Tony Robbins’ Top 2 Money Mistakes (And What He Learned From Them)
Written by
Daria Uhlig
Edited by
Zuri Anderson
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Tony Robbins is perhaps the world’s wealthiest and most successful life coach, helping everyone from struggling low-wage earners to CEOs transform their mindsets, money and lives.
Robbins doesn’t focus on mistakes. In fact, when asked what his biggest failure was in an interview with ABC News, Robbins said there were too many to count, and that he looked at them as experiences to learn from. However, he has discussed two missteps that taught him valuable lessons you can use to create your own wealth.
Failure To Develop Valuable Skills
At age 17, Robbins was struggling to support himself with a low-wage job when he scrimped together enough money to attended a Jim Rohn’s motivational seminar. He then went to work for Rohn, according to a 2017 profile of Robbins in Entrepreneur.
Despite working long hours, Robbins felt stuck. Rohn told him he needed to build a skill set so that he could make the most of his talents and provide more value than anyone else. Robbins took the advice, and within 10 years he was making $30 million per year.
Focus on Self
In a 2016 YouTube interview with Lewis Howes, host of “The School of Greatness,” Howes asked Robbins why it’s important for people facing their own financial struggles to think about giving in order to generate wealth.
“You never get beyond scarcity, you’ve got to start beyond it,” Robbins said.
To illustrate the point, Robbins shared the most powerful experience of his life. He had been in business for over a year, but the business wasn’t working, and he was flat broke.
While driving down a road at midnight after a long day, he had an epiphany: “The secret to living is giving.”
It was a highly emotional experience, Robbins said, because he realized he’d spent the last year or more focused “why wasn’t it working?” instead of “how do I give more?”
“I made that shift, and it was one of the most important shifts of my entire life,” Robbins said.
Robbins said things improved over the next year, but a series of setbacks left him with about $22 to his name — which he gave to a little boy whose gentlemanly behavior toward his mom had impressed Robbins so much that he wanted the boy to be able to treat her to lunch. Despite literally having given the boy his last dollar, Robbins said he had no fear, no scarcity.
The next day, Robbins received $1,200 in the mail — money he’d loaned to someone he’d been trying to chase down for repayment.
“I thought to myself, ‘why did this happen?’ And I chose to believe — I don’t know if this is true, but I chose to believe — that it’s because I let go of just trying to take care of myself. I did what was right,” Robbins said.
Robbins took away an important lesson from that day: “When you have nothing is when you need to give.”
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