Transcription
The number one ingredient is hunger. If somebody's got a hunger that doesn't go away—not a hunger to lose some weight for the summer—I'm talking about hunger to be more, to do more, to create more, to become something, to give something that matters. That kind of hunger that doesn't go away—that's what you see in, like, I'm sure you know Richard Branson; he's a good friend. You know Richard is 74 years old; he has the same hunger as he did when he was 16, starting Virgin in a crypt. You know I mean, that's there. Anybody who has that component that's alive in them is going to succeed.
And hunger, though, usually comes from not having things so so well. I mean, I come from an environment where I had four different fathers, and the common denominator I thought at that stage was lack of money, because we had no money for food. But you know, someone was interviewing me the other day. I—I just announced, you know, I um, I started out early on, when I was 11 years old. I had people come to my house on Thanksgiving. We had no money and no food—no food. We had crackers and peanut butter; that's what we would have had. But you know, Thanksgiving, we was having a big feast. So it's really makes it pretty daunting. And my parents were saying things to each other that you can never take back. And I have a younger brother, five years younger, younger sister, seven years younger, and I'm trying to make sure they don't hear this, and this knock comes to the door, and I open the door, and there's this tall guy holding two giant bags of groceries. And then on the floor, on the ground, he had this uncooked frozen turkey in a pan that he obviously carried up there first. And he said, "Is your father home?" And I'm like, "Just one moment," right. And so I run to get my dad; they're screaming at each other. I said, "The door's for you." He goes, "You answered?" I said, "I answered, yes. Speak to who is it?" I don't know. And I'm just a little boy, right, 11 years old, just like waiting to see his face, think it's going to be the happiest moment in our lives. And my dad opened the door, and he was not a happy man. He said, "We don't take charity," and he just went to slam the door in the guy's face. And the guy had, you know, leaned in slightly, so it hit his shoulder and bounced off, and that made my dad even more frustrated. He said, "Sir, sir," I said, "I'm just the delivery guy. You know, everybody has tough times, and somebody knows you're having tough times, and they want you to have a great Thanksgiving with your family." And my father said, "We don't take charity," and went to do it again. And this time, the guy, because he leaned in, his foot now got there, and his foot hit the door and panted open. My dad's getting madder, and then the guy saw my father and—and saw me, and he said something I thought my father was going to punch him in the face. He said, "Sir," he said, "Don't make your family suffer because of your ego." And I could still see the veins on the side of my father's face, my neck. I—I thought, sure, he was going to punch him. And he took the food, didn't say anything, threw it on the table, and slammed the door—never said thank you.
And I tell you that story because it changed my life, because I believe there—I didn't know it then, I figured out later—CU, I had to—my father left our family about two weeks after that. And to me, that was—he had four fathers, but he's the one who adopted me, the one whose name I carry, he's the one I love the most, quite frankly, had the most time with, it's the most inspirational for me. But he left. And why'd he leave? 'Cuz there's three decisions we make every moment of our lives. The first decision we're making is what are we going to focus on, on right now? There's millions of things we could focus on. People listening can be focused on what they're doing, what we're saying, whether it matters or not, you know, a million things, right? But we only focus on a small band of things, and whatever we focus on, we experience in life. And so the first decision, what to focus on. I know what he focused on; he focused on that he had not fed his family, because he kept saying it. But then the second decision you make as soon as you focus on something is you give it a meaning. Is this the end or the beginning? If you think it's the end of a relationship, you're going to behave very different than the beginning. Is this person dissing me? Are they challenging me? Are they coaching me? Or are they actually loving me? Whatever meaning you create produces emotion, and those emotions control your third decision, which is what are you going to do? And I tell you that because he focused on didn't feed his family; the worst part was the meaning. The meaning for him was, you know, "I'm worthless," and he decided to leave our family.
MH, that day I had a very different experience. I focused on there was food—you know what a concept—but then secondly, the meaning is what changed my life; it's why I'm sitting here right now. The meaning I got was, "Wow, strangers care." My father always said, you know, we grew up in an environment on the other side of the tracks, quite literally. And you know, I thought it was a wealthy community; it was a lower middle-class community, but compared to us, they were wealthy. And my dad would always said, "No one cares." And it's like I had evidence that someone cared so much, and they didn't even want credit; they fed my family. And so it's like, if strangers care about me and my family, I'm going to care about strangers. And I made a decision right then, at 11 years old: I'm going to feed people when I get older. And so when I was 17, I had two families, and it was so emotionally rewarding. Then I went—went to four, and eight, then I got to a million, then I got to 4 million—2 million from my Foundation, 2 million from me. And then in the last uh, 10 years—about eight years or 12—10 years ago, I started—it took me eight years—I said, "I'm going to provide a billion meals here in the United States," and we did that in eight years. I'm proud to be 100 million meals a year I did through Feeding America as my partner. And so I decided I met with uh, the head of the food program for the UN, so he and I joined together and created a 100 billion meals. I said, "How many do we need to bridge the gap?" He said, "About 70 billion." So let's do a 100 billion meals in 10 years. I did a billion; I wasn't a billionaire when I started. I said, so I've grown obviously to make that happen, but all we need is 99 people like me, and we can do this, right? And so we went out to do it, and we announced a few days ago we had 30 billion meals already in the first two years. Most people thought it would be totally impossible, so we're going to make that happen. But here's what I wanted you to get: If I was a well-fed child, do you think I'd be working this hard? I know I—you know, I'm proud to be a good human being; I believe I'm a good human being, but I don't think I would have that same drive. So I think hunger often comes from having gone through enough pain. Like, I've suffered enough; I don't want somebody else to suffer.
So what—what do you say to the kid that right now is Tony, okay? They—they have access to YouTube; they're watching this right, and they're going through it. Because for us now, I'm 46, you've been around, you've done your part; we—we are now out of it. In when you were in it, how were you coping with that pain? For me, it was sports; it was bodybuilding. What was your coping mechanism at that time? We knew—know how to have a lot of money. Yeah, sports was a big piece, but for me it was books. Um, I was—was—I—I decided to take a speed-reading course when I was 15 years old, and I was going to read a book a day. And I didn't do that, but I read 700 books in seven years—all in the year of human development, psychology, physiology, pre-8, pre-8—well, some—well, over seven years—so starting at that time. And what it was was I just got obsessed with wanting to know answers, because early on, for example, I was really small in high school and junior high school. I was 5-1 my sophomore year in high school; I'm 6-7 now. I tell people the difference is personal growth—10 inches in a year, right? Then yeah, I had a tumor and didn't know it—a pituitary tumor. It made me explode in size. And when people talk about growth pains, I mean your muscles are stretching; it's brutal. But the point is, as I went through that process, I found myself in a place where books—where I could—I could go to another world. I could read Emerson's essays, and I could feel that sense of autonomy and freedom. I could read Man's Search for Meaning and say, "No matter what you went through, you know this guy went through, you know, Auschwitz and survived and turned things around. How did—how can I make my life work?" And so especially biographies, because when you read a biography—not an autobiography, but a biography written by the actual author—you're thinking their thoughts. And whatever thoughts you think over and over again develop habits and emotions and meaning in your life, right? So that became my way, between that and sports, as how I really managed it. But I also, early on, when I was 17, I went and heard this man named Jim Rohn—a personal development speaker. I think you probably have heard of—incredible. And uh, he was really amazing. He used to do this three-and-a-half-hour seminar on how to, you know, he turned his life around, became successful in various ways. And I was working for this gentleman; I was in high school, and I was, you know, got my little growth spurt. And so the guy's like—he was successful flipping houses. And my family said he used to be such a loser. My father said, "Now he's so successful." And so one day he called and said, "Listen, your son looked to make some extra money," and I was always doing that; we were poor; I had to help support the family, so I had two jobs—working as a janitor. I was like, "Yeah, I'll work on the weekend there; let's do it." So I'm moving all the stuff, but I had a goal; I really want to know how he became so successful, 'cuz my idea of success then, is when you're poor, is like you've done well in achievement, you've done well in economics, finance. And so one day he took me to lunch and goes, "You're such a hard worker; I'm taking you to lunch." And so he asked me a bunch of questions. I said, "I want to ask you some questions." He said, "What do you want to know?" I said, "Well, my father said you used to be such a loser, and now you're so successful." I wasn't trying to be negative; as a kid, you don't think right. And he started laughing. Goes, "Your father said what?" I said, "Well," he goes, "Well, it's true." I said, "Well, what changed you?" He said, "I went to a seminar." I said, "What's a seminar?" He said, "This man comes, and he takes 20, 30 years of his life, and he crunches that down to like three and a half hours and shows you the shortcuts to make your life as successful as it could be." I said, "I'd like to go to that." He thinks he said, "I think you should." I said, "Well, how much is it?" And he said, "$35—$250 in today's dollars. But for me, I'm making $40 a week as a janitor, so it's a week's worth of pay." And I said, "Well, can you get me in?" He said, "Sure." I said, "Well, will you?" And he said, "No." I said, "Why not?" He goes, "You won't value it if you don't pay for it." And I go, "Look, man, I'm—I'm making 40 bucks a week; that's a week's pay." He goes, "Okay, well, figure it out on your own; take 10 or 20 years and figure it out on your own if you want to do that or learn faster through this and make the investment in yourself." So it—it's like to me the biggest decision of my life at that point; it felt like, because it's like a week's pay—I mean, whole—and I went to that seminar, and I took notes like a crazy person. And I was finishing some of Jim Rohn's statements because I read all these books, so it's like I recognize them. I was like this wild person in the middle of the event. And afterwards, I went up, and I thought, "I'm going to—I'm going to change the world," you know. "I'm 17 years old; I'm going to run for president—first, I'll run for Senate, before that I'll do Congress, before that I'll do local State Assembly. Yeah, I thought that how I'd serve most, and then I'll start by my high school; I'll run for student body president of my high school." And I was not the most popular kid in school at all. And I did it in a real campaign; I went and talked to all the groups and found out what they wanted and—and told the truth—what could be done, what I thought couldn't be done, and—and I won. I beat the most popular kid in school. And so that taught me that if you're real and raw and you truly serve, popularity doesn't matter; you'll get through to people. And it was a—it was a marker in my life to make those things happen. But all of these situations stacked, and then I was so involved in personal development, and I really wanted to learn how to do more, and I finally got a chance to go to work for Jim Rohn at 17 years old. And my mom kicked out my father; he went back east on Christmas Eve. She kicked me out, and she kept my 1968 VW's wagon—I'd worked, you know, $40 a week to earn—and I slept on the hill one night; it was raining. And then the next day I was like, "I can't stay in the rain." I went to this girlfriend's house—a girl that was a friend, not a girlfriend—and they let me stay in their—you know, their little uh, what's called—washing machine room. And um, and then I took the little money I had, and I took these buses, and I bought a book. I went to Claremont, California; it was about 15 miles away, and I bought this book at this bookstore called The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol. And it talked about how to program your mind. And I was writing on the mirror in the laundry room all my goals, and I made these posters—said, "Only, you know, only an idiot gets depressed; only a loser gets depressed." It's not true, but that was my way of leveraging myself, right? And I started to make these changes. And then I tried to go to work for Jim Rohn, and it was Christmas, so I had to keep working as a janitor. And what changed my life was finding that part that's inside of all of us that will not give up. And I—I was going—taking buses now because I had no car—to go to San Marino, California; it was about, you know, about an 18-mile place, but the number of buses you had to take took about, you know, almost two hours—90 minutes to two hours. I go clean the banks, because I could do two banks; I wasn't paid by the hour; it's by performance, and I could do an amazing job, and I'd off notes—people as if, you know, I was there; I was so connected. 2:00 a.m., I was on that bus to get home, and 3:30 a.m. or 4:00, I was going to bed and getting up four hours later to go to school and be student body president. And I was burning out. But one night there were—I got to the bus stop on time, made it there 2:00 a.m.—no bus. 2:15, no bus. 2:30, no bus. 2:45, no bus. I have no—one called. I'm 17 miles from home at least, right? Like, what am I going to do? And then all of a sudden a car pulls up, rolls down the window, goes, "Hey, bud, didn't you see there's a bus strike? There's no buses coming." Oh, you got to be kidding me—no. And so I was like, "What am I going to do? What am I going to do?" And I was like, "I'm going to run home; I am going to run the entire way." And my first starting out was just rage; it was like, "All show her—my mom—for kicking me out." We're—we're super close now; she's passed away, but we weren't at that time, as you might guess. But anger only gets you so far; it's the fuel that burns out very quickly. So I started thinking about those books and programming your mind. I started doing these—not just affirmations—we go, "I'm happy; I'm happy," but where you shout it, you engage your body, you—and I was running. "On every day and every way, I'm getting stronger and stronger," and I do that, and that same change the word—every day and every—every stronger and stronger. And then I do that for 20 minutes, and then I do healthier, and then I do happier. And I ran 16 of the 17 miles; last mile I walked. And it changed my life forever; to this day that source of energy, that source of strength, that source of—that I'll push through is a part of who I am. But it usually comes from challenge. You know, if you look at the history of the world, good times create weak people; they're not bad people; they just have never been challenged. It's like a muscle—you're a bodybuilder; I built my body; you don't get it by taking something light; you do something unbelievably difficult. And you're going to do 10 curls, and you can barely do 10 curls; you know the 12 is where all the growth is, right? You know, so I had these experiences that challenged me so strongly, and I met the challenge, and it changed my sense of identity about who I was and what I was capable of. And then I couldn't help but spread that, you know—you know, I lost 30 lbs and help my friends lose 30 lbs, and they started getting girls. And then I got addicted to knowing the answers—like being able to give people the answer to anything—their body, their emotions, their relationships. And so that obsession still continues to this day, and I'm—you know, I've been doing this 48 years. [Music] [Music]