I Asked Tony Robbins How to Go From Broke to Billionaire
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Summary
If you had $1,000 or $100 million to invest, the most important decision you're going to make is not whether to invest in an Apple or a piece of real estate, it's what's your philosophy of investing.
Transcript
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I had four different fathers. We were always broke. They're all good men, and we had no money for food.
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You could be a really good person and work really hard and have nothing.
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We're all equal as souls, but we're not equal in the marketplace.
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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.
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Who are the wealthiest people in the world? What industry are they in?
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When I ask most people, they think tech completely wrong and they think real estate wrong.
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It's I asked Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund guy in the history of the world.
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Is there one principle that's the most important principle to becoming financially successful?
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He said, Tony, I wrestled that for 12 years and I can tell you what I call the holy grail of investing.
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Welcome, everybody. We are here with the legend, Tony Robbins.
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I'm really excited. We're going to dive into your book.
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You wrote the third book in the trilogy, The Holy Grail of Investing, and it is a banger.
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Before I get into it, I've got a question for you.
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I got introduced to your work, an incredible event.
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And you said something on stage that it just hit me.
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You were talking about your backstory and all the challenges, and you kind of just said,
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It just struck me because I was like, wow, like this is how it works.
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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?
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Well, I don't believe in just doing New Year's resolutions because they don't work, obviously.
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When people call it New Year's resolution, 91% of the people don't follow through.
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I don't know how accurate it is, but it's probably pretty accurate.
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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.
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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.
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It's like I always tell people, if you want to make progress in anything, you've got to get on the path.
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Well, whether it's your finances, whether it's your business, whether it's your relationship, whether it's your body,
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The first thing is do you know exactly what you really want and do you know why you want it with enough reasons, strong enough reasons to get you through?
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If you're not clear what you want, most people are clear what they don't want.
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I don't want to live this way. I don't want to be this way.
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Focus goes where energy flows. Energy is going to flow where you focus.
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So the whole focus is what do you want with precision and then getting those strong enough reasons.
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And then the second step for people 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?
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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.
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And when I do that, I found there's really only five things that create that gap.
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The first one that gets in the way is fear for almost anybody.
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Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of not looking at some fear.
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But then the second one might be limiting beliefs.
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That's what I used to say to myself when I couldn't lose weight.
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And I eventually tried lots of things and got fit and stayed fit, right?
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Or, you know, all the good ones are gone, right, you know, in a relationship.
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So those beliefs can keep you from making progress.
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And unless you change those, setting a new goal doesn't mean anything.
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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
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or any other emotion that slows the accelerators of your life.
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And then the fourth thing that can get in the way for people very often is habits.
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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 smoke-a-mocha, whatever.
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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.
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And so you've got to come up with what those habits are.
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Or the last thing you might be missing is you just might be missing the skill.
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Like, you know, finance, most people don't know how to get asymmetrical risk-reward.
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That's how they became a billionaire, the ones that started with nothing.
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They figure out what's the minimum risk or the most amount of upside that I can possibly get.
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And they do that over and over again, and you're going to eventually win.
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So if you don't know certain skills in a relationship, certain skills in how to run your business,
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certain skills in how to make your body go, then you're probably not going to make the progress.
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And once you know that, then you come up with your massive action plan,
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You take action, and then you go slay your dragons.
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you change the belief. You change the pieces. You get some daily practices. You keep measuring and
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improving and you'll get to where you really want to go. And then you'll come up with the next
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journey. You know, it's like life is a journey. It's like the hero's journey. So I look at it
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that way. I look at it as saying, I got to get clear what I want now at this level and what the
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increases are and then what's gotten in the way. And then what am I going to do? Let me go get
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what's in the way out of the way. And then let me create some daily practices that virtually
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guarantee it it's kind of awesome to watch because even six years ago i've seen your approach to your
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interventions kind of kind of evolve right they're they're a little different they're softer and we've
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got um so much to dig into i'm just curious why this book like why why choose to i was telling
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you earlier that it's like you there's a difference between retail investing and professional
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investing you went into the world where all the rich people you know the people say it's a rich
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get richer you went to where the people that know how to make money they shared their strategies
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why this book why now well it's the final it's a trilogy and i didn't expect to write three books
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i wrote the first book a little 670 page little monster number one new york times bestseller
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still the best-selling financial book of this century century's only 24 years old but still
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i'm proud of it because i wrote a book i wanted my billionaire friends could get value out of but so
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So could a person who's just beginning the journey.
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So I really am proud of that book and it's like soup to nuts.
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And I learned so many things by interviewing 50 of the greatest investors in the world
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I've worked with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the top 10 traders for 24 years.
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He hadn't lost money during that time, so I learned a lot from him.
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I learned don't lose money as their first focus, which that's not most people's because
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they know, you know, if you talk to Warren Buffett, you know, his rule is rule number
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one, don't lose money. Rule number two, see rule number one, right? Well, that's ridiculous.
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Of course you're going to lose money, but their focus is not to lose money because if
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you're only trying to make money and you don't look at the downside, you're going to get
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hurt. And if you have a stock that drops 50%, you don't need 50% to get even. You got to
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get a hundred percent return to get even, right? So the way they do that is the second
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principle, no matter whether they're a macro trader or they were a value investor, it
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didn't matter. They all look at the way to protect themselves as having the right asset
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allocation. That's one of the reasons I wrote this book. Because asset allocation is big
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words for some people, but all it means is if you added $1,000 or $100 million to invest,
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the most important decision you're going to make is not whether you're going to invest
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in an apple or buy this piece of real estate. It's your philosophy of investing. And you
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think of it as two buckets, primarily. A bucket that's a security bucket where you're going
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to take some percentage of your money. You're going to decide in advance. It's always that
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percentage. 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 70%, whatever it is, is going to go in a place where it's low risk
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and less returns. So it's going to take longer to get there. But because it's low risk, you're
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going to get there. It's like the turtle versus the, you know, the hair type race. Then how much
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you're going to put that's in a risk bucket. Now on the risk bucket, you have the potential for
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huge upside, but you'll still have the potential for big downside. And so what is that? Is that
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50-50, 60-40, 70-30, 30-70, and, you know, explain to people how to do that. But what I found out
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over the years, and now there's plenty of reports to back it up, is that the ultra-wealthy have over
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46% on average of their money in private equity, private real estate, and private credit. That is
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very different than 90% of the population. That's less than 5% of that in there. Most people, they
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go and they put their money in stocks and bonds in their home and maybe a REIT. Those are the types
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of things where most people are moving them around. Now, why does that matter? Well, diversification
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was the fourth principle that we all know. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. But
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when I interviewed Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund guy in the history of the world,
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he's now managing almost $195 billion, to give you an idea. Manages sovereign funds,
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you know, pension funds. Brilliant guy. In 2008, when things dropped, what is it, 34%,
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if I remember right, he was up 8% to give you an idea. I mean, just genius. He warned
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everybody about it so i asked him when i first met him 12 13 years ago and we're just becoming
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friends i said you know of all the things we've talked about is there one principle above anything
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else that's the most important principle to becoming financially successful as an investor
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and he said tony i wrestled that for 12 years and i can tell you what i call the holy grail
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of investing that's where the title comes from it's not from me it's from him and i said what
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is it he said think about it tony once you know the fundamentals that you know and asymmetrical
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risk reward is one of those as well right so once you know those principles you've got a great
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opportunity but people want to get to their goals and they want to get there faster and most people
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are behind so the only way to get there faster is get higher returns or put more money in which a
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lot of people don't have or you take higher returns you just got to take bigger risks
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then you can lose everything and now it defeats itself plus all the stress involved he said so
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I figured out a mathematical principle if this is his principle holy grail if you can find eight to
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twelve uncorrelated investments now correlated so your audience knows or uncorrelated a simple
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example stocks and bonds when the economy is going great most people put their money in stocks because
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companies are growing you get a bigger return when things are trouble they're counting on their bonds
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to balance them out because they're supposedly non-correlated except when we have these big
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crashes they all drop and your broker goes i don't know it's not supposed to do that right
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and what i learned from ray is that happens all the time and he explained why which we won't take
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the time to do right now but here's what he said if you can find eight to twelve uncorrelated
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investments you reduce your risk eighty percent tony and increase your upside i'm like are you
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serious and he showed me how it works in the math it's all detailed so then i went to go to work how
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do i find eight to twelve things that aren't tied together in some way and the world is tied together
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so much in the public markets and so then i started looking at private assets and it's like wait a
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second here's a nice statistic for your audience in the last 35 years every year public stock
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markets have produced a lower return than average not the best i interviewed 13 of the very best
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the biggest in the world in private equity and private credit but the average has outstripped
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every stock market in the world in terms of profit so i'll give an example most people
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familiar with the S&P 500 index, top 500 companies. Well, if you go through the S&P index and you say,
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how's it done over the last 35 years? It's produced an average return compounded at 9.2%.
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So that's pretty nice. If you're getting 5%, it takes you 14 years to double your money.
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You know, 9%, you're doing it in eight years. But average, not great, average private equity
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did 14.2% at the same time. So you were getting 50% greater returns every year, compounded year
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year after year. So you know what that means. If you put a million dollars away 35 years ago and
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put it in the S&P 500 and forgot about it without doing anything, it's worth 26 million dollars
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today. But if you took the same million dollars and put it in private equity, average private
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equity, it's worth 139 million dollars today, 500% more. So it became a no-brainer to say you
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can't put everything in private equity. You still need public markets, but maybe we should model the
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asset allocation of the smartest people on earth. So then I went to go work on that. And Dan, you
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know, because you've done well in your life, you know, there's only a few players that are the best
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in the world. And access, it's not available to everybody. How do I get access? And then there's
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a second problem, which is, okay, if I'm going to, for me, first it was just access. Like, you know,
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I know a lot of people, I've got a good brand, I've helped a lot of people, so I got access to
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some. But it's kind of like trying to get access to the new SP3, you know, three Ferrari that's
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$4 million. Even if you have the money, you can't get it because it's only sold to the guys that
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already bought before. And that's what happens here. All the pension funds, all the sovereign
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funds, all these people get those spaces. So I would get little slivers. And one day I was
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talking to a good friend of mine who was one of Paul Tudor Jones's partners who started his own
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firm, really successful guy. I was talking about my frustration that I've gotten a few of these,
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but you know too small to have a real impact and he said tony he goes you've been a good friend to
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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
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of my money i said most your money he said yeah he goes there's this place in houston i said houston
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i thought he was going to say singapore london new york connecticut he goes this group they're
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they're one of the best in the world and they've found a way where you don't have to get in the
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fund see when you invest in a fund you're called a limited partner where you're an owner you're
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called a general partner, right? Just for your audience's clarifications. And he goes,
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you can buy a piece of the general partnership, a slice and own the business. Now these guys,
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these are the masters of the universe financially. Who are the wealthiest people in the world? What
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industry are they in? When I ask most people, they think tech, completely wrong. Then they
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think real estate, wrong. It's financial services, but it's not hedge funds because they go up and
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down. These guys in private equity have a really unique approach. There used to be 8,000 companies
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in the stock markets. There's only 3,700 now. And in the S&P 500, five of the companies
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produce 25% of all 500. It's so concentrated. But most companies, most companies in the
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world are privately held. And these private equity firms come in, and they don't just
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try to buy at the right time. They buy a company or a piece of it, but then they add value.
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They change the marketing. They bring in new tech. They bring in a new CEO. And they grow
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the company, and then they sell it for a multiple to a bigger company, or they take it public.
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They tie up your money for five years. Why would people do that? Well, because the kinds of returns
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they get are so much better. People say, I'm happy to have some of my money be tied up for
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that kind of return. For them, that means they don't have to worry about the markets going up
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and down. So when it goes down, they can buy. When it goes up, they can sell. That's why they get such
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unbelievable returns, and they're adding value. They're not just trying to find the right thing
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the right price so i was blown away seeing those results and it's like okay how do i do this and
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what i found out is you know they get their two and twenty for those unfamiliar when you give them
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your money they get two percent per year that's what they charge on your money whether they make
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and they get twenty percent of the upside well people are willing to do it because it's not
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uncommon for a firm to go from a billion to two billion in five years they make a hundred million
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in fees over those five years they make 200 million the 20 percent of the next billion they
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make 300 million dollars in a billion dollar investment that's why they're there and most of
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them the ones i interviewed are 35 50 100 billion dollar firms so you get the idea of how they are
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and they've all done 20 or more compounded for decades one guy in the group has done 36 compounded
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for 26 years i mean it's it's crazy so then i thought okay well i can help my friends wealthy
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friends but then the reason i wrote the book final answer to your question is because i had
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all these principles of the distinction i own 65 of the biggest companies in the world i'm getting
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the 220 right beside the owners and i got their business when there's no inflation their business
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with inflation their future i got private credit firms so i was like i'm out of my mind then i
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saw that congress finally did something it always bugged me i was complaining that look the richest
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people in the world get access to the best investments people need to grow it don't get
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access because the law says you have to be an accredited investor or even higher in some of
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these firms and that means you have to have a million dollar net worth already not counting
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your house or two hundred thousand dollars in annual income right so congress saw what i believe
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was true i didn't have to do with it but they just passed across the congress and now the senate's
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taking it up it should get passed hopefully the next two or three months because it's bipartisan
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and the first one already passed and they said look you shouldn't have to have a certain amount
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money to do this you should just know what you're doing some people build a business or they inherit
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money when they get to do it they're not sophisticated you take a test you study and
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take the test and then you can have access to these same components so now the world can have
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access to this so that's why i decided to bring this out at this time but if you can imagine being
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able to have all that income like you would get from let's say bonds at the same time like the
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the income is between 8% and 10% on most of these firms each year, just on the fees that's
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guaranteed. So when I invest in the firm, 80% of my investment is already guaranteed just by the
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income coming back from the guaranteed fees, and then I get the upside of the 20%. And we've had
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one firm that was doing, I think we started them when they were doing $3.8 billion or something
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like that, and now they're at $22. It doesn't take a lot more employees to do that, by the way.
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The profitability of that firm is through the roof.
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And by the way, if that firm gets sold to a bigger firm,
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I'll get the multiple on that business when it gets sold.
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And so I walk people through all these different avenues
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so you can have 80% less risk and have more upside.
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It's interesting because going through the book as a business nerd,
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I'm loving each chapter is exposing me to these new investment strategies.
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My three favorite for people listening is the GP stakes you touched upon.
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The private credit, which was obvious in hindsight when she started unpacking that, and then sports team ownership, which I know you've got to stake in the Sacramento Kings, Team Liquid on the eSports side.
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What investment kind of category did you get most excited about talking to all these incredible investors that you decided to kind of pursue or which one do you think was most fascinating for you?
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Those three are probably my favorite, although I've got a huge amount of money invested in the energy sector as well.
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for that's yeah you had two chapters dedicated to energy yeah because i got a project in hydrogen
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that's unbelievable right now so i'm so excited about that and has unbelievable returns but i
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would say uh owning these companies where you get to be a partner with the smartest people in the
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world that's pretty hard to beat but let's take private credit for example in 2021 just a couple
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years ago you could make no money on bonds before they raised interest rates right so what bonds
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went crazy were junk bonds and they call them high you know high income bonds right but they're just
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junk they're terrible and if you remember 2021 you can get one or two percent somewhere else but
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you get 3.9 percent on junk bonds taking huge risks and of course that industry imploded right the
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market dropped to the floor when everyone else is taking these giant risks at 3.9 percent i was
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getting nine percent on private credit private credit is just since 2008 the banks have tightened
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up you most people know about what happened recently for example silicon valley and so forth
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banks so what happens is most banks are not loaning to the majority companies that need it
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so they go to these private equity people they really know how to vet companies
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and they loan to the same companies over and over they provide that capacity
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now the beautiful thing about private credit is they have a one percent failure rate no bank on
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banks would die for that kind of return because these guys know what they're doing and they stay
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with the very best people so incredibly safe three times the return is if you did junk bonds at that
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time but now the interest rates have rised now by the way i own those firms too so i have two
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and twenty on those as well not just the investment but what's been amazing is if you bought a
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mortgage and it was at three percent and it was fixed you're happy right now you don't care that
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interest rates went up because the only seven percent doesn't affect you but if you had a
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floating rate you might be paying three times as much as you were a few years ago well in business
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those are always floating rates so we loan money to people in these firms let's say at five and six
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percent originally and now the rate is rising now they're paying us 12 and 13. now get a sense of
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what the profitability is on that's the same loan with the same people with no additional expense
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and our profitability is through the roof and i got the 2 and 20 on that as well so i love that
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but the one that's most fun is sports because i'm a sports guy you know i wanted to be a
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professional baseball player my one of my forefathers was a semi-pro baseball player
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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.
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So I started to look at a different path, but the bottom line is I was like, someday I really want to be a sports team.
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Well, you know, about a little less than a decade ago, I finally had enough money and enough resources and some good partnerships,
00:21:00.460
We created the club. We built the stadium with my partner, Peter Gruber, and a group of other partners.
00:21:04.080
and it was fun and I enjoyed it and then I moved to Florida so I'm nowhere near there
00:21:08.080
but I still enjoyed owning a sports team. Well I wanted to own more and then as you said I bought
00:21:12.680
a few others but then in the last three years there's been a new rule change and other than
00:21:19.140
the NFL all the other sports leagues now have a way it only a few firms can do it because you
00:21:24.360
can't use leverage there's a bunch of rules around it but you can buy a piece of more than one sports
00:21:29.440
team. So now I own, not only do I own the Warriors and the Dodgers, but I own the Red Sox and the
00:21:35.480
Sacramento Kings, I own the Pittsburgh Penguins in hockey. It's amazing what you get to have a
00:21:41.700
piece of. And to give you an idea, like Michael Jordan bought his Charlotte team, the NBA team,
00:21:47.380
for $275 million about 12 and a half years ago. A group of people, including us, bought that
00:21:52.780
interest for $3 billion. $3 billion. That's his return on 12 years. Another example is just the
00:22:00.100
average. These investments are no longer just butts in seats. And by the way, it's not correlated
00:22:06.440
to the stock market. That's the power. So when inflation hits, they just raise the price of a
00:22:10.840
hot dog and people pay it. But it's no longer just butts in seats. It's also media. So when Peter
00:22:16.000
Gerber and his partners originally bought the Dodgers, and they paid $2 billion for them.
00:22:25.080
The most any sports team I'd ever gone for was $800 million baseball team.
00:22:32.840
So I went to Peter because I'm going to be part of this.
1.00
00:22:48.980
We'll have a little party together and we'll laugh.
00:22:52.880
He sold the local TV rights for $7 billion and made $5 billion net immediately.
00:22:59.360
And when you own a sports team, you keep your local rights,
00:23:02.220
but you also get an equal share of everybody else around the nation.
00:23:06.640
So whether you're a small team or a big team, you get your percentage of that.
00:23:11.740
So the average return in the last 10 years across Major League Baseball,
00:23:18.660
If you took those four and merged them, the average return is 18% compounded per year.
00:23:24.200
It's been 11% for the S&P 500, and it's not correlated.
00:23:32.000
No one else can compete with you in that city, in that sport.
00:23:40.880
That's where the word fan comes from, fanatics, multi-generational.
00:23:44.380
So it's an amazing business, and it's fun, and it's enjoyable.
00:23:47.460
and people can be involved with it now like they never could before yeah it's it's a fun one and
00:23:53.180
it was so cool reading the examples in the book um tony obviously you got the chance to meet uh
00:23:59.240
and interview some of the best some of them are my heroes robert f smith from this as a software guy
00:24:03.960
he's the goat right vinod kosla david sacks like i met david sacks 13 years ago and he's just become
00:24:11.840
literally the category king in sass out of all those people what like does anybody stand out or
00:24:19.040
do you feel like they all have their genius like what did you learn talking to these these wizard
00:24:23.680
of the financial world i learned so many things and they're in the book but uh but i looked also
00:24:28.160
for common patterns because then you see universal principles that work and by the way you know sax
00:24:33.280
is genius original original paypal mafia is an unbelievable guy and i love him personally but
00:24:39.120
But, you know, I think Robert Smith would take offense to he's the owner of SaaS because Robert is the owner of SaaS.
00:24:45.760
Robert's got a $100 billion firm, and I can't say what his returns are because you've got to get the prospectus to do it legally.
00:24:52.200
But just he's the highest return of anybody that I interviewed for the longest period of time.
00:25:00.020
What I found really most interesting was the way they think about business and entrepreneurship.
00:25:06.920
When I interviewed the 50 smartest investors in the world, traditional investors, Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, you know, Paul Tudor Jones,
00:25:15.060
they all have different ways of doing things, but they're trying to buy something at the right price, right, and the right time.
00:25:21.140
What's so cool about private equity is the best people, they're not buying just trying to get, they like to get a great price.
00:25:28.100
But they're going to, their entire focus is adding value.
00:25:31.980
What I mean by that is when I first met Jim Rohn, my original teacher,
00:25:35.680
he answered one of the most important questions I had burning in my life,
00:25:44.420
I've done a billion meals in the last eight years,
00:25:46.560
is because someone provided food for my family when we had nothing when I was 11.
00:25:50.920
It started with two families, four, and built up.
00:25:53.140
Well, if you look at somebody like what Robert's done,
00:25:56.920
Robert's been in a position where he started with literally nothing,
00:25:59.400
and he built up, but he did it based on the principle that I learned from my teacher, Jim
00:26:03.460
Rohn. Jim Rohn, I asked him, I said, how come my fathers, they're all good men and we're always
00:26:07.620
broke. We had no money for food. And he said, Tony, we're all equal as souls, but we're not
00:26:14.740
equal in the marketplace. I said, what do you mean? He said, Tony, you could be a really good
00:26:19.680
person and work really hard and have nothing. He goes, I brought up school teachers, you know,
00:26:25.760
how little they make and how unfair that is compared to this hedge fund guy.
00:26:29.540
And he goes, Tony, well, let's start with McDonald's.
00:26:31.360
He said, I'm not being derogatory, but it's not designed to be your long-term job.
00:26:35.580
It's an entry job because you don't get paid much because it's easy to learn.
00:26:43.420
You're paid in proportion to the value you bring to people.
00:26:47.820
Today, there's machines now starting to replace these people in fast food places, right?
00:26:53.160
But the guy you're saying is terrible, he said, your teachers, how many of them were truly great?
00:27:03.700
And he said, yes, out of your entire education, there's three.
00:27:06.660
The others, would you agree, some were good, some were mediocre, some were terrible?
00:27:10.540
He goes, and they're helping 20 or 30 students.
00:27:14.380
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.
00:27:19.880
And they got a guarantee, and they do a lousy job.
00:27:22.140
But if you want to put yourself on the line and be valuable, it's a very different game.
00:27:25.680
So he said, the guy you're making fun of or being derogatory towards,
00:27:30.000
most people in those days were getting 6% returns.
00:27:32.340
He goes, he got a 48% return on billions of dollars.
00:27:40.420
So he's worth a billion dollars because he added that much more valuable.
00:27:44.120
He said, you need to focus on finding a way to do more for others than anybody else in whatever industry you're in.
00:27:50.380
You'll build a brand, and you'll become dominant, and you'll have a blast because you're a giver, Tony.
00:27:55.820
You're going to be proud of what you're doing, not just make a lot of money.
00:27:59.340
And that's why I got these, that's actually 114 companies now total.
00:28:05.920
And, I mean, every single company we built might have that obsession with adding value.
00:28:10.480
And that's what I saw in every one of these people.
00:28:13.440
They didn't just buy the asset or buy it right and then flip it over or cut it up in pieces like Private Equity used to do 20 years ago.
00:28:21.900
Now it's like, okay, you go to Robert Smith and you've got a SaaS organization.
00:28:25.700
He has built a system where you can take any SaaS company and grow it.
00:28:29.760
He knows how to bring the right CEO in the place, what the market piece, who are the right people, how can you advance the technology, how can you cut the cost.
00:28:36.780
So he makes it so valuable and then he sells it to a bigger company or takes it public.
00:28:41.140
So every single one of them was obsessed with adding value.
00:28:46.060
And that is really, really unique, but they do it in a different way.
00:28:49.780
You know, if you go to Veritas Capital, you know, Ramsey, he was partners with a guy 12 years ago and a guy committed suicide and they had a $2 billion fund.
00:29:02.960
And the fund was, you know, it had a clause in your agreement as a limited partner that if anything happened to the original founder investor, you could take your money back.
00:29:15.660
so he literally met with every around the world every investor flew and met
00:29:20.100
with them one-on-one and said I want you to stay with us and here's what I'm
00:29:23.160
gonna do he built that from from 2 billion to 42 billion in 11 years his
00:29:28.140
expertise was he said I'm gonna go do business with the government government
00:29:32.400
buys more technology than anyone on earth and no one else has mastered it
00:29:36.840
I'm gonna fit they all avoid it I'm gonna go master it and own them and
00:29:40.380
again I can't tell you his returns but I'll just tell you they're gigantic
00:29:44.900
returns compounded over a decade continuously because he's figured out how to add value in
00:29:49.380
the government system. You know what I mean? If you look at somebody like Khosla that you know,
00:29:53.920
of course, I mean, he took one of his best investments, he took $3 million and turned it
00:29:57.800
into $7 billion, right? And how did he do it? He looks around and says, okay, what's a technology
00:30:04.140
that could change the world that will be a necessity? And he saw Juniper Networks. He said,
00:30:09.760
But I think that's where the web is going to have to go.
00:30:12.420
He made these bets and a little bit, 7 billion is not like a gross number.
00:30:16.880
That's the net return to investors off that investment.
00:30:23.300
Each one of them is massively committed to added value.
00:30:28.860
They don't do it ad hoc to take any company in the categories they focus on and grow it.
00:30:34.760
Another reason I love doing this is I have these guys and they're all in different industries.
00:30:38.680
They're all, some of them are different countries.
00:30:40.680
You know, you go to somebody like MBK Partners, right?
00:30:45.680
And, you know, he's the, Michael Kim, he's the, what do you call it, the biggest investor,
00:30:50.680
the most successful private equity investor in basically Japan, China, Asia.
00:30:55.680
He's the richest, you know, South Korean in the world.
00:31:04.680
that so i think really knowing your market really knowing your ideal customer coming up with products
00:31:11.320
and services that produce raving fans coming up with an irresistible offer which is a lot of what
00:31:16.600
they do each time an offer that is so good that people say i gotta at least try it and that then
00:31:21.320
they over deliver they all seem to have that in common even though they're doing different
00:31:25.720
industries in different ways and have different forms of expertise it's so great i love the idea
00:31:31.720
because a lot of people they struggle with like should i go all in on my primary business because
00:31:36.120
i they hear diversification but it's like all these people mastered their game systematize it
00:31:41.720
created ways to again the asymmetrical results um i think that's awesome the the question i want to
00:31:48.200
kind of get closer as we wrap up is how has having a child as a 61 year old person change your
00:31:55.400
perspective on life tony i mean when you guys shared that sage and yourself it was inspired
00:32:00.200
for me i'm like wow this is really fascinating like how how does that change your perspective
00:32:05.560
on life and how you show up and how you think about your time right because i wrote a book
00:32:09.320
i'll buy back your time how has that impacted where you allocate your time well it's interesting
00:32:13.800
you know before you know i have five kids and five grandkids and my oldest daughter is 40 ain't going
0.99
00:32:19.800
to be 49 in about a month and my youngest daughter's coming up on three pretty soon it's two and
00:32:25.080
three quarters so i got quite a quite a spread but um the answer your question is i didn't want to
00:32:31.080
have both my wife and i uh she couldn't carry because of a problem with her body so we went
00:32:37.560
through ivf and went through all these processes for years and then our life was on the road to
00:32:42.680
and 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
00:32:46.840
so like i don't want to bring a kid into that experience just too hard especially at this stage
00:32:51.160
of life so when COVID happened and I found a way I could talk like I'm doing a seminar by the way I
00:32:56.920
should mention for your audience I do a free seminar every year I started with COVID because
00:33:01.960
you know people are trapped in their homes I was doing stadiums and suddenly stadiums said I could
00:33:05.880
put a hundred people in a stadium instead of 15 000 I was like so I built these studios and I
00:33:11.080
started doing these events and I said I want no one to stop by money if they're stuck at home I
00:33:14.920
want to be able to show them how to change their life from their home and I want to have to travel
00:33:19.480
obviously and so we put these events on for three days there's one coming up january 25th through
00:33:24.680
the 27th starts at 2 p.m eastern but we have people from 195 countries have come and we had
00:33:29.880
over a million people last year and we give you the way it's called time to rise if you go to
00:33:34.360
timetorisesummit.com timetorisesummit.com you get tickets it's free you can do it from your home
00:33:40.840
or your office bring your family and your friends but but uh the reason i bring this up is when i
00:33:45.480
could reach millions of people and go deep and do these giant events now like instead of 10 or 15
00:33:51.480
000 i got 40 000 people in the event and they're from 195 countries all over the earth at once
00:33:56.600
i was like we could have a kid and we could be home more i still travel but nothing like i did
00:34:01.960
and so we tried one final time and god blessed us and answer your question is it's been the
00:34:06.120
greatest gift of my life because i'm proud of how i've been as a father when i was in my 20s
00:34:09.880
now i married a woman who was 13 years my senior in my first marriage and she had been married
00:34:14.120
twice before and had kids from both their husbands and I adopted them all. So I was, you know, 24,
00:34:19.800
a 17 year old, an 11 year old, a five year old, and then went on the way. So at this stage,
00:34:25.320
it's very different. You know, I've got a lot more to even more to give. And Sage is such an
00:34:29.880
unbelievable mother. And we have such incredible family. So it's, it's changed things so that now,
00:34:35.000
you know, I have rituals, like I have dinner at 630. I've never had dinner a certain time before.
00:34:45.420
You know, at that stage of life, she's learning Chinese and Spanish and English, and she's
00:34:50.120
playing the piano, and she has time just to be a human.
00:34:52.960
And, you know, yesterday, flew a kite, which I would never be doing at this stage normally.
00:35:00.320
And I told my wife originally, I said, I'm not having a kid past 50.
00:35:03.220
I said, I'm not going to show up at her high school graduation at 70 years old.
00:35:06.560
Now I'm going to be 80 at her high school graduation.
00:35:09.120
But I got to tell you, it's the most beautiful thing in the world.
00:35:12.060
And I, without naming names, I had a very, very famous designer who I had dinner with one time with Steve Wynn at his resort.
00:35:20.560
And we were sitting at dinner and he was 65 and just had two children.
00:35:27.560
And he went on and on the entire night about how it was the greatest thing in his life.
00:35:34.200
And then God made it possible because of COVID.
00:35:36.120
So I don't have to choose between my mission and my child.
00:35:38.140
get to do it all and she gets to attend the seminars and watch on tv we don't show pictures
00:35:43.100
of i don't even say her name because i want her to have a private life no social media
00:35:46.860
um so she can have just her own life outside of that but she gets to attend and sometimes comes
00:35:51.420
back and looks through the curtain sees what's going on but she because we do so much hybrid
00:35:55.660
you know live events and video base she gets to attend most of the events at this stage which is
00:36:00.220
just a blast it's cool tony to see you even at this stage push the boundaries of what's possible
00:36:06.060
and what you think you can do at different ages.
00:36:15.560
I believe there's actually a free audio chapter.
00:36:18.400
Can you talk more about where they can get that?
00:36:31.620
is there for free and you can listen to it if you'd like
00:36:35.200
so you can pre-order it, but you'll get a jump on it right away.
00:36:39.700
Everybody, go get a copy of the book, The Holy Grail of Investing.
00:36:43.100
Tony, you've had an incredible impact on my life,
00:36:48.500
My brother and I remember that when the first one came out,
00:36:52.060
and I'm excited to share this one with him when it comes out.
00:37:01.200
I want all your audience to know that I do this five-day boot camp
00:37:04.940
that I do for business is help them grow their business,
00:37:06.760
you know, 30 to 180%, depending on the type of business.
00:37:13.660
So I can't tell people enough about how great you were there.
00:37:20.420
Awesome, Tony, have an amazing rest of the day.