Money And Psychology, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 1

TWS 7 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

 

Any Tony Robbins finance summit always bring game-changing opportunities for thrill seekers and for those who want to grow and stand out in their industries. Patrick Donohoe shares his fruitful experience from the event. Understanding oneself is key to establishing what you want. A clear set of outcomes along with the excitement that sticks with achieving it is one of the highlights of the summit. Discover more learning from the summit such the idea of money magnifying the understanding of psychology, the archetypes that people have, the five financial dreams, and Erik Prince’s economic influence.

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Money And Psychology, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 1

I’m up in Sun Valley, Idaho. It’s beautiful up here and cold. As most of you know, I’m at the Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership finance trip, which is a summit of a couple of hundred people every year that learns from some of the best minds in the economy about what’s going on, what are the opportunities and what to be aware of. I’m going to recap every day for you. It’s going to be day one and it was crazy. It was over a twelve-hour day starting at noon. We didn’t get out until almost 1:00. It was packed. Tony did the entire day. I learned a lot and a lot is repetition. I’ve learned some of these principles and ideas before. As most of you know, sometimes it takes 2 to 4 plus an emotional experience to have those ideas resonate so that they’re understood, not just analytically processed. There’s a difference.

Day One: Real Wealth, Your Economic Identity, And The Four Kinds Of Archetypes

Day one is philosophical. In the next couple of days, they get into some alternative investments. The CEO of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is one of the speakers, as well as Bill Gross and Ray Dalio. There are seven billionaires that are going to be speakers. It’s going to be a stock-full of valuable information, but on day one, it was Tony. For those of you who have had the opportunity to go to one of his events, you understand where he is when it comes to the importance of mindset. It doesn’t matter how much material things you have, real wealth is in the mind. He started right out of the gate by explaining how real wealth is being able to master the mind. Mastering the mind usually is in unfavorable circumstances. If you look at the wealthy and successful from a financial perspective, they have made their wealth during the downturns, the winters, difficult times where everyone’s afraid. Nobody is willing to act because they don’t have control over those two competing forces, the analytical mind and the emotional mind. It was refreshing. The theme is to be able to live without fear, especially when it comes to finances.

Let me get into a couple of my notes. I have probably 30 pages of notes from one day. It’s crazy. I’m going to highlight a few things that he said and expand on them. Developing ownership of being the creator of your life, not a victim of circumstance. This is a powerful idea. It’s something that I thought a lot about, especially when it comes to business. I believe that we get caught up in what’s called the tyranny of how, which is the analytical mind is trying to figure out, “How is this going to happen?” The emotional mind is telling us that it’s not possible as well. That’s where it comes down to understanding yourself as the possibility of creation and being able to establish what you want. Not having a plan of how to do it, but having essentially a clear set of outcomes that you are passionate and excited about. The ‘how’ ultimately manifests. Being in that mindset is a prerequisite for that manifestation. It’s an interesting idea.

If you look at the nature of growth, typically growth is not controlled. People usually will have to have some unfavorable circumstances happen to them in order for them to wake up, to snap out of it, to have a realization or an epiphany. At the same time, you can control that. There are these thresholds that we have within ourselves when it comes to what we want and what we’re willing to do. If you look at the nature of equality, our souls are all the same and equal. The value that we bring comes down to our psychology. The value we bring to the marketplace is represented in the monetary remuneration for that. He stated that getting to the next level, there’s something in your way in which you identify with economics. There are these thresholds. It’s this idea that you hit these thresholds, whether it’s the money that you make or the investments that you make, your risk tolerance, but it comes down to your mind. He ended that thought with the idea of what real wealth is.

He defines wealth as the ability to extract enjoyment from life, no matter the circumstances and being able to do that in every moment. The idea of money magnifies that understanding of that psychology. What that means is if you’re not happy, satisfied and joyous about what you have, that lack of that state will magnify. If you’re in a scarce, fear-based, frustrated, egotistical, envious type of state, the money will magnify that. It’s a powerful idea. That’s why he focuses on mindset and state so that it’s established. Regardless of what your circumstances are, you’re able to find the beauty, the enjoyment, the satisfaction with whatever is going on before you get to the next level. It’s almost a prerequisite. That mindset puts you in this state of being able to have more. It’s fascinating. We’ve talked about that before with the whole Have-Do-Be instead of Be-Do-Have habits. It is that same idea.

It doesn't matter how much material things you have, real wealth is in the mind. Click To Tweet

Tony mentioned that with all the things that go, the reason why he bombards you with information isn’t so that you absorb and take in all of that information. It’s the one idea that’s meant for you, the epiphany, the one takeaway, the one action on it, the one realization requires one to completely change your life. That’s what these events are for. That’s why I was persistent in inviting you out to UPW, which is his foundational event in San Jose. There’s going to be another one in Chicago. If you want all the information for my contact over at the Tony Robbins organization, you can register for that too with the same discount. There’s one in Chicago and there’s going to be one in New York City toward the end of the year. The idea is for you to have this awakening of sorts. It happens based on his teaching and explaining based on some of the physical things that you do, but also based on some of the interventions that he does that requires one idea.

He went through a lot of different examples, but there is someone that pays for the Platinum partner membership and comes to the finance event. At the finance event is where all these ideas float to him. He made a deal in 2019 where he sold a business to Merrill Lynch for $1.2 billion coming from one idea that he got at finance. The thing is putting yourself in the environment in which these ideas come to you. It’s not going to happen in your general set of circumstances. I have one idea on the kickoff dinner that I could have gone home. It’s one conversation with this guy in the home renovation industry, of all industries. It rocked my world. It’s one idea to completely change one idea, one realization, one epiphany, that completely changes your life. Another purpose and theme of the week is expanding your economic identity, those thresholds, your relationships when it comes to money and finance.

Ray Dalio has this amazing video that was played. It talks about the economic machine. I think you would get a lot out of it. It’s deep with information. At the same time, he makes it easy to understand that. It will give you the idea of a system and what to look for when it comes to economic opportunities. I’m going to get into the final piece. This is my realization and it may sound strange. The guy that was sitting next to me was an extremely successful venture capitalist. He’s younger than I am. He’s in his mid-30s and has a couple of nine-figure funds. He does some incredible things. He helped me identify something that I hadn’t thought of before. Tony is a coach for a lot of high-level people. He coached Conor McGregor in his win. I didn’t watch the fight. I don’t watch MMA fights that often. He used that experience to talk about these four kinds of archetypes that people have.

You have the warrior archetype, magician archetype, the lover archetype and then the sovereign or the King or Queen archetype. This struck me. I’ve been to over a dozen events and he hasn’t spoken about this before, but he did this time and it clicked. The individual I was sitting next called me out on a few things that things started to click for me. I want to be a little open with you. One of the exercises they take you through is they have you answered the question, “What is money?” You keep saying everything that’s on your mind, “What is wealth? What is money not or wealth is not?”

It does extracts language. It extracts words, whatever is on your mind. That’s flowing there. I realized that there are some dominant archetypes that we have that I don’t believe we are fully in control over, unless you’re aware of it. As you can imagine, I won’t get into a lot of the details, but the warrior archetype, you can imagine what that is. The lover archetype, you can imagine what that is. The magician archetype, you can imagine what that is, as well as the sovereign or the King. These are part of our identity, our psychology that has been essentially formed over the course of time. It’s also natural. Based on our circumstances, based on typically child events where we came to certain realizations of who we are and what we need to do to protect ourselves, we’ve formed one or a couple of these dominant archetypes.

In the language that I was using when I was coming up with, “Where my identity thresholds were?” I realized that my identity was heavily in the warrior identity and lover identity. It oscillated back and forth. There was some magician in there every once in a while. What I wanted was the sovereign and the King identity, but the language I was using answering on all of these questions, all related to the language of the warrior and the lover. A lover being gracious, charitable, altruistic in a sense of giving. You have the warrior, which is make it happen, do whatever it takes.

TWS 7 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: Develop an ownership of being the creator of your life, not a victim of circumstance.

 

I realize that there are elements that I’ve seen myself in the past, as far as the characteristics of my personality, my psychology, that has come to certain circumstances with the magician. I know what the outcome is. The sovereign, I became more aware of myself in being able to identify what the best results that I get when my psychology is growing the most is in this specific archetype. It’s figuring out how to identify what that archetype, in a sense, act and show up as that archetype will get me the results that I want. Yet, I was showing up as a different archetype. This may sound weird to you. Conor McGregor, the example he used was his natural identity was a warrior. It’s like going to battle fighting and winning at all costs, all odds.

Tony brought out the magician in him and the magician was creative, figuring out how we win the game in a way that wasn’t anticipated or expected. The magician is looser. They’re more free-flowing. He was able to help Conor capture that and subsequently win his fight in 40 to 42 seconds. That’s the biggest breakthrough I had. It is understanding how I show up in my specific set of circumstances, how I view money, how I view economics and then establishing what I want, as far as the enjoyment levels of life. I’m going to discuss that as some of the things I put down, essentially establishing what those are. Once it’s all established, once it’s stated, then you can come up with plans and how to accomplish that. The psychology of believing that it’s possible first takes precedence. You are amazing. Thanks for tuning in. We will be back with another episode. Take care.

Day Two: The Experience Of Life, The History Of Money And Their Patterns, And The Five Financial Dreams

I’m back for day two of recapping the event. I’m still up in Sun Valley, Idaho. It’s the Tony Robbins finance conference that he puts on once a year for his platinum partners. It has been packed. It’s been crazy. I can’t find any time to do these recaps, let alone sleep. I’m having a great time. I’m learning a ton. I’m going to recap the primary things I learned from day two. Tony started out the day talking about your body. He’s writing a book called Life Force Ha, coming out in 2020. He’s been working on it for a while. He started with this quote, “A person with health has a million dreams and a person without it only has one.” It eludes to this idea that the experience of life is very much dependent on our physical wellbeing, our health. Although we have many conveniences, life is becoming easier from a physical perspective, people are becoming unhealthy. They are no longer forced to survive, which helps them retain that physical vitality.

They don’t need it. It is more of a choice to work out, eat healthy, in a sense is even more challenging than having to do it to survive. He then brings in all his companies as well as others, whether it’s Egoscue, which is a form of physical structure and different stretching and ways you can align your body. He has a number of others. He is huge on this whole idea of health and having your body in its optimal state in order to have the best experience of your day. I’m going to get into a couple of other things that I’ve thought through. It does have to do with the whole idea of health and our physical wellbeing, but it’s patterns.

I didn’t cover this in the day one review, but the speaker late on day one was Niall Ferguson and he wrote The Ascent Of Money. He is a consultant to a lot of major hedge funds as well as sovereign funds throughout multiple countries. He is a brilliant individual, funny, great storyteller. He is good at British sarcasm and humor. I researched some podcasts that he’s been on. He’s worth the listen. He talked a lot about the history, as far as the history of money and their patterns. I believe recognizing those patterns help us anticipate the future. At the same time, we don’t necessarily have to be subject to patterns. We can create our own patterns. This is where health comes into play. We have a pattern of health. We have a pattern of how we do things and understanding that it exists and be able to essentially refine, break the pattern, create new ones in order to improve our results.

The psychological thing that's going on in our mind is we put an impossible number out there which demotivates us. Click To Tweet

He specifically talked about patterns as it related to what’s going on in the world. Even though it’s all different, there are some things that are the same because human behavior is the same. He spoke to a lot of what happened in 2008 and 2009 and referenced other times in history with the same things that have happened. I will pick up his book, The Ascent Of Money. He’s updated it in the last couple of years to reflect some of the more modern things that are going on mainly in Chimerica, which he talked about extensively. This is about what is driving China, what are their motivations, what are their intentions? He looked at history to help refine what’s going to happen in the future. That was interesting.

Ray Dalio did the same thing. He talked about patterns. I mentioned that when it came to how the economy works. I reviewed that because it shows you the different patterns that occur. It’s not necessarily going to predict with 100% accuracy the future, but you’re going to start to be able to see signs of what’s going on and understand how those fit within the patterns of how an economy works. I’m going to talk about what I believe Tony is brilliant at. He has helped me. I mentioned this idea of understanding outcomes, understanding results, understanding your goals. Those are insanely important to be crystal clear about what you want, why you want it and the motivations to get it.

We all have these psychological thresholds. We have thresholds based on the amount of money our parents earned, our socio-economic circles earn, our peers, maybe our extended family, our siblings. We’re psychologically kept. It’s a glass ceiling, at the same time, it’s a ceiling. Understanding goals going to push you to the brink of that threshold and breaking through that threshold allows you to achieve those goals. Being crystal clear about what it is, how it’s measured, believing that it’s possible, making it a must. Not a could, but a must, “I must do that. I must achieve that.” Then ensuring that it’s worth it, that the reward is worth the struggle and pushing through. Nothing’s going to come without hitting that threshold. Those psychological thresholds, especially when it comes to money, we don’t even realize they’re there, but they’re there. Being able to have something that is motivating us is huge in getting crystal clear about that.

One of the things that Tony brought up is he’s very well off, which is clear. Most billionaires are very well off and their motivations have changed to what they originally have been. He had stated that there were at least twenty different charitable causes, whether it’s the partnerships that he’s done. Feeding two billion people sustainably is what his X Prize is with Peter Diamandis and Elon Musk. He’s pushing to these more contributions to the world projects that is breaking through the thresholds that he had previously. He doesn’t have to work. He doesn’t have to do what he does, but he has these new motivations that he has designed. He has created commitments there that have made him push through new thresholds that he had in order to achieve more.

His whole life is about contributing and giving back. There is a birthday party that he’s doing in Los Angeles. His wife and his circle of influence are putting it on for him. The proceeds are going through Operation Underground Railroad. There’s a documentary that Russell Brunson did. There’s also a movie coming out with one of my favorite actors. The guy who played The Count of Monte Cristo. There’s a movie coming out about human trafficking, the sex trafficking that’s happening all around the world. A lot of the demand is coming from the United States. These are places like Haiti and Asia. It’s horrific what’s going on.

Operation Underground Railroad is out in Utah. Timothy Ballard, who’s the CEO and is a former Special Forces, he may have been maybe a Navy SEAL, but he essentially got to the point with his position in the government where it was difficult to go after these types of criminals. He took it upon himself to form an organization that goes out and does that and is making a huge difference. Tony has raised millions and tens of millions of dollars. This whole birthday party is around that idea of contribution. There are the things that are motivating him that are beyond him. This doesn’t mean that we have to have these altruistic, charitable driven things at the same time. The gift of contribution, the gift of making a difference in somebody else’s life. There are more psychological and spiritual benefits for that than anything else that you could do. At the same time, your enjoyment of complete altruism is imbalanced.

TWS 7 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: We have thresholds based on the amount of money our parents earned, socio-economic circles, peers, and siblings.

 

It’s your enjoyment of life, being able to do the things you want, go to the places that you want. What Tony does is he explains that there are these five financial dreams. The five financial dreams are facilitated by having savings, having your investments at a point, at a level, he called the critical mass level. The money is at a certain level that if it were to earn 5%, it would pay for these dreams. The first level of dream is that your investments in a 5% return on those investments would pay for your basic living expenses such as your food, shelter, clothing, transportation and basic insurance. You calculate what that is. What is the bare minimum that you can live on your rent, your food and so forth? What is the dollar amount that’s needed to hit that threshold?

One of the exercises he did in advance of this was powerful, where he asked the question, “What dollar amount would you need to be financially free?” You had people that put down $5 million, $20 million, $1 billion and $500 million. The answers were all over the place. The reason why he did this was to seep where someone’s psychology is. As he goes through these dreams, his intention was to show that we think it’s going to be much money than it is to be financially free and it’s much less. The psychological thing that’s going on in our mind is we put this huge number, this impossible number out there. It demotivates us from even getting started. Being able to establish that threshold, what is it going to take? Then going into, what is it going to take to be the first dream financial security? Having that critical mass, that amount of money that if it earned 5% would pay for your food, utilities, transportation, basic insurance. It’s a number that’s much less than what people think it is.

Then the next dream is financial vitality. Financial vitality is all of your financial security expenses plus one-half of your monthly clothing costs, one-half of dining and entertainment, one-half of small, indulgent and luck or luxury. This gets to the point where it’s not only your basic living expenses, but maybe it’s going on vacation or maybe going to the movies or going out to eat. It’s calculating what is your critical mass, what’s the amount of assets with a 5% return? It would create a cashflow sufficient to pay for financial vitality. That’s a bigger number than financial security. It is a number that is way less than what people think they need to be financially independent. This purpose isn’t necessarily to say, “I’m going to have enough money, then I’m going to have my living expenses covered.” It’s not to do that. It’s to create milestones. To create these psychological levels where we know that we have enough money, sufficient resources and sufficient cashflow to pay for these things. Knowing that allows us to push more. It operates outside of fear. That’s what I said, to live without fear. These are ways in which you can position your psychology so that you establish thresholds where you have certainty in your mind that if this happened, “I have enough resources to pay for my basic expenses or financial vitality.”

Next is financial independence, which is the critical mass at a 5% earnings rate that would support your lifestyle. People budgeted out their lifestyle and then calculated what it would take to get there. The next is financial freedom, which is financial independence, plus 2 to 3 major luxuries. This could be a big diamond ring for your twentieth anniversary, or it could be a trip around the world or it could be buying a dream home or second home on the beach or something like that. It’s calculating what that dollar amount is.

He had pages in there that showed the luxury cars that are out there. A home, they had mortgage interest rates and payments. You’re able to see what it would take in order to do that. It was much less than what people thought. Next is absolute financial freedom is whatever you want, whenever you want. This is where people were pushed to put things in there that you usually don’t think about. I was like, “If I had absolute financial freedom, I can do what I want when I want and what would I do.” I’ve started to calculate things. Things that came to my mind were taking my wife’s family, who are underprivileged and taking them all to Hawaii for a week of Thanksgiving. I calculated out what that dollar amount would be.

Life is becoming easier from a physical perspective that people are becoming unhealthy. Click To Tweet

Another one was my wife and I had the opportunity to go to Tahiti a few years ago. What it would take to go back and be able to take my brother? I got married within nine months of each other. For our twentieth anniversary, I’ll take my brother and his wife to that same experience that Cynthia and I had. What that would be? I started thinking, my parents are going to be moving from Cape Cod to the West. What would it take to purchase a home there and continue the legacy that we have? We’ve gone to Cape Cod every summer for several years. What it would take to do that?

You come up with all of these different things and calculate it out. It stretches you. You start to realize, “In order to have that, I don’t have to do much more.” What it does is it helps to calibrate where you’re at and push you beyond where your thresholds are. That’s what I wanted to cover for this recap. The speaker for the second day evening was Erik Prince. He is the Former CEO of Blackwater. Blackwater is a private military contracting company that he’d founded. There are lots of conspiracy theories around Erik Prince and Blackwater. I’m not sure whether it’s true. I looked at a bunch of different things around the internet, but I found him to be genuine. I found him to be intelligent. He’s since sold Blackwater and he has different investment venture capital funds, not just in the US but around the world.

He spoke with somewhat intimate knowledge about the rest of the world. He talked a lot about the Butterfly Effect because of how intertwined things are. One little blip here and there could set things off, specifically based on what we’re dealing with is the Coronavirus. He spoke a lot about China and about what China’s intentions are. He made the statement that China is not militaristic. China is not after conquering the world with their military. They are about their economic power, their economic influence in what they’re doing.

I mentioned on the show before that they have a huge presence in Africa and other parts of the world. The way in which they’re doing it is interesting. Erik went into what the supply chain looks like with China and how that relates to the rest of the world as well as shipping. He said he wasn’t afraid of China. He also stated that there’s a time where if you’ve been indulging for too long, it’s good to go on a diet. He said that is what the United States needs. We are at a historic low-interest rates, highest tax revenues, but also the highest amount of debt we’ve ever had, as well as our entitlement benefits. We’re at this point in time where we need to figure out how to cut trim the fat. He didn’t necessarily allude to any type of trigger that would do that. He also said that China is using its influence to become more powerful. They are hoarding gold. There’s a rumor or speculation that they are creating gold back cryptocurrency to create a more balanced trade.

It was pretty fascinating. He talked about how Venezuela had a tremendous wealth there, but also alluded to Maduro’s influence being deep-rooted and it’s going to be difficult for Guaidó to get into his position even though he was elected. He talked about how things are becoming so much more international. The world is very youthful. One of the statistics I saw, this is by somebody else and not by Erik, there are 600 million people in the age of twenty in Africa, which I found fascinating. I’ll get to that one next time based on another speaker who has a 5G satellite company, as well as a new technology. His insight was fascinating. He talked about how China is dealing with lots of other countries. He also talked about how the manufacturing is dependent on them. I know I’m going off on China, but the majority of people’s questions revolved around China because of what’s going on with the coronavirus. There are also a lot of Chinese that were supposed to come to this event. They weren’t able because of the travel restrictions, travel bans. I’m going to leave it at that.

He did say that there’s a tremendous opportunity if you understand the rest of the world. I think that the United States still has a tremendous opportunity, but for those of you who are reading that are very knowledgeable about the rest of the world, knowledgeable about how to do investment overseas. He had mentioned that some of the Middle East countries, African countries as well as some of the dependent pieces of the supply chain that we have with regards to China are huge opportunities because there’s capacity in other parts of the world other than China. He was specifically alluding to minerals and how minerals are our main manufactured there and how parts, whether it’s for computers, how industrial metals are being used, how those are rare earth minerals are being used to create different technologies. It was over my head to an extent. Erik Prince is somewhat active online. You can follow him. That’s it. Thank you for tuning in for the day two recap of my experience here.

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