Tony Robbins

Robbins argues the greatest sources of joy from spending are experiences and giving to others rather than possessions.

“The three things that give you the most joy are number one, experiences. Experiences are more than any toy or asset because those we get used to”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 1:01:59

Robbins says he set and met a goal of a billion meals with Feeding America and now has commitments for hundreds of billions of meals globally.

“Right now I have commitments for 295 billion meals in four years and 63 billion have already been delivered”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 57:55

Robbins recounts John Templeton telling him that gratitude is the secret to wealth and that consistent tithing precedes great wealth.

“If you're grateful about anything, you're gonna be rich. If you have a billion dollars and you're not grateful, you're unhappy”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 57:25

Robbins says modern private equity creates value by improving businesses rather than breaking them up as in earlier eras.

“It's not like the old days where they find something, cut it all up and sell off its pieces. That was the original kind of private equity. Those days are over”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 38:22

Robbins argues ultra-high-net-worth investors hold the majority of their assets privately and that most companies are now private.

“If you look at the ultra high net worth people, 52% of their money is in private equity, private credit, private. Only 29% in the public markets”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 8:46

Robbins says he wrote Money Master the Game after 2008 because he believed the financial game looked rigged and wanted to test whether ordinary people could still win.

“Right now, the game seems like it's rigged and the average person thinks that they can't win. And I want to know, could they?”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 1:16

Robbins criticises general-purpose chatbots as sycophantic and unsuited to mental health support, describing an alternative product that reads micro-expressions.

“These are made for sycophancy. They're designed to keep you online talking. They're not designed to actually help you to change”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 1:13:37

Robbins says his approach deploys many small AI agents to remove busy work rather than a single monolithic system that replaces staff.

“we look at people's workflow and you find out that 60% of what people do is busy work”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 1:10:06

Robbins cites a statistic that a majority of Gen Z and millennials diverted investment money into sports betting and a quarter see it as their financial future.

“52% of them in the last year have taken money that they would have used investment to put into sports betting, and that 26% think that sports betting is their way to build their financial future”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 34:09

Robbins reports Ray Dalio's holy grail principle that eight to twelve non-correlated investments reduce risk by about 80% while increasing upside.

“I found out that if you will confine 8 to 12 non-correlated investments, and they're things you believe in, you reduce your risk by 80% and increase your upside”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 4:05

Robbins describes his OOCEMR method and argues decision-making is a muscle strengthened by deciding more often.

“The most important thing in decision-making is value clarification. When you know what's most important to you, you can make a decision”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 1:22:46

Robbins predicts AGI within 36 months and superintelligence within five to six years, citing Ray Kurzweil.

“We'll have AGI in the next 36 months. Some people would argue we already have it”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 1:09:00

Robbins argues sports teams are uncorrelated, recession-resistant assets that have compounded at 18% over the past decade.

“Sports are an uncorrelated investment. They have nothing to do with the markets going up or down, what's happening with interest rates. In the last 10 years, they've had an 18% compounded return”

Modern Wisdom: The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth - Tony Robbins - #1153 (Sep 21, 2026) · Listen from 20:28