Tony Robbins

TWS 54 | UPW Virtual

My Top Takeaways From Tony Robbins’s UPW Virtual

July 30, 2020 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:56:50 Comments Off on My Top Takeaways From Tony Robbins’s UPW Virtual

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Top-ranked life and business strategist Tony Robbins breaks records in the virtual events space with his groundbreaking Unleash The Power Within Live Virtual 360 Interactive Experience, which teaches thousands of people how to discover their power to break through limitations, overcome challenges and create the life that they want. In this episode, Patrick Donohoe shares his top takeaways from the UPW Virtual, the biggest virtual event ever. Whether you’re in it for your business, career or personal life, there is so much you can learn about creating a successful and fulfilled life. And what better time is there to learn than in these unprecedented times? Plus, Patrick answers a couple of questions concerning the Federal Reserve and the stock market. There is so much you can take away from this short but compact episode. Don’t miss it!

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My Top Takeaways From Tony Robbins’s UPW Virtual

I hope you guys are well. I know we’re in rough times. I hope you’re gaining some insight and motivation from the show to help navigate these waters and find some fulfillment, joy, and gratitude as well as opportunities to grow and be even more successful. I wish you guys the best. This is what I’m going to talk about. It would be important to note this upfront. I’m going to get into the top four things I took away from Tony Robbins’ UPW Virtual. It’s the biggest Zoom call, virtual event ever done. There were 24,000 people there. Tony had this 360 screen that went all the way around. It was incredible. I had a great experience. I’m going to share four things there.

At the end, there’s a couple of questions that came in through social media and YouTube that I’d like to answer. The first one was based on the interview that Andy Tanner and I did, which is, how do you go about studying the Federal Reserve System? The second question related to the stock market and came from one of the Richard Duncan interviews, which was, what is the Federal Reserve going to do if the stock market crashes? Thank you guys for being here. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for taking the time to learn, grow, and take the steps necessary to take your life to the next level. I’m going to first get into a few recommendations that I have before I do the Tony Robbins thing.

There’s a company/app that I started using in 2008, 2009. It’s more like the end of 2009, 2010. It was a company called Lexington Law. Lexington Law was one of the first credit repair companies out there and their platform, system, and model are amazing. I know with job loss and with the crazy times that we’re in, credit is getting crushed. Credit monitoring and credit repair, these guys have the best. Credit these days is here to stay even though they change and adapt a little bit, it’s the objective way whether it’s mortgages credit, business credit, getting hired, or renting, credit is almost a necessity of good credit. Staying on top of it, even though I have a perfect credit score now, I still maintain monitoring because identity theft is still prevalent out there. Staying on top of it is also important.

They have some Credit Monitoring Services as well as Credit Repair Services that I still take advantage up to this day. Incredible company. They’re here in Utah and they’ve been around the longest. From my experience, it’s incredible. If you guys need that service, definitely check them out. The second thing is a new app that my wife and I started using, which is You Need A Budget. I have an accounting staff here for the business. I have bookkeepers that do some of the other business stuff that I have in investment, but for personal cashflow, it’s between my wife and I. You Need A Budget is one of those apps that has continually improved. It’s so easy to use. We use it all the time, it helps to identify money going out, and opportunities to be more efficient with that. Check them out as well.

Let’s get into what I took away from the Tony Robbins event. First off, for those of you reading for a while, I invited you guys all to come to the live UPW in San Jose. There was going to be one in Chicago neither are happening. Tony tried to reschedule and find that city. Finally, it was like, “Nothing’s going to open. It’s not going to happen.” That realization opened up a space for him to innovate and create a new level and precedent for virtual meetings and conferences. This meeting was amazing. There were people from all around the world. He had a 360 screen with people’s faces on there. I’m not sure from a visual standpoint. I probably wasn’t able to sleep because of all that light for that long.

I had this 360 screen. You guys can check out. Some pictures are all over social media and YouTube but it was a great event. I’ve been to a number of these events. The dynamic was different at the same time, the content and the experience was very similar and incredibly effective. He’s doing it again in November 2020. I’d like to invite all of you guys. This is something that allows you introspection and breakthrough. I have not found it possible in other areas of life unless you get fired, have a rough time, and your breakthrough happens to happen because of terrible pain, frustration, anxiety, depression. When you’re at the bottom, breakthrough usually happens.

This is a way that you can do it proactively. I know there is a lot of unemployment claims that are almost 40 million. You have all sorts of major companies filing bankruptcy every day. It’s a rough time. This is a time where innovation and solutions are the biggest opportunities ever yet. That is the paradox, during the times when nobody wants to innovate and they’re scared for their life to innovate is the time to innovate. This is an event that helps you understand yourself at a deeper level. Make sure you bookmark that. It’s virtual. You need an internet connection and you have to use Zoom but it’s amazing.

I imagine it is going to be even better because there were some quirks and some things I got kicked out a few times. At the same time, it pushed the limits of Zoom and I believe it’s going to be even better. For those of you who are business owners, entrepreneurs, investors, Business Mastery, which is also in an event I’ve attended a number of times and it has changed my business and finances. You guys have heard about it on the show a number of times, both directly and indirectly. Business Mastery is incredible and that’s going to happen August 19th through the 23rd, 2020. I can’t wait for that. It’s going to be incredible to see how he does everything virtually.

My UPW Takeaways

If you’re a business owner and investor, check that out. Here’s what I learned from UPW. These are things that I have maybe talked about before or the things that I heard and understood to an extent, but because of where I’m at in life, it’s always different when you consume information, especially in a good heightened state. You think about it differently and it makes more sense or it connects with you at a deeper level. The first thing I learned or had some breakthrough with is the Science of Achievement. Science is the ability to show reason as far as why something has become as an outcome. I look at achievement.

You're more likely to get what you want and achieve what you want if you are already fulfilled by what you have. Click To Tweet

The desire for achievement is within everybody, even if they don’t say that it is. People are naturally compelled to grow and to get to the next level, which is achieving a new level and then a new level, and it never stops. The Science of Achievement is to understand the method behind what is achieved and you do. It gets a little complicated detailed but I would say the easy way to explain it is, identify what you want first. It sounds self-explanatory but people have an idea of what they don’t want. They don’t know exactly what they want. Sometimes, people describe what they want as what they don’t want. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want to have this career for the rest of my life.

Identify what you want then it’s going about discovering those that have achieved that and hopefully more. When you’ve discovered that person, organization, etc., it is the study of their method and their method could be a mindset, routine, or language. There’s a number of things but I’ll use an example of losing weight or bodybuilding. Having a certain physical appearance as well as internal energy level. The idea is first to identify what you want, then you look at the science behind someone who’s achieved it. It could be, how much sleep do they get? What time did they go to bed? How do they prepare for sleep, so they get a good deep sleep and allow their body to repair itself at the highest level?

What do they do with their exercise routine? How do they prepare? How do they eat? What are the portions? Why did they choose those portions? You get into the science and study what it is you want to achieve. It’s been done before. We live in a shortcut society so everybody wants the pill or the quick fix, but the science of achievement has a method to it. The method is step-by-step, formulaic. It’s understanding that from someone who has achieved it and trying to embody what they do from how they speak. It comes down to what you want to achieve, but I’ll go back to the physical side of things.

How do you speak about yourself? What are the routines you take in the morning, the day, or the afternoon? How much time do you spend here? How much time do you spend there? Understanding that allows us to start to connect to, I’m not doing that? I’m going to do 70% of these things. Start to chip away at what I want. That’s the Science of Achievement. You identify what you would achieve, 99.9999% of what you most likely articulate has been achieved. It comes down to identifying the person group who’s achieved it and breaking down their methods, mentality, perspective, philosophy, and starting to compare.

The next thing is the Art of Fulfillment. This comes to the next paradox that I mentioned a moment ago. The Art of Fulfillment sunk in because of quarantine and the shutdown. I discovered that there was a certainty that I wanted with regard to my business, traveling, and this is on the calendar. We’ve done this, prepared for this, planned for this. Is it going to happen? I don’t know if it might happen. It frustrated me and a number of different instances. The idea of fulfillment comes down to, regardless of what’s going on around you, achieving what you want, getting what you want, or things being the same. It’s to be grateful, appreciative, and fulfilled as if nothing changed.

Now, I mentioned that we’re compelled to change and grow but the Art of Fulfillment, and this is why it’s an art, it’s different for everybody is to find ways in which you can appreciate how things are. You can appreciate what you’ve already achieved. You can appreciate and be grateful for all the things around you. Here’s what’s interesting. There’s a book called Letting Go by David Hawkins and it talks about the science of letting go, the science of art of fulfillment, and I’m so grateful where it essentially frees up space and energy so that what you do want to achieve is more likely interesting. You’re more likely to get what you want and achieve what you want if you are already fulfilled by what you have. I connected to that and started to appreciate who I am, what I have, and all the things to be grateful for around me.

It’s amazing what that does. Tony uses the example of Robin Williams. Robin Williams being one of the most loved people on planet earth, amazing actor, achieved all sorts of levels in his career, yet he never figured out fulfillment and that’s why he killed himself. The idea is, I’ll sum it up in a quote that he often uses which is, “Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.” Those are the first two things. The second thing is the Success Curve. The success curve is there’s also in economics, something called the S curve. It’s not the same but the S curve and success curve is first starts out as growth. Most people that study finance and wealth have heard and understand the compound interest that interest, earning interest, etc.

Most people don’t understand that the nature and tenants of compound interest. They look at this linear thing which, “If I earn 8% and 8% and 8%, and I earned it over the course of 50 years, I’m going to be this.” Life is not linear. Life does not happen like that. No tree grows to the sky. Just as much as in nature, there are things that stop at a certain level and then innovate at that level. The same thing happens with success and economics. I was in Montana and you had these trees that fell almost onto the river. You could see how it was bent over because the roots were sticking out, but yet it still stayed in place and didn’t fall in the river.

The trunk started to grow straight from that point on. This is the idea of success curve as well as innovation in economics or an economy. We’re seeing it all around us. We’re at the going down piece of the compound curve. Society and markets have grown. Things have gone up and there’s so much pressure on it not going up based on the same principles that got it there. That’s why you’re starting to see declines. This happens in our personal lives, nature, economics, markets, and society where you grow based on certain principles, and then it starts to decline. From a personal and success standpoint, you plateau. What gave you satisfaction before no longer give you satisfaction.

TWS 54 | UPW Virtual

UPW Virtual: Identify what you want first, and then look at the science behind someone who’s already achieved it.

 

It’s Parkinson’s Law, which is a luxury experienced soon becomes a necessity. How many people take for granted driving where people had to be on a horse or walk before flying? There’s so much we experience in life that was at one point a miracle and now it’s like, “Whatever.” If you look all around us, there are miracles. There are miracles everywhere but yet, the satisfaction of what we experienced initially as a miracle loses its luster. The success curve is understanding and anticipating that, but then also recognizing that in order to S it, instead of collapsing, S curve is innovation. You start to plateau then you decline, but then you innovate and find better ways of doing things, it starts to go up, then it becomes an S curve again, so on and so forth.

That’s the nature of things if you can anticipate. Instead of things collapsing all around you, it’s understanding what worked before no longer works. I have to innovate in order to continue to grow. That’s what I learned. Tony learned it as well because he kept wanting to do things the way he had done them before. He wanted to UPW Live. He wanted to do business mastery Live. You wanted to do all these events Live in person because of the incredible dynamic and experience it is for everybody, including himself. He can’t do that anymore. Now it becomes, instead of going down, I’m going to innovate and go up. He’s going to crush it. This set a whole new precedent for virtual events. It pushed Zoom beyond its limits. I guarantee it’s going to be much better the next round as far as these new virtual events. I’m excited for that.

A couple of the final things, and then I’ll get into some of these questions. Anticipation and momentum. When I talked about anticipation, it is knowing what I’m talking about and what I now realize is important to life and my satisfaction as an individual. I’m assuming yours as well and anticipating that these things are going to happen. They’re already happening. Now is an incredible opportunity to step back, reflect, and start to implement these principles. It’s anticipating that it’s going to continue to happen in the future. Looking at how we emotionally react to things, of course, we’re not going to look at this, which is logic.

We’re not going to look at this and instantly be able to implement it. It’s balancing the emotional and logical side of our brain and our makeup. Anticipate in the future is understanding the principles behind navigating water, as opposed to 100% jerk reaction, emotionally responding, or reacting to things, and then momentum. Momentum in physics, you have elasticity, the maintenance of momentum. Inelasticity is where you or the momentum declines. In order to get back up to the level where that momentum was, it takes way more energy than the amount of energy that left going down.

Look at losing weight, working out, or getting in shape. If you are in the peak shape of your life and you take 2 to 3 weeks off, you’re not going to go back to normal. It takes longer than three weeks to get back to normal. The idea is maintaining as much momentum as possible. There isn’t much momentum anywhere in society because people have been forced home. They’ve been forced in a sense to do certain things differently because people don’t have the certainty of what gave them fulfillment, success, a good experience in life before, now, you have to find new ways of doing it. The more momentum you lose in every area of life, the harder it is to get back. It’s the maintenance of momentum.

On Stock Market And The Fed: Questions Answered

Once you get there, it’s not losing that momentum. If it goes down, it’s recognizing it and then doing what it takes because you anticipated what it takes and understands the principles of what it takes to catch yourself and build back up. Those are the four things I took from UPW, Unleashed The Power Within. I didn’t attend all of it. I attended some of it on a couple of hour bike rides, but at the same time, I’m committed to going to November 2020 and playing full out. I hope you guys can join me. I’m going to get to a couple of questions as I said or answers the questions and then we’ll wrap up, but thank you guys for being here. Thank you for learning and support. Let me get into the questions.

How do you study how the Federal Reserve works? I first looked at this question. I was like, “Do they want to know how the Federal Reserve works or they weren’t the ones to learn how to study it?” I’m going to touch on both. The Federal Reserve means central banks around the world play an instrumental role in society and the economy. Hope you guys got that from the Richard Duncan interviews. To study how it works, I’d first want to look at understanding the fundamentals. We referenced in the video I did with Andy Tanner, How The Economic Machine Works, which is a video by Ray Dalio. I’ve watched that a bunch of times. In watching that, this is the best way I study and understand something which is preparing to teach it and then teaching it. I would teach it in five-minute segments and teach it to somebody that is somewhat familiar with it and then get their feedback.

In the teaching, you are going to realize some of the voids in what you understand or don’t understand. That is one of the best ways to study is by teaching and discussing. Form of a little Facebook meetup, teach it, understand it, do a watch party, watch How The Economic Machine Works together, start to see where the voids are, and how you understand it. Hopefully, you’re able to see the forces that are already in motion, and as one builds and other shrinks, it influences the outcome of markets, prices, interest rates. All of it is tied together. All talk is generally about a central bank. This is dating back several years and it’s a very Austrian free-market perspective.

A Federal Reserve central bank creates currency out of thin air. It is monetizing assets, which is mostly debt. What that means is that the Federal Reserve can create, let’s say $1 billion electronically and then purchase debt. It purchases a loan that either wasn’t there before or it’s purchasing it from somebody who already owned it. What that does is it manipulates the true price of the debt, which is ultimately a risk. It manipulates the price of assets because that money didn’t exist before. When you look at free markets, efficiency, innovation, as I said before, when things decline, go out of business and fail, that is not a bad thing. That is an incredible opportunity to innovate. I believe what the central banks are doing. European Central Bank has announced that the US central bank and central banks around the world are doing the same thing as the Federal Reserve, which is they created money out of thin air and gave it to people.

You have to innovate in order to grow. Click To Tweet

What that did is it flooded society with money that was not earned. That’s what I consider the immoral side of things because money is a receipt of value. When money comes without any value created, that’s not a natural transaction. There has to be an exchange. At the same time, that’s not how our system works. That’s what the point of talking about the Federal Reserve, their role in society and the economy with Richard Duncan. From general principles, freedom, and liberty perspective that I have, looking at how things should be is not going to get me anywhere. It’s not going to be valuable to anyone because it’s not how it works. It may be how it should work but it doesn’t work that way. I look at what Richard was promoting, which is paying attention to what the Federal Reserve does and the central banks on what they do.

If they’re purchasing these assets, those assets are most likely going to go up. If they’re stimulating here and stimulating there, it’s creating artificial signals that ultimately are going to come home to roost. Let’s go back to Kodak. Kodak, who surprisingly enough invented the digital camera. They created a business out of it which they didn’t, they got crushed because others create a business out of it but the government was like, “Kodak, you’ve paid us lots of taxes. You’re going down and we’ll give you more money.” Kodak is not going to do anything different. They’re going to continue to operate and they’ll have more money.

Ultimately, when the money dries up, then Kodak is going to have a massive bankruptcy and failure. They had a bankruptcy in a smaller failure at scale if they were stimulated. Right now, what you’re seeing is that people are being given money. Businesses are being given money but yet you still have tons of businesses that are going bankrupt. What’s amazing is I look at a lot of the businesses that are going bankrupt. Let’s look at retailers. JCPenney is a great example. Retail eCommerce has consumption in that method has gone up significantly.

It’s crazy, yet retailers are going bankrupt. It’s not necessarily the business. It’s how business is done. I believe that the way in which people consume and goods are created to consume is not at scale. It’s at a very micro level compared to before. That’s awesome because it’s creating a new way of doing things, which creates efficiency, variety, and different jobs in different areas. I look at when things fail. It’s not a bad thing. Going through the central bank, what it does is it produces false signals. When you realize that it’s producing false signals, you want to look at the unintended consequences. You want to look at, “If they’re giving money to an institution, economy, and society, there’s a band-aid effect there.”

It’s one of those like, “Is it a band-aid because they’re talking about another stimulus and another one.” This goes to Parkinson’s Law and you’re going to have this decline in productivity. This decline in personal responsibility because people are being bailed out. I’m not saying that there isn’t cause and importance in understanding that for a short-term thing, but when it becomes a long-term thing, it’s not healthy and there’s going to be unintended consequences. That’s my take on that. I would love for you to follow up on whoever is the question I answered, but teaching how the economic machine works is what is going to allow you to study the principles of the Federal Reserve and central banking around the world at a much deeper level.

The second question and I’ll end with this, which is, what if the stock market goes under? Is the Federal Reserve or central banks going to bail it out? There are two parts of this but this came from the Richard Duncan interview which Richard said. He would not be surprised if the Federal Reserve Act changed. In the Federal Reserve Act, parameters as far as what the Federal Reserve can stimulate is what they can buy. It started out as setting interest rates and now, setting interest rates by doing huge bond-buying with government bonds treasuries, government debt. They’re doing municipal, corporate bonds, even junk bonds.

They’re getting into the private sector, which is interesting but from an equity standpoint, they can’t buy equities and stock to my knowledge. If the stock market goes down, are they going to buy the stock? I don’t know. The stock market can’t go under. The premise there we first have to address, what if the stock market goes under? Our modern society is dependent on the stock market. It’s where businesses are scaled where they’re financed. I don’t see how the stock market could go under without society going under. If that goes under then none of what we’re talking about from a financial standpoint is relevant.

I look at first off removing that premise that the stock market is going to go under. Is the stock market going to have challenges? 100%. It’s going to have huge challenges because you’re artificially stimulating and creating false signals. There are a lot of companies that are public that got stimulus. You have companies that are propped up. A big thing that I’ve talked about on the show before is stock buybacks, where you have businesses that will take on debt. They’ll issue new debt and then they will buy their own stock with that because of supply and demand. It keeps the stock price high.

That was illegal through Glass-Steagall, which came about through the Great Depression and the stock market crash then. As you’re able to now stimulate business’ Fed buying debt, you’re going to prop up their value and then artificially have a stock price. There’s going to be businesses that are going to innovate through this and we’ll make out well given the stimulus. There are some businesses that if they keep doing what they’re doing and their business relies on artificial stimulation, which it’s money that they get but they did not create the value to get it, there’s going to be challenged. There’s going to be opportunities there. I know several opportunities where you have some entrepreneurs who are buying assets. I think JCPenney and Hertz are part of it.

TWS 54 | UPW Virtual

UPW Virtual: Money is a receipt of value. When money comes without any value created, that’s not a natural transaction.

 

I’m not going to go into what bankruptcy is. Bankruptcy is not a company going out of business. I’ll talk about it briefly. Bankruptcy is when a business restructures. When they’re able to go into receivership, which means all their assets, everything they owe, everything they own goes into receivership and then a receiver, a bankruptcy trustee will split up assets, they’ll sell, and get whatever they can. Entrepreneurs right now are buying up a lot of those business assets that are incredible with online marketing, with eCommerce. They’re going to freaking crush it. They’re buying assets at huge discounts, taking those assets, using modern marketing and commerce principles to improve and maximize those assets. There’s a tremendous opportunity as businesses go bankrupt, shuffle the deck, and you have very intelligent capitalist entrepreneurs that are optimizing the assets that were not optimized by the companies that held them before.

The last thing I’ll comment with Richard Duncan in equities. He alluded to the Fed bailing out equities being on the stock market. I want to put it past. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened. It’s going to exacerbate the problem. It’s having an awareness of what’s happening, being able to anticipate the future and make decisions accordingly. That’s all I talk about. I appreciate your time. Thank you for sticking with me. Hopefully, those answers made sense. Go onto our YouTube channel, make comments there, social media, I’d love to hear from you guys. Email us as well at Hello@TheWealthStandard.com.

If you are interested in Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery, check that out. Go to the UPW, Unleash The Power Within in November 2020. For me, it is been the best investment of time. It’ll be a couple of $100. What you’ll be able to create and degree of happiness you’ll have as a result of it, fulfillment, you’re going to love it. Hopefully, you guys can put that on your calendar and make the necessary steps to attend that and benefit from it. Guys, you’re amazing. Thank you for your support. I appreciate you reading the blog. We’ll see you guys. Take care.

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TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Quantum Computing, Quantum Leap Technology, AI, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 2

March 12, 2020 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:45:23 Comments Off on Quantum Computing, Quantum Leap Technology, AI, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 2

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TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

 

 

In this second installment, Patrick Donohoe wraps up Tony Robbins’ Finance Summit events and shares the learnings he unlocked from it. Discussing China’s indifference about the trade disruption, he also touches on quantum computing and how diversification across different non-related assets is essential. He also breaks down Tony’s six-step decision making process and Greg Wieler’s four forces that tells the future, and recaps on Eric Prince’s segment. Find out more about quantum leap technology, artificial intelligence, and more in this information-driven episode.

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Quantum Computing, Quantum Leap Technology, AI, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 2

Ray Dalio Talks About China

Thank you for reading this review of Day 3 of my experience at the Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership Finance event up here in Sun Valley, Idaho. This was by far the most packed with information. I’m going to try to keep it brief, but I learned quite a bit. There was some interesting insertion or inserting of information that I wasn’t expecting and I had heard it before, but it made an even bigger impact for me. I’m going to share that. There were some speakers who went back to back that had polar opposite views in a sense of where things were going. It was fascinating to see that dynamic and how much that not only inspired my new level of thinking, but the audience as well. Let’s get into it. The first speaker right out of the gate was Ray Dalio. He was about a good friend of Tony’s and has become successful. He wrote a book called Principles, which I’ve referenced often. There were some great nuggets in there in regards to investing business and life in general. Check that out. Ray’s message wasn’t necessarily something that was outside of the video I’ve already mentioned, which is how the economic machine works.

Here are a few things that I took away. First, he made essentially a statement around where we’re at in the debt cycle. That relates to his video that I’ve referenced a few times. He said that we’re late in the short-term debt cycle and even later in the long-term debt cycle, but not quite to the point where there are a correction and disruption. I would say it’s a QE4 in a sense, which is the Fed’s involvement in the repo market. This has to do with bank liquidity and banks have to keep a certain amount of reserves. If they don’t have those reserves, they usually will borrow it from other banks. Over the last few months or so, that liquidity has shrunk and so the Fed has gotten involved. The Fed is providing this stimulus. It’s lending against high-value assets of a bank and injecting even more liquidity into the market. It’s interesting how they’ve done that, but it isn’t necessarily manifesting in inflation and huge amounts of growth. That’s because the inflation is in the financial assets, not necessarily in goods and services. That was an interesting insight.

He made a point about China going to another topic. He said that China doesn’t care about the trade disruption that they’ve had with regards to the Trump administration. He said that’s not necessarily a big concern for them. Their biggest priority and biggest concern is technology. They believe that the leader in technology is the one that’s going to essentially control economies, the global economy. That’s where China has been focused. Also, the dilemma is that the US and China are intertwined in regards to its technology. As far as the demand, I would say there’s a huge demand for the different technologies that the US has that’s all manufactured in China, which is interesting. Also, he made mention of quantum computing. Quantum computing is one of those races that companies are similar to 5G.

Google has made some strides toward having economical quantum computing. China is ahead of the game, ahead of any company in the United States, which I thought was interesting. It’s going to come down to the power needed to have these quantum computers run, which is an exorbitant amount of power. I would say part of the race is figuring out how to make that economical. The last thing I’ll mention is the idea that China is trying to disrupt the global economy and take over leadership and that’s going to be based on its control over technology. That’s one of the things that Ray had mentioned.

The next thing was the idea of tactical investment. He said that tactical investment, technical investment trading, ride short positions and ride long positions. It’s one of the most difficult games that’s out there. He said that the average investor has way more to gain by diversification. In Tony’s book, MONEY Master the Game. One of the takeaways from his interview with Ray and what Tony had Ray help him with is the creation of a portfolio that’s called The All Weather Portfolio, which is a combination of different assets. There are bonds, gold and commodities in there. What those assets are is when one goes up, the other goes down and there are about 5 or 6 types of asset classes in that portfolio, whereas things fluctuate in the global economy, then it’s able to counterbalance in a sense. I’ve backtested that. I’ve created a whole spreadsheet with a guy on my team. We backtested for 50 years and it does work. The gross yield was around 8% and you have to net out fees. That’s an internal return, which is interesting. He not only mentioned that but also to diversify into other asset classes. He said that the ideal diversification is across at least fifteen different non-correlated assets.

The last thing he mentioned is that there’s going to continue to be more stimulus. We’re seeing in the repo markets at the same time there’s still a tiny bit of room, but he believes that there’s going to be continual printing, especially this year being an election year and then the wealth gap. He mentioned that this is one of the biggest concerns. It’s where he is putting a lot of his philanthropic focus is into this wealth gap. At this time, 40% of the United States can’t come up with $400, which is concerning. If you look at Andrew Yang pushing universal basic income and also Bernie Sanders and his message, which is anti-establishment, but socialistic is attracting the lower tail of our socio-economy. It’s concerning to him because that gap continues to broaden. It comes down to the financial asset inflation, where that is made individuals wealthy at the top, but it has not helped those that are at the bottom. Ray wrote an article on LinkedIn about universal basic income and his study.

Growth takes place in environments that challenge you not just physically, but mentally as well. Click To Tweet

Tony’s 6-Step Decision Making Process

The next thing, not necessarily an intervention, but there was a woman who stood up and was talking about her investments, what she was taking away and what she was trying to determine as far as some of her next steps in business. Tony did something and I’ve heard this before, I’ve come across it, but he went into way more detail and something hit home to me. I’ve been talking this a lot over the last several podcasts, which is this idea of where your focus is when it comes to your future and the decisions that you make. He has a six-step decision-making process.

I looked online and there are several resources available. There’s a Fortune Magazine article that discusses it in detail. It’s the OOC/EMR. The OOC is step-by-step. The first three steps being, how to start to identify the basis of your decisions. These are all acronyms of course. It’s Outcome, Options and Consequences. The outcome is first, which is getting crystal clear of the outcome you want. What are the results that you’re after? Getting clarity, crystal clear of exactly what those outcomes, those results are. I’ll go through some of the notes that I took. What is the result you’re after? Why do you want to achieve it? Getting clear about outcomes and their order of importance, you start listing out and it’s a brain dump in a sense. That’s what he was having this woman do. Options, write down all of your options, whatever comes to mind. He says that one option is not a choice.

Two options are a dilemma and three options are where you do have a choice. It’s coming up with as many of those options as possible. He also said that it should include the maybe farfetched type of options. Options that you may think is crazy but listing all of them out and there’s a whole process to this once you’ve done it. Outcomes, all of your different options and the consequences are the next one. What are the upsides? Consequences are positive and negative consequences. What’re the upsides and what are the downsides of each option? What do you gain by each option and what would it cost you? It’s answering those questions as it relates to all of your options.

Finally, it’s evaluate. Now, you go back and you evaluate all the options and the consequences and if it does get you what you want as an outcome. Start to rank those in order of importance based on the upsides and downsides. The next one is the probability. What is the probability that it will happen, that this option will work? What that does is it gives you an idea of what is the specific direction as it relates to the decisions you’re going to make. Finally, it’s mitigate. As you review the downsides of all, you brainstorm alternative ways to eliminate or reduce the downsides, which is important because as you can review, if I have a downside, you list the downside, but, how can I get rid of the downside? How can I mitigate the risk of a downside?

Finally, it’s resolving. It’s going back through and selecting the best option based on ways in which you’ve been able to rank and categorize them. It was fascinating and this was probably, I would say at least an hour-long type of discussion with this woman in front of everybody. She had multiple breakthroughs being, she got to this point where it’s like, “I can do this.” You can see her as her mind starting to expand. It’s that whole quote of, “Mind that got you to where you are is not the mind that’s going to get you beyond.” It’s opening up that mind breaking through thresholds in being able to figure out, “What is a decision I can make that it will get me closer to the results that I’m after?” That was fascinating. I love that.

It was two speakers that were again the polar opposites. The polarity that existed between their perspectives of the world was fascinating, especially they were back-to-back. Tony did this by design. The first is Harry Dent. He has spoken at Tony’s conferences for a long time and he does it because Harry Dent has some track record issues. There are a lot of calls that he’s made in his books that has not come to fruition or were early or were late. It’s happened for several decades. Harry took a stand with Dent Research, which is a part of the Agora Network where he started writing newsletters. It wasn’t these books that he would come out with and then write about how the future looks like this.

TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: China is trying to disrupt the global economy and take over leadership which is based on its control over technology.

 

Where he’s writing through a newsletter, a publishing business would allow more accuracy. He’d be able to course-correct quicker, which is smart. Regardless, this is what Harry said regarding the future. He said, “There is going to be a downturn.” Harry has written often about demographics and the spending of demographics, their net worth and where their asset concentrations are. He said that we’re either at or beyond the peak of Baby Boomer spending. The Baby Boomers started in 1946 going to 1964. That’s the years in which the Baby Boomer demographic was born. We’re getting to that almost 60 years old where it’s the end to the Baby Boomers and their spending peak after they’re empty nesters. Their parents are finally free. That’s when they start to spend a lot of money. That’s what’s going on. That’s going to come to a close soon.

He said that plus the behavior of youth and I’ve talked about the greatest wealth transfer in history, which is a set to come in the next years amounting to tens of trillions of dollars. It’s going to be different buying behavior of this younger demographic, different assets that are also in a different financial situation, whether it’s the debt that they have or the professions that they have. It’ll be interesting to see where money flows once this wealth transfer starts to take place. He said that being in cash is a good thing. You’ll be able to take advantage of opportunities. He sees major disruption in 2022 and Dent Research has multiple newsletters. They have a free newsletter as well if you guys want to follow them.

Finally, he mentioned that a lot of the opportunity from an investment standpoint is in healthcare, specifically care to those that are aging, whether that’s nursing homes or assisted living. There are tons of private investments out there, but there’s a lot of public investment out there as well. Several ETFs or REITs, Real Estate Investment Trusts, that concentrate and focus on essentially different types of housing and real estate for an aging demographic. That was Harry. He is an entertaining speaker. He is somewhat crude in moments but at the same time, he was entertaining. One of my buddies, Matt Atkinson, I need to get Matt here one of these days. He has a distinct laugh. He was sitting probably toward the back from where I was sitting. You can hear his distinct laugh several times throughout Harry’s comments.

Let’s talk about Peter Diamandis. Here’s what’s cool. Peter essentially said at the end that all of his slides, which I already have can be made available to anybody. We can share those. I’m going to post a link for you to download those slides. Make sure you go to TheWealthStandard.com and there’ll be a link there to download. He is a thinker and I’m not going to spend a ton of time going into my notes there. I first read Peter’s book Abundance. He has Abundance and then Bold. He has a new book. It’s called The Future is Faster Than You Think.

I read Peter’s Abundance book it was about 2009, 2010 where it was a dark time for a lot of people, including myself. There were pessimistic views as far as what was happening within markets. Peter wrote a book about essentially how incredible the times were that things were much better in the past. There was much innovation going on. That the world was getting better and he had all proof of how it was getting better. I love that mindset because he knows what’s going on. He knows that there’s pessimism, but one of the quotes he used was that, “A negative mind will never give you a positive life,” which I love because it’s always been that way and always will be that way. There’s always going to be a half-empty glass.

Peter And His Ideas Of Growth

I know if the focus is there, that’s where your emotions and your feelings are going to focus and regardless of the circumstances. In 2010, those dark times was an amazing time if that’s the mindset that you had. There were tons of opportunities, whether it was real estate or other types of business investment. Since then, it’s been this huge boom. I love how Peter thinks, but the polarity between a pessimistic view of things and then an optimistic view of things was healthy. It helped broaden not just my perspective, but a lot of those that were in the room. A few of the things that Peter mentioned, you will be able to get into the slides and dig into some of the amazing innovation that’s going on.

Concentration, understanding the future, and energy information are going to create better lives for everybody. Click To Tweet

We are in this exponentially growing a society where it was Moore’s Law before. It’s the acceleration of acceleration. It’s this quantum type of leap toward the future. That’s what growth is like. Also, it provides a lot of opportunities because he cited some polls of the simple question, is the world getting better? Six percent of the US believes that it is and 94% don’t think that the world is getting better. He had all statistics on poverty being cut in half in the last decade. Child mortality and famine were going down. Half the world is using the internet. There are almost 800 million more people in the last decade that have electricity and renewable energy. There’s ten times more solar power than there was and then he gets into the future. The future of being driven by artificial intelligence and biotech.

He said that the concentration as far as understanding where the future is going is an energy information and material. The combination of which is going to create better lives for everybody, but also an extreme amount of wealth for those that know how to ride those waves. He mentioned personalized drugs. CRISPR, which I’ve known about for a long time, is a way in which a map is created for the human genome being able to have different ways in which you can edit and improve genetic disorders. It’s fascinating and some of this might be scary as well. I know most of something you were thinking that a lot of the crowd, that’s a way in which they responded.

Tony invested in a 3D printing home building company in Mexico. He has two printers but they’re able to build 2 or 3 homes a day and they’re $10,000 each. He’s talking about rockets and how SpaceX and other companies are being able to capitalize on either putting satellites in that provides a 5G type of internet globally. Digitizing of factories, which is going to bring costs down, but also it’s going to decrease dependence on foreign manufacturing. We’re seeing that with the coronavirus and how that’s disrupted the supply chain. I don’t think we are yet to see the impact of that. Some are saying that it could be an impact last longer than a year in disruption of the supply chain. 3D printing is going to essentially help us to create factories on site where you can 3D print parts as opposed to having to manufacture in shipping costs. The use of fuel and energy for that shipping and so forth. He talked about flying cars that there’ll be Uber Copter in Dallas. He also spoke about Kobe Bryant’s helicopter going down. The older style of helicopter makes that type of flying dangerous, but the more modern ways in which Bell and other companies are creating copters with multiple blades, multiple propellers, which highly mitigate the probability of crashing.

He said that by 2021, Elon Musk thinks that there’s going to be fully autonomous flying vehicles that can be commercialized. Boston Dynamics, he posts a video about this jumping robot that Boston Dynamics has created. It’s amazing what it’s able to do. It’s a matter of bringing down costs. Next is artificial intelligence. It is going to make decision making much more accurate and the reduction of error and the reduction of time and energy spent on making decisions. Information will be provided based on trends and patterns. There’s a guy that spoke about how he’s created an unlicensed 5G network where you could put up a tower anywhere if you own real estate. If you have a building, you put up a 5G tower and it can circumnavigate buildings and so forth and create a beam of the internet at 5G quality for $6,000. for each tower and it can give access to over 500 households. He says that if you network 30 towers, you can essentially provide 5G to an entire city. We don’t know what the impact is going to be of these different frequencies and how that’ll impact the body.

Based on this guy’s innovation, it’ll highly reduce the number of towers, even reduce the number of towers that exist to provide that type of internet at those speeds. OneWeb is that satellite company and I can’t remember the name of the 5G company. He talked about quantum computing as well. It’s human longevity and what we’re being able to do there. It’s fascinating. Peter has Abundance 360 with his conference. He also has what’s called the XPRIZE. It’s essentially putting a prize out there to whoever wants to tackle that. Whoever does get some of the prices are $10 million. He has a $100 million prize.

Event Wrap Up

I’m going to wrap up this amazing event. I’ve been on the road. I’m ready to go home, but it’s been life-changing. These are environments where your mind is almost forced to expand both with what you’re being taught by the speakers and guests, as well as all the conversation that takes place afterwards. There are a lot of high-level people here. It’s been amazing. I’m still processing everything. Day 4 was no exception. Every single day has been packed full of amazing content, amazing people and ideas. They make you think differently. Those are environments that serve everyone. I don’t believe growth takes place in passive environments, environments that you’re used to. Growth takes place in environments that challenge you not just physically, but mentally as well. I’m going to go through a few of the speakers and wrap this thing up. We started around noon every day because most people would ski and so forth in the morning.

TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: Artificial intelligence will make decision making so much more accurate with a huge reduction of error.

 

We opened Day 4 with Paul Tudor Jones. This is a guy that Tony Robbins has coached for decades and is one of the most successful traders out there. For those of you who have not heard of him, he Founded Robin Hood, which is a platform that has raised billions of dollars under the banner of low fees, automation and so forth. He’s been successful with those entrepreneurial ventures but also trading as well. I want to set some context of his remarks because he was at the airport on his way to the Federal Reserve. He was on their advisory board and/or the advisory board was going to be hearing from him. He had prepared some words and some statements for them. That was his mindset. It’s interesting.

Some of the things he said are the managing or governing member of this specific panel that he was going to talk to wants higher inflation. He wants growth. What Paul was saying we’re in unprecedented times because we have the lowest interest rates in history. We have the lowest unemployment almost in history, but we have the highest budget deficits and it’s difficult to cut. Erik Prince of Blackwater said that “The US needs to go on a diet.” We need to experience scarcity to expose the waste and get rid of the waste. Paul said that the majority of the US budget is fixed. There is no discretion as far as cutting here or cutting there. He said, “78% of the US budget is fixed.” Whether that’s interest on the debt or whether that’s your unfunded liabilities, your social benefits, Medicaid or Social Security.

He said that an economy that has the lowest unemployment, lowest interest rates should be running budget surpluses, but we’re running budget deficits. It means that we’re spending as a country $1 trillion more than we bring in an all tax revenue, which is insane. That’s his mindset. He’s always looking for opportunities. He’s going to the Fed to speak his mind. He’s there to give them feedback. He’s there to give them information. He’s not going to be able to go in there and change their mind, because a lot of influential people speak to them. He goes in there with challenging their thoughts. This was a great way to do it, saying, “We are in these unprecedented times. You want all this growth, yet you’re printing your way to growth.”

He also alluded to financial asset inflation. You’re getting growth, but they’re not getting growth in the areas that they want it. That’s mainly due to those that are using low-interest rates. It’s mainly businesses and institutions. They’re not using it for productive purposes. They’re not using it to hire more people. They’re using it to push up their stock value and so forth. That’s one example. A few of the other things that he said is when he’s making investment decisions. His decision is based on a 5:1 ratio. He loses a lot. Tony has referred to this before, where Paul Tudor Jones would send him trades every day from an accountability standpoint. A lot of the times he was losing, half the time he’s losing. When he wins, he’s shooting for a 5:1 win and that 5:1 makes up for all of those losses and some. It’s an interesting way of looking at it. He also alluded to the markets. He was referring specifically to the S&P was at a 22 Price to Earnings Ratio, PE ratio. If you go back to some of the ratios that were pre-2008, pre-2001 with the dot-com crash, we were at 27:1, so there’s still some room to go.

He also made it seem that between now and the end of the elections, he also alluded to the markets being priced for a Trump win, but there’s not going to be much volatility. If anything, there’s going to be growth and there’s room to grow as well. There’s also room for more stimulus. I mentioned with regards to QE4, which is the repo markets and the fed being able to provide additional liquidity by injecting liquidity with collateral being these highly valued assets like treasuries and so forth. He said that we’re in the time where you can compare it to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie Pumping Iron where he was hugely jacked and boosting all these weights and veins popping everywhere. It was all based on him in steroids and doing it artificially. That’s what he said. He made the statement at the end that made everybody laugh, which is, “These are the best two hours of your life.” It’s 11:00 PM or 10:00 PM, the last hours of the day. “It’s going to be the greatest two hours.” He eluded to whether it’s drinking or partying, but you’re going to have a massive hangover once that happens, alluding to the economy as a whole.

He also got into where things are going. The demand has enhanced where he’s seeing more socially and environmentally conscious investors. He also created a fund that is backed by Goldman Sachs called JUST Capital. It’s a fund where there is a specific set of criteria for all the different companies that are within this fund there are socially environmentally conscious as well as have a more even keel distribution of resources than fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. He was alluding to taking care of employees, paying above-market wages, also being charitably conscious and forth. It’s interesting and fun. Paul Tudor Jones was a great speaker.

If you're looking to construct the way in which you invest based on the last 20 to 30 years, that is a losing strategy. Click To Tweet

Greig Weiler And The Four Fources

I’ll get into some stuff that’s a little bit more exciting. Two more speakers and then we’re done. The first was fascinating. This guy had much energy and he was one of those resourceful people and his history has shown it. His name is Greg Wyler. He runs OneWeb, which is 5G-based. It’s more of a satellite system and Tarana. It is the biggest competitor to Comcast to broadband. His background is he laid the majority of fiber in Africa and he has deep, intimate knowledge of that country and what’s going on there. I’ve alluded to more youth in Africa than double the population of the United States. Africa is booming. It’s crazy. There’s a lot of youth. These are people under the age of twenty amounting to hundreds of millions and they know what’s going on in the other parts of the world. Once they’re connected, it gives them huge opportunities.

He’s started laying fiber in Africa, networking and connecting schools. He has a platform where you can go check out the connectivity of schools in Africa. It’s called ProjectConnect.world. He said that the youth are waiting for this. He also realized that by experiencing laying fiber throughout the country, the internet that way is not going to work. That’s where he started to get into the satellite business. He’s been there for several decades. OneWeb is one of the companies he’s running. It purchased rights for a particular frequency in space. This is outside of my realm of understanding, but that frequency is almost exclusively owned by them. He has some of the more modern satellites that can move and navigate. He said that it’s getting busy up in space and satellites are getting more dangerous because they can start to collide. That’s not good for any satellite system.

His company, OneWeb has figured out some techniques to mitigate those risks. Those risks exist for a lot of other companies that are putting satellites into space for this purpose. Tarana is this first broadband company to compete with Comcast. It’s a $6,000 a unit. You can attach it to a building and it provides a unique way of 5G connectivity. One gig up, one gig down and it’s extremely low-cost. He said that $1 million in infrastructure costs. $1 million could create 1G up and down for the entire city of Sacramento. If it’s $1 million in costs, it’s amazing. That’s where things are going.

He also alluded to this is a huge opportunity because 20 million people in the United States do not have good internet, if any internet, which is surprising. It’s a huge opportunity there. Greg was a great guest. You can tell he’s super socially conscious and entrepreneurial. The money he raised for OneWeb or one of the first satellite companies he had was $1.5 billion. There was no proof any of it was going to work, but he hustled, grinded and figured out a way to make it happen. I’m following him. He’s a go-getter but also is doing a lot of good in different parts of the world, mainly the emerging markets. The last individual I’ll talk about is Michael Smorch and he has worked with lots of different VCs and hedge funds and has been around the block. I enjoyed some of his thoughts. He said that if you’re looking to construct the way in which you invest based in the last several years, it is a losing strategy. He said everything is exponentially growing and emerging. A lot of opportunities are no longer in the US. The opportunity is in emerging markets.

He said that four forces will tell the future. First is there’s going to be geopolitical alignment and he alluded to China. All of these speakers have alluded to China, with the coronavirus, it’s going to be interesting to see how that creates disruption, but at the same time, because of that huge dependence on China, other opportunities are emerging because of this. This is the nature of capitalism and entrepreneurs and it mainly had to do with bringing the supply chain closer to the actual end-user, which is 3D printing. He alluded to 3D printing. The first is the geopolitical alignment. He said that China-based on its influence controls the majority of patents for 4G and it’s controlled by Huawei. There’s this continual alignment of these two big forces, China and America. It’d be interesting to see how that comes to fruition.

The next one is the digital revolution. It’s no longer Moore’s Law, which is the doubling of computing power. It’s Neven’s Law. It’s the acceleration of acceleration. He also alluded to that. He said that AI is coming online in many different areas. We use it in our database but AI is essentially creating the ease of some of the backend work in order to make better decisions. It’s coming in everything. Insurance, investment, school, on our device, the wearables and being able to have the information so that we know, “Eat this, stand up, do some exercise.” It is getting more and more accurate to help us live better lives, to help us to use our energy to make meaningful decisions as opposed to the stuff we have to spend our energy on, which can be eliminated. The third force is Millennials. He alluded to different studies that showed that Millennials pretty much hate all of their parents’ assets.

TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: Tony Robbins’ events can impact your ability to create wealth.

 

They hate gold, they hate the market or they want different advice, more robo advising cheaper funds as opposed to speaking to financial advisors. There was also a study that if they had an extra $1,000 in discretionary money, what would they buy? It was over 40% who would buy Bitcoin and all the other options were like a mutual fund, cash or gold. It’s a different demographic. Also, he alluded to their peak in spending is coming within the next couple of years. To give some context to that, some reference to that, if you look at the Baby Boomer peak of spending, that was in the early ‘80s. If you look at the boom and the economy in the ’80s and ’90s, these were the greatest growth years in pretty much in history. He said that’s coming soon in the next couple of years for Millennials.

The third force is the environmental change. This is interesting. I hadn’t thought about this before, but he used a great example. He said that there is global warming. One of his biggest clients is a dynasty family in Italy who has massive wineries and they can’t grow. It’s too dry in Italy and they can’t grow like they used to. They picked up a massive plot of farming land in Patagonia. He said that those that are growing are going North and also going South toward each of the poles because things are warming up. Those are the four forces. It’s geopolitical alignment, the digital revolution, Millennials and environmental change. It came down to the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is his way of getting these asymmetric types of returns. The companies or the industries, the environments that are going to have this asymmetric growth have a growth story behind it. There has to be a massive market. The audience that would take advantage of whatever the sector was had to be massive. It also is something that hardly anyone owns, especially institutions. They’re not there yet, but it captures the heart and minds of people. It’s movement-based.

Finally, it creates forced buying, like Comcast. If you want a good internet, you only have 1 or 2 options. It’s a forced buying situation. The example he gave is number one, space, whether it’s SpaceX. There’s also an ETF that owns a lot of these space types of companies, which has a ticker symbol of UFO of all things. This is an environment where whether it’s the satellite idea. There’s a guy I met that has a company that does transportation in space, both from satellites to the space station. There’s a huge environment, whether it’s mining asteroids. There are tons of opportunities there. That’s one example. With our new military force, space force, which I could do a Donald Trump impersonation of, but I can’t. That’s another example of where things are going.

The last one is Biotech. That was another example he gave of this Holy Grail of asymmetric type of opportunities. It’s a growth story, a massive market, something hardly anybody owns already, especially institutions. It captures the hearts and minds of people and it also creates force buying. He said biotech was one of those other things where we do a lot to respond to getting sick or pain. Biotech is getting to the preventative. We know in advance what needs to be done in order to avoid that. Those are a couple of examples. This was a great couple of days for me. Hopefully, you got a lot out of my thoughts on what I learned. I encourage you to take the opportunity to come to one of these Tony Robbins events, the basic one. Come to the UPW if you haven’t been.

This is an environment that pushes you outside of your comfort levels. It’s an environment that forces you to grow. There’s much on the other side of this environment that will help you with your relationships with business. It’ll facilitate an even more meaningful life. I know that’s what everyone’s after, especially myself. I hope you guys take advantage of this opportunity. If you call my guy, Jeff, over at Tony Robbins, he’ll hook you up. It’s a little bit too late maybe for the March event, but Chicago is in the summer and then New York City is in the late fall. Hopefully, you were able to take advantage of it because I know it will impact your ability to create wealth. It’ll impact your ability to take your life, your business, your family, your relationships to the next level. I can’t wait to hear your feedback and stories about it. Thanks again and we’ll catch you next time.

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Tony Robbins Unleash The Power Within
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March 12-15, 2020
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TWS 7 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

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

March 5, 2020 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:35:15 Comments Off on Money And Psychology, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 1

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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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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

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.

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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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TWS 12 | Lessons On Entrepreneurship

Mid-Season Recap: Lessons On Entrepreneurship

July 25, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:40:03 Comments Off on Mid-Season Recap: Lessons On Entrepreneurship

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TWS 12 | Lessons On Entrepreneurship

 

We are only halfway through the season, and we have been learning a number of great things from numerous guests on our theme of entrepreneurship. In this special episode, host, Patrick Donohoe gives a recap of the main core principles from the season so far. Calling back the past seasons’ themes, he weaves these lessons into capitalism and 2018’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. Don’t miss out on this great wisdom compiled and delivered to you, and learn more about defining what you want and valuing the power of relationships and the power of your state.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Mid-Season Recap: Lessons On Entrepreneurship

This is going to be a mid-season recap of our theme. We still have a few more interviews to do regarding our theme of entrepreneurship. 2019 has been crazy for me. I usually have to travel maybe once a month or so for different conferences and speaking engagements. At the end of 2018, I had an incredible experience with one of Tony Robbins’ events, the Date With Destiny event. I was compelled to immerse myself in that culture. It’s been a wild ride. I’ve been to a handful of events so far. I’m recording this in July of 2019 and I have one event every month until the end of the year. It’s going to be an even crazier and busier travel schedule. I’m learning so much. I had felt compelled to review a lot of the main core principles that we’ve been learning this season from the guests on entrepreneurship and weave them into our previous themes on capitalism and in 2018, life, liberty and the pursuit of property. They all weave into one another. In the end, they provide something that I would like to focus a lot of my thoughts on now.

Main Takeaways From Events

Let me first step back and talk about some of my main takeaways from all of the events that I’ve gone to and the coaching that I’ve had. I have two business coaches now. There are two female business coaches, which is a much different dynamic than the coaches I’ve had in the past. The guests that I’ve been so fortunate to interview this year. I’ve broken down and summarized my takeaways into three things. First is to define and discover what you want. The second is the power of relationships. The third is the power of your state. I’m going to get into the details of all three of those. These came to me almost immediately. It was incredible. I’ve learned things about business finance, the mechanics of the different focus points and impact points of your business and how to have maximum growth with the least amount of improvement. I’ve learned things about tax strategy, other aspects of wealth strategy and all of these different things.

It’s not just me observing my business and myself. It’s also observing others’ businesses. That’s one of the main benefits I’ve gotten from this Platinum Partnership group with Tony Robbins. I’ve been exposed to thousands of other successful business owners. I’ve experienced what they’re going through, their struggles and their chokeholds. It has allowed me to summarize. I thought of these three things almost instantly. I believe that if you don’t understand these three things, you’re going to discover them eventually. I’ll put it that way. This is not based on my fourteen years of experience as an entrepreneur. It’s now my experience with thousands of people, both with the clients who I get to work with and my team gets to work with, as well as going to different conferences. It’s hearing stories, hot seats and much more successful than I am business owners and what they struggle with. Let me start with the first one.

Takeaways From Platinum Partnership: Discovering What You Want

I’ll start with a story. One of the conferences I went to, which is an advanced business mastery course and this was one of Tony’s smaller events. It was in Amsterdam. It was for five days. There’s an extra day exclusively for the Platinum Partnership. Most of the crowd was from outside the United States. It was amazing to see all of the different translators in the back and the languages that the event was being translated into. This was a smaller amount of people. There were probably 3,000 or so people there. It’s still a big number, but relative to some of his other conferences, it was much smaller. The last day was where this story comes from. This was a business owner who was in South America. He owned a big piece of real estate and business that had to do with the shipping port of Uruguay. He was part of a hot seat.

Oftentimes it’s easy for us to look at somebody else’s business and make recommendations than our own. Click To Tweet

One of the things that Tony and Jay Abraham did on the last day of this Platinum Day was known as a hot seat. They gave the opportunity for anyone to go to the mic and talk about some of their struggles in business. We’ve already done several days with twelve to fourteen hours of all business that spoke to every single thing that everyone who got to the mic and did a hot seat talked about or had a struggle with. Despite being able to have the education in the previous sessions, you still had these same struggles. It was interesting.

This guy, in particular, he had to raise $7 million to finish a building that had to do with his contract renewal for this shipping company that he had. He was not able to answer some of the basic questions. What came out of his mouth was all why he couldn’t do something, not how he could do something. It’s a very simple shift in language. The thing that hit me is when either Tony or Jay Abraham asked him the question of, “What do you want out of your business?” He couldn’t answer that. It hit me hard. To conclude this story, he got to the mic and wasn’t able to articulate what he wanted. Also, he was making excuses for why he couldn’t raise this amount of money.

Based on the revenues and success of his company and the money he was trying to raise, $7 million, it was like a drop in the bucket. Tony said something interesting to him. He went face-to-face with this guy and said, “I will write you a check right now. Pitch me on your business,” and the guy couldn’t do it. As he is talking through his issues, another thing occurred to me. Oftentimes, it’s easy for us to look at somebody else’s business and make recommendations, be a consultant and know what they could do to improve this, that or the other. When it comes to your own business, because you are in it and that’s where I think the whole, “Working in your business versus working on your business,” is used so often because of how challenging that is.

I’m not placing any type of judgment on this guy. I just found it fascinating. There are so many blind spots that I have met with the business that I have been discovering. With this individual, he had a guy that would give him money right there but he did not have the wherewithal, the state, the understanding, the knowledge and the basics of any business to be able to tell Tony why he should put his money there. The conversation went on and he got the nuggets he needed to go back. They even made him make a commitment regarding it that they were going to follow-up with him on. There are chokeholds in a business.

TWS 12 | Lessons On Entrepreneurship

Lessons On Entrepreneurship: The chokehold of any business is the psychology of leadership.

 

What I discovered about most businesses and myself is that the chokehold of any business is the psychology of leadership. A few years ago when I was having some cultural issues with my business, we had to let a bunch of people go and other people quit. All this happened within a few months. It was crazy. It made me doubt my abilities and myself. I had those feelings of insecurity. I didn’t step up as a leader. I looked at the psychology of my culture. It wasn’t until now where I connected the dots to the growth of my culture, my business and what I want to do in life first has to start with my psychology. It has to be there. My influence and leadership abilities have to be there before I expect my team or anyone within my stewardship to step up and represent that psychology or culture.

I realized and recognized a lot of limitations in myself. Now, I’m focused on my personal growth as a leader. That’s why these business coaches have been extraordinary in helping point out my weaknesses, my blind spots, to help me up my game as a leader. As I do that, the game and psychology of my team will subsequently rise. That’s the theory. It sounds awesome in theory. I do believe in that principle though and that’s why I put so much emphasis and resources behind that, especially for myself. Whether you’re an entrepreneur and working for a company, it doesn’t matter. Sit down and define what you want. Write it out. Let’s say you’re in your car and you’re going to start thinking about what you want. I’m not saying that at all. This is maybe a good tactic.

Tony Robbins has this exercise. If you go to his website, which is TonyRobbins.com/priming, he takes you through his exercise. It takes about ten minutes of breathing exercise and a visualization exercise. This puts you into this state of mind where you are thinking clearly. There’s nothing going on around you. Maybe put some noise-canceling headphones on while you’re doing this. In that state, ask yourself some questions, “What do I want professionally? What do I really want?” It’s not what you don’t want like, “I don’t want to stay at this company. I don’t want to be in this position.” It’s, what do you want? “I want this position. I want this type of company. I want this type of lifestyle.”

Once you connect with that, think through why. There’s this exercise known as the Seven Levels of Why. I don’t know if you always have to use seven levels, but ask yourself based on the answer you give. “I want to make a $500,000 a year.” Why? “It will allow me to provide this type of lifestyle for my family.” Why do you want that? “I care about my family. I want to provide them good experiences. I don’t want to have financial anxieties.” Why don’t you want financial anxieties? Why do you want to provide this type of lifestyle for them? Keep going and write all that stuff down. You’re going to get to this core why of what you want. Typically, it’s going to be, “I want to be happy. I want to have an adventure.”

Relationships are hardwired into who we are. Click To Tweet

It’s going to narrow down into something very simple. I’ll end with that first takeaway which is discovering what you want. It doesn’t have to be, “I want to make this amount of money. I want to have this type of position or this lifestyle.” You’re going to achieve that. You have to believe and want it. Write it down first, but you’re going to want stuff beyond that. This is one of those infinite game types of principles where just because you come up with it and achieve it, it doesn’t mean that that’s it. It’s going to be this never-ending pursuit. Start with something and once you connect to that, make a decision that it’s what you want.

The Idea Of Proximity

The second thing I want to talk about is something that I have experienced for quite a long time with business, family, extended family and friendships. It’s the idea of proximity. There’s a saying, “Proximity is power.” That is the nature of relationships. Relationships are hardwired into who we are. If you go back to a part of our heritage, our ancestry which is in our DNA, people weren’t alone. They were always together. They ate together around the campfire. If you go back thousands of years, archeologist will always go to where people ate. That’s where they found all this stuff. People gathered. How that happened over and over again built itself into what we desire. I believe that if you work hard enough and you repeat and have these behaviors, people can be happy by themselves.

Do you want to go against thousands of years of our ancestry? People want to be with people. I look at all the opportunities that I’ve had. It has come as a result of relationships. However, relationships also have some characteristics, healthy relationships. It’s not about how to do something, how to invest here, how to set up your tax strategy this way or how to become this. It’s who and this whole idea of proximity. I believe in the six degrees of separation these days is probably two or three. It has probably been cut in half. It’s looking at how important reputation is, how important it is to have integrity. Do the right thing. Put other people first, which is not a natural principle. As much as we’re meant to be around other people, being in groups and want relationships, we also have these fears and anxieties of being taken advantage of.

We’ve had these fear and anxieties of what people will think and say about us. That means a lot. Social media is a perfect example. We’re all connected in theory, but people lack connection more these days than any time in history. It’s this idea about understanding the value of relationships and putting yourself around good people. That’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to immerse myself this year in this group. Probably 80% of the stuff that Tony Robbins talks about, does and believes, I’m all in. The 80% is what I focus on. I don’t care about the other stuff. The other stuff maybe because I don’t understand.

TWS 12 | Lessons On Entrepreneurship

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Financial Strategy to Reignite the American Dream

Looking at the group of people that are all there paying a large amount of money, spending a lot of time away from their families and businesses to commit themselves to grow personally, I wanted to be a part of that group. I realized that this immersion would help me become a better husband, father and leader. It’ll allow me to focus on my psychology, my state of being, my happiness and my physical wellbeing. If that wasn’t taken care of first, the experience I have with showing up for my family, business, friends or any other role that I play in life will be less than what my potential and what I could do. That’s where I connected the dots. This is a time where I am able to immerse myself in new relationships. I’m able to be around people that are driven like me and learn certain things. I’m able to make connections and contribute in a way that I may not be able to contribute to others. It made so much sense to me. Now I’m paying a huge amount of money to do it.

I’m taking up pretty much my entire year with the goal of achieving this state of personal development, as well as an improvement or enhancement of my leadership abilities. It’s been incredible. I’ve had so many breakthroughs. I’ll use an example. I was talking to someone about Donovan Mitchell. He is a professional basketball player for the Utah Jazz. I’ve talked about it before on the show. He was either a runner up or the Rookie of the Year. 2018, he had an incredible season. He had a shoe named after him now. His nickname is The Spida. He did this commercial with Tom Holland about his shoes. Don Mitchell has his own shoes with Adidas now. He’s not just an amazing player, he’s an amazing person. How do you know that? I don’t know him personally.

I’ve met him a couple of times. How do you know he’s a good person? He does a lot on social media. If you are on social media, follow this guy. It’s amazing. He has gone to some of the Utah football games like the University of Utah, Utah State Games and local basketball games. He walks around town. He never denies a signature or a photograph. He makes it fun. He’s so approachable. When they lost to the Rockets in the last game one evening, we were bummed. The next morning, my wife was at Target, which is down the road from us. It’s halfway between where I live and where downtown is where Donovan Mitchell lives and a lot of the Utah Jazz. Cynthia saw him at Target. She and her friend got a picture with him and were talking with him.

Donovan Mitchell has this personality. I don’t know if he designed it or he was raised that way. I had a conversation with somebody that contrasted that with John Stockton. He was probably one of the more famous Utah Jazz in the past. John Stockton was a prick. He did not talk to people and give autographs. This person was telling me that he used to go to this bread store. He would wait in his car for everybody to leave and then would get out and buy bread. You have Donovan Mitchell who’s been incredible. The culture of the Utah Jazz, the season tickets are almost sold out. My point is that the person you show up as is what makes a massive difference to others.

The person you show up as is what makes a massive difference to others. Click To Tweet

In my book, Heads I Win Tails You Lose, one of the stories I put in was about LeBron James and how he treats his status as a brand, as a business. Is that the angle that Donovan Mitchell has taken? Maybe or maybe not. The idea is if you can connect with people. People are what provide the highest degree of happiness, fulfillment and achievement. Without people, it would be a pretty miserable world. I look at what we can do as human beings, as individuals. We’ve all had crap happened to us. We’ve all had these reasons to not play full out. We’ve had failures. We have our insecurities, inadequacies and weaknesses. This is where I come to the last point I’m going to make, which is controlling your state. This has to do with how you show up in those relationships and what has those relationships thrive.

The Idea Of The State

I’ll give you a couple of examples of some relationships. I can talk about this principle with some stories. The idea of the state is a big thing that I learned at one of these other conferences that Tony Robbins puts on, which is called Unleash the Power. This is something that hit me. I grew up as an introvert. I was shy. I never had a serious relationship with a woman until my wife and I’ve been married for several years now. I grew up where there were some events of my life that made me shyer and more introverted. I wasn’t expressive. I was afraid of what people thought or say. There was some fear built up based on experiences. I had repeated those stories over and over and it affected me. There were some events that caused me to break out of my shell. It’s one of those things where I’ve connected to the control that I have over how I show up, my state right now and if you think about everything that you will ever want. I’m talking more materially, whether it’s the salary amount, a job or a lifestyle that you want.

The only reason why you want those things is that you think it’s going to produce a certain state. I look at the control that we have over defining a beautiful state that we can live in without those things. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t want those things. Having an adventure and experiencing life, there’s being able to travel and go to events like the ones I’ve been talking about. Being able to take vacations, even something as simple as that requires financial resources. I get that. At the same time, what makes that so much easier is understanding what your state of mind and being consists of and figuring a way to put yourself in that state as often as humanly possible. Let me talk briefly about that.

The first is a triad. The first principle of that triad is your focus. You can always look at the glass as half full or half empty. Every experience that happens in life can be construed as good or bad. In the life that we live, people would kill. They would die. They would walk across the desert. They would do that to be in the United States. That is something that we could wake up and be way more grateful for than we usually are. Be grateful for the time in which we live. We don’t have to worry about the things that people had to worry about 100 years ago. One hundred years ago, people were working their ass off during this time of year so that four months from now, they wouldn’t be freezing on the brink of dying.

TWS 12 | Lessons On Entrepreneurship

Lessons On Entrepreneurship: Paying attention to our physicality or physiology is huge when we want to live a beautiful life and a beautiful state.

 

We don’t have to worry about that these days. We have so many things that are part of life that we take for granted. That sounds super cliché, but if you think about it, we could focus on something as simple as that. The feeling of gratitude, being able to understand and acknowledge that, helps us to see our experiences, whether it’s today or tomorrow, from a different perspective. That allows us to experience a different state and different degree of happiness, fulfillment and so forth. That’s the first, is focus. The second is physiology. It is your physical wellbeing. When I look at physiology, something’s connected with me. I want to do more research here. I look at all the different experiences we’ve had in our life. They’re all in us somewhere.

We can’t remember them all, but part of our unconscious mind is that most of that stuff is there. Most of our life is on autopilot like our heart beating, reactions to things and language. We use the same words. We say the same phrases. We have these very similar thoughts over and over. A lot of our life is on autopilot. Much of that is with our physical body. Our body is taking care of itself without us giving direction to it. I look at how repeated the behaviors are, whether it’s the language we use, the things we say, the things we tell ourselves. How we show up has been programmed into our habits. Those habits continued to be reinforced over and over again.

Looking at focus is one of the first ways in which you can start to reprogram your habits. The second thing is looking at your physical wellbeing. A lot of those things are built into our nervous system. We react to things that way. When somebody says this or does this, we react this way. It’s there. As far as controlling our state as we start to focus on different things, paying attention to our body, especially our stature, smiling, chest up or shoulders back. There are several things that, if you understand body language, tell the person what you’re feeling without you saying anything. That’s why nonverbal communication is 93%. It’s your feet position, shoulders, eyes, chest, smile, and frown or where you look. There are all these tells that FBI agents and interviewers know to a T but we don’t know those but they’re built into us. Paying attention to our physicality or physiology is huge when we want to live a beautiful life and a beautiful state.

The final thing is language, which are the words that we use. I can’t remember what the statistic is, but we have a set of vocabulary that we consistently use. We all know what the positive words are and what the positive tonality is. We know what the negative words are and the negative tonality. As much as we control our focus, we control how we define that focus, which is typically in words and language. When you define an experience or your physical state, when you put an adjective on something and start to describe something, you can easily say that it’s negative as you can positive. Most people, because of these survival instincts that are within us, our fear of being and what people will say, protection to our self-esteem, we typically will use negative patterns. Those affect our positive state. In the end, this may sound woo-woo to you and it probably is. This is what I’ve been going through. I’ve taken all of these experiences that I’ve had, thousands of conversations over the last six months and boiled them into these three things, which I have connected as the most important to me.

Every experience that happens in life can be construed as good or bad. Click To Tweet

I look at the pursuit of an entrepreneur, all the different people that I’ve interviewed, both in the season on capitalism and this season on entrepreneurship. You’re going to see the same theme throughout, which is people overcoming certain things, digging down deep. They may have not articulated what I have here, but I look at the power of relationships, the power of controlling your state, making certain decisions and difficult moments and in the end, understanding what you want. I’ll go back to that relationship story I was going to tell you. I was in Dallas for UPW, the Unleash the Power Within, which is a Tony Robbins event. Instead of coming home the last day, I drove down to Austin and did a video interview with someone that I’m doing some joint venture type of marketing with.

Pursuit Of Entrepreneurship And Relationships

I’ve known this individual for several years. I met him because another business associate friend of mine, we were having dinner with a very famous entrepreneur author in Austin several years ago. We decided to invite this individual. He expressed a lot of gratitude since then to us for inviting him. It was an amazing dinner. It was a lot of cool and amazing conversation. Over the course of time, we’ve talked back and forth. We have some mutual contacts and connections and I decided to maintain that. It led to a business opportunity. That’s what we’re pursuing now. This time when I was in Austin after we were done with the video shoot, we were going to go to dinner because I was leaving the next day. We ate at this amazing restaurant. The food was incredible. This individual asked if I wanted to invite anyone that I knew in Austin. Almost immediately, a person came to mind.

This individual, I’ve known for several years as well. I had an immediate bond and connection with him when I first met him. He happened to be the guy who bought the very first copy ever of Rich Dad Poor Dad. He’s writing a book with Robert Kiyosaki. I’m going to interview him. I knew he was in Austin. I didn’t know where. I reached out to him. I’m like, “I’m doing this dinner. I’m here just for the night. We’re doing it at this place.” The place happened to be within the same complex as his office and about five minutes from where he lived. He had barely, within the hour just got home from a writing retreat that he did at his place in Colorado in the mountains. We had about an hour of conversation. I was able to bring these two people together. Even though they didn’t know each other, I’ve created two additional networks.

It was such a powerful conversation. The nature of the conversation had to do with, “How can I help you out? I can do this for you.” It was an incredible experience. Never underestimate the power of relationships. You don’t know who people know. You don’t know who people will become. The greatest mistake I’ve made as a business owner and as an individual over the past is failing to recognize the importance of relationships. Over the last few years, this has been something that I’ve been so driven by, which is, “How can I create value for more people? How can I help here? How can I connect this? How can I influence this?” It’s not, “What do I get out of it?” It’s, “How do I bind people, help people and provide value?” I never called it proximity is power or the power of relationships, but I’ve always believed that people are assets.

TWS 12 | Lessons On Entrepreneurship

Rich Dad Poor Dad

There’s always something to gain by having healthy relationships. A lot of the business failures that I’ve seen over the course of time are those that don’t care about their reputation and don’t care about others, “It’s all about me.” I get it. We all have this need to be significant and see ourselves as important in the world. If you look at the John Stockton principle, when you express that, whether it’s overtly or covertly, covertly in his case, it never ends well. You build a reputation where people don’t want to have a relationship. Those are the three things. This show revolves around business, ideas, taking those ideas and bringing it to fruition, but I thought it would be good for me to say what’s up and tell you about what I’ve been doing over the last several months. Weave in some of the things I’ve been learning and what they have to do with entrepreneurship.

I have been happier over the last couple of months than I have in a long time. I associate that with what I’ve discovered about myself and these three principles, defining what you want, understanding and believing in the power of relationship and wanting to be around the who and not how. It’s, “Who can help you do this?” and not, “How do I do this?” It’s who’s already done it and building relationships where you may not have a value from that individual for years. You never know. It’s also the state. I have 60-plus employees. I have a lot going on. We have thousands of clients. There’s always something. I was gone. When I come back, there was a toilet that leaked on the fourth floor and trashed all of my marketing books. I probably have a hundred books that now toast. This stuff is going to happen, but I choose how I react to that. It didn’t affect me the slightest.

Sometimes I look at what impacts us and how we can control it and control and understand our state of being and put ourselves in the most beautiful state possible as often as possible. You’re going to see that. That’s going to impact the relationships you have with people, the goals that you set and your success. I hope you got something out of this episode. I’ve made some offers with the book in the previous episodes. If you want to go pick up the book, it’s FreeBook.HeadsOrTailsIWin.com. We’re giving the audiobook for free if you buy the physical copy. You are amazing. Thank you so much for your support. I’ve been getting tons of good feedback for some of the episodes, videos and interviews. Keep them coming. The podcast is at ParadigmLife.net. I hope you’re enjoying this season on entrepreneurship. We get some cool interviews coming up. Make sure you stay tuned to future episodes.

If you are new, we did three seasons. We did all of 2018 based around John Locke who was an influential philosopher several hundred years ago and coined the term, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of property,” which became the pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence. We did a season on life, a season on liberty and a season on the pursuit of property. You can go check those interviews out. That was such a fun year. The first four months of 2019, we did our theme on capitalism. Now, we’re doing on entrepreneurship. I’m not sure what we’re going to do for the third season of the year. I have some ideas. Thank you so much for your support. That’s it. Thanks. See you soon.

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TWSFF 08 | Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins Platinum Partners Finance And Economics Summit

March 8, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:14:31 Comments Off on Tony Robbins Platinum Partners Finance And Economics Summit

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TWSFF 08 | Tony Robbins

 

Nothing makes us grow more than learning. Patrick takes us into his experience over the last Tony Robbins Platinum Partners Finance and Economic Summit he attended, highlighting three major takeaways that impart great wisdom that contributes to success. He shares what he learned about focusing on the positive, finding the balance between certainty and uncertainty, and knowing the emotional cycles that exist in financial markets – from the big to the small.

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Watch the episode here:

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Tony Robbins Platinum Partners Finance And Economics Summit

Financial Friday

I’m going to condense my experience over the last Tony Robbins event that I attended. This is a special one. This is for Platinum Partnership, an inner circle group of Tony Robbins and they do it once a year. It’s purely based on finance and economics. He had speakers like George Bush, Clinton, Bernanke, Greenspan, Ray Dalio, T. Boone Pickens and a lot of other professional investors. I’m going to give you my top three takeaways. However, you can look for the playlist or the videos I did. It basically has four videos I did while I was at the summit that goes through in detail some of the things that I was learning. I’m going to highlight the top three. The first one was interesting. This is a big thing that we all can work on and it’s always going to be the case, which is the idea of focus.

This room was filled with successful people in all walks of life. They have a few billionaires in there. I got to talk to a number of people and it’s probably the most high-level group I’ve ever been around, especially the number. There are about 300 of us there. It was one of those things where it kept coming up over and over again. It’s the notion of focus. Oftentimes, how we’re conditioned is we focus on the things that are not going right or we focus on the problems. We focus on the pessimistic side of things as opposed to what we actually can control and focus on, which is what’s going good, what’s going right. What that does is it provides a different state of mind in regards to how we analyze things, how we take advantage of opportunities, how we experience life. Ultimately, the amount of money or success that you achieve, you’re always going to have that instinctive side of you that is looking for what’s wrong. It’s protecting you. It’s looking out for danger so that you don’t get harmed or hurt. What it tends to do is affect our mind that we’re always focused on the negative, the bad, not necessarily the good. There’s always something good going on.

When the focus is there listing things, you’re grateful for or singing out loud a list of those things that you’re grateful for. Thinking about the blessings that you have or thinking about what is going right and list those, it’s amazing what type of mindset that creates. That’s one of those keys to understanding opportunity is that if you have a pessimistic attitude, you’re not going to see opportunity. Therefore, mindset is key. I know that’s general, maybe it’s not necessarily financial but in my experience, it leads to financial. I have dozens of employees. I have lots of responsibility on my shoulder. I’m a parent, I’m a husband. It’s one of those things where there’s always pressures. There’s always something that’s not going as I want. However, there are amazing things that are going on. When my focus is there, my attitude is so much different. I show up differently, I played differently. I experience life differently. Take that as my first big takeaway.

Second is interesting. This is where I’m determining as the balance of certainty and uncertainty, which I’ve talked about before. Here’s an interesting quote and it’s deeper than I thought when I actually first heard it. The quote is, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.” Uncertainty as he describes it, it’s variety. It’s adventure. Those are some uncertain things. Uncertainty is what makes life exciting, not boring. Uncertainty can also be very negative if you think about it but at the same time, uncertainty is having fun adventures, surprises, roller coasters, going on trips, exploring new places, learning something new, being with new people. Those are experiences that give life a lot of vitality. If everything was the same over and over again, that repetition is boring and we don’t deal with that well.

We are conditioned to focus on things that are not going right as opposed to what is going good. Click To Tweet

The idea is how do you balance certainty and uncertainty? How I look at it is something that Tony uses, which is looking at your financial life with a bucket mentality. I call it a hierarchy in the book I wrote, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. I talked about the hierarchy of wealth. It’s a very similar concept where you fill up that first bucket, that safety bucket or certainty bucket and it has assets that we’re not going to lose money. Assets that are protected and insured grow to an extent but also allow you peace of mind so that you can start to experience uncertainty and that variety. You do it in a responsible manner and the uncertainty applies to you but it could be having those adventures, doing vacations, doing fun things with your family. The uncertainty could also be pursuing a different position, applying for a new position, applying for a new job. It’s expanding your resume and being more valuable to your employer or another employer, researching things about yourself. It’s basically doing things that are different than they currently are.

That uncertainty is where I believe that he’s referring to. The quality of your life as you’re taking on these new things and you’re growing and expanding, that uncertainty is essentially reinforced and accentuated by a balance of certainty. That was cool to think through because in the end, we’re all looking for a high quality of life. A high quality of life is not redundant things that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis. It’s doing things that are exciting. The pursuit of that is always going to give this fulfillment and excitement. However, to be enjoyed I look at having a foundation, having an offset of certainty when it comes to your financial life.

TWSFF 08 | Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins: A high quality of life is not about doing redundant things on a day to day basis. It’s doing things that are exciting.

 

The third thing was interesting. This was brought up a number of times, which is the emotional cycles that exist in financial markets, big markets but also small markets. Sentiment is vital to understand. It’s interesting how we approach things sometimes because when you’re approaching it as a third party observer, we tend to look at things rationally, analytically. However, when we’re in the actual experience, when we’re not observing, we’re actually in there. It’s more of an emotional game than anything else.

One of the speakers was a manager of I think $100 billion, $20 billion, $30 billion. His name’s Howard Marks. He went through and talked about his new book that’s out I believe. It’s one of those things where you would assume that big traders, whether it’s hedge fund traders or VC funds or whomever, that they have it together and they’re not emotional when you have volatility. He basically made the case that they always are. One of the most difficult things in their world when it comes to investment is making decisions based on fundamentals being in line. However, it’s also adding the variable of emotion. If a certain emotional state is not present, that could be a no buy or a buy signal. It’s interesting. I think we’re in this euphoric state where people are bidding up and buying for the sake of it.

If you have a pessimistic attitude, you're not going to see opportunity. Click To Tweet

An example that they did at this event was they bid up the price of $100 bill. This is a room full of successful people and Tony made the claim, “Who are my risk takers out there? Who are my ballers out there?” A couple of people raised their hand and he auctioned off a $100 bill. Somebody offered a $150, $200, $500, then it got to a $1,000 then $5,000. Here’s the catch, the person that bid the highest had to pay and got the dollar bill but the runner up didn’t get the bill but still had to pay. It was fascinating. The bidding got up to $50,000 and then $100,000. The $50,000 guy had to pay same with the $100,000 guy but the $50,000 guy didn’t get everything.

I want you to look at going from $50,000 to $100,000 the guy knew it’s a lot of money but then he didn’t know how much the $100,000 guy was going to bid after that. It could have gone to $1 million. It’s one of those things were in the actual mix, the emotions, the stuff that’s going on in your brain is not rational because the rational thing would have been not to bid more than $100 for a $100. Have your experiences some other way. These guys may have been the billionaires in the room. I have no idea. All of the money went to charity but regardless, I would rather not have that experience and paid $100,000 for that. There would be way more beneficial than that.

My point is this is where emotions come into play. With where our world exists, there is a certain emotional state collectively when it comes to assets being bid up, whether it’s real estate assets, whether it’s commodities, whether it’s stock. It’s an emotional game. The emotion is nonsensical from a more greed standpoint or fear of missing out standpoint as opposed to a sell-off, “I’m running to the hills.” Those are two different emotions. Howard Marks does a great job of talking about that emotional cycle.

This is one last thing as we get into this idea of the emotional game, which is something they made me think. I’ve looked at the fundamentals of our economy. I look at how much debt is out there, how much productivity is out there, which is not that much at all. Peter Diamandis, this guy is one of those thinkers. He went 10:00 at night, three hours long and his energy level is high as could be the entire time. It was fascinating and he talked about so many different subjects. I cover some of them on the video that I mentioned. Peter made the case that life in the next ten years, there’s going to be more economic growth, more prosperity than the previous 100 years combined. His argument was how quickly technology is growing but also the exposure to societies and markets that are not online.

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The statistics are showing 4.5 billion people will be online in the next ten years. It’s fascinating to think of it, whether it’s India as an emerging market. Africa is an emerging market. China is the same thing. In the Middle East, it’s the same thing. It made me think about what my frame of references when it comes to, whereas an economy with productivity is like. What are our debt situation both short and long-term is like? What’s going to happen as a result? I don’t play markets, but at the same time, I’m curious because the markets are part of our life. They fund the companies that we all use. Looking at consumer sentiment when it comes to being alive, it’s going to be interesting to see what the next ten years hold.

From a transportation standpoint, from a communication standpoint, our lives are going to change quickly and it’s exciting to me. At the same time, it could definitely be disruptive to whether it’s companies, economies or governments. Looking at that, whenever emotion is high, especially fear and running to the hills, that’s where all the opportunity exists. The last thing I was going to talk about is Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio runs one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. The minimum investment you can make with him is $1.5 million. He’s done very well for himself but what’s interesting is his thoughts in regard to economic cycles.

He has some theory associated with economics and the best way to handle so much progress when it comes to technology and potentially the employment situations we can find ourselves in, where technology is going to take over a lot of employment. He has some amazing thoughts there. Those are on the videos of on YouTube. There are four of those videos. Go check those out. Research Patrick Donohoe in there or Paradigm Life, put The Wealth Standard and that should pop up. There are four of those, it says Tony Robbins’ Platinum Partners, day one, two, three and then day four and five. I hope you like them. Thanks for everyone.

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About the host

Patrick Donohoe

Patrick Donohoe

CEO Paradigm Life

Patrick is the President and CEO and started Paradigm Life in 2007 after learning from his mentor Kim Butler about financial strategies outside of Wall Street.

With a background in economics and marketing, Patrick immediately realized the opportunity to teach investors, business owners, professionals and families on a large scale using modern digital media and communication technology. Since 2007 Paradigm Life has worked with thousands of individuals in all 50 states.