I Asked Tony Robbins How to Go From Broke to Billionaire

I had four different fathers. We are always broke. They're all good men, and we had no money for food. You could be a really good person and work really hard and have nothing. We're all equal as souls, but we're not equal in the marketplace.

We are here with the legend, Tony Robbins. If you had $1,000 or $100 million to invest, the most important decision you're going to make is not whether you're going to invest in an Apple or buy this piece of real estate. It's your philosophy of investing. Who are the wealthiest people in the world? What industry are they in? When I ask most people, they think Tech. Completely wrong. And they think real estate. Wrong.

It's... I asked Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund guy in the history of the world, "Is there one principle that's the most important principle to becoming financially successful?" And he said, "Tony, I wrestled that for 12 years, and I can tell you what I call the Holy Grail of investing."

Welcome, everybody. We are here with the legend, Tony Robbins. Tony, thanks for taking some time today.

Thanks for having me on. I'm really excited. Uh, we're going to dive into your book. You wrote the, the third book in the trilogy, "The Holy Grail of Investing," and it is a banger. I spent the last...

We got to get you the regular one, the real thing. Before I get into it, I've got a question for you.

Sure. I was at one of your events six years ago. I got introduced to your work. An incredible event, and you said something on stage that just hit me. You, you were talking about your, your backstory and all the challenges, and you kind of just said, "I built this mfer." Like, I built Tony. It just struck me because I was like, wow, like, this is how it works.

When you think of like the New Year, how do you decide what areas of your life do you want to kind of go deeper on and expand?

Well, I don't. I don't believe in just doing New Year's resolutions because they don't work. Obviously, when people call New Year's resolution, 91% of the people don't follow through. That's the statistic. I don't know how accurate it is, but it's probably pretty accurate. And I think it's because they express what they want, but they don't really have a path or a plan or a strategy. And, um, and, and so it doesn't last. And so I think it's really critical that you don't just come up with something you want to do, that you have some idea of it. It's like, I always tell people, if you want to make progress in anything, you got to get on the path. Well, how do you know if you're on the path? Well, whether it's your finances, whether it's your business, whether it's your relationship, whether it's your body, the first thing is, do you know exactly what you really want? And you know why you want it with enough reasons, strong enough reasons to get you through. If you're not clear what you want, most people are clear what they don't want. "I don't want to live this way. I don't want to be this way." You know, focus goes where, you know, energy flows. I mean, the energy is going to flow where you focus. So the whole focus is, what do you want with precision? And then getting those strong enough reasons. And then the second step for people, and that I look at is, okay, all right, if this is what I really want, I got strong enough reasons. What's kept me from that in the past? And you got to see where the gap is between where you are and where you want to be if you're going to close it. So you got to be clear. And when I do that, I found there's really only five things that create that gap.

The first one that gets in the way is fear. For almost anybody, fear of failure, fear of success, fear not look at some fear. But then the second one might be limiting beliefs. Bels like, you know, "I've tried everything." Well, that's what you say to yourself. That's what I used to say to myself when I couldn't lose weight. "Haven't tried everything." I tried everything. I would have been fit. And I eventually tried lots of things and got fit and stayed fit. Right? Or, um, you know, "All the good ones are gone," right? You know, in a relationship. So those beliefs can keep you from making progress. And unless you change those, setting a new goal doesn't mean anything.

Uh, the third thing that can get in the way is some other emotion like overwhelm or stress or sadness or depression or feeling sorry for yourself or any other emotion that slows the accelerators of your life. And then the fourth thing that can get in the way for people, very often, is habits. So you say you want to lose 20 pounds, and the first thing you do in the morning is go to Starbucks and have a smoka mocha, whatever. It's not going to happen. You got the wrong habits, right? It, it's one thing to have, you know, resolve you want something, but that resolution isn't real if you don't have rituals to back it up. And so, uh, you got to come up with what those habits are. Or the last thing, you might be missing is you just might be missing the skill. Like, you, you know, finance. Most people don't know how to get asymmetrical risk reward. They don't know what it is, but every billionaire knows, right? That's how they became a billionaire. The ones that started with nothing, you know, they don't take giant, insane risks. They figure, "What's the minimum risk where the most amount of upside that I can possibly get?" And they do that over and over again, and you're going to eventually win. So if you don't know certain skills in a relationship, certain skills in how to run your business, certain skills in how to make your body go, then you're probably not going to make the progress.

And once you know that, then you come up with your Massive Action Plan and you don't wait till it's perfect. You take action. And then you go slay your dragons. You do the hard work. You change the belief. You change the pieces. You get some daily practices. You keep measuring and improving, and you'll get to where you really want to go. And then you'll come up with the next journey. You know, it's like life is a journey. It's like the hero's journey. So I look at it that way. I look at it as saying, "I got to get clear what I want now at this level, and what the increases are, and then what's gotten in the way, and then what am I going to do? Let me go get what's in the way out of the way, and then let me create some daily practices that virtually guarantee it."

It's kind of awesome to watch because even six years ago, I've seen your approach to your interventions kind of, kind of evolve, right? They're, they're a little different, they're softer. And we've got, um, so much to dig into. I'm just curious, why this book? Like, why, why choose to? I was telling you earlier that it's like, you, there's a difference between retail investing and professional investing. You went into the world where all the rich people, you know, the, the people say it's "the rich get richer." You went to where the people that know how to make money, they shared their strategies. Why this book? Why now?

Well, it's the, it's the final, it's a trilogy. And I didn't expect to write three books. I wrote the first book, little, 670-page little monster, number one New York Times bestseller, still the bestselling financial book of this century. Century is only 24 years old, but still, I'm proud of it because I wrote a book I wanted my billionaire friends could get value out of, but so could a person who's just beginning the journey. So I really am proud of that book, and it's like soup to nuts. And I learned so many things by interviewing 50 of the greatest investors in the world at that time. That's why I did it. I, I thought I knew a lot. I certainly did. I've worked with Paul Tudor Jones on the top 10 traders for 24 years, hadn't lost money during that time, so I learned a lot from him. But I want to learn from everybody. And I learned four things fundamentally. I learned, "Don't lose money" as their first focus, which that's not most people's. Uh, because they know, you know, if you talk to Warren Buffett, you know his rule is, "Rule number one: Don't lose money. Rule number two: Rule number one." Right? Well, that's ridiculous. Of course, you're going to lose money. But their focus is not to lose money because if you're only trying to make money and you don't look at the downside, you're going to get hurt. And if you have a stock that drops 50%, you don't need 50% to get even, you got to get a 100% return to get even, right? So the way they do that is the second principle. No matter whether they're a macro trader or they were a value investor, it didn't matter. They all look at the way to protect themselves as having the right asset allocation.

That's one of the reasons I wrote this book because asset allocation's big words for some people, but all it means is, if you add $1,000 or $100 million to invest, the most important decision you're going to make is not whether you're going to invest in Apple or buy this piece of real estate. It's your philosophy of investing. And you think of it as two buckets primarily. A bucket that's a security bucket, where you're going to take some percentage of your money, you're going to decide in advance, it's always that percentage, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 70%, whatever it is, is going to go in a place where it's low risk and less returns. So it's going to take longer to get there, but because it's low risk, you're going to get there. It's like the turtle versus the, you know, the hair type race. Then how much are you going to put that's in a risk bucket? Now, on the risk bucket, you have the potential for huge upside, but you also have the potential for big downside. And so what is that? Is that 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 30/70? And, you know, explain people how to do that. But what I found out over the years, and now there's plenty of reports to back it up, is that the ultra-wealthy have over 46% on average of their money in private equity, private real estate, and in private credit. That is very different than 90% of the population that has less than 5% of that in there. Most people, they go and they put their money in stocks and bonds, in their home, and maybe a REIT. Those are the types of things where most people are moving them around.

Now, why does that matter? Well, diversification was the fourth principle that we all know, don't put all your eggs in one basket. But when I interviewed Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund guy in the history of the world, he's now managing almost $195 billion to give you an idea, manages sovereign funds, you know, pension funds, brilliant guy. In 2008, when things dropped, what was it, 34% if I remember right, he was up 8% to give you an idea. I mean, just genius. He warned everybody about it. So I asked him when I first met him, 12, 13 years ago, and we were just becoming friends, I said, "You know, of all the things we've talked about, is there one principle above anything else that's the most important principle to becoming financially successful as an investor?" And he said, "Tony, I read, wrestled that for 12 years, and I can tell you what I call the Holy Grail of investing." That's where the title comes from. It's not from me, it's from him. And I said, "What is it?" He said, "Think about it, Tony. Once you know the fundamentals that you know, and asymmetrical risk reward was one of those as well, right? So once you know those principles, you got a great opportunity. But people want to get to their goals and they want to get there faster. And most people are behind. So the only way to get there faster is get higher returns or put more money in, which a lot of people don't have. Or you think higher returns, you got to take bigger risks, and then you can lose everything, and now it defeats itself, plus all the stress involved." He said, "So I figured out a mathematical principle." If this is his principle, Holy Grail, if you can find 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments. Now, correlated, so your audience knows, or uncorrelated. A simple example, stocks and bonds. When the economy is going great, most people put their money in stocks because companies are growing, you get a bigger return. When things are in trouble, they're counting on their bonds to balance them out because they're supposedly non-correlated. Except when we have these big crashes, they all drop. And your broker goes, "I don't know, it's not supposed to do that," right? And what I learned from Ray is that happens all the time. And he explained why, which we won't take the time to do right now. But here's what he said: "If you can find 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments, you reduce your risk 80%, Tony, and increase your upside." I'm like, "Are you serious?" And he showed me how it works in the math. It's all detailed.

So then I went to go work, "How do I find eight to 12 things that aren't tied together in some way?" And the world is tied together so much in the public markets. And so then I started looking at private assets. And it's like, "Wait a second." Here's a nice statistic for your audience. In the last 35 years, every year, public stock markets have produced a lower return than average. Not the best. I interviewed 13 of the very best, the biggest in the world in private equity and private credit. But the average has outstripped every stock market in the world in terms of profit. So I'll give you an example. Most people are familiar with the S&P 500 Index, top 500 companies. Well, if you go through the S&P index and you say, "How's it done over the last 35 years?" It's produced an average return compounded at 9.2%. So that's pretty nice. If you're getting 5%, it takes you 14 years to double your money. You know, 9%, you're doing it in eight years. But average, not great. Average private equity did 14.2% at the same time. So you were getting 50% greater returns every year compounded year after year. So, you know, what that means? If you put a million dollars away 35 years ago and put it in the S&P 500 and forgot about it, without doing anything, it's worth $26 million today. But if you took the same million dollars and put in private equity, average private equity, it's worth $139 million today. 500% more. So it became a no-brainer. Say, you can't put everything in private equity. You still need public markets, but maybe we should model the asset allocation of the smartest people on Earth.

So then I went to go work on that. And Dan, you know, because you, you've done well in your life, you know, there's only a few players that are the best in the world. And, and access, it's not available. Every access. How do I get access? And then there's a second problem, which is, okay, if I'm going to, for me, first it was just access. Like, you know, I know a lot of people, I've got a good brand, I've helped a lot of people, so I got access to some. But it's kind of like trying to get access to the new SP3, you know, 3 Ferrari that's $4 million. Even if you have the money, you can't get it because it's only sold to the guys that have bought before. And that's what happens here. All the pension funds, all the sovereign funds, all these people get those spaces. So I would get little slivers. And one day I was talking to a good friend of mine who was one of Paul Tudor Jones's partners, who started his own firm, really successful guy. I was talking about my frustration that I've gotten a few of these, but, you know, too small to have a real impact. And he said, "Tony, you've been a good friend to me. You've helped me in so many ways. I'm going to help you. I'm going to tell you where I put most of my money." I said, "Most of your money?" He said, "Yeah." He goes, "There's this place in Houston." I said, "Houston?" I thought he was going to say Singapore, London, New York, Connecticut. He goes, "This group, they're, they're one of the best in the world, and they've found a way where you don't have to get in the fund." See, when you invest in a fund, you're called a limited partner. When you're an owner, you're called a general partner, right? Just for your audience's clarification. And he goes, "You can buy a piece of the general partnership, a slice, and own the business."

Now, these guys, these are the Masters of the Universe financially. Who are the wealthiest people in the world? What industry are they in? When I ask most people, they think Tech. Completely wrong. Then they think real estate. Wrong. It's financial services. But it's not hedge funds because they go up and down. These guys in private equity have a really unique approach. There used to be 8,000 companies in the stock markets. There's only 3,700 now. And in the S&P 500, five of the companies produce 25% of all 500. It's so concentrated. But most companies, most companies in the world are privately held. And these private equity firms come in, and they don't just try to buy at the right time. They buy a company or a piece of it, but then they add value. They change the marketing, they bring in new tech, they bring in a new CEO, and they grow the company, and then they sell it for a multiple to a bigger company, or they take it public. They tie up your money for five years. Why would people do that? Well, because the kinds of returns they get are so much better. People say, "I'm happy to have some of my money be tied up for that kind of return." For them, that means they don't have to worry about the market going up and down. So when it goes down, they can buy. When it goes up, they can sell. That's why they get such unbelievable returns. And they're adding value. They're not just trying to find the right thing at the right price.

So I was blown away seeing those results, and I was like, "Okay, how do I do this?" And what I found out is, you know, they get their 2 and 20. For those unfamiliar, when you give them your money, they get 2% per year. That's what they charge on your money, whether they make money or not. Yeah. And they get 20% of the upside. Well, people are willing to do it because it's not uncommon for a firm to go from a billion to two billion in five years. They make a hundred million in fees over those five years. They make 200 million, the 20% of the next billion. They make $300 million on a billion-dollar investment. That's why they're there. And most of them, the ones I interviewed, are 35, 50, hundred billion firms. So you get the idea of how they are. And they've all done 20% or more compounded for decades. One guy in the group has done 36% compounded for 26 years. I mean, it's, it's crazy.

So then I thought, "Okay, well, I can help my friends, wealthy friends." But then the reason I wrote the book, final answer to your question, is because I had all these principles of the distinction. I own 65 of the biggest companies in the world. I'm getting the 2 and 20 right beside the owners, and I got their business when there's no inflation, their business with inflation, their future. I got private credit firms. So I was like, "I'm out of my mind." Then I saw that Congress finally did something. It always bugged me. I always complained that, look, the richest people in the world get access to the best investments. People need to grow. Don't get access because the law says you have to be an accredited investor or even higher in some of these firms. And that means you have to have a million-dollar net worth already, not counting your house, or $200,000 in annual income, right? So Congress saw what I believe was true. I didn't do anything to do with it, but they just passed across the Congress, and now the Senate's taking it up. It should get passed, hopefully, in the next two or three months because it's bipartisan. And the first one already passed. And they said, "Look, you shouldn't have to have a certain amount of money to do this. You should just know what you're doing." Some people build a business or they inherit money and they get to do it. They're not sophisticated. You take a test, you study, and take the test, and then you can have access to these same components. So now the world can have access to this. So that's why I decided to bring this out at this time.

But if you can imagine being able to have all that income, like you would get from, let's say, bonds, at the same time, like the income is between 8 and 10% on most of these firms each year, just just on the fees. That's guaranteed. So when I invest in the firm, 80% of my investment is already guaranteed just by the income coming back from the guaranteed fees. And then I get the upside of the 20%. And we had one firm that was doing, I think, uh, I think we started them when they were doing, uh, 3.8 billion or something like that, and now they're at 22. It doesn't take a lot more employees to do that, by the way. The profitability of that firm is through the roof. And by the way, if that firm gets sold to a bigger firm, I'll get the multiple on that business when it gets sold. So it's pretty amazing. And so I walk people through all these different avenues so you can do something that's not correlated, so you can have 80% less risk and have more upside.

It's interesting because, like, going through the book as, as a business nerd, I'm loving each chapter is exposing me to these new investment strategies. My, my three favorite for people listening is the GP Stakes. You touched upon the private credit, which was obvious in hindsight once you started unpacking that. And then sports team ownership, which I know you've got a stake in the Sacramento Kings. Team Liquid on the sports side. What investment kind of category did you get most excited about talking to all these incredible, um, investors that you decided to kind of pursue? Or which one do you think was most fascinating for you?

Those three are probably my favorite, although I've got a huge amount of money invested in the energy sector as well. For, yeah, you had two chapters dedicated to energy. Yeah, because I got a project in hydrogen that's unbelievable right now. So I'm so excited about that and has unbelievable returns. But I would say, uh, owning these companies is where you get to be a partner with the smartest people in the world. That's pretty hard to beat. But let's take private credit for example. In 2021, just a couple years ago, you could make no money on bonds before they raised interest rates, right? So what bonds went crazy were junk bonds. You know, they call them high, you know, high-income bonds, right? But they're just junk, they're terrible. And if you remember in 2021, you could get one or two% somewhere else, but you get 3.9% on junk bonds, taking huge risks. And of course, that industry imploded. Right? The market dropped through the floor. When everyone else is taking these giant risks at 3.9%, I was getting 9% on private credit. Private credit is just, since 2008, the banks have tightened up. I, you, most people know about what happened recently, for example, Silicon Valley and so forth. Banks. So what happens is, most banks are not loaning to the majority of companies that need it. So they go to these private equity people, they really know how to vet companies, and they loan to the same companies over and over. They provide that capacity. Now, the beautiful thing about private credit is they have a 1% failure rate. No bank, banks would die for that kind of return because these guys know what they're doing, and they stay with the very best people. So incredibly safe, three times the return as if you did junk bonds at that time. But now the interest rates have risen. Now, by the way, I own those firms too. So I have two and 20 on those as well, not just the investment. But what's been amazing is if you bought a mortgage and it was at 3% and it was fixed, you're happy, right? Now, you don't care the interest rates went up because 7% doesn't affect you. But if you had a floating rate, you're, you might be paying three times as much as you were a few years ago. Well, in business, those are always floating rates. So we loan money to people in these firms, let's say at 5 and 6% originally, and now the rate has risen. Now they're paying us 12 and 13. Now get a sense of what the profitability is on that. It's the same loan with the same people with no additional expense, and our profitability through the roof. And I got the 2 and 20 on that as well. So I love that.

But the one that's most fun is sports because I'm a sports guy. You know, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. My one of my forefathers was a semi-pro baseball player. But I started late, I wasn't that skilled, and I got clear that that wasn't going to happen by the time I got to high school. So, um, I started looking at a different path. But the bottom line is, I was like, "Someday I really want a piece of a sports team." It seemed like such a huge thing. Well, you know about a little less than a decade ago, I finally had enough money and enough, you know, resources and some good partnerships, and I invested in the LAFC football club. We created the club, we built the stadium with my partner Peter Guber and a group of other partners. It was fun, and I enjoyed it. And then I moved to Florida, so I'm nowhere near there. But I still enjoyed owning a sports team. While I wanted to own more, and then as you said, I bought a few others. Um, but then in the last three years, there's been a new rule change. And other than the NFL, all the other sports leagues now have a way. It only a few firms can do it because you can't use leverage. There's a bunch of rules around it. But you can buy a piece of more than one sports team. So now I own, not only do I own the Warriors and the Dodgers, but I own the Red Sox and the Sacramento Penguins, you know, the Pittsburgh Penguins and hockey. It's, it's amazing what you get to have a piece of. And to give you an idea, like Michael Jordan bought his Charlotte team, the NBA team, for $275 million about 12 and a half years ago. Uh, a group of people, including us, bought that interest for $3 billion. $3 billion. That's his return on 12 years. Another example is just the average, these, these investments are no longer just butts and seats. And by the way, it's not correlated to the stock market. That's the power. So when inflation hits, they just raise the price of a hot dog, and people pay it. But it's no longer just butts and seats. It's also immediate. So when Peter Guber and his partners originally bought the Dodgers and they paid $2 billion for them, now everybody thought they overpaid. Everybody thought they overpaid. The most any sports team had ever gone for was $800 million, baseball team. And people thought they were worth a billion. They were an amazing franchise, but $2 billion. So I went to Peter, cuz I'm going to be part of this. I'm like, uh, Peter, I know you're no idiot, smartest people alive. How are you doing this? Are you going to pay $2 billion? And he said, "Tony, you know me, I'm a movie producer. I," he said, "You got to have a cliffhanger." He said, "I'm going to announce it on Tuesday. Once you hear it, come to the house, we'll have a little party together, and we'll laugh." They announced it on Tuesday. He sold the local TV rights for $7 billion and made $5 billion net immediately. Wow. And when you own a sports team, you keep your local rights, but you also get an equal share of everybody else around the nation. So whether you're a small team or a big team, you get your percentage of that. And they own real estate. So the average return in the last 10 years across Major League Baseball, the NBA, Major League Soccer, and hockey, if you took those four and merged them, the average return is 18% compounded per year. It's been 11% for the S&P 500, and it's not correlated. So it's an amazing opportunity. It does really well. And you have a legal monopoly. No one else can compete with you in that city in that sport. You own it. So it's a, and your, your customers are literally fanatics. That's where the word fan comes from. Fanatics. Multigenerational. So it's an amazing business, and it's fun, and it's enjoyable, and people can be involved with it now like they never could before.

Yeah, it's, it's a fun one. It, and it was so cool reading the examples in the book. Um, Tony, obviously, you got the, a chance to meet, and interview some of the best. Some of them are my heroes. Robert F. Smith from Vista, as a software guy, he's the GOAT, right? Vinod Khosla, David Sacks. Like, I met David Sacks 13 years ago, and he's just become literally the category king in, in SaaS. Out of all those people, what, like, does anybody stand out? Or do you feel like they all have their genius? Like, what did you learn talking to these, these wizards of the financial world?

I learned so many things, and they're in the book. But I, I looked also for common patterns because then you see universal principles that work. And by the way, you know, Sacks is genius, original, original PayPal Mafia, he's an unbelievable guy, and I love him personally. But he, you know, I think Robert Smith would take offense to he's the owner of SaaS because Robert is the owner of SaaS. Robert got a hundred billion dollar firm. And I can't say what his returns are because you got to get the prospectus to do it legally. But just, he's the highest return of anybody that I interviewed for the longest period of time. It's mind-boggling what he has done. And he started with absolutely nothing. What I found really most interesting was the way they think about business and entrepreneurship. When I interviewed the 50 smartest investors in the world, traditional investors, Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, you know, Paul Tudor Jones, they're all have different ways of doing things, but they're trying to buy something at the right price, right? And the right time. What's so cool about private equity is the, the best people, they're not buying just trying to get, they like to get a great price, but they're going to their entire focus is adding value. And what I mean by that is, when I first, uh, met Jim Rohn, my original teacher, he answered one of the most important questions I had burning in my life, and it changed my life. I had four different fathers. We are always broke. The reason I provide 100 million meals a year, I've done a billion meals in the last eight years, is because someone provided food for my family when we had nothing when I was 11, and I never forgot it. Started with two families for, and built up. Well, if you look at somebody like what Robert's done, Robert's been in a position, position where he started with literally nothing, and he built up. But he did it based on the principle that I learned from my teacher, Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn, I asked him, I said, "How could my fathers, they're all good men, and we're always broke? We had no money for food." And he said, "Tony, we're all equal as souls, but we're not equal in the marketplace." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Tony, you could be a really good person and work really hard and have nothing." He goes, "I brought up school teachers, you know how little they make and how unfair that is compared to this hedge fund guy." And he goes, "Tony, well, let's start with McDonald's." He said, "I'm not being derogatory, but it's not designed to be your long-term job. It's an entry job because you don't get paid much because it's easy to learn. Anyone can do that job. So it's not valuable. You're paid in proportion to the value you bring to people." There's not a lot of value today. There's machines now starting to replace these people in fast food places, right? That, that's why they make so little. But the guy you were saying is terrible, he said, "Your teachers, how, how many of them were truly great?" I said, "I had some great teachers." Said, "How many?" "Tell me them." And I listed three, right? He said, "Yes, out of your entire education, there's three. The others, would you agree, some were good, some were mediocre, some were terrible?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "And they're coach, they're helping 20 or 30 students." He goes, "So they're paid, and they're not in a position where if they do well, they're paid more because they wanted a guarantee, and they got a guarantee, and they do a lousy job. But if you want to put yourself on the line and be valuable, it's a very different game." So he said, "The guy you're making fun of or being derogatory towards, most people in those days were getting 6% returns. He got a 48% return on billions of dollars. Those are people's pension funds, that's their future, that's their economics." So he's worth a billion dollars because he added that much more value. He said, "You need to focus on finding a way to do more for others than anybody else in whatever industry you're in. You'll build a brand, and you'll become dominant, and you'll have a blast because you're a giver, Tony. You're not a taker. You're going to be proud of what you're doing, not just make a lot of money." And that's why I got these. That's actually 114 companies now total. We're doing $7 billion in revenues. And I mean, every single company we built might have a bad obsession with adding value. And that's what I saw in every one of these people. They didn't just buy the asset or buy it right and then flip it over, cut up in pieces like private equity used to do 20 years ago. It's much more competitive now. Now it's like, "Okay, you go to Robert Smith, and you got a SaaS organization. He has built a system where you can take any SaaS company and grow it. He knows how to bring the right CEO in place, what the marketing piece, who are the right people, what's, how can you advance the technology, how can you cut the cost?" So he makes it so valuable, and then he sells it to a bigger company or takes it public. So every single one of them was obsessed with adding value. And that is really, really unique. But they do it in different ways. So that's what Robert Smith does. You know, if you go to, uh, Veritas Capital, you know, uh, Romsey, um, yeah, he was partners with a guy 12 years ago, and a guy committed suicide, and they had a $2 billion fund. And the fund was, um, you know, it had a clause in your agreement as a limited partner that if the, anything happened to the original founder investor, you could take your money back. There were no time limits on anymore. So he literally met with every around the world, every investor, flew and met with him one-on-one and said, "I want you to stay with us, and here's what I'm going to do." He built that firm from $2 billion to $42 billion in 11 years. His expertise was, he said, "I'm going to go do business with the government. Government buys more technology than anyone on Earth, and no one else has mastered it. I'm going to, they all avoid it. I'm going to go master it and own them." And again, I can't tell you his returns, but I'll just tell you their gigantic returns compounded over a decade continuously because he's figured out how to add value in the government system. You know, I mean, if you look at somebody like, uh, Khosla, that you know of, of course. I mean, he took one of his best investments, he took $3 million and turned into $7 billion. Right? And how did he do it? He looks around and says, "Okay, what's a technology that could change the world that will be a necessity?" And he saw Juniper Networks. He said, "I think that's where the web's going to have to go." He made these bets, and literally, $7 billion is not like a gross number, that's the net return to investors off that investment. So each one of them has vision. Each one of them is massively committed to adding value. Each one of them has a system that they built. They don't do it ad hoc. To take any company in the categories they focus on and grow it. Another reason I love doing this is I have these guys, and they're all in different industries. They're all, some of them, different countries. You know, you go to, uh, somebody like, uh, MBK Partners, right? And you know, he's the Michael Kim. He's the, what do you call it, the, the biggest investor, the most successful private equity investor in basically Japan, China, Asia, um, he's the richest, you know, South Korean in the world. And it's like, "How do he do it?" Same thing. He figured out what Asian companies need. He's specialized in that. So I think really knowing your market, really knowing your ideal customer, coming up with products and services that produce raving fans, coming up with an irresistible offer, which is a lot of what they do each time, an offer that is so good that people say, "I got to at least try it." And then they overdeliver. They all seem to have that in common, even though they're doing different industries in different ways and have different forms of expertise.

It's so great. I, I love the idea because a lot of people, they struggle with, like, "Should I go all in on my primary business?" Because I, they hear diversification, but it's like, all these people mastered their game, systematized it, created ways to, again, the asymmetrical results. Um, I think that's awesome. The, the question I want to kind of get closer as we wrap up is, how has having a child as a 61-year-old person changed your perspective on life, Tony? I mean, when you guys shared that, Sage and yourself, it was inspiring for me. I like, wow, this is really fascinating. Like, how has that changed your perspective on life and how you show up and how you think about your time? Right? Because I wrote a book called "Buy Back Your Time." How has that impacted where you allocate your time?

Well, it's interesting. You know, before, you know, I have five kids and five grandkids. And my oldest, uh, daughter is 48, going to be 49 in about a month. And my youngest daughter's coming up on three pretty soon. It's two and three-quarters. So I got quite, quite a spread. But, um, the answer to your question is, I didn't want to have. Both my wife and I, uh, she couldn't carry because of a, a problem with her body. So we went through IVF and went through all these processes for years. And then our life was on the road. To, she's with me all the time, and we don't want to be apart. And I was on the road 250 days a year. So I, like, I don't want to bring a kid into that experience. Just too hard, especially at this stage of life. So when COVID happened, and I found a way I could talk like I'm doing a seminar. By the way, I should mention for your audience, I do a free seminar every year. I started with COVID because, you know, people are trapped in their homes. I was doing stadiums, and suddenly stadiums said, "I could put a hundred people in a stadium instead of 15,000." I was like, so I built these studios and I started doing these events. And I said, "I want no one to stop by money if they're stuck at home. I want to be able to show them how to change their life from their home." And I want to have to travel, obviously. And so we put these events on for three days. There's one coming up January 25th through the 27th, starts at 2 p.m. Eastern. But we have people from 195 countries who come, and we had over a million people last year. And we give you the way it's called "Time to Rise." If you go to timetoserisesummit.com, timetoserisesummit.com, get tickets, it's free. You can do it from your home or your office. Bring your family and your friends. But, but, uh, the reason I bring this up is when I could reach millions of people and go deep and do these giant events now, like instead of 10 or 15,000, I got 40,000 people in the event, and they're from 195 countries all over the Earth at once. I was like, like, we could have a kid, and we could be home more. I still travel, but nothing like I did. And so we tried one final time, and God blessed us. And answer your question is, it's been the greatest gift of my life. Because I'm proud of how I've been as a father when I was in my 20s. Now, I married a woman who was 13 years my senior in my first marriage, and she had been married twice before and had kids from both her husbands, and I adopted them all. So I was, you know, 24, a 17-year-old, the, uh, an 11-year-old, a 5-year-old, and then went on the way. So at this stage, it's very different. You know, I've got a lot more to, even more to give. And Sage is such an unbelievable mother, and we have such an incredible family. So it's, it's changed things. So that now, you know, I have rituals. Like I have dinner at 6:30. I've never had dinner at a certain time before. Uh, but I love it. I love everything about it. My daughter is a learning machine. You know, you, at that stage of life, she's learning Chinese and Spanish and English, and she's playing the piano, and she has time just to be a human. And, you know, yesterday went, flew a kite, which I would never be doing at this stage normally. But I'm going to be 64 in a month, she'll be three soon. And I, I told my wife originally, I said, "I'm not having a kid past 50." I said, "I'm not going to show up at her high school graduation at 70 years old. I'm, I'm going to be 80 at her high school graduation." But I, I got to tell you, it's the most beautiful thing in the world. And I, without naming names, had a very, very famous, uh, designer who I had dinner with one time with, uh, Steve went at his resort, and we were sitting at dinner, and he was 65 and just had two children. And I was dumbfounded. And he went on and on the entire night about how it was the greatest thing in his life. So that was where the seed got planted. And then God made it possible because of COVID. So I don't have to choose between my mission and my child. We get to do it all. And she gets to attend the seminars and watch on TV. We don't show pictures of her. I don't even say her name because I want her to have a private life, no social media, um, so she can have just her own life outside of that. But she gets to attend, and sometimes she comes back and looks through the curtain and sees what's going on. But she, because we do so much hybrid, you know, live events and, and video-based, she gets to attend most of the events at this stage, which is just a blast.

It's cool, Tony, to see you even at this stage, push the boundaries of what's possible and what you think you can do at different ages. It's, uh, it's inspiring in a huge way. Um, where's the best way? I know the book comes out February 13th. Everybody should go to Amazon, pre-order. I believe there's actually a free audio chapter. Can you talk more about where they can get?

Go to the Holy, the, the "Holy Grail of Investing.com." HolyGrailInvesting.com. If they go there, they can pre-order the book through Amazon or whoever they want. But there's also, uh, the first chapter on audio is there for free, and you can listen to it if you'd like. Uh, because the book comes out in two weeks, so you can pre-order it, but you'll get a jump on it right away. You could do it today if you wanted to.

Awesome. Everybody go get a copy of the book, "The Holy Grail of Investing." Tony, you've had an incredible impact on my life, from the events to, um, the books. My brother and I remember when the first one came out, we devoured it, then the second one, and I'm excited to share this one with him when it comes out February 13th. Everybody go grab a copy. Tony, again, it's an honor. Appreciate the time.

I want to thank you. I want your audience to know that I do this five-day, you know, boot camp that they do for businesses, help them grow their business, you know, 30 to 180%, depending on the type of business. And you came in and did the piece on AI, and just was a home run. So I, I can't tell people enough about how great you were there.

Thank you so much. It's, it was my honor. It was appreciated. Awesome to have an amazing rest of the day. Everybody, bye.