Tony Robbins: Why AI won't replace you, someone using it

1. 0:00 – 3:03

   Intro

   1. SPSpeaker0:00

      I'm trying not to cry. [chuckles] I'm just like, um, I hate suffering. I've suffered myself, and so I hate to see anybody suffer. And so, um, this is my mission. This is what I'm made for, and, um, I'm just one guy, I can't do everything, but I can do a lot. [gentle music] Um, I always try to help people say, "How can you turn your worst day into your best day?"

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:23

      Please help me welcome to the stage, Tony Robbins! [upbeat music]

   3. SPSpeaker0:28

      He's the nation's number one life and business strategist.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:31

      He's worked with royalty, elite athletes, Oscar winners, scientists, and everyone in between-

   5. SPSpeaker0:36

      To overcome their limitations and accelerate change.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:40

      Can you take us back to the environment that shaped you into the man that you are?

   7. SPSpeaker0:43

      So I grew up in a tough environment. I had four different fathers. My mom, she drank alcohol and took prescription drugs, and we had no money, no food. And then the thing that changed my whole life was a knock on the door on Thanksgiving. There was this tall guy standing there with two bags of groceries and an uncooked frozen turkey in a pan. My dad saw this man, he said, "We don't take charity," and he went and slammed the door on the guy. But it became a very useful in distinction for me about how he and I processed that day differently, because there's three decisions you make every moment of your life, and the real problem is the story you have. For example, that day, my dad's focus was the fact he not fed his family and he was worthless. However, I took that as strangers care. And so the story is the belief you've told yourself over and over, 'cause belief is the invisible force that controls everything in your life. And then there's the third decision: What am I gonna do? And so what I decided to do is someday I'm gonna do this for others and end suffering where I can. And so I'm gonna show you how to get clear on what you really want, figure out what's been stopping you, put the plan in place, and teach you the most important thing that's made me successful.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:41

      And I don't think people fully realize the significance of how many of the most influential people on planet Earth you have worked with and continue to work with. What is the pattern that you noticed in those people?

   9. SPSpeaker1:51

      So I found four things with them, and the first thing is-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:55

       Listen, my, my team gave me a script that they asked me to read, but I'm just gonna ask you, um, in the nicest way I possibly can. Thank you first and foremost for choosing to subscribe to this channel. It is, um... It's been one of the most incredible, crazy years of my life. I never could have imagined. I had so many dreams in my life, but this was not one of them. And the very fact that these conversations have resonated with you and you've given me so much feedback is something I will always be appreciative of, and I almost carry a weight, a sort of burden of, uh, responsibility to pay you back. And the favor I would like to ask from you today is to subscribe to the channel, if you, um, would be so obliged. It's completely free to do that. Roughly about forty-seven percent of you that listen to this channel frequently currently don't subscribe to this channel. So if you're one of those people, please come and join us. Hit the subscribe button. It's the single free thing you can do to make this channel better, and every subscriber sort of pays into this show and allows us to do things bigger and better and to push ourselves even more. And I will not let you down if you hit the subscribe button, I promise you, and if I do, please do unsubscribe, but I promise I won't. Thank you. [upbeat music] Tony, I was, I was shocked. It was so surprising

2. 3:03 – 6:13

   A Stranger Changed My Life Forever

   1. SBSteven Bartlett3:03

      to me that you had the childhood you had based on the outcomes that you've accomplished in your life. And as someone that has followed you for a very long time, I imagine that there's many other people that have followed you for a very long time that have no idea about the early context. For those people-

   2. SPSpeaker3:19

      [chuckles]

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:20

      ... Can you take us back to the environment that shaped you into the man that you are?

   4. SPSpeaker3:24

      Well, I think, you know, I grew up, I grew up in a tough environment. I had, um, four different fathers. My mom [chuckles] was a very intense and passionate woman. Uh, we never had any money. We were very, very poor. Uh, my mom was probably the most important influence in my life by far. Um, very loving woman, but a very stressed woman, and under that stress, she drank alcohol and took prescription drugs, and when she did that, she became very violent. So I took the brunt of that and then figured out how to manage her emotions, basically. Uh, that's where all my beginning training really happened, and yet at the same time, she was loving and she pushed me, she believed in me, uh, she wanted me to be something. So she influenced my life in so many beautiful ways. And then probably what changed my life the most, though, is my fourth father especially, made it clear no one gives a damn about anybody else. We lived in a, um, uh, what I thought was an upper-class, uh, c- community or city, but we were on the other side of the tracks. It was lower middle [chuckles] class, and we were, you know, literally right by the railroad tracks, where the worst of the worst lived, so to speak. And so we're kind of looked down on, and so it really looked like nobody cares. And then the thing that changed my whole life, a single event, was a knock on the door on Thanksgiving. We had no money, no food. When I say no food, we had crackers and peanut butter, but not a Thanksgiving dinner, right? And, uh, my dad and my mom are screaming at each other through a door, and, uh, my dad had lost his job. You get the knock on the door, and I open the door, and there's this tall guy standing there with two bags of groceries, one in each hand, and at his feet, he had an uncooked frozen turkey in, in a pan, you know? And he said: "Is your father here?" And I was like: "Just one moment," [chuckles] you know? And I was like, it was Christmas morning. So I go to my dad and I go, "Hey, Dad, there's someone at the door for you." And he goes, "Who is it?" And I said, "I don't know. It's for you." He goes, "Well, you answer." I said, "I already did. It's for you." So he goes over there, and I'm waiting, like, with such excitement for him to open the door, and he saw this man, and he was not happy. He looked at this man before the guy said a word, and he said, "We don't take charity." And he went and slammed the door on the guy, but the man had leaned in because of the groceries, and it hit his shoulder, and it bounced off, which made my dad even madder. And he said, "Sir, sir," he said, "Somebody knows you're having a tough time. Everyone has tough times. They want you to have this food for your family for Thanksgiving." He goes, "I'm just the delivery guy." And my father said, "We don't take charity," and he pushed the door again, but this time, because the guy is leaning, his foot now stepped in. It hit his foot and bounced off. And then, now my dad's getting more fired up, and I'm standing looking at this whole thing, and it's like a car crash happening. And the guy said something to my dad, I thought my dad was gonna punch him in the face. He didn't say it meanly. He said, "Sir," he said... He saw me, he said, "Don't make your family, you know, suffer because of your ego." And I can still see it like it was yesterday. My dad's veins on both sides of his neck were just pumping, and he's red as can be.... and then he just dropped his shoulders, he took the groceries, he slammed it on the table, and he slammed the door, and he never even said thank you.

3. 6:13 – 10:55

   You Only Experience the Life You Focus On

   1. SPSpeaker6:13

      It took me maybe a decade to eventually figure it out. It became a very useful in distinction for me about how he and I processed that day differently, 'cause I believe there's three decisions you make every moment of your life. You're making them right now if you're listening to me, and so is your audience. The first one is, what are you gonna focus on? You're gonna be focused on what happened yesterday, what you're gonna have for lunch, what I'm saying, how it relates to you. There are m- millions of things you can focus on, but you don't experience life. You experience the life you focus on, and most of us are distortion, deletion creatures. Our brains don't take it all in consciously. It's too much, so our brains delete things, we distort things, we generalize things, so we can make it through our lives. And so if you don't control your focus, you react. And that day, my dad's focus was on the fact he didn't feed his family. It wasn't hard to figure out. He said it over and over again after, after he slammed the door. And my focus was, "Wow, there's food. What a concept!" [chuckles] You know, I was excited. But the second decision you make every moment, the minute you focus on something, your brain has to figure out, what does this mean? Is this the end or the beginning? Is this person dissing me? As they-- are they challenging me? Are they coaching me? Are they loving me? And whatever meaning you give it produces emotion, and out of that emotion, you make the third decision: What am I gonna do? And that day, I know the meaning my dad did. It wasn't just that he didn't feed his family; it's that he was worthless. You know, I can't even feed my family, and he muttered all this stuff continuously, but I, I took that as strangers care. It completely violated everything I had experienced in my life up until that point, and my brain was like, if a stranger doesn't even want credit for this, and they fed my family on Thanksgiving, I gotta care about strangers. And so what I decided to do is someday I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this for others. And so when I was seventeen, I went out, and I, uh, I didn't have a lot of money, but I was doing okay, and I went to a grocery store, and I told the manager what happened in my life, and I said: "I wanna feed two families. Help me out. Give me a discount." And he gave me ten percent off, and I thought, cheap bastard, but I took it. [chuckles] I had the most enjoyable shopping. I took two shopping carts and just filled it up for two families. And then I, um, I called this church, and I said: "Who do you know that needs help but won't ask for it, won't come for it?" And they gave me two families' names, and so I wrote a little note. I just put, "This is a gift from a friend. Everyone has tough times. I hope you have a beautiful Thanksgiving, and someday, if you can, pay this forward." I didn't use the word pay it forward. I said, "Do this for someone else," but now you'd look at it as pay it forward. And I put, "Love, a friend." And then I, I realized I was going to the barrio area of the city, and I was like, maybe they don't speak English, so I had a friend of mine write in Spanish on the back, so I figured I could flip it over. And I... The first house I went to, it's a little, tiny place. I knock on the door, and this woman, about this tall, S- Hispanic woman, sees me and sees the food and screams, and then grabbed my head and pulls it down and starts kissing me on the cheek. [chuckles] And I said, "No, no, no, delivery boy, delivery boy." And she's like-- and I was, "Oh," and I pull out the note, and I flipped it over in Spanish, and she read it, and then she started to cry, and she goes... And she started giving me a kiss again. I said, "No, delivery." She goes, "No, gift of God, gift of God." And I'm trying not to cry. I'm just like, um, I feel it like it was yesterday still. And so, um, I-- [chuckles] the door opened. It's a tiny, little place, the size of your kitchen here, or your reminder of your kitchen. And, um, and I, I was so excited to set food down, all of a sudden, I heard screams, and then next thing I know, I'm hit by one and then by another. Four boys, and one hit one leg, one hit the other. They saw the food, they went crazy. Um, and I said, "Come help me." You know, 'cause we had other stuff in the van, and when they saw the pumpkin pie, it was really over, [chuckles] you know? And we brought all this food in, and then it was time to go. And, um, the father had left them, I found out later, four days before Thanksgiving with no money and no food. And, um, anyway, I'm looking through the mirror, and I just started crying uncontrollably, and I'm like, "Why am I crying so bad? This is such a beautiful moment." Then I just realized, you know, my worst day of my life was really my best day. That, the day that was the most painful to me, 'cause that father is the one who, he adopted me, I carry his name, um, that I wouldn't be there if that dad... I'm a good human being, but, you know, would I worked as hard as I worked to feed other people? I mean, I'm-- next year, I did four, then eight, then twelve, and I had a little company. I got my employees involved, and I got to a million people, two million people, and then about twelve years ago, I decided I want to fill the f-- I want to feed a billion meals here in the United States in ten years. And so it's grown and grown and grown, all from not being fed. And so I, I, I see it as a blessing. I see... I always try to help people say, "How could you turn your worst day into your best day?" That's when life is really magical.

4. 10:55 – 14:11

   I Hate Suffering

   1. SBSteven Bartlett10:55

      How many years has it been since you met that young mother with her four children at-

   2. SPSpeaker10:59

      I was seventeen. I'm gonna be sixty-six. [chuckles]

   3. SBSteven Bartlett11:02

      Wow, fifty years?

   4. SPSpeaker11:04

      Yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett11:06

      And it still brings you to tears to recount that story.

   6. SPSpeaker11:08

      It really does. [chuckles]

   7. SBSteven Bartlett11:09

      Why, why is that?

   8. SPSpeaker11:11

      Um, I have a... I hate suffering. I've suffered myself, and so I hate to see anybody suffer, and so I'm unbelievably driven to end suffering where I can, to help anyone do that, whether it be hunger or emotional hunger or depression or sadness or a relationship or... I just, I don't know what it is. I just, I love human beings. I hate suffering, and I hate-- and I love to see when somebody awakens to who they are, and we all are so much more than we ever, you know, perceive ourself to be, but many times, you don't discover that until you have to. I like to try and show people how to do it, so they have to wait till life hits them. You know, anything you can imagine, we're all gonna go through extreme stress in our lives, but how do you... Do you use stress, or does stress use you? And so my whole thing is help people, show them how to use stress, 'cause I don't care how good a person you are, I don't care how spiritual or religious you are, I don't care how smart you are, how rich you think you are, every human being is gonna go through extreme stress multiple times in their life....And the real question is, what are you going to do with it? And the first thing is, if you're going through hell, keep going. But if you keep going, you discover, number one, how strong you really are. 'Cause if you don't give up, you'll discover who you are. The second thing you find out is who your real friends are, 'cause when things aren't so great, you get to see who those are. And then third, it almost gives you, like, an inoculation to future stress. 'Cause, like, I had a friend that was shot down in Vietnam and was in a prison there for seven years in solitary confinement, and, uh, Captain Coffey is his name. And I remember I met him later in life, and he was going through this tough thing with the IRS, and it was so unfair. It took him three years. He got his money back, but I said: "Doesn't that drive you crazy?" He goes, "After being with the North Vietnamese," he goes, "you know, what could the IRS do to me?" [chuckles] You know? So I think those pieces are there, but everyone gets called on the journey. Most people try to resist it, but that journey, that's what the call is. It's a call to grow. So I, I'm, I'm big on change your story, change your life, and I'm big on understanding the narrative of where you are in the story of your life. 'Cause if you understand where you are, it gives context, it gives meaning, and it doesn't make you feel overwhelmed.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett13:12

      Had your mother not suffered in such a way, do you think this would be so important to you? Had you not observed that suffering?

   10. SPSpeaker13:18

       Yeah. Um, no, I, I, I've also often said I'm... Like I said earlier, I think I'm, I'm a good human being, and I think I still help people. But would I be providing sixty-two billion meals, [chuckles] working around the clock on top of, you know, my hundred and fourteen companies and all that? No, I don't think I would, and that hunger comes very often from pain. But pain's not enough to keep you going. Pain only goes so far. You've got to find something that... 'Cause like I, I tell people, there's two types of motivation, right? There's push motivation.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett13:46

       Mm.

   12. SPSpeaker13:46

       You know, you're making something happen, and I have enormous willpower. I'm sure you do. Most of the people we probably interact with have great willpower, right? But there's still a limit to it. But there's no limit to pull motivation. Pull is there's something so magnificent you want to serve, something that you care about more than yourself. That's where all the energy in life comes from. You know what's in your heart and your soul, what wakes you up in the morning and makes you go, and I think

5. 14:11 – 15:45

   The 'Self-Care' Revolution Is Making You Weak

   1. SPSpeaker14:11

      if I hadn't had the pain, I don't think I would have been sensitized. But I also, if I hadn't felt the pleasure of serving and seeing impact on such a large scale, then, you know, you'd be limited. 'Cause you, listen, meeting your own needs is not that hard. Like, I- my biggest beef with right now, since COVID, is this whole self-care revolution we've got. I mean, you've got to take care of yourself. Don't get me wrong, I take care of myself, and, you know, you get weaker and weaker the more you focus on yourself. The human mind is always gonna figure out something that isn't good enough. But when you're serving, you're not there. Like, your mind's not there. You're with the people, you're with what you're doing, and it, it's the escape from the mind's reductionism. And so I really believe that people, the secret to life is to find something you care about more than yourself that gives you that pull motivation, and then you're never gonna lack for energy, you're never gonna lack for passion, you're never gonna lack for anything, and you're gonna have a life that's extremely meaningful. It's not happy every moment. There, there's not meant to be. If you smile, have you ever smiled so much, your face hurt?

   2. SBSteven Bartlett15:12

      Yeah.

   3. SPSpeaker15:12

      You know, we need variety. [chuckles] So, yeah, but meaning, that's something you can find no matter what.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett15:18

      I asked you before we started recording, um, a question I almost never ask any of my guests, which is: what is the thing that we should be talking about the most? And you told me, you know, shortly after, um, what your answer was, but, you know, even shortly after that, you then went on to talk to me about how you're driven to end suffering. Now, if I compare these two answers, the answer you gave me to the question I asked about what's the most important thing for us to be talking about, and your second point about your desire to end suffering, there's probably some kind of overlap.

   5. SPSpeaker15:44

      There is,

6. 15:45 – 25:22

   The Scary Future of AI & The Psychological Impact

   1. SPSpeaker15:45

      yeah.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett15:45

      So if I were to ask you, just for, because we weren't recording then, what you think may be the most consequential thing we should be talking about right now is, as it relates to suffering and everything that's going on in society, what would that answer be?

   3. SPSpeaker15:56

      I think it's, uh, AI, but it's not just AI, it's nanotechnology. It's how technology, the rapid change in technology, and, uh, if you don't believe it's gonna destroy humanity, and it's gonna liberate us from a lot of labor if you believe that, the ones that promote that concept. If that does happen, and we displace this many jobs in this short a period of time, jobs are not just money, jobs are meaning. It's not the only form of meaning, but it's meaning. So it's like you talk about, well, we'll do give people UBI, and okay, I think you might have to, because the change is gonna happen so rapidly. Like I said, you know, farming, eighty percent of us were farmers a hundred and fifty years ago. Now it's three percent, and we feed the world. That's a long transition. Uh, I think I mentioned to you off the air here, I was visiting with President Obama ten years ago, and towards the end of his term there, and I was saying: "Hey, I just gotta talk to you. You know, you inherited a pretty tough economy from the original two thousand and eight explosion, breakdown. We lost eight million jobs." So I said: "There's technology coming right now that we can predict is gonna displace more than those eight million jobs." And I talked to him at that time just about-- I said, "Just take one, like self-driving cars. They're just starting to come out." I said, "In the next ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years, they're gonna become ubiquitous." And I said: "There's eight million truck drivers, Uber drivers, and taxi drivers, and are you doing anything to retool them?" I said, "Because-"

   4. SBSteven Bartlett17:17

      Just in the US?

   5. SPSpeaker17:18

      Just in the US. I said: "Because if you don't..." Think about this. If I'm a business person, and I can hire a person to drive a truck only eight hours a day, I have to pay for the healthcare, which gets more expensive every year, um, they're gonna bitch at me about things, and I can buy a truck that can drive twenty-four hours a day, and my insurance is cheaper because it doesn't make mistakes, and I can depreciate the asset. Am I gonna hire anybody? I said, "So those jobs are gonna go away. That's eight million jobs. That's one sector." We can look at farming, but there's so many industries affected. So I said, "We've got to retool those people now, or there's ten years to gear them up because these are not people that are gonna do it on their own, and they're gonna be shocked. The, the shock to their system, the loss of dignity, of, of being in control, agency of their own life, of their own job, of their own direction is huge." And if you go back to, like, the Luddites, you know, you're from the UK, right? You must know your history there. 1800s, you know, mercantile, they come up with these machines, and how do people react? And by the way, this story is the same across history. We have a radical change like this. All these people are displaced, and what do they do? They rioted.... They took hammers, and they destroyed those machines. They threatened to kill the owners of those companies, and some were shot and killed. They blew up and firebombed places. And what did the UK, uh, you know, do about this? They passed a law in the first year of this, these Luddites, saying, "You destroy a machine, it's capital punishment."

   6. SBSteven Bartlett18:39

      Hmm.

   7. SPSpeaker18:39

      They hung people because they couldn't have them destroy the growth of the, of the economy, right? And guess what? Fifteen years later, the same thing happened again with the thrashers. Thrasher machines, they were used for wheat, and they lost all the jobs, and the people and the government overreacted. I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, but if anything, this transition is just gonna be smooth by us doing nothing, they're wrong, and the problem is, as I mentioned to you before, I think the leverage is not in favor of us taking care of society. The leverage is the carrot and the stick. The carrot is, I can make a trillion dollars if I have the right LLM or, you know, if I can get to a, artificial general intelligence, who knows? And if we don't do it, China's gonna do it, that's the stick, and then they're gonna run the world. So there's no focus on safety virtually, as you well know, and there's certainly no focus on what's happening with these jobs. Right now, high school students are getting jobs more than college students for the first time in fifty years, right? You see the displacement. You know, you got friends just like I do. Mark Benioff's one of my dear friends. They let go of like, what was it? I think it was... Was it five thousand customer service agents, and now it's done with AI now? Now he wants to elevate them to other jobs. So we have to look at what this means to our society. We have to anticipate what this means, and we've got to retool not just the jobs but the psychology because w- people talk about a post-work world. You hear people talk about this all the time, Elon, people like that. They-- labor is now like electricity. You just take it for granted. It's so cheap, it's so easy. Well, if that's true, and he's talking three to five years, and a lot of people say Elon's early. He usually is, uh, in his predictions. But Ray Kurzweil is a good friend of mine. He's the most accurate predictor of technology in history, and he's been saying twenty twenty-nine for almost twenty years is when you have artificial general intelligence. If you go to Hinton, I think you've interviewed Hinton, haven't you? Right. So he's the longest, and he's saying twenty thirty to twenty forty. He's giving us a little more room. In the next three to ten years, this is gonna happen. How are we prepared for this? And so this is the questions I'm trying to bring up to people that have influence to say, "If you're in business, [chuckles] you got to take a look at this. If you're in government, you got to take a look at this." And so I, I just got, um... They haven't announced it yet, but I just got selected to be on the Federal Advisory Committee for the President and for the Health and Human Services, and I'm on the mental health side, and I'm hoping to use that position to bring more of government's focus into this category as well because it's, it's got to be addressed.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett21:03

      When we recite these-

   9. SPSpeaker21:05

      And that's, by the way, the answer to your question is, and that's suffering.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett21:07

       Yeah.

   11. SPSpeaker21:08

       That's suffering at the highest level, not just financial suffering. That's emotional suffering, that's loss of identity suffering. If I am a coder, I am a truck driver, and I lose who I am. Now, uh, and I just want to say one last thing. We've already been in a post-work world because I-- one person said to me recently, "Well, for four thousand years, we've tied our identity to our work." I said, "No, Americans all go, 'What do you do?'" Not everybody in the world does that.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett21:31

       Hmm.

   13. SPSpeaker21:31

       And for four thousand years, our connection po-- before the agricultural revolution, was really what tribe we're connected to, and our sense of significance was maybe our courage in battle, not our financial component, or maybe it was our creativity, our poetry, our, our storytelling capacity, or maybe it was our generosity, um, maybe it was our wisdom. So we can find other things to have meaning besides a job, but if you don't take a cu- culture that's been conditioned for two hundred years to think a certain way, we're gonna have a lot of pain, and I would like to see us have less [chuckles] of that, if we could. And I'm only one person, but I'm do my best to help people make that transition.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett22:10

       It's funny because when we think about those historical examples of transition, I, for many reasons, think this is even more extreme.

   15. SPSpeaker22:17

       I agree.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett22:17

       Because you have intelligence, and you have-- you've basically disrupted both the muscles and the mind. [chuckles]

   17. SPSpeaker22:21

       But, you know, it-- the reason it's gonna explode even faster is because we're moving from LLMs to now actually studying visually what's happening in the real world.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett22:29

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SPSpeaker22:29

       And when robots do that, then the game changes. There's tempo of learning, and just think about this: you and I are having a con- a conversation. I picked up one of your books here, and I'm reading through your book, so I'm gonna get a feel for who you are and everything else before I came here. I've seen some of your videos, but-- and I, like, I really enjoyed it. But I had to go get that. I had to take a couple of hours to dig through that. You and I have a conversation. If either one of us learn something, you're a machine. Every machine knows it instantly. You push one button, and they have all of that knowledge. There's none of this word transfer. It's just, it's now. So people don't realize what this really means, and when you're learning from the real world, not just LLMs... Right now, you and I are- our brains are predictive devices. They're predicting what is gonna happen next to the best of our ability, and we're trying to close that gap as much as we can, or we get jolted. Well, think how predictively that's gonna do to people's heads when all of a sudden their labor is not needed.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett23:18

       Hmm.

   21. SPSpeaker23:18

       And it's no longer blue-collar labor, which is what people thought it would be. It's white-collar labor. I mean, like, my financial, I, I have a lot of- I have, uh, I own ninety-five different private equity firms. I have owned the firms, not the actual funds, right? So I get the two and twenty on them, and I got pieces of volume, so the biggest in the world. And so I get to take a look at some of the things that are happening so fast, and I look at all those jobs, and I see people in those industries, and quantum is taking-- it took over maybe five years ago. I've seen the shrink in these offices from staffs, the guys who are making five million, ten million dollars a year, they're now unemployed, right? It's not just the blue-collar worker, it's everyone. So you're right. This has never happened before in history, and what's being done about it?

   22. SBSteven Bartlett24:01

       More money's been put into it to accelerate it.

   23. SPSpeaker24:03

       The carrot and stick, the trillionaire and China, those two pieces are driving it all, and a few people are trying to hammer, like Hinton and a few other people, we got to work on safety here, so it doesn't [chuckles] eliminate the human race. And I'm not a reactionary person, but, you know, of what is it? Twenty-five, thirty percent of the people that work in AI say that they think it could potentially do that. I mean, like, you could use electricity to kill people or light up a city, so all technology has that challenge, but this is a different technology. This is a technology that keeps learning, can replicate itself. Right now, they don't even know how some of this actually works.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett24:34

       Hmm.

   25. SPSpeaker24:34

       They don't know how the AI is actually working. It's teaching itself. These AIs now have their own language. I'm sure you know, they're talking no longer in English to each other.... and, you know, I'm sure you've seen the studies, right? Where th- they give them information, uh, in the email, and then they say they're gonna shut, shut off the AI, and it blackmails them by giving them fake, the fake information about somebody having an affair, and it blackmails them. I mean, it lies. So we're, we're living in a crazy world where the opportunity is greater than any time in hist- history for us to be creators.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett25:02

       Mm.

   27. SPSpeaker25:02

       We were created, and we're meant to create, and we've got tools to create like never before. But we-- we're gonna have to make sure that as we're doing that, we've got some parameters around safety and some parameters about what does it do to society. And I don't have the perfect answers for it, but I do know one thing: retooling is the answer. And I don't believe most people will be replaced by an AI. They'll be replaced by somebody who knows how to use

7. 25:22 – 27:36

   The Violence AI Will Cause

   1. SPSpeaker25:22

      AI.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett25:23

      Yeah, uh, one of the things you said that really blew my mind when I watched a video from Boston Dynamics this week, where they-- the guy explained how these robots are gonna learn, and he goes, "There's two ways. One way is we're gonna get our factory workers to wear a suit, and every time the factory worker does something, the e-- the, all the robots are gonna learn that thing. And the other thing is," he said, "is if one of our robots learns something, whether it's how to pick up a book or how to make an omelet-

   3. SPSpeaker25:47

      Sure

   4. SBSteven Bartlett25:47

      ... every robot learns it instantaneously." And my mind was like, wow! That is-- I personally don't know where this leaves us. So that's kind of- [chuckles]

   5. SPSpeaker25:57

      [chuckles] Well, neither do I, but there are certain things you know it's leading us towards. You know it's gonna lead us to a great deal of violence because there are gonna be people, like have always happened with technology, it displaces them, only this is gonna be a global event across multiple areas and not just drivers of Ubers and truck drivers. If we don't get our act together and have a plan, there's gonna be violence for some period of time. There'll be-- there's that grief period of loss and, that people go through when something jars them that much, and some people don't re- return from that grief. And some people are gonna take this technology, and they're gonna go off. It's already happening now, even without AI. Th- there are more males at home, twenty-five to thirty-five, living at home with their family, not working, than any time in human history, including the Depression, right? There are, I think it's twenty-five percent, or I think it was thirty percent, I forgot the number, just saw it recently, of young men have never approached a woman to ask her out for a date. They play video games all day long, their mom does their laundry, and they order Uber Eats. This is a mass number of people. That's just the technology of getting somebody gamified. Imagine with AI. So some people are gonna go live there, and some people are gonna go the Star Trek route and say, "I'm gonna figure out what makes human existence be here." But it's not hard to figure out the majority are not gonna go the Star Trek route. And so we've got to have a bridge because of the time compression. If this was a hundred years to do it, we could adjust. There will be more jobs. There'll be new jobs, there'll be new ti..., but it's the timeframe that I'm most concerned about. So when you ask me what I'm concerned about, that's what I'm concerned about because it creates suffering, and it's something that we can predict is gonna create suffering, and yet I see very few people in positions of influence and power doing much about it.

8. 27:36 – 42:47

   If You Were 18 Now, What Would You Be Focusing On?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett27:36

      So on an individual level, if you were an eighteen-year-old Tony Robbins, what, what would you be doing at this moment? What would you be focusing on work-wise? What-- How would you be designing your life for such a world?

   2. SPSpeaker27:48

      I have five kids and five grandkids, right? So I have a, a, uh, fifty-two-year-old daughter, and I have a, thanks to COVID, a four-year-old daughter. [chuckles]

   3. SBSteven Bartlett27:57

      [chuckles]

   4. SPSpeaker27:57

      So COVID was good to me. I was home. So, um, I look at my, my, especially my grandkids and my daughter, and I say, "They're entering a world that none of us have known before, and so how do I arm them for it?" And the answer is a couple of things. Number one, I have to teach them not to do what most people in the world do. Most people you talk to of any, even quote, "successful people," whatever that means, they're stressed all the time. Stressed. "I'm so stressed." You hear people talk about stress all the time. It's like they argue about who's more stressed. And I, I look at that and go, "Why are they stressed?" And the answer is because they're managing their life. It, we're not made to manage circumstances; we're made to create. We were created by something, call it your Creator, call it the Universe, call it God, whatever you wanna call it, and we were made to create, and when we create, we're alive. When we just try to maintain or manage or hold on to something, if we're just get caught up in making a living instead of designing a life, life is a bitch, and that's why so many people have so many challenges. So I'm teaching my kids to be creators, and I teach them the second piece, the most important thing, I believe, that's made me successful and anyone I've ever interviewed. You've interviewed a million people, you see if you agree or disagree with me. The three most important skills in life now are the ones that allow you to learn more rapidly. If you learn rapidly, you can win no matter what happens with the technology. And what are those three skills? Number one, the skill of pattern recognition. When you can recognize patterns, you eliminate fear. Fear comes from, "This has never happened before. I don't know what this is." Chaos. Like, I hear people all the time talk about how we've never been in this place politically. We're here in America. We're the most... We're gonna have a civil war. The w-- And, and they don't do any history whatsoever. I, I have these two placards that I have because back then, they didn't have ads, right? They had placards, and one is from Thomas Jefferson talking about Adams, and one from Adams about Jefferson. And they said stuff that make Republicans and Democrats look like they're nice to each other. [chuckles] I mean, it's just unbelievable the, the stuff they said. This is a cycle, and so when you recognize a pattern, it gives you power, potential power, at least. The first power is you're not, not afraid anymore. You go, "No, this is not something that's never happened. This is not something that's gonna... I, I can see this. I can see how this has been dealt with." What took us from living in fear, from being hunter-gatherers or trying to survive every day, didn't know if we're gonna survive every day, to being able to stay in one place? What? Pattern recognition.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett30:18

      I was gonna say the seasons, but-

   6. SPSpeaker30:19

      You got it!

   7. SBSteven Bartlett30:20

      Really? [chuckles]

   8. SPSpeaker30:20

      That's it, the seasons. I, I figured you'd get it.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett30:22

      [chuckles]

   10. SPSpeaker30:22

       The seasons, because before that, you could do the right thing at the wrong time, and you get pain. And three of the four seasons are the wrong time.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett30:33

       [chuckles]

   12. SPSpeaker30:34

       So once we figured out, oh, my God, if I plant in the spring, and I take care through the hot summer, I get this big reaping, and if I hang on to some of it to make it through the winter, I can live here. I don't have to worry. All my fear disappears. So we are-- the minute we understood seasons, it changed humanity. And by the way, there's the seasons to your life.... you could say zero to twenty-one is springtime. Springtime, how hard is it for something to grow in springtime? If you start a business in an economic spring, where everybody's optimistic, you think you're a genius, you're just in the right season, right? Mm-hmm. So zero to twenty-one, you're taken care of, and that season, you grow like crazy. Somewhere around, in roughly, and everyone's different, twenty-one, twenty-two years old, you go to the next stage, twenty-two to forty-two, and that's your summertime. That's the testing period of your life. What happens? You are twenty-one, you've heard all this stuff, and now you go: "You know what? I don't know if I believe this bullshit. I want to see what I believe. I'm gonna test." All history, all studies in psychology show this is the most difficult time in most people's lives, right? Twenty-two to forty-two. So if you're in that range and you're listening, I love you. Hang in there. [laughing] You know, this is, this is your grow-- if you keep growing, this is a great time, right? Somewhere in that range, you make a transition. Somewhere around thirty, thirty-five, you're thirty-three, you just got engaged. Congratulations, right? You start to move towards a family. You start to have those experiences. I'm sure yours will be very successful. Many aren't, right? So at forty-two, uh, forty-three to sixty-three, that's the fall. If you planted in the spring, right, and you worked your tail off during that hot summer, now you can do more with your pinky than working around the clock. You know more people, you have relationships, you recognize the patterns, you know what's going on. It's-- nothing's really a shock or surprise to you. You're more strategic, you're more efficient, you're more elegant, you have more choices. Um, you've learned a lot of lessons if you grew. Now, if you didn't plant in the spring and work hard in the, in the summer, you're gonna weep in the fall, not reap in the fall, right? [chuckles] So now this is, this is your power period. This is when most people earn the most money in their life if they're gonna grow because they've accumulated knowledge, skills, relationships, and so forth. And then the winter, as you comes back to that, sixty-four to eighty-four to a hundred and four to the oldest humans, hundred and twenty-four, that period is a transition period to where you become a real leader because you're no longer, you know, that twenty-two to forty-two, you're trying to prove yourself to yourself or maybe other people or both. But there's a point when you get into your power group, you know who you are. By the time you get into this last season, this, you know, sixty-four to eighty-four, hundred and four, hundred and twenty-four, you know who the F you are. I mean, and, and you, you want people to like what you do, but if they don't, [chuckles] it's like, you know who you are. You don't give a shit. I've just entered that season myself. I'm about to be sixty-six in a few weeks, and, um, it's the most fulfilling season of all. Um, it's mind-boggling. I wouldn't believe that when I was your age. That's why I'm sharing it. It's... If you're healthy, if you're fit, if you're strong. Um, if you don't do that, then it's, can be a bitch that time. But if you're healthy and strong, you have forty-year relationships, thirty-five-year- Mm-hmm ... business relationships. You have friends that adore you and love them, and you're-- it's unbreakable, it's unshakable. You have an intimate relationship or a family or husband and wife relationship you've, you've built to that point that is m- beyond anything you'd have dreamed of or hoped for. You wake up every day, and you know that life is a gift, and you want to give back even more. Like, you're more driven than you were when you were in the twenty-two to forty-two sa- stage. Those are the seasons. There's one more. There's seasons of history, and your season of history shapes how you shape your life. So you can look at a thousand years of Roman history, I'm very much in history, and five hundred years of Anglo-American history, um, and you start to see patterns. In fact, I'd recommend for everyone, there's a book called Generations. Have you read it? No. When I was working with President, uh, Clinton, in those days, I worked with President Clinton. I went across the other side and worked [chuckles] with the Speaker of the House, Gingrich. I- on the same day, on Clinton's, on, uh, on his desk, on the Resolute Desk, was this book, Generations, and I asked him about it, and he told me about how it is amazing. It shows how history is somewhat predictable and why the cycles are generated by different generations, how we react to the way we're, uh, we grew up. And then I go over to Gingrich's office, and he's a historian. He's got it on his desk. Really? It's a pretty thick book, good-sized book. My point is, if, if you want to navigate your life, you need pattern recognition, so you don't go in reaction. And one thing is to understand seasons are a great pattern. They freed us. There are seasons of your life. You should think about this season. What's this season about for you? What do you want to extract from this season? And every season has predictable challenges and predictable opportunities. And where am I in the season? Some people go through their springtime during a war or wintertime. Some people go through springtime in a fall. We all grew up with different environments, and so we're shaped by that, and that's why history's changed. So but let me finish the last, the last piece. I've gone way long. I apologize. No, good. I said there's three skills, right? What do we need, right? First one is pattern recognition. The second one is pattern utilization. So I watch you, like you, you and I both, we developed companies, took them public very early ages, made a lot of money, and figured out it wasn't just about money, right? I'm gonna look at your history. You didn't just recognize patterns, you used them. You saw them in marketing areas. You saw online opportunities. You saw things. You didn't just, "Oh, now I understand it," you jumped on it. Anyone who's incredibly successful in anything, if they're great at dance, if they're great at investing in companies, if they're great in running companies, if they're great in singing, they recognize there are certain patterns. And then the final skill, and this is what I'm teaching my children, is you ultimately want to become a pattern creator. You take an example, say, learning, learning to play the piano, right? Yeah. How do you learn to play the piano? You gotta recognize patterns, and usually, you're taught someone else's patterns that produce something beautiful. Mm-hmm. Right? Could be Bach, Beethoven, could be some rock, could be whatever you're learning. And so you learn those patterns, and you practice them. You learn to use them, right? And now you can produce the same music. There is a point, and I'm sure you've experienced this already, and you're gonna experience a lot more in the next ten years of your life, you've taken so much input in, you've recognized so many patterns that now you come through, and you become the pattern creator....And that's when you start to become the GOAT of your industry, uh, the best of all time. And you look at, you know, Tom Brady's a friend of mine, like, he's made pattern distinctions no one else made on how to keep his body strong, one of the most important ones, so you have the duration, but also how to read the defense, know what's happening. Those tools, he started to create his own patterns about how to deal with that, right? And so once you create your own patterns, you bring something to the table that's never been there before, and you make some deal never been there before, your value goes through the roof. When I met Jim Rohn, my original personal development teacher, he changed my life radically. I went when I was seventeen years old. He-- [chuckles] oh, yeah, that's a great picture. That's great. I love that man. Beautiful man. I, I went-- what I did was I was working as a janitor. I'm in high school, sophomore year, and I had, um, my mom came home one day and said, uh, "We've got a friend that needs somebody to help move stuff," and I was always trying to earn some extra money. And so, and it was the weekends, I wasn't doing the janitorial work on the weekends. So I said, "Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll do it, volunteer." And my dad said: "Yeah, you ought to find out what he did. He used to be such a loser, and now he's so successful," [chuckles] right? And so when I went to go see this guy, you know, I'm, I'm a hard worker, so I worked really hard, and so he took me to lunch, and he starts asking me questions. I said: "I wanna ask you questions." And I said, "You know, my father said you used to be such a loser, and now you're so successful. How'd you change your life?" I'm just a kid. I wasn't trying to be funny or mean, right? The guy said, "Your dad said what?" He goes, "Well, it's true." And he said, "Well, what changed my life is I went to a seminar." He goes: "Yeah, it was, you know, three and a half hours. His name is Jim Rohn." He told me the whole thing, and he's here in Orange County. He's coming up, doing an event pretty quick. I said, "Could you get me in?" And he goes, "Yeah." I said, "Well, how much is it?" He said, "Thirty-five dollars," would be like two hundred and fifty dollars in today's money, right? And I said, "Thirty-five dollars? I'm making forty dollars a week as a janitor." And I go-- I said, "I, I, I can't do that." He goes, "Well, then just learn on your own experience and waste a few decades." I said, "You really think it's that valuable?" He goes, "No, you have to decide if it's that valuable." And so I remember I, I wrestled with this, like it was the biggest decision of my life, a week's pay, and, and I went in, and I heard this man speak. He said some simple things like, you know, "For things to change, you gotta change. For things to get better, you gotta get better," right? It was interesting things, but at the end, I was so excited. I went up to him, and I said: "I wanna come work for you. I wanna learn this. I wanna be a part of this." And he turned to me and said, "Look, kid," he goes, uh, um, "you know, if you wanna come work for me, you gotta go through all my programs." And I said, "What does that mean?" And he said, "Well, you gotta do this, this, this," you know. It was like twelve hundred dollars for just one of the programs for a weekend. Twelve hundred dollars is like ten thousand dollars today, to give you an idea, twelve thousand dollars. I'm, at the time, sleeping in my car, working as a janitor. My dad left, my mom kicked him out. My mom's a strong woman, and then she chased me out with a knife. She wasn't gonna kill me, but I wasn't going back in that place. And so I'm like: I, I can't, I can't do this. And then he said something. He said, "You know, decide..." He goes, "Some people have to survive, some people succeed. Decide which one you are, and if, if you're ready by next Saturday, a week from Saturday," he goes, um, "I'm starting a training, and you can join it. But if you, if you don't have the money for it, you won't be able to do it." And I remember leaving, thinking, "This guy just wants my money. He's such a jerk," and I was so angry. But then in my head, I was like, "He's right, he's right." You know, I've always gotten what I had to have. I haven't had to have much. And so I started going to banks. I walked in this place, I... Five banks turned down, and I saw this woman who looked persuadable and sweet, and her name was, uh, Mrs. Williams. This woman looks at me, and she goes, "The bank's not gonna loan you this money." And I'm-- She's, like, my fifth bank, and, uh, I said, "You don't understand!" and I got all passionate. She goes, "With this kind of focus and energy, I think you can do something. I'd like it to be something good." And she goes, um, "I'm gonna talk to the bank, but if the bank won't loan you the money, I will. If you look me in the eye, and I-- you swear to me, I'm never gonna have to come find you, and that you will take care of this." And I jumped across, hugged her, and kissed her. She wasn't [chuckles] quite ready for that. I went to the Jim Rohn seminar. I went to work for him, and the first question when I got, finally got a private moment with him that I asked was: "I had four fathers. They are all good men. They all worked hard. How come we never had any money and sometimes no food?" I said, "I look over at the school teacher who makes thirty-five thousand dollars a year, I think, in those days, and then I see this hedge fund guy who made a billion dollars in a year?" I said, "That is so unjust." And he gave me a lesson that changed my whole life. He said, "Tony," he said, "you're right. We're all equal as souls, but we're not equal in the marketplace." And I said, "What does that mean?" He said, "Well, let me ask you a question. Is it possible for someone to make twice as much money in the same amount of time?" "Yeah." "Four times? Ten times? A hundred times?" "Yeah, people do it. How?" He goes, "You have to become more valuable." He goes, "If you go to work at McDonald's, you get this tiny little income. It's not made to be an ideal job. It's a first-time job. Anyone can learn to do it in two hours." And I've been obsessed about it ever since, and I-- That changed everything in my life. My whole life became, how do I add more value? And so today, I have a hundred and twenty-one companies, and we're [chuckles] doing twelve billion dollars in business across almost every industry you can imagine that I'm a part of, and I couldn't run one company in the start and, you know, and make it successful at three hundred thousand a year, [chuckles] you know, for the, for the revenue. All that became in every industry, and I've a lot of them, I'm the number one in the industry. It's because I'm obsessed with adding value, and so I think that piece is what's missing also from our youth. You're saying, like, what do they need to know? They think I'm here to get something. No, life is calling you. What are you gonna give? Not, not just what you wanna give, but what people need. And so my focus is, I give people what they want. They wanna make more money, they want a better relationship, but my goal is so I can give them what they need, which is a life that has more meaning, and that's one that goes beyond yourself.

9. 42:47 – 46:02

   New Tools the Younger Generation Should Learn to Handle Stress

   1. SBSteven Bartlett42:47

      It's gonna be a stressful period-

   2. SPSpeaker42:48

      Yes.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett42:49

      -to say the least. Um, I, I think algorithms are actually making our online experiences more stressful. I think-

   4. SPSpeaker42:55

      A hundred percent.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett42:56

      -because, you know, they're designed to retain our attention, and the best way to retain our attention is probably fear.

   6. SPSpeaker42:59

      Yep.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett43:00

      And I think this with myself, I find myself watching all these fucking short-form videos that are just like-- they feel like they're, at some level, frying something, depleting something in me. But they're, they're designed-- it's designed, the algorithm, is to serve me up the next one that's gonna hold me or scare me or whatever.

   8. SPSpeaker43:15

      Yep.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett43:15

      So-... in such a world where we're, the, the algorithms are probably gonna, you know, in the online world, especially for younger kids, it's gonna really-- it's gonna, it's gonna be better at taking hold of us. What are the tools that I need to deal with this stress and this angst?

   10. SPSpeaker43:29

       The first step to me would be take fifteen minutes out of your day and go for micro-learning. Like, decide you're gonna learn what matters, right? About yourself, about AI. We tell people, like, you already have habits, right? Most people are scrolling a good portion of the day. Give me fifteen of those minutes, and let's do micro-learning on something, a new language to stimulate your brain, philosophy, history, AI, something pragmatic, something that's valuable. It's just getting people to have some habits that... You know, the one percent growth m- metaphor, right? You know, you know, twenty-seven times at the end of the year. It's like, it's pretty simple. All we have to do is create a new direction. If you try to do it in one giant step, it's overwhelming for people. The, the secret to life is chunking. Think of it this way: some people never work out, but they eat easily. So I'll say to them, "Why don't you work out?" They'll look at me all the reasons, and they'll say, "But, you know, you know, I'd have to, I'd have to join, join a gym." And I say, "Okay, well, tell me what's entailed." And they'll go: "I gotta look up where the gyms are, and then I gotta, I gotta drive to each of the gyms, and then I gotta, you know, I gotta park the car each place and find it, and then I gotta get out and then, you know, get, hopefully, get a pass, and then they take you on the tour, and, and then they wanna sit you down and sell stuff to you, and they gotta back in the car, and you gotta drive things. And then when you go do it, let's say you sign up, then you go, and you gotta check, check in and take off all your clothes, and then they drop and get wrinkled, and then you go work out, and it's sweaty. You gotta wipe other people's sweat off, and then afterwards, you gotta go do a shower, and your hair is messed up and your makeup, and you gotta start all over and everything else, and then you gotta get the thing, and you gotta back out." It's like, it's too much work. What is it to eat? Oh, you just go. They chunk eating as one thing. They chunk working out as twenty-nine thousand things, right? So if you chunk too big, try to do everything in one bite, it's overwhelming, and if you chunk it too small, it's overwhelming. So there's a different size for different things, and i- if we wanna learn and grow, which is what the secret is to your future, is to become a learning machine about what matters. Like, most people, major and minor things, they know more about some actresses' or actors' love life, um, than they do, or their skin regimen, than they do about their own values and needs and what makes them tick as a human being. Today, you can learn from the brightest, smartest people on earth are available. They're available by online. They're available by, by contracting or coaching them. They're, they're everywhere. There isn't a limit anymore. There's zero limit, except you're deciding to be a creator and not a maintainer. So you're deciding: I'm not just gonna manage my life, I'm gonna design and create something, 'cause the tools are available everywhere, and so I'm just

10. 46:02 – 49:39

    How to Get Better at Pattern Recognition

    1. SPSpeaker46:02

       one of those.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett46:02

       I have a couple of questions based on what you've just said. The first one, starting at the top, was around-- you talked about this idea of pattern recognition, uh, utilization, and creation.

    3. SPSpeaker46:09

       Yes.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett46:09

       The question I had from that section was: Is there a way to get better at pattern recognition?

    5. SPSpeaker46:14

       Yeah. Well, first, by understanding it's the most important key.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett46:17

       Okay.

    7. SPSpeaker46:18

       So it's like, if I'm fearful, what's the pattern I'm missing here? What's something that could give me some history to understand that this isn't random? Like, you know, people say, "I overeat, I overdrink, I, I get really angry," whatever. You don't overeat every moment. You don't smoke every moment. What are the triggers that you use?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett46:36

       And do you, do you recommend people write? How do they, how do they raise their self-awareness enough to start spotting these patterns?

    9. SPSpeaker46:41

       I believe in diaries. You call it diary, I call it journals. I believe in journals to be able to do that, to guide yourself. But yes, but it's more than that. You have to, you have to not only make the distinction, but you also have to have a different state to it. Uh, for example, let's say, um, let's say, uh, I say to you, "I know, I know, um, I need to lose weight. Um, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go on a diet. Um, I'm gonna work out." Am I gonna do it? [chuckles]

    10. SBSteven Bartlett47:11

        No. [chuckles]

    11. SPSpeaker47:11

        No.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett47:11

        You're fighting it.

    13. SPSpeaker47:12

        Because I'm not in a state to do it. Now, most people are trying to figure out what to do, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's the wrong sequence. Because when you think about what to do, if you've never done it before, you feel uncertain, you don't follow through. If you have done it before, but you don't feel strong enough, you're not gonna follow through. So I tell people, if you want a breakthrough, it's three things: strategy, story, state. Most people, if they wanna have a breakthrough, they wanna change their body, they wanna change their life, they look for how to do it, and that's natural, but it's the absolute wrong order. And if you do things in the wrong order, it's like having the numbers to a phone for someone, and you dial the wrong order, you don't reach somebody or the vault, right? You, you got the right numbers in the wrong order, the vault doesn't open. Why are so many people overweight in this country? Like, sixty percent of the population is overweight. How is that possible? Is it because what it takes to be fit and strong is so incredibly complex? No. Only the one percent knows? No. It's super expensive? No, you have to work not to know what to do. So the, the how is not the problem. So I say strategy, story, state, that's how you have a breakthrough. Yes, I'm a strategist. The right strategy can save you ten years. I love that! It's fun, but if I start with a strategy, you'll listen and go, "Yeah, that's cool," and you won't do it. The real problem is the story you have. The story you have is, "I've tried everything."

    14. SBSteven Bartlett48:28

        Mm.

    15. SPSpeaker48:29

        The story you have: "Nothing works." The story you has: "All the good ones are gone, and I'm gay, and they're not, or they're gay, and I'm not." It's-- the story is the belief you've told yourself over and over because belief is the invisible force that controls everything in your life. And when you have a belief that you've honed because you're fearful and you've never done this before, then I can show you exactly how to do it, and you'll say, "It doesn't work. I've tried that." Yeah, how many times? How hard? How many minutes, right? But what's behind the story is your state, your mental, emotional state. If I said to you, "I am gonna lose twelve pounds in the next six weeks, that is non-negotiable. Here's what I'm gonna do, this and this and this and this," do you think I'm gonna do it?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett49:11

        Yes.

    17. SPSpeaker49:11

        You bet your ass I'm gonna do it. [chuckles] Right? You can feel the state.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett49:15

        Yeah.

    19. SPSpeaker49:15

        So people are usually trying to figure out how to do something, and they got a story about it, when what they need first is the state. When you go in the right state... How many of this happened where you get in the flow and, and something comes to you, you're hitting a tennis ball, or you're doing, or you're speaking, and at the end of it, you're like-... That was pretty awesome. I did that. How'd I do that? I don't know. That shit just flowed. That was pretty awesome, right? You're in a peak state. I put people in a peak state while they're doing the things we're talking about.

11. 49:39 – 52:10

    How to Get Into a Peak State

    1. SBSteven Bartlett49:40

       So what do you do right before you come out on stage, and what can anyone listening at home do before the big meeting, the big moment in their life, or really, like, on a daily basis, to configure our state?

    2. SPSpeaker49:50

       The first thing I do in my little daily routine is I go out, I use the jacuzzi for a moment to open my body up and everything else, and then I go in the cold plunge, and I've been doing that for eighteen years. Now, everybody talks about it, but I go in that cold plunge, and the secret, though, is I don't negotiate with myself. I go in the cold plunge for both the health purposes, 'cause it floods your body, right, completely, but the, the real value is, is the mental discipline of I don't go, "Okay, I'm ready," and I don't get in when I'm just lie- lying here. I dunk under. I jump in when it goes above my head. I go under, under the water. I dive into it, right? And I don't stand there. I, I don't stand there and go, "Oh, I feel cold right now," or, "Well, wait a minute," or... Like, I've trained my brain, when I say go, we go. And I've done that for decades, and so I'm not, I'm not in the place when I say, go somewhere else, my brain obeys. I'm not-- I don't have these stories in my head back and forth, trying to have a conversation with myself, just trying to convince myself to do something I've decided, right? So decision point is everything. So I've trained myself to do it, but also it produces a massive change. It is not comfortable. I don't think there's been a morning in my life that I've looked forward to doing it, but it changes you. So that's one thing. The thing I do before I go on stage, I have a routine of how I shift my body. I have a, I have a prayer that I do, which is, "Use me, Lord," and I picture being to serve as many human people as, human beings as possible. I see them not only where they are now, I see where they're gonna be by the end of when I'm done, and then I make this radical shift in my body. I make these moves, an explosive breath, and then I storm out there. And then I've, I've taken myself, imagine, on a zero to ten to a twenty of intensity, so now I can drop down to a nine, feels like I'm very relaxed, um, but I've got a lot more gears in me than you know, and that's how I can project to the guy at the top of the stadium and hold him for twelve hours. You know, who wouldn't sit for a three-hour movie someone spent three hundred million dollars on?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett51:40

       And do you think a lot about your diet and nutrition and-

    4. SPSpeaker51:43

       I'm... Yeah, I'm totally committed to that, and I also train like a crazy person, [chuckles] and I do hyperbaric oxygen. I, I, you name it, I'm a, I'm a biohacker, um, and I'm committed. I have a whole company that does it for people as well. So I've always done that because I've had to, to perform, and I'm sixty-six, gonna produce results that, you know, were designed by a twenty-five-year-old, right?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett52:02

       Mm.

    6. SPSpeaker52:02

       But I'm stronger today than I was then. I got more aerobic capacity. I've got more muscle capacity, so, I mean, there's a limit, but I haven't found it yet.

12. 52:10 – 53:12

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett52:10

       [paper flipping] If you follow me, you've probably heard me talk about hiring more so than anything else. You've probably seen me on Behind the Diary, which is our other YouTube channel, talking about how obsessed I am with the hiring process. And this really brings me to a recommendation I'd love to give you, which is to check out our sponsor, LinkedIn. If you're having hiring difficulties, their new AI assistant filters out applications for you based on the criteria you've set for that specific job, surfacing only the best matches. That way, you're not left having to hunt through a mountain of different resumes. It'll recommend twenty-five candidates daily who fit what you're looking for, that you can then invite to apply for the role. LinkedIn is where we go to find the long-term A players that I have on my team. In fact, employees hired through LinkedIn are thirty percent more likely to stick around for at least a year, compared to those hired through other job networks. Hire right the first time by posting your job for free at linkedin.com/DOAC. Then use the promotion feature to access LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant. That's linkedin.com/DOAC. Terms and conditions apply. [paper flipping]

13. 53:12 – 1:06:41

    Individualism Is Making Us Depressed

    1. SBSteven Bartlett53:12

       In a world of, um, in a world of challenging meaning, where a lot of, lot of my viewers are struggling with meaning, one of the things I've noticed is that it appears, especially with young men who you talked about earlier, that it appears that more and more of them are turning to religion. And you mentioned your, your faith in God there.

    2. SPSpeaker53:26

       Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett53:26

       That is a really interesting phenomenon for me that I've observed in my own life. I've talked about this a few times. Um, certain friends of mine who were very individualistic, they were living the dream in any way that you might define it, you know?

    4. SPSpeaker53:37

       Yep.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett53:37

       They had money. They had freedom. They had no boss, no dependents, no, no partner, and suddenly you see their life turn into w- what looks like depression, a form of depression-

    6. SPSpeaker53:47

       Yep

    7. SBSteven Bartlett53:48

       ... an absence of meaning in their lives. And I, I, I, wanted just to throw this out there because we, we are in a society that's, um, I think, increasingly encouraging independence.

    8. SPSpeaker53:56

       Yes.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett53:57

       And there's upsides to independence, of course. We all understand those, but I wondered if there's a sort of a double-edged sword here when we're, we're-- You kind of said it earlier about making the world more about just me, me, me, and I. And in a world of abundance, I imagine many more people are gonna choose to make it about I, I, I, I, I, 'cause they, 'cause they can.

    10. SPSpeaker54:15

        Yes.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett54:15

        I could put a headset on, but theoretically never leave my house. Someone could literally put... A robot puts the food in my mouth. I could have some sex robot that just gets me off.

    12. SPSpeaker54:23

        [chuckles]

    13. SBSteven Bartlett54:24

        Uh, money comes in my account by UBI.

    14. SPSpeaker54:27

        The reason your friends got depressed, I've had this happen, I've seen this as well, I've had-- You know, most of my friends are older than I am. Usually, for some reason, I gravitated to, to men that were eighteen, twenty years my senior, who are brilliant-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett54:36

        Mm

    16. SPSpeaker54:37

        ... and learning from them and seeing where they're going in their life and so forth. But I watched some of them, like, sell their company and make a billion two.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett54:44

        Mm.

    18. SPSpeaker54:44

        And then they were happy for, like, a month maybe, and they'd call me: "Let's go do this, go do that," and, you know, try to go do something. But I got, you know, I got a lot of companies. I got a lot, I got a lot of kids. I got a lot of things, right? [chuckles] And it's like... And eventually, they all want to get back in the game because we have six human needs: certainty, uncertainty, 'cause think about this, if you were certain every moment of your life, you know what someone's gonna say, and I'm sure you've had this somewhat, you know what they're gonna say before they're gonna say it. But if you knew what someone's gonna say, before they're gonna say it, you know what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen every moment of every day, in the beginning, it'd be cool, but after a while, what would you feel?

    19. SBSteven Bartlett55:18

        Bored.

    20. SPSpeaker55:19

        Out of your mind bored.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett55:20

        Mm.

    22. SPSpeaker55:20

        So God, in her infinite wisdom, [chuckles] gave us uncertainty. We need variety. We need surprise. So I ask people, we've got a stadium, fifteen thousand people, and I say, "How many of you love surprises?" And everybody raises their hand, "Yay!" And I, I go, "Bullshit."

    23. SBSteven Bartlett55:34

        [chuckles]

    24. SPSpeaker55:34

        You love the surprises you want, right? [chuckles] The surprises you don't want, you call problems, but we need those, too, right? Third need is significance. We need to feel unique. You need to feel special. The need to feel important. Who do you think has that need?

    25. SPSpeaker55:48

        ... um, but all of us?

    26. SPSpeaker55:49

        Everyone.

    27. SPSpeaker55:50

        Yeah.

    28. SPSpeaker55:50

        Now, some people, like Donald Trump, it's pretty obvious, [chuckles] right?

    29. SPSpeaker55:53

        [chuckles]

    30. SPSpeaker55:53

        And some people, though, it's like: I don't want significance. I don't wanna be unique. I don't wanna be special. That's only because they feel if they get special, they'll get attacked.
14. 1:06:41 – 1:15:42

    How Your Needs Create Pain

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:41

       I've got to ask you some questions here on those two points. So on these six needs, 'cause I also want to ask you about the, the fifty rich people that you've, you've interviewed for the books. But on those six needs, when you look at someone like me, and you look at the broad world that I'm heading towards as a thirty, thirty-year-old man, what, what configuration of these needs-

    2. SPSpeaker1:07:00

       Well, I'll tell you what creates all the pain first.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:02

       Okay, please.

    4. SPSpeaker1:07:03

       So if I go to a room and I'll say, I, I explain these needs like I have, and I know this is [chuckles] kind of lecture here. I didn't mean to be that, but I just want to share 'cause I'm so passionate about it. And I'll get people to understand what they are, and then I ask them, "I want you to write down what you think your top two needs have been, not in what you want, but in the way you've been living." Because people might want love, but they think they have to be significant before they can get it.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:24

       Mm.

    6. SPSpeaker1:07:24

       Or they might want love, but they want certainty that love will never go away. You follow me?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:28

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SPSpeaker1:07:29

       And so that modifies things. And I'll say, "So the way you live, the way you've lived, what would've been the top two?" And then I say, "I want you to write a paragraph about what's the downside of having that one so high on your list." And it's amazing. So then I say, "Now write what you think your list top two should be to go to the next level of your life." Okay, let's have that you do that. What do you think your top two needs are? [laughing] I see you doing it already, which I love.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:53

       Yeah.

    10. SPSpeaker1:07:53

        I love how active you are. So what would you say your top two have been up until now?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:57

        ... I think if I'm being completely honest-

    12. SPSpeaker1:07:59

        Yes, and I, and by the way-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:00

        [chuckles] I have to-

    14. SPSpeaker1:08:01

        By the way, I, I wanna thank you because I watched several of your pieces, and you are.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:04

        [chuckles]

    16. SPSpeaker1:08:04

        You're not bullshitting about anything, you are so good.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:06

        No, 'cause there's just no-- I'm gonna die someday, so there's no-- even if being honest makes me look bad, it is what it is, because my, I, I-- of course, like significance, of course.

    18. SPSpeaker1:08:14

        Yes.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:14

        Especially from where I, w- you know-

    20. SPSpeaker1:08:16

        Came from

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:17

        ... where I came from.

    22. SPSpeaker1:08:18

        Yeah.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:18

        That was the big problem was, you know, being different, and not, and not in a good way.

    24. SPSpeaker1:08:21

        That's right.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:22

        And then I would say, um, [lips smack] interestingly, it feels like uncertainty and significance are really, really high for me because-

    26. SPSpeaker1:08:30

        Yes. Yes

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:31

        ... I've, for some reason, I have a very, a huge appetite for uncertainty.

    28. SPSpeaker1:08:35

        Yeah, well, uh, uh, but-

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:36

        Disruption

    30. SPSpeaker1:08:37

        ... you're wired that way, in a beautiful way. It also leads to learning for you.
15. 1:15:42 – 1:23:27

    Is It Possible to Change?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:42

       Is it really possible to change like that, that deeply?

    2. SPSpeaker1:15:46

       No, not at all. [laughing]

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:47

       [laughing]

    4. SPSpeaker1:15:47

       I've never been able to do that in-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:49

       No, no, I, I asked, like-

    6. SPSpeaker1:15:50

       ... my forty-ninth year, I'm just, I've, I've never seen that happen.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:52

       No, I, I was, I was thinking really, really deeply about what you were saying, and I was thinking there will be some people that are listening, and I think there was maybe a part of me, my conscious that's like... because I-- because that's a journey I've never gone on before, I've never shifted from the inside-

    8. SPSpeaker1:16:07

       Well, you're not gonna do it by discussion. You have to have leverage. Just like-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:11

       And what is that? How do I do that?

    10. SPSpeaker1:16:12

        Leverage is, uh, you have to have something you value more than your present way of doing things. Leverage can be pain or pleasure, right? So-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:19

        Like my fiancée.

    12. SPSpeaker1:16:20

        Yeah, your fiancée. Yes, I, uh, understand how you got to LA. [chuckles]

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:23

        Yeah. [chuckles]

    14. SPSpeaker1:16:24

        A little leverage, right? Her love, her happiness, her joy. Oh, that's beautiful.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:28

        That's a fair view.

    16. SPSpeaker1:16:29

        That's my girl.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:30

        You and Sage.

    18. SPSpeaker1:16:31

        That's awesome. You're good at putting people in state with their pictures. That's impressive. [chuckles]

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:35

        It's a beautiful photo.

    20. SPSpeaker1:16:36

        Yeah. I love her so much. We've been together twenty-five years. I love her more today than ever before. She is a force of nature, this woman. Really, really great. But yes, she's leverage in my life. My, my, my youngest daughter's massive leverage, you know, four and a half years old. It's beautiful. But I'll give you an example: I had-- I worked with a woman one time on stage, and she was a colon therapist and a vegan and, you know, so... But she was always sick 'cause she's so stressed all the time, trying to be perfect at everything. There's a constriction in her body, right? And, um, and the level of stress was just ridiculous, right? So I was trying to get her to see, have some other options about what to do. Without boring you with the whole story, I'm looking for leverage always. That's how you get someone to make a change. You gotta get, make change a must, not a should. Not me making it to you. If I put a gun to your head, that's leverage, but some people would rather die than bend to your will. You gotta find out what moves that person. It's unique for everyone. Not what motivates them. I hate the word motivation. I've never used it. I wanna know your drives. Look, if you're fat, and you're motivated to eat, I wanna know what's underneath. [chuckles] I wanna know what the drives are. So this woman, I'm trying to help her make changes, and I show her these things and see the consequences, and she wouldn't change, wouldn't change. So finally, I, I said, "Man, I gotta push this lady." It's like I said, "How long..." I wouldn't tell her this. I asked. I said, "How long would a person with a level of stress, with these things you're doing and these ailments, how long will a person like that live if they don't change?" And she paused, and she thought, and she said, "Probably to thirty-five." "How old are you?" "Thirty-two." So I thought, "Okay, she's gonna change now. Maybe she's gonna do it, right? That's the leverage. She's gotta change." "But I can't change. I just can't. It's just how my life is." I said, "Well..." I said, "This session is on videotape, you know?" And I said, "How do you think your daughter's gonna feel when she's carrying your coffin, and she knows that you knew you could shift this, and you didn't?" This is pretty intense. I mean, she thinks she's gonna die. If she doesn't do it, she probably could. So I'm picking up big leverage, right? She goes, "I know, that's, that's horrible, but I, I can't change." And part of my head, I'm like, "Holy shit, she's not gonna change here. What the hell is gonna change her?" [chuckles] And then I said to her, I said, "Yeah, what if her new mother is a meat eater?" And she exploded on stage. "That is not happening! I will not make this happen." I mean, she went berserk, and she goes, "Fine, I'm changing this now." [chuckles] Like-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:06

        Mm.

    22. SPSpeaker1:19:06

        ... there is always leverage. There is something that will make change a must and not a should. Change is never a matter of ability. It's always a matter of strong enough reasons, of motive. If you've got strong enough reasons, you can do just about anything, but if you have weak reasons, you're not gonna do anything. So the fact that you understand this is our discussion.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:24

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SPSpeaker1:19:24

        In an event, you'd be in a rather, a rather peak state, and I'd take you through a process of consequence, where you will envision what the consequences are, and then you can make that shift. And you still gotta condition it. This specific change is the hardest one.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:38

        I think a lot of people might say, I was thinking forward of m- life events to come, and becoming a father-

    26. SPSpeaker1:19:43

        Yes

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:43

        ... is often-

    28. SPSpeaker1:19:44

        That will do, that will absolutely shift a lot of people. Becoming a father, getting married, and falling in love. There are certain events. Losing people will make you reevaluate things. Hitting a birthday, you know, you're thirty-three, when you hit your fortieth birthday, I'm sure you don't think it'll be any different. I remember people telling me that, but you tend to re-evaluate for some weird reason in our culture, and after forty, usually a five-year or a, [chuckles] a fifty-year or sixty-year... It, it's just part of the way we look at life. It's-- there's a process you go through, and there will be different things that trigger you. But-... when you want a real lasting change, you have to change the driving force. When we change these, it's changing your values. So again, like, think about how your brain is a predictor, and it's trying to close the gap between what it's predicting and what reality is. When it's not working, it looks for an answer. When you get to the point where your old strategy doesn't work enough, and you have enough pain, you will search for something new. And if at that time we can give you something that actually works, you'll grab it. It's like, if you're drowning in a sea of confusion, and I throw you a life raft, you're not gonna go, "I don't like the color." [laughing] You know? You're gonna grab a hold, and it comes into your unconscious. And the other-- last thing I'd say about that is, it's also about going beyond your conscious mind, right? You're-- if you ever try to do something and then sabotage yourself, it's just consciously, you wanted one thing, subconsciously, another. I believe all lasting change happens in an altered state. When I say an altered state, you could call it hypnosis. I tell people, "I'm a de-hypnotist." Most people walk around in hypnosis. People tell me, like, "You can't hypnotize me," and they're, they're in a hypnotized state in that moment. Do you ever drive your car, and then something catches your attention, and you stay focused on it too long, and all of a sudden you realize, "Holy shit, who's been driving the car?"

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:25

        [laughing] Yeah.

    30. SPSpeaker1:21:25

        You ever had that experience? That was a, that was a hypnosis state. Hypnosis just means you're inside, not outside, most of the time. And in a hypnotic state, what goes in, goes in deeper than in just in a consciousness state. That's why I like doing storytelling. You know, I'm, I'm-- my wife and I are... There's certain things in life that just shouldn't happen, that are inhuman, and trafficking is one of them. And we had, uh, a friend that's child was taken and trafficked, and it was the most brutal thing, and so it got us involved. And so now we've, we've contributed to seventy-two thousand children being saved. I've gone out on some of these undercover with scars on my face and elements. It's the most brutal thing you can possibly imagine. But I tell you this because when you, when you witness certain things in life that are so intense, they alter you, they change you. They change what you value. They change what, what you make important in your life. And so what I say to people, "You want your life to keep growing? Keep putting yourself in new environments. Keep getting around things you're not used to and let something hit you." You know, like, people don't know their passions 'cause they keep going, doing the same things. It's like, get around where it's better and see what hits you. And something's gonna strike you, something's gonna wake you up, something is gonna make you feel more, desire more, want to give something to life as opposed to just live your life. 'Cause the life you describe to those people is predictable. You get familiarized. Even pain, I mean, you look at people in Auschwitz, you know, it's like, um, Man's Search for Meaning is one of my favorite books. Have you read it?
16. 1:23:27 – 1:25:31

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:27

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    2. SPSpeaker1:23:49

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17. 1:25:31 – 1:34:23

    The Pattern of Successful People

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:31

       I was stunned at how big your business empire is. You know, even as you're speaking now, you're talking about movies that I've watched, that I had no idea that you're involved in, and you're talking about all these other incredible things you've done, and yeah, your company's doing what, twelve billion dollars in revenue annually?

    2. SPSpeaker1:25:44

       Well, it's a group of companies, not just one company.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:45

       Group of companies, yeah. And then earlier on, you said you'd spoken to these fifty very, very rich people in the pursuit of writing the books that you've written about wealth and finance and money. Pattern recognition.

    4. SPSpeaker1:25:56

       That's right.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:57

       What is the pattern that you noticed in those people, it, that you then applied to yourself? What is the pattern? You know, this is called The Diary of a CEO, so I'm sure we have a lot of people that are thinking about building businesses, wanna get financially free, especially in the world of AI, where they're, they're very uncertain about how they'll make money-

    6. SPSpeaker1:26:12

       Yeah

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:13

       ... and how they'll provide stability to, to their family. What is the pattern that you have found in all of those people that you have met and interviewed? And I know you know some of the most wealthy people on Earth because I know you coach a lot of them.

    8. SPSpeaker1:26:22

       Yes.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:22

       Um, I don't think people fully realize the significance of how many of the most influential people on planet Earth you have worked with and continue to work with. Um...... I found it h- hilarious reading that Bill Clinton called you, uh, the day before he was gonna be impeached, telling you that he was gonna be impeached-

    10. SPSpeaker1:26:40

        [chuckles] Yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:40

        -and asking you what he should do.

    12. SPSpeaker1:26:41

        Yeah. First, let's say what everybody makes the mistake on, the majority of people. We live in a free enterprise system, and we have kids that all think communism is great. I just want you to know, I went to the USSR when it was still the USSR. I was twenty-four years old. I was brought there because of my firewalking experience, and I went on a train from, from Moscow to Siberia and back for two weeks. On the train, we were all fed caviar and the most incredible meals, as were all the Russians on the plane, right? We're supposed to be all equal, right? That's supposedly what communism is. It's everything's fair for everybody. Every single town, we'd stop in the square where the-- there, and in the square, there's a big building, and they, they wrapped around for about maybe a quarter of a mile, people standing in the freezing cold to get a quart of milk and a half a, um, a thing of bread. I left there, and I became a capitalist. I didn't know what a capitalist was, but I knew I wasn't a communist, right? So people in our country are the free enterprise system, but they don't understand it. So what are they making the mistake of? They're consumers. They're not owners. We are a consumer society, and we've trained these kids to be consumers, adults as well. So I'll give you a simple example. I, look, I was trying to give an example to a young kid the other day, so I actually did the math on it. You have an iPhone?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:50

        Yeah.

    14. SPSpeaker1:27:50

        Okay. Have you always had an iPhone? [chuckles]

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:52

        Well, yeah, for the last decade or more, yeah.

    16. SPSpeaker1:27:54

        All right. So iPhone's around for what? Eighteen years, nineteen years. I went and did the numbers and found out what the cost was for every iPhone, added up. If you got an iPhone each time, somebody who's older did it, you spent twenty-two thousand and some change. That's retail price. If you bought the stock, I went and saw what the stock was on the same day the thing came out, and you bought the stock. Same amount of money of the stock-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:15

        Apple stock.

    18. SPSpeaker1:28:15

        Apple stock, three hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars right now. Instead of out twenty-two grand, you have three hundred and twenty-six. If you're gonna use an Apple phone, I'm not saying it's Apple specifically, I'm not making a recommendation, why would you not own the company, right? Because we don't teach people to think that way, and so now they think communism is gonna be the answer. They don't understand what that really means. They have no clue! So you have to become an owner. You have-- That's what you have to do. Then the second piece is, when I interviewed all these people, I found four things with them. I found, number one, their focus, didn't matter if they were a, a macro trader or if they were a value trader or... It didn't matter what their style was. The four things they had in common, I call them the core four, was, number one, they all were focused on not losing money. Most people are trying to make money, and the reason is, they know if you lose, you know, y- you, you lose, uh, you get a hundred thousand dollar investment and you lose fifty percent, how much do you have to grow your money to get your money back? And people will say fifty percent. No, you got to grow it a hundred percent.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:29:14

        Mm.

    20. SPSpeaker1:29:15

        Right? You get it?

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:29:15

        Yeah, yeah.

    22. SPSpeaker1:29:16

        Right. So they know that. So they're first making sure they don't... Now, how do they do that? They do it by asset allocation, right? They all have different asset allocation strategies, which at the most basic level is, you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Most people put all their money in their business or their house, right? They, uh, know that that is the kiss of death, and so they look at how to divide their assets, where they have a certain amount in a more secure environment, meaning not a lot of upside, but it's like the nest egg, and they have some that are more at risk. And there's different-- and I learned what theirs are, and I taught those different ones. But the most valuable one I know you know, 'cause I read it in your book, and I was really impressed, asymmetrical risk-reward. Their entire focus is not about taking risks, right? There are few, only a few people, you think you're a billionaire 'cause you take giant risks, right? No, no, no. M- some do, but they don't usually stay billionaires doing that, right?

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:30:07

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SPSpeaker1:30:07

        How do they do it? They figure out what's the smallest amount of risk with the most amount of upside that I can do. And so, m- uh, Paul Tudor Jones's approach was five to one. If I'm gonna risk a dollar, I wanna be certain I'm gonna make five. You and I, most average people, would normally think, well, I used to think, well, twelve, fifteen, twenty percent return, right? But here's how it works. If I risk one dollar and I'm certain I'm gonna m- make five, and I'm wrong, I'm down one. I can risk a dollar and still make four. I can be wrong four times out of five and still be okay. That's how those guys become billionaires. Asymmetrical risk-reward. I was talking to a gentleman, um, who in nineteen... uh, two thousand and eight, excuse me. He took twenty-five million dollars and turned it to two billion dollars in the worst economic time. He anticipated what was gonna happen with real estate. Everybody thought it was gonna keep going up. He used synthetic bets and bet against it and made two billion dollars. Brilliant, brilliant job. And I said to him, "You know, what, what is the m- things that's missing for investors?" He goes, "Well, the smartest investors are usually the worst investors, 'cause they want absolute certainty they know everything before they decide, and by that time, the opportunity's gone."

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:31:16

        Mm-hmm. Mm.

    26. SPSpeaker1:31:17

        And he said, but the most important key for him was asymmetrical risk-reward. He said, "I risked..." I think he said he risked six cents for every dollar. He could have been wrong a dozen times, but he wasn't. That's how he did it, right? And then the fourth one is the obvious one we both know, which is diversification, but this is the real key. You know Ray Dalio is, right?

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:31:36

        Yeah. Yeah, I've interviewed him actually.

    28. SPSpeaker1:31:37

        Yeah. So Ray's a good friend. One of the questions I asked him was, "If we had to reduce it to the single most important investment principle to know, I mean, you're the da Vinci of investing. No one has made more money than you in this area, you know?" And I said: "What is it? Is there one? There's got to be one." And he goes, "Tony, there is." He goes, "I spent almost nine years refining this, and it's so simple. So the Holy Grail of investing is to find eight to twelve uncorrelated investments that you feel strongly about. If you find eight to twelve of those, you reduce your risk eighty percent and keep your upside. In fact, you slightly enhance your upside."

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:14

        Uncorrelated, for someone-

    30. SPSpeaker1:32:15

        Uncorrelated. Now, that's the hard part today, 'cause so many markets are correlated.
18. 1:34:23 – 1:34:54

    How Did You Learn About Finance?

    1. SPSpeaker1:34:23

       And so-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:23

       You, you didn't come from a financial background?

    3. SPSpeaker1:34:25

       No, no, I have no financial background. [chuckles]

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:26

       You didn't study finance in university?

    5. SPSpeaker1:34:28

       No.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:28

       So, so where did you learn all this stuff about finance?

    7. SPSpeaker1:34:30

       By going to the very best on Earth. Like, why would I go to university to a professor who's never done anything when I can go to fifty of the smartest people on Earth? Or in private equity, I went to thirteen of the smartest ones, the most successful in history.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:42

       Is your superpower learning?

    9. SPSpeaker1:34:44

       Yes, I think it's-- that's what I tried to say to you from the beginning.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:46

        [chuckles]

    11. SPSpeaker1:34:46

        That's what pattern recognition, pattern utilization, pattern creation is. If you don't learn at a rapid tempo in the world right now, you're cheating yourself of an extraordinary

19. 1:34:54 – 1:42:34

    How Do I Become a Better Learner?

    1. SPSpeaker1:34:54

       life.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:54

       Is there a tactic or a strategy to make me a better learner, especially someone that does this podcast? I get to meet people like you, so I want to store everything-

    3. SPSpeaker1:35:01

       Yes.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:01

       -in this time that we have.

    5. SPSpeaker1:35:02

       Yes, I, I'm, I believe in immersion and spaced repetition, so I believe... Like, uh, did you, did you take a language in school?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:10

       Oh, God, yeah, German.

    7. SPSpeaker1:35:11

       Can you speak it?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:12

       Nein. [chuckles]

    9. SPSpeaker1:35:13

       [chuckles] That's right. So most people go to college or high school and college, and they take a language, right? And five years later, ten years later, they can't speak a word, right? Immersion is how you do it. So if I wanted to teach you a language, and you have the time and money, I would take you to Italy, and I would drop you in the middle of Rome and say, "I'll see you in ninety days."

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:31

        Yeah.

    11. SPSpeaker1:35:31

        With no one to teach you, in ninety days, are you gonna be speaking the language?

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:35

        Better. [chuckles] Yeah.

    13. SPSpeaker1:35:36

        You're, you're gonna speak the language. You're gonna know the nuances of the language. You're gonna have a pitch and tone that's more there 'cause it's how you learned originally, by total immersion. So the reason I do twelve hours a day [chuckles] for four days, fifty hours in a weekend or sixty hours, and most people think, "I'll never do that," but they're having the time of their life, so time disappears when you're enjoying yourself. When you hate it, I mean, it feels like eternity. But the reason I'm able to do that is that immersion is like years of experience, and you're in a peak state while you're doing it, so you remember it because it's locked in, like nine eleven, as opposed to eight eleven. So I live that. The other thing that I do is I'm capturing, and I use AI now to do it. I've kept journals my whole life, just like you, looks like you've done, but I'm building on it, but I have my AI that I've been feeding over and over and over again, the things that I wanted to remember, the principles, and I create structures to evaluate these things.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:24

        And I asked you there about how these wealthy investors make their money. Um, the other... the last question I really have a- around this is how the best entrepreneurs in the world make their money. Um, again, we're called The Diary Of A CEO, so there's lots of entrepreneurs and build, business builders watching, and I know you've worked with many of the world's top entrepreneurs. In fact, one of them wrote you a letter.

    15. SPSpeaker1:36:42

        Oh, which one?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:44

        Marc Benioff.

    17. SPSpeaker1:36:45

        Oh, I love Marc. He's a beautiful man.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:47

        For anyone that doesn't know who Marc is, um, he's the, the founder, CEO of Salesforce.

    19. SPSpeaker1:36:53

        Yes. Yeah, he actually came to four, I think, or five of my seminars originally [chuckles] in a row, same seminar, and, uh, you know, Marc's as big as I am. He's a big guy, and he was going for it full tilt, and finally, after the fourth one, he came up to me and said, "You've convinced me. I'm gonna leave Oracle. I'm gonna start my own business. I want you to come on the journey with me. It's called salesforce.com." He said, "We're gonna change business around the world," and he said this to me. He goes, "And I promise you, we'll get to a hundred million dollars in business." Now he's doing, like, forty-two billion, [chuckles] right? So-

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:22

        Gee.

    21. SPSpeaker1:37:22

        -but Marc's... What I love about Marc is he's a contributor. He's, he's a social CEO. Like, he's does things for society. He isn't just about himself. He's an extraordinary human being.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:31

        He said, "Dear Tony, I'm so deeply grateful for everything that you've done for me over the last four decades." He talked about the seminars he'd been to with you and says that you've transformed his life through your inspiration and ideas. He talks about that particular seminar you referenced as the moment that led him to go deeper and deeper and deeper. He said, "It, it was at Date with Destiny that I made the firm decision to leave Oracle and start my own company. We even had a brief conversation about it back then, if you remember."

    23. SPSpeaker1:37:59

        Yeah, I remember.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:00

        Fast forward twenty-six years, and Salesforce now has eighty thousand employees and generates-

    25. SPSpeaker1:38:06

        Mm-hmm

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:06

        ... over forty billion in revenue annually. It stands as the largest enterprise software company in the world. I truly could not have done it without you by my side, and as you always say, 'We often overestimate what we can do in one year, but we vastly underestimate what we can do in a few decades.' Tony, I started this letter with gratitude, and I will end it the same way. When I reached my most difficult moments, you were there. When I reached my highest heights, you were also there. I never forgot that whenever I reached out for help, you returned the phone call or text always quickly. Business and politics are temporal, but relationships are eternal, and yours is one I carry with me always. Congratulations on everything you're doing. I look forward to a wonderful future with you. Aloha, Marc."

    27. SPSpeaker1:38:56

        That's very beautiful. [chuckles] It makes me a little emotional. I just, I love Marc. He's such a good man, and-... um, that was very kind of him to write that letter. He says he gives me more credit than I deserve, um, but I, I love him personally. I love, I, I love strangers. I'm dri-driven by that, but I love Mark 'cause he's such a giver. I, I see him as a, a role model of what a great CEO is, someone who understands the social impact of what they're doing, as well as the business impact. Um, he's got a heart of gold, and of course, we all have ups and downs throughout our lives, and, and he thinks he's just, uh, I've just helped him. He's helped me, too. It's like it's never a one, one-way piece. It's not like I go around and coach all these people. I'm no idiot. I've learned so much from Mark. Uh, it's priceless, so I have to, I have to send that thanks right back to him, no question about it.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:45

        Where does that emotion come from that I see in your face?

    29. SPSpeaker1:39:48

        [chuckles] I don't know. It's just like... I'm, I'm an emotional guy. I'm an empathetic guy, and I'm a, I'm a lover, you know? That's, that's what drives all that I do, and to, um, see somebody I love and to see how far he's come and to know that, um, I've been able to be helpful to him at, at key moments, um, is meaningful. You know, it's extremely meaningful 'cause he's provided opportunities for millions of people, eighty thousand employees, but millions of people through his creativity and his focus, and we've done a lot of cool things together. I called him one time. I was up in, uh, San Francisco for other business, and, um, I read in the paper that this, this landlord was kicking out these nuns who had the food kitchen in the, the worst part of the city there, in the Tenderloin district, and I was like, "This guy's an idiot! I mean, I gotta, I gotta do something." So instead of leaving, I spent an extra day, and I went and met these nuns, the most incredible ladies, and they were spending all their time cooking food so they could sell food, so they could make money, so they could actually prepare food for the homeless there, and in this tiny little building, and they were getting kicked out. So I called the owner, and I said, "Listen, I'm own a lot of real estate also. I understand your rights as a real estate guy," but I said, "Do you want to be the most hated guy in San Francisco?" I said, "I'll give you an option. How about let them stay till the end of the year? I'll pay their lease. I'll pay twice the amount, and then I'll get 'em out." I said, "But you don't push them out now on the street." So he agreed. And so then I said to the ladies, "Let's find a place for you, and I'll help you find a place. We'll rent a place for you." And then I started getting phone calls, and [chuckles] one of the phone calls I got, so it was a realtor, and he goes, "They're, they're looking to buy a place," and I said, I said, "Well, where are they getting the money?" I said... He said, "I don't know." So I called the main nun up, and she goes, uh, I said, "You know, I, I was... said I'd, you know, pay for a place for you guys for a year, you know, lease you a place." I said, "But I hear you're looking to buy a place. Do you guys have some capital I'm not aware of?" And she goes, "No." She goes, "God will provide, Tony." [chuckles] I'm like, "God will provide?" So, so I spent, I don't know, a million, two, something like that, to find them a place, but then I called Mark 'cause I didn't want them living in the place, and I said, "Mark, match me on this," and, I mean, look, like, he didn't hesitate a second. He had not even met the nuns. Then he went with the nuns. We went and met them, and he went, and he bought them a home for them to stay in, and, and then we went through four years of the city trying to not let them take over this place, but that's the kind of guy Mark is. So he's incredibly generous, and I'm very touched that I could, uh, count him as a friend and be helpful to him, and he's been so helpful to me.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:19

        I've learned quite a lot about you today, just from observing you, and two... One of the big things that I've learned is the two moments where I've seen tears in your eyes-
20. 1:42:34 – 1:43:58

    Love Is the Driving Force in Life

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:34

       And I, I work back through your early, earliest years, and I, again, it, it's almost like a, a jigsaw puzzle coming into formation in my mind of how, how much you love love.

    2. SPSpeaker1:42:44

       I do. I think love is life. Love is the driving force in my life, for sure. There's no question about it, and that's why I can't... I, I hate to see suffering 'cause it's the opposite of love. You know, if you love somebody, what do you do? Anything you can, so that's what I'm called to do, and it is, it's a calling. It's not a job. It's not a business. You know, I have all kinds of businesses, obviously, and I enjoy business, but this is my mission. This is what I'm made for, and, um, I'm just one guy. I can't do everything, but I can do a lot, and I'm always figuring out how to scale more, right? You know, whether it's feeding people or getting... You know, my wife and I, we're fortunate enough to have our own plane, and I, I don't wanna just burn up a bunch of carbon, so I found out it's three thousand trees, so I said, "Let's plant a hundred million trees." We're up to seventy-five million. I think we're gonna hit the hundred million this year and... But we didn't just plant the trees. We taught the farmers, worked with an organization about how to build a, build a crop, not once a year, but to do it across twelve different months, so that if something drops down, they come out, and they go from earning a $1.25 a day and starving to making $12 a day, which doesn't sound like much, makes them rich in that community. So we're doing that. It's like I just, I love taking things to scale, too. It's like n- I love the individual impact, and I love the, the global impact. The combination of the two make life ever challenging and ever exciting.

21. 1:43:58 – 1:47:14

    The Pattern Of Successful Businesses

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:58

       With people like Mark and entrepreneurs, my last question about this pattern recognition, and my last question is just, as me as a, you know, I'm, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm building businesses at the moment. I'm earlier in my journey, m- much earlier than someone like Mark, but what is the pattern that you've seen in these exceptional founders and entrepreneurs as it relates to building great businesses that you would impart on me?

    2. SPSpeaker1:44:17

       I don't think there's anything I'm gonna impart on you that you don't already know 'cause the fundamentals are so simple. Um, you have to... The business has to be more than a vehicle for money. And don't get me wrong, I mean, there are people who've certainly succeeded that way, but if you look at the people that build something that's lasting, it has to be a passion, where y- it's something you believe in so much, it's so valuable. It's a contribution sense to you, not just an economic sense, 'cause in the beginning of a business, it's like having a child, you know? You know, you don't get a lot back. You work around the clock, you'll discover [chuckles] when your first child comes, and you love them. It's, it's the pride of ownership. But if you're just... A lot of people start a business, think they're gonna get rich overnight or make some... And those people never succeed. So it's like finding something, a vision that not only you believe in, but others are completely moved by, 'cause you can attract people. You can't build an organization without great people. And, and do you think I could run all these companies if I was just sitting there every day? I mean, I've got some of the greatest leaders I could possibly recruit. I'm constantly looking for the second part, which is: How do I find leaders? How do I find leaders that are smarter than I am in various areas, and where I can-... pull together the right people together and create a culture that adds massive value and continually does so until it dominates the, that industry or that market or that marketplace. So I think you have to find something that's more than just a business for you. It has to be more than economics for you. It has to be a mission for the most successful people, and you have to be able to have something you can articulate that can attract people, and you have to constantly find the very best that you can. And you gotta constantly prune, because the law of familiarity shows up. That's what your friends went through, right? They got all these great things, but no matter how great it is, after a while, it's familiar. You know, it's like they don't, they don't have the same hunger. I look for not only wickedly smart people, which I love, but hungry people. When people ask me, like, "What is the one common denominator of people that succeed on a massive scale around the world?" I'd always in the beginning say, "Well, I love wicked intelligence, but I know a lot of very smart people that can't fight their way out of a paper bag in their relationship or their finances. [chuckles] You know, they're smart in one area, not another." But the one that is absolutely, completely accurate is hunger. The hunger to be more, to do more, to give more, to share more. Somebody who has a hunger that doesn't die, not a hunger to get... make a certain amount of money or a hunger to achieve, you know, a swimsuit size, but a hunger that's unquenchable. Those are the people that you know their names because they have an impact. So it's like, whether it's Richard Branson, who's in his seventy, he has the same hunger today as when he was sixteen years old in that crypt in your country, coming up with Virgin, right? I mean, same level, "Let's give it a go," right? He's got that piece, you know. Uh, anybody you see, I mean, you know, look at the people you have on your show and think about how many of them still have that hunger. Kevin Hart, like, he's a friend of mine, I know he's been on your show. I mean, he's one of the hardest working guys, but he's hungry. He loves it. He want- he just wants to do it all. To me, that's the gift. And stoking your hunger or awaking someone's hunger that doesn't have it, that's a real gift, and that's one of the gifts I think I've tried to refine within myself and help people with.

22. 1:47:14 – 1:51:20

    Create Life on Your Terms

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:47:14

       My last question is, of all the things we've talked about today and everything else that's going on in your life and the world, what is the most important thing we should have talked about that we didn't talk about?

    2. SPSpeaker1:47:23

       We covered a lot of territory. [laughing] I'm impressed by the diversity of what we got to cover. Thank you. We went deep. Um, I don't know if there's anything of that off the top of my head right now. I, I, I do think that I hope people leave with the idea that if I'm stressed in my life, I gotta stop managing, I gotta start creating. And that, that sounds like just an overwhelming thing, but it's like creating life on your terms, like deciding what are the immutables. It's like, um, if you wanna take the island, you've gotta burn your boats.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:47:50

       Hmm.

    4. SPSpeaker1:47:51

       Uh, if, if you have a way to go back, the mind will rationalize, and you will go back. But if you really are committed to a greater quality of life, you gotta master the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. And fulfillment is not like achievement. There's very cl-- real rules for achievement, like what to do with your body. Multiple ones, but there's certain fundamentals that are immutable. What to do financially, certain things that are immutable. Fulfillment? That-- success without fulfillment is failure. And fulfillment is an art. It's not a science. It's different for you and me and everybody we meet, and so, uh, I, I'll tell you one real fast example. I know we've gone over in time. Um, Steve Wynn's a good friend of mine, built most of Las Vegas, a brilliant guy, absolutely brilliant. And, um, one day, Steve calls up. He goes, "There's a painting that I have coveted for over a decade." And he goes, "I just recently outbid everybody at Sotheby's, and it just got delivered, and you gotta see it." And I said, "Okay, I can't see it." I said, "But I gotta ask a question: How much did it set you back?" And he goes, "Eighty-six point nine million dollars."

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:58

       Oof.

    6. SPSpeaker1:48:58

       [chuckles] I go, "Eighty-six point nine million dollars? Okay, I gotta see what an eighty-seven million dollar painting looks like." So I go to his house, he takes me in, shows me this wall. It's a red square. It's a Rothko, if you know what a Rothko is. It's a red square, and it's not totally red, a little red and orange, right? And I look at him, I go, "Steve, they missed some spots." [laughing] And he looks at me and gives me this little look, and I start to tease him a little bit. I go, "Steve, if you give me a hundred dollars worth of red paint, and you give me ten minutes, I think I can match this." And I'm just screwing with him a little bit. He knows I'm screwing with him. He goes, "You know, this is a Rothko!" I said, "I know." He goes, "No, but you don't know. Like, you know, he committed suicide..." He tells me the whole story, right? And I go, "Well, that better be blood if he has eighty-seven million dollars," right? But the reason I tell you this story is it's not making fun of Steve, it's making fun of me. He can look at that, and he can barely see, and he knows what every stroke means, has meaning for him. He knows what it's about, what it means, the uniqueness of it. He knows the man's life. I see a red square. He has an experience. The richness of life is when you go deeper and figure out what makes you feel like it's a red square for someone else, but this is your thing. This is what fulfills you. I know what fulfills me: family, love, as you can probably tell, [chuckles] and contribution in a meaningful way, light me up like a Christmas tree, and they've made me go for sixty-six years, and it'll keep me going, right? But people gotta find what that is for themselves because if you succeed and you're not fulfilled, what do you got? How many people have taken their life who are super successful on the surface, but they weren't fulfilled? Some of the people made everybody on earth laugh when they took their life. Some people, their businesses then took their life. You don't want- I don't, I don't think most people are gonna take their life, but you don't wanna live more decades and not really be here, not experiencing fulfillment. So my passion is to help people be fulfilled, not just achieve.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:52

       Amen. I mean, I've got so many other photos that I might as well show you the ones that-

    8. SPSpeaker1:50:56

       This is the moment my wife and I met.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:58

       That is the moment you met.

    10. SPSpeaker1:50:59

        Literally, the moment we met. How beautiful!

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:01

        A beautiful one.

    12. SPSpeaker1:51:01

        That's my mom. That's Jim Robbins. This man adopted me.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:04

        This one you...

    14. SPSpeaker1:51:06

        Oh, that's down, uh, this one is actually down in Haiti. I went down there. That's where-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:10

        Oh, wow!

    16. SPSpeaker1:51:10

        -the first group of people we went to save, all these kids. These were kids that had been trafficked. Yeah, my brother and sister. Wow, you do your homework. Very impressive.

23. 1:51:20 – 1:54:20

    How Long Would Your Lifespan Be If You Could Choose?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:20

       We, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, if you could choose your life span, how long would it be, and at what point would you choose to die?

    2. SPSpeaker1:51:38

       ... Hmm, that's a great question. Well, I certainly would wanna live, um, as long as my family does, and now I've gotta live a little longer 'cause I got a [chuckles] four-year-old. Um, I don't know if I'd wanna live forever. Um, I don't know. You know, there's talk about, you know, uploading your consciousness to a machine and so forth. I don't-- I believe in spirit and soul. I don't know if that's gonna be uplift a machine. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just the process, but I wanna leave as much legacy as possible. I wanna live as long as I'm interested and useful. You know, those are the two things that I really matter, and I... You know, my minimum, I think, is ninety-two, is my goal, as if I had control, right? [chuckles] Life will-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:52:18

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SPSpeaker1:52:18

       -tell me. But ninety-two for, is a number that somehow I've had in my head, and with some of the boosts we have with biochemistry and element stem cells, who knows? Maybe it goes past a hundred. But, uh, I think a, a century of living and giving would be an extraordinary experience for me. I don't know if I'd wanna live for eternity, but I, I'm not at that point where that's really a choice, so I don't have to think about it. Um, I, I will tell you, the only fear that I've really felt in my life was dying too soon. I think part of my drive early on was just I wanna squeeze everything out of life while I'm here. I don't know where it's come from. I think, you know, a couple- couple things could have contributed to it, but I think death was a good counselor for me. It gave me drive. To the today, it, it's not a fear for me other than, uh, I wanna be here as long as I can for my family and for especially all my children, but especially my youngest. But yeah, that would be my answer. I'd say not forever, but as long as I'm useful and helpful, and I can enjoy it all.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:53:10

       You used the word legacy there.

    6. SPSpeaker1:53:12

       Yeah, well, legacy is, uh, what I leave when I'm gone. In other words, I don't have to be here to continue to have impact, right? It's like that's the best part of life. I, I looked at, you know, leadership is influence, right? What makes you a leader is your ability to influence thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions of another person. If you're a positive leader, for good, and I look at the levels of influence. One is, can you influence someone to change their state? Then it's, can you influence them to change their state when you're not there? So you're no longer a manager, right? You've changed their values. Could you change their state, and they're not there for a group of people, right? Could you change their state with a mass number of people, and you're not there, right? That, to me, is the ultimate level of influence. And now with audios and videos and AI, especially with AI, I've got an AI that's amazing, and we have four point nine on Apple, and people love it, and their lives changed by it. And I'm, I'm working right now with another group, um, to create a platform for interventions and therapy that's not just me with AI because there aren't enough therapists, there aren't enough great therapists in the world. I wanna have that. It's already in fifty languages, so the whole world. I wanna leave a legacy that the world has people that can help them twenty-four seven, three sixty-five, and I think AI is one of the tools, uh, it's getting better and better, to do that.

24. 1:54:20 – 2:00:39

    What Happens When You Die

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:54:20

       And what happens when you die? Where do you go?

    2. SPSpeaker1:54:23

       I, I, I don't think anything in the universe-- I know nothing in the universe ever is destroyed, it changes form. What does that look like? Do I have conscious awareness that, as I do now? I don't know the answer to that question. Uh, all I wanna do is make sure I live fully while I'm here, and whatever's next, when it shows up, I'll, I'll take that journey.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:54:41

       Thank you so much, uh, for so many reasons. I think you've been a, you've been a mentor to so many of us for, for so long and in so many ways, whether it's... I remember how profoundly impacted I was when I watched your, um, your piece on Netflix, and-

    4. SPSpeaker1:54:53

       I'm Not Your Guru, yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:54:54

       Yeah, that was really the front door f- for me into your world. I'd seen, I'd seen your work before. I'd, I'd read the books and stuff, but for me, that was really a paradigm-shifting moment. I think it was in that documentary where there was a young man who was suicidal. Yeah, it was that one, the Netflix I'm Not Your Guru.

    6. SPSpeaker1:55:07

       Yeah, there was, yeah, there was one. That's how it started, actually.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:10

       Matthias?

    8. SPSpeaker1:55:11

       Yes, Matthias.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:12

       Matthias. That was what, six years ago?

    10. SPSpeaker1:55:16

        No, no, that was twenty fourteen, so-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:18

        Twenty fourteen. Okay, wow!

    12. SPSpeaker1:55:19

        Eleven years ago. Yeah.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:19

        Gosh.

    14. SPSpeaker1:55:20

        There was a young woman there also. I don't know if you remember the young woman that was in that sex cult where they-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:24

        Yeah

    16. SPSpeaker1:55:24

        ... made the children have sex with the adults. That one was very emotional. I was down in Brazil, and I was doing a seminar for, you know, about ten thousand people, and I'm walking through the aisle, and this woman kept looking at me, and then I didn't realize it. She goes: "Don't you recognize me?" And it was her. She got herself out of the group. She s- wrote a book. She's now a therapist. She helps other people get out of it, so, uh, it's really fun to see years later. We actually did a follow-up at the seven-year mark or something like that afterwards to show what happened with these families. It's been really nice to see.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:54

        Did you say his name? His name, it was Matthias. Matthias?

    18. SPSpeaker1:55:56

        Matthias.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:57

        Matthias, he, he just wanted to-- he sent an email just w- to say that, uh, uh, for anyone that doesn't know, he was a, a guy in the audience who was, had suicidal ideation and was clearly struggling.

    20. SPSpeaker1:56:08

        Yeah.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:09

        Um, it's been, what, a, a, a decade roughly since then. You, you supported him, you helped him, and he's just sent an email to say that attending that event that day was a huge dream for him, and the experiences that, that he got from that have completely changed the trajectory of his life.

    22. SPSpeaker1:56:24

        Hmm.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:24

        And those memories continue to impact him as he continues to support, um, his growth, his habits, his decisions, and his outcomes, and he wanted to send his regards to you for that.

    24. SPSpeaker1:56:33

        That was really kind of him to reach out. That's nice. I love seeing people a year later, ten years later, twenty years later. That's the great gift of my life. I walk down the street, anywhere on Earth, [chuckles] the Sahara Desert, it's happened to me in China. People come up and say, "You changed my life," and I always remind them, "I didn't change your life, you did, but glad I got to help what happened," and then they tell me stories. And out- outside my family, there's nothing that gives me more joy than to hear those stories.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:55

        Well, you've done that for more people than I could possibly receive emails from. Um, hundreds, or, billions really, i- if we're counting the amount of people, the amount of meals you've fed through the, the work you've done through your company. You even- you've invested tremendously also in, in saving the planet through your green energy investments, which we didn't get to talk about today, but I'm gonna link that below for people to read about.

    26. SPSpeaker1:57:12

        One thing I would mention, if I may, is I, uh, uh, Paramount approached me, and we now have a twenty-four-hour-a-day channel. And, uh, it's, it's a fast channel, so it's free, advertising-supported television. It's a TV I grew up with instead of cable. So if you go to, um, whether it's Pluto or if you go to Roku or if you go to Amazon Prime and you look for live TV, there's the Tony Robbins Network, and twenty-four hours a day, there's content there that's free that anybody can watch and educate themselves, and they're full of interventions like these that we talked about. So I hope some people will check it out because it's, uh, it's a way, another way I'm trying to give people a gift to support their lives.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:47

        I'm gonna link that below, and also I'm gonna put a link below to your free three-day virtual event called Time to Rise, which I think we mentioned.

    28. SPSpeaker1:57:53

        Oh, yeah, please come to that. You don't have to say come. You can do it from anywhere in the world, your office, your home, and it's, uh, coming up on the twenty-ninth through the thirty-first of January.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:58:00

        And it's perfect timing at the start of the new year-

    30. SPSpeaker1:58:02

        Yeah, exactly

Episode duration: 2:00:39