.
He made a half a billion dollars in income and went bankrupt, right?
So that's not the way that you get wealthy.
You get wealthy by taking a little bit of money over time and compounding it.
So I tell parents, teach your kid who's 19, put $300 a month away.
Sounds like a lot, but they don't have any overhead.
They can do it.
Put in the stock market, average returns 8% over time, 8 to 10. Don't let them touch it.
And if they start at 19, and just do it to 27 years old, 300 bucks a month.
The total amount's like 28 grand over those eight years.
Never invest again.
They're set.
All right?
Let's say they have a brother.
He starts at 27. Same amount of money, 300 bucks, and does it to at least 65. He's put $138,000 roughly in.
And he's done it for...
38 years, not 8 years.
He has less money at the end.
Because compounding, the first guy's got $1.8 million, and all he did was invest for 8 years, $300 a month, put it in the stock market.
The second one has $1.5 million, but he didn't have as much time.
He took longer to do it.
He started later, so he didn't get the same level of compounding.
So compounding, just like the million versus the $139 million, $26 for $139, it's both getting in the game, and it's where you put it.
And so this book is trying to show people where you put it.
And then I interviewed 13 of the masters of the universe and found out, like, what is their approach?
And ironically, it's what I taught you earlier or I mentioned earlier.
Their whole focus is not to just buy a stock when it's down or buy a company when it's down.
They want to buy a company, right?
But the whole thing is how do we add value?
How do we take this company and make it more valuable than it's ever been and then take it public or sell it to a bigger company?
And that's where they make their profits.
And their other value is they don't drop as much because...
When markets go down, they can buy.
When markets go up, they can sell because they've tied up your money for five years.
So all your money can't go in those types of investments because you need some liquidity.
But if you're going to want to try to maximize to get to a retirement in the world we're in today, it might be nice to have the smartest people in the world on your side and be their partner, making 2% right beside them as an owner in the business and making 20% of the upside.
Think about it.
These are very few of them this small, a billion dollars in funds.
They're going to be guaranteed.
20%, right?
The 2% is going to give them $20 million a year for five years.
They're going to make $100 million whether they make money or not.
And most of them are good at making money.
So in five years, they take the billion to $2 billion.
Didn't have to hire a ton more people, and they're going to make 20% of that side.
They make $300 million on a billion.
That's why there's more of those in the Fortune 400 than any other industry.
Perhaps that's a pathway you and I should take advantage of as long as we're smart enough to see what's there and willing to educate ourselves instead of living like I can't do it and the game's against me.
So that's actually what I wanted to close on since we began the conversation by my noting that there's a sadness palpable and you pointed to the reality of that and then suggested an upside to it or at least a different way to think about it.
You've mentioned twice the perception that people have that's grounded in some reality that the system is rigged and you kind of can't win.
You said it emerged after 2008. I think that's right.
Your experience of your life is the life you focus on.
So right now...
If I want to figure out what's wrong, I'm sure I can find a million things.
I've got a hundred plus companies, lots of employees all over the world in different industries.
What are the chances right now somebody's screwing up?
If screwing up is doing what I don't think they should be, a hundred percent.
I can focus on being stressed out or I can focus on what I can control.
I can focus on what can be done.
Focus on what's great.
What's wrong is always available.
So is what's right.
So we've always had problems like that.
Study history.
I hear people talking about this is the worst time in history politically.
We've never been to each other's throats like this.
And I don't have it with me.
I wish I could pull it out for you.
I have this little write-up.
It's two different posters that were during the time of Adams versus Jefferson.
If you read what they were saying about each other, it looks calm compared to what Republicans and Democrats and liberals and conservatives say today.
We've always had it.
It's cycles.
We go through cycles.
And if you know cycles, you're not so fearful.
You say, okay, this has happened before.
What do I need to do to take advantage of this?
But if you just go in a mindset of, oh my God, it's rigged against me, I can't win, then it's self-fulfilling.
So you have to not be one of the many.
You have to think differently.
You've got to educate yourself.
One of the biggest things Jim Rohn taught me is he said, look, if you want to have an extraordinary life, you need to feed your mind and not let everybody else feed it.
And so when I was totally broke, my mom kicked my dad out.
She chased me out on Christmas Eve with a knife.
She wouldn't have killed me or anything, but I wasn't going back in that house.
I am bigger than her, but I was 5'2 in high school, 5'1.
And she grabbed me here and smashed me against the wall and poured liquid soap down my throat.
I mean, you learn to acquiesce.
But anyway, my point is, I was on my own trying to figure out what the heck am I going to do?
And, you know, it's Christmas Eve.
I'm sleeping on the hill and it starts raining.
I sleep in somebody's, you know, a friend of mine's laundry room.
And then I felt so depressed.
I remember Jim Rohn, I'd met him when I was 17, saying, every day you've got to stand guard at the door of your mind.
He said, you should read 30 minutes a day.
Not what comes to these days on your phone.
Not clickbait.
Something, philosophy, or a skill, or a psychology, or a tool that makes you better every day.
Just 30 minutes a day, it'll change your life because you're feeding your mind something different than what everybody else feeds them.
And so I put this little five-step plan together back then.
I did it again back in 2008 because I had all these companies, not the same numbers now, and it was rough.
In 2008, my billionaire friends were in trouble and so was my barber.
I mean, we all were affected by it.
And I did the same five steps.
Step one.
If you want to be emotionally fit, if you want to be able to say, when all hell's breaking loose, I can still do incredibly well, you've got to every single day do something to feed and strengthen your mind.
So for me, that's reading 30 minutes a day or doing an audio.
That's easier because I call audio net time, no extra time.
I can do while I'm driving, while I'm working out, and I get to feed my mind something different than all the crap that comes to you that's designed to get your attention and make money from you.
Or you travel the world and you realize America is a pretty damn good place with all its flaws.
As good a place as any place on earth for most people.
So it's just providing those steps.
Those little things you can do can change it all.
And that's, by the way, what I'm doing.
I'm doing this again this year.
I want to just mention some people who want to join us.
It's the whole focus of our three-day seminar.
It's two and a half, three hours a day.
Three days in a row, the 25th of January to the 27th.
Starts at 2 p.m.
Eastern, but we have people all over the earth, 195 countries that will attend.
You'll be connected to over a million people in our community who can help you and support you.
But the kind of results people got by doing that when they were stuck at home before, because you can do it from your home or your office with your friends, family, by yourself.
You know, I had one guy that stands out for me is this guy.
I bring him up on screen.
I interact with people.
And this guy is in his bed.
He weighed over 700 pounds.
He'd been in bed for six years, naked.
His brother died.
He took some drugs to try to deal with it.
Those drugs affected his body.
And he had breathing oxygen.
He was told he'd never be able to breathe on his own without the oxygen.
In bed.
Has to go to the bathroom.
Never gets up to go to the bathroom.
Never been out of the bed.
And he got so inspired that he took a, not a coat hanger, but like one of those little light metal things.
And he started doing this little daily practice of doing these exercises.
And I gave him, you know, a task.
I said, you do these things.
You get to where you can go to the bathroom.
You get to where you can drive a car again.
I'll fly you to my seminars, my guest.
And we'll take the next level.
We'll have you walk on fire.
We'll do the whole thing.
He got inspired.
He did this, got muscle strength, got off the oxygen, made it to the bathroom.
I think it took him three months.
He's now, you have 700 pounds, he's lost 310 pounds, to give you an idea.
Came to the seminar, transformed his life.
And he never would have seen it, because he'd never come to a seminar, he'd be in bed.
I had this guy that just got out of prison.
I just saw him two weeks ago.
And he was a pretty tough guy, tattoos all over his body.
You know, people treated him mean, he got really mean.
He was really horrible with women, went to jail, and got out, and he had a little girl, and couldn't see her.
They wouldn't let him see her.
And so he set a goal to start changing himself, started doing all these little daily practices.
And I saw him two weeks ago.
He's got full custody now.
He's able to be with his daughter.
He's coaching other people.
He attended the seminar in his truck.
He was driving a truck for a living, going out of prison.
He'd pull over and he's watching on that.
And so a woman who lost, you know, her baby, her child.
Two years old, the cancer is horrific.
Seeing her change.
Seeing people double or triple their businesses.
So we have amazing abilities.
It's no BS to say you can go from where you are to where you want to go, but you'll never get there with, it's all rigged against me.
Some of it is rigged against us.
It's true.
But that doesn't stop you from being able to still create an extraordinary quality of life if you build a path.