Tony Robbins on the Psychology and Skills of Exceptional Leaders

hi I'm James Ledbetter I'm the editor of ink magazine and ink.com I'm very pleased to be joined this morning by one of the most esteemed authors and leadership experts in the United States today he doesn't need much of an introduction so I won't give you one we're very pleased to be talking this morning to tony robbins tony so much for coming in so great to see you I want to talk today principally about leadership something that you think and write a lot about so why don't we start by you giving me a definition of what

leadership is from from your point of view it's interesting when I was really young starting out I was looking for answers leadership in you like look up in Webster's dictionary leadership is one who leads helpful really helpful I believe that leadership is really a skill of influence it is the most important skill that any human being can master and I don't think of leadership as a position I see it as a skill a tool that all of us have to have in other words the quality of your life I do really believe comes down to

your level of leadership other people don't have to follow you to be a leader but you have to live life on your terms and the first person you have to influence it yourself you know whether you're fit or fat you know whether your kids are out you know on drugs or not it's who has more influence the guy on the street corner or you whether you're fit or fat is can you influence your own hands your own body your own mind to do what's necessary so I think to be able to influence the thoughts the

feelings the emotions and the actions of another human being that's what leadership is and quality leadership obviously authentic leadership is one where it's servant leadership you're looking to influence those thoughts feelings emotions and actions for a greater good not just for yourself and I think the people that master that are the people that you know about I mean they aren't they're the captains of industry there are people that are celebrities because they've learned how to influence people they are some of the greatest teachers you know some of the greatest scientists because you can't just come

up with ideas ideas will die on your lips unless you become a person of influence and that's what leadership is one of the things that I've seen you say in the past about leadership is that in order to become a leader you need to destroy the limitations within your own mind what does it mean to destroy a limitation well first of all if you look at a business the chokehold on the growth of any business is always the psychology and the skillset of a leader and it's 80% psychology and 20% mechanics meaning so many small

businesses you know the owner might be an incredible innovator maybe they write incredible code maybe there are a tremendous influencer but they don't know the economic side of their business right and they find themselves getting in trouble because somebody's giving them financial information after the fact they don't have true financial intelligence to make decisions and they get caught up can you can you give me an example of a business like that you have to name names no I'll pick my own examples I had several companies earlier my career that we're near bankruptcy because I would

sit down and I would I knew how to produce products that would change people's lives I knew how to market I knew our building teams of people but what I didn't know was finance so I look and say you know okay what are we doing it oh you got a great you know you got a 20% profit you know you got two million dollars in profit those day little tiny company and I've come to the end of the year there was no cash right I didn't know that profit is a theory and so just not

having that skill or someone might be really great in finance but they're not any good in marketing so sometimes it's a skill problem but 80% of it you can solve those skills you can get those skills if you can change your psychology but when you accept that oh my god the markets down or oh my god the economy in areas down when you allow the environment to control your psychology you're not gonna win there's an interesting guy named Mel Fisher you may remember from back in the 90s he was that the name lingers in your

mind he was a guy that spent I think it was 27 years if I remember correctly looking for the Spanish galleon that was supposed to be filled with gold yeah that's cool and he found it after 27 years now here's my question for you Jim yeah five years into it you've worked every day for five years and you found nothing what are you gonna do and how are you gonna raise more money because you have run out of money ten years into it fifteen years into it 20 years into it so I say to people

in business I say to them you understand psychology here's the biggest challenge for most businesses they think they've maxed what's possible because they think they've tried everything once you believe that your belief controls you and you missed innovations you missed the answers this guy found that gold cuz he had three beliefs first belief was there's a treasure out there and he was certain it was out there even though he didn't have any absolute evidence and that certainly drove him but if you knew there was treasure in your business that's not enough you gotta also believe

I will find it and he also have to believe it's worth it right and without those three beliefs he never would have found it and so changing the psychology of the leader is what'll change a business faster than anything else changing their skills will also do it but lots of people the skill they don't execute and you and I both know you know executions more important than those now we'll just Trump by execution every single day and that execution comes by changing the psychology I can't even look for a lego with my son for ten

minutes if I can't find the piece in ten minutes I get 27 years but but I guess my second question on that idea of destroying the limitations is how do you do it should should more leaders be in psychotherapy should they be mountain climbing what what one of the mechanics of changing a limitation I mean after all if it's your own limitation presumably you know you put it there you're probably attached to it on some level well unconsciously maybe but let's just talk about how it happens people are not one way we are a reflection

of the states we're living in when you're in a frustrated state and overwhelmed state a tired state your brain processes completely differently than if you're in a passionate state whether you're feeling determined whether you're feeling committed whether you feel completely resolved so learning to change the leaders state learning how to change your own state coz what you know people want the silliest questions I get asked this you're not really that happy are you are you have bad days don't you of course them you know bad times but I don't have bad days anymore and it's

not BS it's because I've trained myself like an athlete to go in these Peaks they'd so often that they're just natural from it's like building a muscle so it's not like I'm so smart I'm just so positive it's just like why would I waste my time stressing out I have a 90 second rule I'll stress for 90 seconds but stress is not going to solve it let me put myself back in a different state and so the way I do that is I use my body because I've done this with athletes foredeck with billionaire businessmen

if you see somebody gets in a in a slump of some sort great athlete Paul Tudor Jones some of the greatest financial traders in the history of the world you know I used I've coached him for 22 years when I came to see him this is a man who made 200% in 1987 when the stock market had his biggest single crash in the day percentage-wise still he made 200% for his clients more than anybody could dream of then he went to the moon and he went down to earth and that he lost money so I

was brought in to turn him around well how do you turn a guy like that around yeah I watched him his shoulders were down he was breathing like this he's sitting like this all time because he'd been through these failures and it started to get stored in his body on this state this man is a genius couldn't do it so I watched films when he was at its best and he's like standing up and he's doing this he's going to sell this make this happen and the movement the intensity the way used his face and

so I showed him a video of himself today it should have a video when he's at his best and I said what do you notice he was like those are two different people I said yes but we can get back to this guy by just using the body first trying to use your mind you'll go in circles but I've been teaching for years that a radical change in your body instantly changes your biochemistry thirty-eight years have taught it two years ago at Harvard they did a study scientifically proven we've been teaching all these decades where

they say they call it power postures yeah the one thing woman standing like one moment of Superman for two minutes yep or like you see guys like this pull back like that for two minutes literally increases your testosterone in your biochemistry within two minutes by 20% it drops cortisol by 18 percent which is the stress hormone and increases your chance of taking a more risky behavior which is what's required of the leader by 33% two minutes now that's just standing a certain way I show people use their voice their body their movement which is 10

times more dynamic than just a stiff stance and when you change your state your mental emotional state you change the points haven't you at times when you have I can't remember how to spell a difficult word like love or your own email right contra man's name and then you've had times where you're in the flow or after you do something like you know I did that I know how I did it but I did it yes I was in the flow well you're the same person the only difference is States so training yourself to be

in a peak State every day I mean you know you think about like a great businessman I think a big great entertainer like Elton John has been around and rock and roll like 42 how many years yeah yeah I mean it's mind-boggling and most people still like some sample of his music well he's gotta have days when he gets up to entertain when he thinks if you make me sing that Daniel song one more time I'm going postal right but he never does every single time he's in that same beautiful state that's not because he's

naturally like that he's trained himself to do that like a great athlete trains himself that's what leaders have to do the state of the union the state of the company is the culture and the culture starts at the head whoever that leader is their state impacts everybody else so training yourself to be in that peak state is the key to it all can anyone be a leader and I asked that for sort of two reasons one just my own curiosity for supply and demand right if everybody is a leader then who's a follower and we

got to have leaders and followers but secondly I'm curious what you think about innate qualities versus teachable qualities first let's just look at that what's the scarcest resource we probably need in our society today it's great leaders I mean look at the political process that we're going through right now if there's any evidence that we're hurting for leadership I see it in government you see it in businesses there aren't that many great leaders now so then the priests opposition for a lot of people be then well it must be this innate talent if there are

people that are born and up read when you may be born with more certainty like people willing to take more risks there certainly are people that nature but anyone can be a leader in something that they decide to become masterful in you can be the leader of your own wife everyone should lead their own life you should be the leader of your family and so I think everyone can be a leader but there are different types and different styles of leadership and I believe that leadership is a skill it starts with having something that you're

committed to that's larger than yourself a vision that's bigger than yourself if there's a large enough vision if you have enough passion for that vision then you're gonna have enough Drive to actually start to execute and then leadership is the capacity to disappoint your disappointment because you're gonna have to go through failures and instead of making failures you have to learn from those and then it comes down to the scale of influence once again and so anyone can learn anyone can develop a vision anyone can uncover their passion anyone can learn to influence that's a

skill that can be learned so yes leadership can be taught and leadership can be learned can everyone be a leader the answer is yes because there's so many different eggs to lead in and it's not a situation like you have to follow me for you to lead I just have to know what it is I truly stand for accordingly it's not necessarily a zero sum equation no my my leadership doesn't take away from someone else's leadership the fact that that as a boss people have to follow me doesn't mean that they themselves can't be leader

what a great boss wants to someone who is you want hire leaders how do you want hire people are smarter than you are if it all humanly possible right now some people's ego doesn't believe that's possible anarchy but I really think if you really look at what will free you as a leader is recruiting other leaders yeah training other leaders that's what allows an organization because one's leader do they get the result they find the way to victory they find a way to create breakthroughs with teams of people they don't just do it themselves otherwise

you can't leverage you can grow how important is that where on the hierarchy of things that people need to lead is that ability to connect I really believe Nordic influence people you got to know what already influences them who the mistake that we make is we don't connect enough to figure out who this person is and what most of us do is try to lead other people by influencing them the way we've the influence they try to influence their kid to clean the room the way that would make you do it but even though they're

your kid they're different than you and so they're gonna do it for a different set of reasons than what you would do it for you might have done it because someone told you to but your kids I'm all day long that's not it there has to be something else it's a sense of freedom they get from it or a sense of Master something that's going to move them so I always say there are two things that influence everyone if you want to be a leader you have to know how to change other people a person

is in an O state a person's in an angry state persons in a frustrated state you have to be able to influence their stake is if you change their state you're gonna change the result they get but the second thing you have to understand is what are people's blueprints blueprints my shorthand for what are the values what do they believe what do they fear I always say to people that life is found in the dance between what you desire most and what you fear most if I want to lead you and support you I got

to know your goals your desires I don't know what you're scared about when you're fearful about what stresses you out and if I understand that I can communicate in a way that will inspire you to maximize not only when I'm here that's management leadership is on God and you've raised your own standard and you're gonna continue to perform at a higher level it strikes me that so much depends on an internal mechanism of when something works and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about that I mean am i a success if I'm hitting my numbers

am i a success if I'm hitting my goals do we carry around ideas of success that are unrealistic and that and that may even hold us back for sure there's a program I've done for 25 years called date with destiny fact I was just in South by Southwest and we aired a documentary done by Joe Berliners you know Kadim you were nominated brilliant documentarian he's gonna what about you it's it's about it's not about my life it's just one program I do each year I see a couple hundred thousand people and you know thirteen countries

and then we have one programa D for 2,500 people the most intimate program I do six days and nights I mean the documentary yeah that's what yeah yeah and in that compression of that experience what I really have him show people is how people create real and lasting change I made him agree because it's his documentary that he'd wait a year to publish it and follow up with people a year later to show what's really going all it's just coming out now but the reason I bring it up is if you're gonna actually produce change

you've got to become a student of what actually works like I have not lost a suicide out of thousands in my lifetime knock on wood in 38 years and I'm the guy that gets the phone call when the kid is melting down I got a phone call President Clinton calling me and he says to me I'm gonna impeach in the morning what should I do my first response is could you call me sooner it's like come on so when you learn to influence when you learn the skills of influence and you can learn them from

so many different locations what you're able to accomplish is breathtaking to other people I mean when people see someone is suicidal I have one night of this event and I call you have no problems and in a room of 2,500 people on average there's 12 people that are suicidal and I say who's suicidal let's handle it now and every one of them is different and no one breeds and the reason it works is because I knew what you just said I connect I uncover what are their belief structures for someone who want to kill themselves

I gotta believe that dying is less painful than living and I got a shift that or they're not gonna change they're gonna kill themselves and so how to do that is an art but it's also a science and what I tell people is success leaves clues if you find someone who's a great leader the best thing you could possibly do is go model that person figure out what they do different than anybody else and you could save yourself a decade by spending a few weeks modeling somebody that strong we hear a lot in recent years

about inequality in our society and the way that the growth of wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a very few perhaps at the expense of the many depending on one's interpretation and I wonder what you have to say about people who say well the problem is not what's in my mind the problem is what's not in my pocket are there instances in which people are genuinely held back by their lack of material resources well of course there are you know half the planet lives on two dollars and 50 cents a day the challenge

is the people that complain that they're the 99% against the 1% are actually the 1% he goes to Tony what are you talking about those people down there who are in those tents downstairs and you know a few years ago and there if you watch them typing on their iPhones and having a Starbucks drink they think that they are really suffering but in reality if you make if you're in poverty in this country you're in the 1% of earners in the world you're the top 1% so you really care about the 1% you gotta care

about everybody but the real challenge I think is not money as it is that the world has changed if you are blue-collar worker if you're an unskilled worker meaning you're not tech oriented you're not cognitively driven in your job you can't have trouble and I don't care what the politicians say about bringing these jobs back there are no jobs to bring back and the reason is because technology is making labor less valuable and that's why jobs don't produce as much unless you're high cognitive high decision-making high tech those people have no problem there's a 1%

unemployment for people make $100,000 or more it's so tiny because they've learned to become more valuable I always tell people the most valuable lesson I got from my mentor Jim Rohn was I asked my father work two jobs we were always broke we had no money for food and we lived in a community we moved to it just I thought they were all rich and we were on the other side of the tracks it was a lower middle-class but compared to where we lived before these people seemed rich compared to us and I just didn't

understand it and Jim said to me Tony it's not about the value of your soul it's about the value of you and the marketplace and your father's skills are not that high well he used to take he was underground parking attendant and he would take people's ticket and make change well the research now shows it's being done at Yale's being done overseas in England as well and they found that 40% of all jobs they project in the next 10 years are going to disappear because of Technology it's gonna be replaced by an algorithm it's gonna

be changed you know all these guys on Wall Street you're seeing all these algorithms take over and they're getting rid of all these traders right it's changing radically these in these hedge funds there's three million truck drivers self-driving cars are here in the next five years they will be the standard certainly within seven or eight years are you gonna hire someone who can only work eight hours a day and sometimes gets drunk or can make a mistake when you can buy a machine write down the Machine and be in a position where it works 24

hours a day driving but no one is telling these drivers this and it's they have to retool now so technology is the biggest challenge labor is less valuable because of efficiencies with technology and it's going to get better and better for technology which is scary when you think about what's going to happen for jobs so I say to people you got to participate in your own rescue you've got to retool yourself the idea that Bernie Sanders has of providing free education sounds wonderful but the education he wants to do is Community College there are no

skill sets and community colleges today for the most part that are gonna prepare you for the economy or a job that's there so what is that going to do you're just going to waste more money more time we need to retool ourselves the government's not going to do it for you and a great leader in a company is retraining their people all the time the training never stops because that is the innovative creative marketing edge as your own people most companies do less training today than they did right now 30 years that's crazy so where

do you get the training I think they have to self-educate I mean I'm an example that myself you have to say what's an area that I want to become masterful in because dabblers will never have any financial freedom you know if you're gonna run a company you got to find what is your niche what is it you're gonna do better than anybody else every one of us individuals have to say that then say now where do I get that education in a world that we live in today with the internet where there's education from all

the world from MIT from Harvard online and there are people you can go to work for who you could become a mentee if there's just so many approaches but you can't have a standard education and expect to have an extraordinary life it's not gonna happen the one breakthrough for all leaders is constant never-ending improvement and that means educating yourself and continuing to develop even greater emotional mastery because that's what affects whether you execute or not it really is remarkable what's what's available online isn't it you can learn you know economics 101 with Robert Shiller yeah

it's exactly Bell prize-winning economist for free okay maybe gotta buy a textbook but you can afford the textbook like yeah think about all the possibilities that are available the opportunity for self education is there we have to change our psychology from I'm gonna do what everybody else does and I'm mad because it doesn't work anymore - the reality is this the greatest time to be alive if you're growing you're learning you're educating and you're developing valuable skills it's like if you go to work for McDonald's I don't know I think the average I read recently

is seven dollars and seventy five cents an hour in the United States working for McDonald's the skill sets the value you provide can be taught to anyone in about 20 minutes David Tepper made what 3.5 billion I think last year he produced I think it was a 40% return right 41% return in a world go that's those billionaires those one percenters he's not that 1% he is the point zero zero zero one percent but my point is the added value he did for all those families who would have been getting 33 basis points half a

percent you know 1% right well I'll take him 72 years to double their money he's getting those people's families to get 40 percent more than a year alone he's worth three point five trillion billion dollars right so instead of complaining you gotta say where are the skill sets valued in the marketplace and how do I work harder on myself than anything else because if I become more valuable then I will be able to give more do more and change more when I interviewed Warren Buffett ask the most important best when he ever made in his

life you know he said it was I was thinking all the companies they've done you know he said Tony going to Dale Carnegie said what he goes because by developing myself that's the most important investment those skill sets learning how to persuade learning how to speak learning and influence all my ideas would've died on my lips if I hadn't be able to influence and I learned it from that little course most valuable thing I ever did in my life he said so all of us have to understand this is the most important investment we have

to retool ourselves and leaders we gotta take other people on our teams and keep growing and that's what's gonna make your company and valuable not just recruiting new people but constantly upgrading the skills of the people you have I met a man last week in Omaha speaking of Warren Buffett yes it wasn't Warren Buffett yeah a young man who describes himself as a struggling artist yes big fan of yours and that's one reason why I'm bringing it up and his question was I I'm still trying to you know develop enough resources to live a decent

life while also trying to realize these artistic dreams that I have have yes how can I do both at the same time I always tell people I said tell me tell me in your schedule no go well you know I go to work and I work 9:00 to 5:00 and I come home I'm exhausted and so you know what am I gonna start a business I said well what about the other eight-hour shift because that's what I did right I haven't be able to work from 8:00 to 5:00 in a normal job and then I

start working as a janitor because I work my own hours the middle of the night but I worked 8:00 to 5:00 and literally I'd come home I get a bite to eat and then I'd start my work at 6:00 p.m. 6:30 p.m. and I go from 6:30 to 2:00 a.m. and I get another 78 hours in and that's how I built everything in the beginning that's honestly what's required and to not do that is to cheat yourself because in the end what we get will never make us happy I don't care how many stars on

your chart and how many Academy Awards how much money you make what makes us happiest progress progress equals happiness if you're not growing you're dying inside your relationships not growing it's dying if your business is not growing no business stays static it's either growing or it's dying you're at that plateau you're going down you better do something right now so the mindset has to be this is the way I live going forward I am a learning machine because we're living in a world where technology is changing me so quickly I gotta stay ahead and that

makes people fulfilled because you become more you're not just doing something cuz you half do or because you're trying to keep up in business every one of your readers or viewers if in this case should really ask themself the question Who am I am i core because we all have different gifts that we can get and business I think you know other than love your labor is probably the most sacred gift you can give any human being because it's so much of your time your energy it's the essence of all you've developed in your life

if you look at it there's three gifts you could give there's the gift of a specific art a skillset an ability a talent that you have and many people are artists they're not just artists like they paint they have something that they're just so good at and then they start a business because they go you know what I can design better clothing than the person I work for I can write better code of course running a business is more than just the art of it right and most businesses are started by an artist and those

businesses you know fail so if you look at that you'd say if I'm an artist I'm a struggle because I'm gonna want to do my art a great business person says it doesn't matter what I care about I can't fall in love my product or service I need to fall in love with my client and I constantly changing to meet their needs don't fall in love with your product or service fall in love with your ideal client that's a different game there's another type of person who's more of a manager leader meaning their gift is

not a specific skill set like selling or creating or something it's managing people and processes and they love it right and it's their nature when it's your nature you tend to get good at it if you work at it right cuz it's just who you are you reinforce for it and then there's the entrepreneur and every somebody calls himself an entrepreneur but there are people that are entrepreneurial and there are entrepreneurs and an entrepreneur by nature is different they love risk they live risk it's like Steve Wynn's dear friend of mine and he took me

to cow and I saw this guy lose 30 no ten million dollar excuse me in less than 30 minutes and the guy got up and gave Steve a hug and said all mister win you're incredible he actually said would you take a picture and I'm used to hearing this right so so sure he goes no you take a picture of me with mr. win and he just lost 10 billion dollars forever right that guy is an entrepreneur you lose 10 million I'll just figure another way earn it again right it's a different mindset an entrepreneur

is in it for the money right there might be a for other things too but they do want to make money the artist is not as committed to make you money they want to make money but they want to do their art they want to make that dress they want to write that code they want to do what they love so if you're gonna be a successful businessperson economically you got to say Who am I and who do I need if I'm a great artist I probably need a good manage a leader as a partner

because they're gonna help me build the organization and I can still do the art that people love and I'm gonna just make sure my art is what they want not just what I want if I'm gonna grow and scale Who am I if I'm a manager leader I might want to tie in with a great entrepreneur because there's gonna be something much greater I can be a part of and own a piece of potentially if I'm there but I'm on Turner I'm looking for great artists cuz they're gonna be the core of my business I'm

looking great manager leaders so you got to know who you are and who you need at Inc we we pay a lot of attention to entrepreneurs what they think we survey them we read other people's surveys and one of the questions that comes up over and over again will ask people who identify as entrepreneurs what's your biggest challenge yes surprisingly people will volunteer I don't have the right idea which fascinates me because if you don't have the right idea why are you identifying as an entrepreneur in the first place but but at the same time

I don't want to dismiss it I'm trying to try to understand and I'm curious well is there another idea the right idea to succeed which is the business of my dream you were all about inspiring people and getting people to dig inside themselves where do those good ideas come from where should these people turn to find those right ideas you know Steve Jobs used to say the best ideas are stolen you know he didn't create the mouse you know the Apple key he went to Xerox right and they built the mouse they built that interface

he just went out and basically stole it right I would say you know Starbucks was modeled right Herschel's overseas he sees this incredible situation in Italy and says wow this could translate so well let's let's take this back here to Seattle you don't have to be the originator of an idea you can see a model that works and just executes better than someone else or see something works one place and bring it to where it's not the idea that you have to be an original thinker I consider myself to have a lot of original thoughts

but I also believe holy cow I stand on the shoulders of so many people that I've learned throughout the years that I've forgotten half of where it's come from cuz I've read so much learn so much interviewed so many people the ideas come from a looking for them I'm being obsessed to find them saying hi and being clear about what you're looking for I'm looking for something that's gonna change lives in this way or that I'm really passionate about in this subject and that I really believe can have a margin so I think that's one

thing I think the other thing is it's all about creating the right questions so I tell people if you want to create innovation in your organization if you try to do it like once a year rain dance it never works you got to train your people in a different way and the way I do it all my companies and the way we've grown so much is I am always bringing new voices to the table new voices come up with new conversations come up with new decisions new ideas so I met a multi-billionaire many years ago

now a good friend of mine very private man and I asked the most important aspect of growing his business as he said every single year I bring somebody new to the c-suite every single year and he said and the reason is new blood has fresh thinking they have a fresh voice they have a fresh perspective and they shake things up a little bit and he said get somebody off the team you know he he does the GE approach to things very often that area right then the second piece though is if you're getting those new

voices you want new conversations so you need to ask new questions and you know one of the questions I teach business and ask is what business are you in what business are you really in and I got that from Marc Benioff because Steve Jobs mentored him and he'd shared with him that when he took over Apple after the debacle right there of near bankruptcy the first question he asked here but it's what this is really all said the computer business he said if that's true we're in deep trouble in fact it's not even called me

a computer it's not it's just Apple right and what he said is they worked in it over the years and at one stage early on they said we're in the business of giving people connecting people to their passions and we do it artfully we do it beautifully we do it in a way that works and connecting their passions led them to music which became the transformation of Apple write iTunes and then that led to phone I mean apples a phone company now if they'd said Apple Computer they would not be one of the richest companies

in the history of the world it's when they expanded and increased what their real core business was so new questions new voices new experiments Twitter was an experiment sound like an idiotic idea a couple guys on the side doing as a project and it blew any character yeah and I don't want to do that what am I going to do that for who's gonna care took off a little ooh you got to try experiments most aren't gonna work and I think that if you try new experience you get new voices you're asking new questions you're

gonna stimulate new answers but most people do the same thing and also when you start saying I don't have the idea and you believe I don't have the right ideas you don't even look for them anymore right it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy one of the other things that you've said that intrigues me is that people running a business actually need to be running two businesses yes that there's the business that you're operating today yes and there's the business that you're becoming that's so critical and I and I think of our you know again ynx readers

and and Inc comms viewers we talked to them and they can barely run the one you know it's it's it's all they can do to get up at 5:00 in the morning and work till you know 1:00 in the morning and raise a family and so how do you do that how do you plan for that what is in essence a second business that's how to point oh yeah it's the most important thing I teach all of my employees all my leaders and all my companies it's like most people want to do the new business

but if you don't take care of the business you have you've got a real problem and then other people are just like totally focused on this business and not anticipating where you got to go the way you do it really truly effectively is you've got to develop a system where once a week you spend at least 90 minutes with your team your team might be an army or two your team might be are made twenty thousand but will you work on the business not in the business and you take each stage of the business you

put focus on it because what most businesses do if you really good at marketing that's what you do lots of and it keeps you going and then you get bit on the employee side or you get bit on HR you get bit on accounting or you get bit on sales right or you're really good on innovation you're innovating so much you're going broke and you're not able to produce the level of sales and that 90 minutes will allow you to work on the business you're in and the business you're becoming but if you don't do

that you're always reacting and I always tell people losers react leaders anticipate in the last few years I think there's been a kind of flux in the way that people think about failure in Silicon Valley arguably almost a cult of failure there's this idea they fail faster a fail smart or iterate fail launch again at times it seems excessive and also it's a little weird to sort of say to people like go out there and fail you know it's a little strange yeah and I'm curious what you think about you know what is the right

level of failure what how should someone who wants to be successful think about failure oh how should they think about failure it's that they've got to look at it as learning I mean anyone who was incredibly successful has failed more than other people you just don't see it because they got back up so fast and they learned from it right that's really how it is the fastest way to avoid failure is not to learn by your own experience but to learn by other people's experiences right now what I believe in compressing decades into days and

the way you do that is modeling once again finding someone who is the most successful world take him 20 30 years and digging in and figuring out what is the core essence of what's made them successful what are the failures they had what they learn for them so you can avoid them so but the other part is you also have to know that success is buried on the other side of failure it's buried in the other side of frustration it's buried on the other side of conflict and so you have to see this as part

of the natural evolution Peter Gruber's of your friend of mine he owns the NBA warriors he took him from last place you know champions mastery I'm not a bad season so yeah and that's about this year I mean Curry's unbelievable he told me a story about his life early on he told me that when he was just a kid there was a neighbor kid who had major physical deformities and potentially mental ones and he saw one day his dad take him out and put him on this long bike with these two like mini training wheels

and he put the kid on this thing who could barely walk and he shoved him and the kid went for a little bit and just crashed and when he crashed and started to cry the fathers got up and walked away and and Peter said he was so mad at this man and he said this would go on like every morning and and Peter be looking at his windows and he went told his mom he said you gotta do something he's abusing this poor boy an interesting thing happened he said his mom said stay out of

their business and one day Peter's looking out the window before it's gonna go to school and he sees the kid out there and the dad shoves him and the kid goes and goes and goes he's not fall over it goes it goes and goes and goes and he finally crashes but he went on forever and all of a sudden he turns around and he looks at his dad there's death like girly crazy like this and Peter said in that moment he made a decision he said you know all failure is is its it's a speed

bump on the way to success and that man's great gift was he didn't baby a cent he got his son to do this and he said Tony years later I'm the chairman of Columbia Pictures and I think he was 34 years old and he was picked over man that was 55 and a war hero and was very respected and so there's this conflict and the first movie Peter made they screened it and it was terrabyte and these horrible views and the guy walked up and said are you scared and Peter looked at him said I

really am but it won't stop me he said let me tell you a story and he told him a story about this little boy it's you know I learned he said I learned that as long as you keep getting back up failures is a speed bump to success and nothing's gonna stop me in this job or anything else and he said the story volunteer to this man's eyes he related to it in so many ways in his own life and he said he went from his adversary to his ally from that day forward so I

really think we're all afraid to fail but it's the only way to learn sometimes I mean when people succeed they tend to party when you fail you tend to ponder and then the pondering is when you usually get the growth the insight the strategy that'll change of us is they'll change your personal life that'll change your finances and so I think I don't vote for failure for anybody but to think you're not gonna experience it as absurd the way to not experience it is to turn into learning the person that can go through failure like

butter and it doesn't stop them they just change their approach changer I mean how long will you give her average child to learn how to walk you know before you shut them off and said you're not a walker people go what are you crazy my kids gonna keep trying until he or she you know as a walker well that's why almost everybody walks right but singing how many people sing a small amount if someone says what do you bet what's that noise you're making stop that that you're not a singer well once you decide that

you stop trying failure is only when you permanently give up if you learn anything and you apply what you've learned failure is a stepping stone I'm gonna make you listen to my wife sing one of the other topics that that we're sort of obsessed with is Millennials and the degree to which Millennials represent you know a change in America's thinking or are they just like they are because they're young and when they get older they'll be like everybody else and I'm curious if you think that the Millennials bring any particular advantages to leadership any particular

disadvantages to leadership how you think about that next generation whenever you're making a generalization about a generation that's going to be wrong because it's a generalization but one thing is true Millennials have grown up and their brains have been formed in a different way because of Technology we don't realize that you know you use technology or technology uses you and if you're unconscious it uses you some people like you know they're disconnected from their Twitter their Facebook or Instagram feed you know like what am I gonna do right it's crazy so their brains have been

wired for instant answers they believe the answer is there which is incredible certainty and gift and they lived in a world where it is there for them it's available to them now you got to sort through the internet which is full of lies and but but there's truth there too it's finding the truth right but also they have a different level of community focus social focus and you know every generation has different gifts there is scalability there is problem-solving capability there is the ability to find answers there's the ability build community that is bred into

this generation everyone's different but it's in the generation as a whole and I think it's gonna bring extraordinary gifts to them it already has but it's gonna bring even greater gifts as the age they're not going to be like every other generation they will adapt to certain things they will adapt to what it means to have a family right cuz you know older oldest Millennials are you know getting close to 35 now you know when you get to 35 that's around more family formation even though a forming longer you have different responsibilities you look at

life differently you learn you're not invincible right when you're 25 you know you're gonna be the multi billionaire and the present States and you're gonna have you know twenty two husbands or wives or whatever but then you begin to realize you know maybe you know I've got some skills but I gotta do a little more work here so I think there gonna be some things that are similar but they're gonna bring definitely unique gifts because they grew up in a different time in human history great well thank you so much been a terrific interview I've

enjoyed it Tony Robbins thank you so much I'm Jim Ledbetter for angin Inc calm thanks for watching you