Last week, I was talking to Joe Polish, Founder of Piranha Marketing and the Genius Network, catching up on recent happenings and discussing his latest efforts, helping Tony Robbins promote his latest book, MONEY: Master The Game, 7 Simple Steps To Financial Freedom.
Joe, along with his podcasting partner-in-crime, marketing guru Dean Jackson, brought together the legendary Tony Robbins, as well as thought leadership Robin Sharma, JJ Virgin and Mike Koenigs, for an incredibly insightful conference call on the I Love Marketing Podcast.
After listening to the interview, I wanted to share with you some of my biggest takeaways from the conversation because when Tony Robbins shares his 7 simple steps to financial freedom you should listen!
Here's my 3 top, curated takeaways for all of you!
1. Become More Valuable in Order to Make More Money (and Here's How!)
The first question in the interview came from Robin Sharma, the world famous leadership development effort and bestselling author of many, many books on the subject. He recalls the story of Jim Rohn's advice to a young Tony Robbins, where Jim Rohn said to a seminar group that Robbins was a part of, "All you have to do to earn more money in the same amount of time is to become more valuable to the marketplace."
This has obviously struck a chord with Tony, and the philosophy is the basis of many of his companies, coachings and this new book, so Robin asked Tony, "For anyone who wants to be more valuable, is the strategy to develop ourselves...or is it to focus on generating more value through our work."
Tony's response (summarized)...The most important thing you can do is to constantly grow personally. Spend every day working on yourself because (as Warren Buffett would agree) there is no greater investment you can make than in yourself. When you do that, you will become more valuable to the marketplace, and have the ability to make more money.
After a system for self-improvement is in place, you need vehicles for sharing that new value with others through your work. The best vehicles are becoming a business owner, and also becoming an "owner" of your own personal investments. The first is riskier, so the second is crucial for longer term strategic safety. With these vehicles, you can take your increasing value and share it with others exponentially.
2. Health IS Wealth (and What You Need to Find Breakthroughs In Your Life)
Up next to question the "money master" was JJ Virgin. JJ is also world-renowned as a celebrity nutritionist and fitness expert, and she asked Tony for the three things we need to look for in order to make breakthroughs in our lives in our finances, health and lives.
In response, Tony recalled a memory where he encountered a Canadian billionaire who was close to 400 pounds in weight. While others whispered, "He's so rich! He's so rich! He's a billionaire," Tony brought the experience back to earth by noting that, without your health, you are certainly not rich.
More importantly, there are multiple types of wealth and different definitions of success (as I've previously discussed myself on Addicted2Success.com). And, in order to continue building your success, you need to find the breakthrough moments in life that allow you to finally lose weight, look for a new job, make the extra sales calls, etc.
What you need: strategies, stories and state. Strategies will give you the systems that help you build habits for success, stories will give you the motivation, removal of excuses and mindset re-framing that is necessary to achieve those breakthrough moments necessary to have peak performance in business, health, and life and state will give you the positive mental attitude needed to execute properly in improving the first two.
3. Investing Comes Down to One Thing...Proper Asset Allocation
"What's your investment advice for a small business owner" asks Mike Koenigs, #1 bestselling author and serial entrepreneur.
While no one is the same, Tony suggests, every entrepreneur needs to create a brand new company right away.
He calls this new business your "money machine", and this new business has no employees or public-facing front.
Tony strongly advises every entrepreneur set up a second area of asset allocation that takes a percentage of your company's profits and/or your salary and puts it in investments that will make money work for you and compound over time. If you don't automate this process, your growing business will suck up extra profits, or your growing lifestyle will suck up new salary bonuses, and while you may be in good shape (or in the favorited growth shape at times), when sh*t finally hits the fan with your job, company, or outwardly investments, you will still be in good shape financially as an individual because you've taken the necessary precautions to create a "money machine" that is created of super low risk investments based on your personal risk tolerance, age and earning power.
In Summary
Check out Tony Robbins' new book, MONEY: Master The Game, 7 Simple Steps To Financial Freedom to find out how some of the world's most financially successful people have mastered the money game so you can apply those same rules to your own financial situations, and check out the rest of the stacked podcast conversation that I have attempted to distill into three major takeaways for you. All proceeds of his book go towards feeding over 50 million people in need this year. Then, check out the advice on The Huffington Post "Smarter Ideas" section to begin finding the motivation and tactics you need to improve your strategies, stories and states as you climb your way to financial freedom.
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Jared Kleinert is a forthcoming author and entrepreneur who has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, TechCrunch, Huffington Post and at TEDxYouth Miami. He is currently the co-founder/co-author of 2 Billion Under 20 as well as the Chief Test Subject of The Gap Year Experiment. Say hi at jared@2billionunder20.com