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1:38
This episode has two amazing guests, Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis.
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We're going to talk principally about how to think big.
1:46
What is involved in thinking big?
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Really 10Xing, 20Xing what you're trying to do.
1:54
And siphoning down the bios of these two gents was very, very challenging.
1:59
Uh Both of them make me look like a real lazy bastard who hasn't done anything with his life, which is inspiring to me.
2:06
So, there are different ways to take it. But, let's get started.
2:09
Tony Robbins, for those of you who don't know, he's often called a motivational speaker, and I think that's a total misnomer because he is really a peak performance strategist.
2:18
And his clientele is really astonishing.
2:21
He has consulted or advised people including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Di, Mother Teresa.
2:28
He's consulted members of two royal families, members of US Congress, US Army, US Marines, three US presidents including Bill Clinton, and some of his other celebrity clients include Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, golf legend Greg Norman, Leonardo DiCaprio.
2:43
The list goes on and on and on.
2:45
on and on and on. He's been named by Accenture one of the top 50 business intellectuals in the world, by Harvard Business Press as one of the top 100 business gurus, by American Express as one of the top six business leaders in
2:58
the world, and and I would I should say, certainly last but not least, he is the creator of a product that many of you may have seen around, which is the number one personal and professional development system of all time called Personal Power. I have
3:11
I have quite a background with this program, and in a future episode, Tony and I will be talking a lot about it.
3:18
But, Personal Power has sold more than 40 million audio tapes and CD copies worldwide.
3:23
He himself has also developed and produced five award-winning television infomercials.
3:32
And here's the stat that might blow your mind.
3:34
They have been continuously aired, on average, every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, somewhere in North America, since April 1989. Okay?
3:45
So, for more than 20 years, I guess 25 years, every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, a Tony Robbins infomercial has been on television in North America. It's amazing.
3:56
And that is just a small fraction of his bio.
3:57
But, I don't want to cut Peter short.
4:00
Peter Diamandis, or I should say Dr.
4:04
Peter Diamandis, has been named one of the the world's 50 greatest leaders by Fortune magazine.
4:10
In the world of innovation, Diamandis is chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.
4:20
The X Prize is really intended to lead the world in designing and operating large-scale global competitions to solve what Peter might call market failures.
4:30
He's also the co-founder and vice chairman of Human Longevity Inc.
4:31
, a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. It goes on.
4:42
He is the co-founder and exec chairman of Singularity University.
4:47
I've actually spent time there as adjunct faculty, basically in the entrepreneurship track.
4:50
This is based at NASA Ames Center.
4:53
It's a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity's grand challenges.
5:03
Ray Kurzweil, some of you may know, also very involved with that.
5:07
And in the field of commercial space, Diamandis is the co-founder and co-chairman of planetary planetary I need more caffeine.
5:13
Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft, check this out, to enable the detection and mining of asteroids for precious materials.
5:24
These two guys are amazing.
5:24
I think you'll really enjoy this conversation.
5:29
And often what holds us back is not lack of resources, it's not lack of tools necessarily, it's lack of ambition.
5:35
We don't have dreams, aspirations that are big enough to really catapult us to the next level of thinking, strategy, operation, and so on.
5:47
Execution, for that matter.
5:49
So, I want to bring these two guys on and talk about how on earth they got to be where they are today in terms of just magnitude of impact and and and sheer sort of force of will. So, I hope you enjoy it.
6:03
Without further ado, please meet Tony and Peter.
6:07
Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
6:07
This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.
6:11
I'm very excited to have two of my friends on the line, Peter Diamandis and Tony Robbins. Gentlemen, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm very well.
6:21
I know that you're both very busy, and I will want to dive into quite a few different subjects.
6:28
So, right off the bat, I think that the the topic the general topics, and I think they're two intertwined that I'd love to explore in this conversation, are number one, I think an aspect of your psychology that both of you are very well known for, and that is thinking big.
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So, I'm going to dive into that, but how you started thinking big, and really big in many cases.
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And then, secondly, how you learn and how you have learned.
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And so, I thought a very perhaps tactical way to start off and just jump into it would be asking you each, and maybe uh Peter, we could start with you.
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Uh what book or books you've gifted to other people the most outside of your own? Uh sure.
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Uh there's actually a few books that have changed my world that I've gifted.
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Uh the first is uh uh reading The Spirit of St. Louis by Lindbergh.
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And, you know, the setting is his story of this epic adventure in 1927 of crossing the Atlantic and doing it for $25,000 prize.
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And I was amazed at this man's determination and the way he thought about this and took the risk out and then made this epic journey. So, that's one.
7:39
I love Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
7:42
It's uh something I've read multiple times to sort of get me in the mindset of not letting anything stand in my way and really driven by passion.
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Which you know is nothing something that Tony knows nothing about. So No, definitely. Kid, sorry to interrupt. Please continue.
8:01
No, no, then there there two others that have been sort of The Man Who Sold the Moon, which is a science fiction book by Robert Heinlein.
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It talks about how this guy D. D.
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Harriman commercializes the moon and it's just a brilliant 50-year-old vision that's as relevant today.
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And then uh a book by my good friend Ray Kurzweil called The Singularity Is Near, which was the the basis for the foundation of Singularity University.
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And it's funny cuz all of these books, each of them in in turn uh were so purposeful to me.
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They they were the drivers for me starting many of my companies. Awesome.
8:39
No, that's I'm going to go pick up all of those.
8:42
Just as a side note for folks, Heinlein, for those of you who use the word grok, grok this, grok that, that is from Stranger in a Strange Land, also by Heinlein.
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A lot of techies don't realize the origins of that word.
8:53
Uh Tony, I'd love to to love to hear your your selection.
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Well, I was it depends on what people really want.
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Over the years, probably the most common books I've recommended are As a Man Thinketh by James Allen because when you think about the quality of people's lives, it starts with the what meaning we give things.
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Two people can have the same exact experience and one person thinks it's over and one person thinks the game has begun.
9:20
And that is the difference that makes the difference in the quality of people's lives.
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It's not what happens to them, as we all know.
9:26
And the other one which is along the same theme that I probably given out as well.
9:30
I give out As a Man Thinketh cuz it's a small book.
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It's it's a book that people can read over and over again and get great value out of it.
9:35
But Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl to me is just one of the great books ever written um because we all in our lives, the one thing that's in common for all human beings regardless of your background or your economic position, good, bad, or indifferent, we're all going to experience extreme stress in our life at some point.
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Everyone's going to have to face the loss of a loved one.
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Everyone's going to face the loss of a job or an opportunity or government change in policy that affects your business or some health issue yourself uh or a robbery or the loss of your home, the burglary, burning down.
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I mean, all these horrible things in your lifetime you're going to experience.
10:10
And to be able to learn from someone who experienced the Holocaust directly, who not only experienced the Holocaust, but walked through what was the difference between those who made it and those who didn't.
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And as most of us who read the book know, it wasn't the strongest that survived.
10:26
It was those that had a higher meaning for their pain.
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Those that found a way to even take suffering and transform it into a meaningful experience.
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You know, most people today, we live in a society where people think happiness is what life's about.
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But you can get bored being happy.
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Some people are, you know, they're so damn happy they create a problem just to have variety in their life because we have lots of needs as human beings.
10:45
And they make up problems they don't even have.
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I I deal with extremely wealthy clients and you shouldn't, you know, some people hear their problems go, "Yeah, I'd love to have those problems."
10:52
So, meaning is what really matters.
10:54
And to to witness, to go through the experience in an associated way, and see how this man not only transformed his own life, but then came back to help so many others, I think is one of the more invaluable components.
11:06
But another book would be The Fourth Turning uh because I also believe you have to understand that life has seasons.
11:12
And The Fourth Turning was written by two brilliant men who actually wrote an original book that Tipper and Clinton gave me when I worked with them 20 years ago called Generations, which goes through, you know, 100 years of generations and walks through how basically we adapt to the way we've been brought up and bring up our children differently and how that creates growth patterns that affect history.
11:31
Uh but the fourth turning is just that an incredibly in-depth experience that shows you that human beings go for periods of time, 10, 15, 20 years, usually from in 15-year range at the stage we are now, where we have a primary set of emotions.
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There are winters where people will tend to find what's wrong.
11:50
There's the springtime of possibility.
11:51
There's the hot summer, and of course there's the fall where the rewards are very, very simple.
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And you can tie these to economics, you can tie them to emotions.
11:58
Um and it's just an extraordinary book to put your life in perspective.
12:03
And so you learn, you know, some people freak out in the winter.
12:05
You know, other people, you know, some people freeze to death, some people ski and snowboard.
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And how to take advantage of whatever season of life you're in and how to utilize that to anticipate in your business and your life, I find to be invaluable.
12:17
But it depends on what somebody's looking for.
12:18
I just recommended slow sex to somebody yesterday who desperately needed it. And they called it out.
12:23
And And another person, I was watching them deal with their kid, and I said, "You got to go pick up Mindset by the Stanford University cuz you're keep telling your kid how perfect they are, and you're going to ruin them because what Telling a kid that they're perfect creates a frame of reference where they have to be a certain way as opposed to you know, giving them the feedback because they put out the effort. Effort they can control.
12:44
Who you are is a whole different component.
12:46
So I'm always honestly seeing what's needed for that individual now.
12:50
But if I'm going universal, I think it's understanding the seasons of life, it's understanding creating meaning, and it's understanding how your thoughts are the ultimate control of your life. No, I agree.
13:00
And uh the I think for for those people curious to dig into also the the parenting aspect that you men- you mentioned, I think that Brain uh Brain Rules uh and the author, I think his name is Professor Medina out of U Washington also underscores that.
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As does Josh Waitzkin, actually, who I interviewed on this podcast, who was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer.
13:20
And he talked about the same thing, how emphasizing sort of effort over attributes is is and can continues to be increasingly important in raising children.
13:30
The The The sort of sort of macro level aspect of both of you that that jumps out most immediately to a lot of people is just the sheer scale of what you do.
13:43
And So Tony for instance, I mean how many how many people are you going to be feeding or are you aiming to feed in in 2015 through your aiming. I'm not aiming.
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It started out It started out with when I was 11 somebody fed my family.
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I don't even know who it was.
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I just met the man at the door who delivered the food and it radically changed my life cuz it the meaning I took out of it was that strangers care.
14:07
If strangers cared about my family, then regardless of what my father told me, I was going to care at a different level.
14:13
It changed my entire life.
14:13
So I fed, you know, when I This happened when I was 11.
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When I 17 was the first time I fed two families and then four the next year and then eight and then it was getting a little tough so I got some friends involved and then my company's grew.
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So now for the last, you know, 37 years I've fed 42 million people, but I feed about 4 million a year.
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2 million people each year through my foundation and I do 2 million myself.
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I do matching funds for the last 5 years.
14:36
So but this year, you know, last year I don't know if you saw, but a lot of people didn't even notice, but Congress cut food stamps by 8.
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2 billion dollars, which is the equivalency understand of the families they're supporting going without food 1 week out of the month.
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Just arbitrarily without figuring out how to make up for it.
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And I obviously work pretty passionately with all these nonprofits cuz I help support them all and they're being maxed out.
14:58
And so I thought you know what?
15:01
I'm writing this book right now on finances and I'm fortunate enough to do quite well.
15:05
What if I took all the money of that and I donated it, you know, how many meals could I donate? And that wasn't enough.
15:10
So I said, well, I'll write a check above that.
15:12
I thought if I could do as many meals as I've done in my lifetime in a year, that'd be a good start.
15:16
So I said, you know, okay, I got to find 42 million meals.
15:18
Holy that's a large drink of water.
15:22
How about How about I donate everything in the book and I put up a big check and I feed 20 million people this year and I get matching donations.
15:28
But as I've gone along, I've gotten more inspired and I've partnered with Feeding America, which is the largest domestic feeding organization, the best organization.
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And I've negotiated with them to cut out all of the costs and I'm now I've raised my game on my total number that I'm writing a check for in a few weeks, November 18th, is 55 million meals.
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I'm personally going to deliver 55 million people.
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And then they're going to partner with me to get that to 100 million with matching funds.
15:52
So I know for sure I'm going to feed 55 million this year. Wow.
15:57
That's not counting my foundation or the other work that I do.
15:58
So I guess it'll be slightly And these numbers to most people are just almost unimaginable.
16:04
And so that just just Peter just to to perhaps catch people up on a couple of examples of the work you've done with the X Prize.
16:10
Of course, you've done many different things in addition to the X Prize.
16:13
But what are what are some of the problems that you're attempting or are tackling or have tackled with with the X Prize to date?
16:23
And I know we're going to certainly we all have sort of a secret agenda to talk about one that we're particularly passionate about right now.
16:29
But what what are some of the others that you can mention? Sure.
16:32
So people might know the work we do here for the original Ansari X Prize for space flight modeled after Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic to win a $25,000 prize.
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We put up $10 million back in 1996 for the first team to build a spaceship and carry three adults up into space and back.
16:50
And the the relevance here is that individuals today can do extraordinary things and you need to give them guidance.
16:57
You know, without a target, you'll miss it every time.
16:59
And and if you incentivize them, you can get entrepreneurs from any place, any walk of life, independent of what they've done before, to do extraordinary things.
17:08
And I fundamentally believe that.
17:08
So the question is, can you point entrepreneurs at the world's biggest problems, the grand challenges?
17:13
And that's what we're doing in in oceans and health and learning and energy.
17:18
One of the prizes I think that's relevant that we're in the midst of right now is called the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize.
17:24
So, anybody who's a fellow Trekkie knows from Star Trek, you know, Dr.
17:29
McCoy Bones would have this device called the Tricorder.
17:33
He'd point it at somebody and be able to tell if they have a Bajoran fever or if they're an alien or whatever the case might be.
17:37
And it is sort of the the vision of where we're going.
17:41
So, we partnered with Qualcomm, Paul Jacobs who is the chairman there.
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Uh they put up $20 million.
17:47
Uh and we have challenged teams around the world to build a handheld mobile device.
17:53
Uh not for a doctor or for a nurse.
17:53
It's for a mom or dad at 2:00 in the morning when their kid is sick.
17:56
This is a device you can talk to.
17:58
It's got AI, artificial intelligence, on the cloud. Uh you can cough on it.
18:02
It can do the RNA and DNA analysis of the bacteria in your in your sputum.
18:06
You do a blood prick and do your blood chemistries.
18:09
It's meant to be able to diagnose you independent of the medical system, which is so broken right now.
18:14
And you know, the we had 300 teams enter the competition.
18:20
We're down to the top 10.
18:20
We'll have a winner in 15 months.
18:24
But, you know, people say you're going to put doctors and nurses out of business. And the answer is no.
18:26
We've got a problem right now.
18:28
There's going to be We're going to be short um uh something on the order of 100,000 doctors in the US alone by 2020.
18:34
And that's great compared to the rest of the world.
18:38
You know, Africa has got 25% of the disease burden and 1.
18:41
3% of the health care workers.
18:44
We could not scale building hospitals or or physicians fast enough.
18:49
So, can we use technology to touch the lives of a billion people?
18:54
And um so, that's that's one of them, the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize.
18:57
And you know, the way I think about it is imagine technology that a Maasai warrior in the middle of Kenya today has access to a smartphone with Google.
19:07
They have access to more knowledge and information than President Clinton had 20 years ago.
19:12
Uh and they're paying a dollar a day.
19:14
This democratization uh and this demonetization is where we're heading.
19:19
And I I think what what I'd love to ask both of you and uh Peter, perhaps we could start with you, is when did you sort of leave this very incremental linear thinking?
19:30
Because for a lot of people, they hear millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, and they they they immediately respond in their own head with I could never do that.
19:37
I could never uh raise that type of money, make that type of money, have that type of impact.
19:43
And when I interviewed uh Peter Thiel on the podcast, some people may have heard it, but he's obviously known as a a billionaire investor, first money into Facebook, co-founder of Palantir.
19:55
But back in the day, he was on a very traditional track to becoming a lawyer.
20:00
And he ended up not getting a clerk uh a clerkship a clerking position.
20:02
Uh and that was sort of the the redirection that sent him into what would later become PayPal.
20:11
And now, of course, he poses questions like, "Why don't you take your 10-year plan and ask yourself, why can't I do this in 6 months?"
20:17
And it just it turns out that sometimes you can actually formulate a plan that works based on asking better questions.
20:24
But you for for him, there were a few moments that really shook him or showed him that the incremental approach was not the only approach.
20:33
So So Peter, I'm curious, Yeah.
20:35
at what point did you develop this thinking or who impacted you and what were the triggers that sort of led you to think this big?
20:45
Good uh great question and uh you know, it was probably So I grew up passionate about space, you know, watching the tail end of Apollo, drinking all the Tang I could get my hands on, watching Star Trek.
20:55
And it was driven by this inner purpose and mission and passion.
20:59
And I sort of attached that to becoming an astronaut and joining NASA.
21:04
And that was my vision of my future.
21:06
future. and as I got closer and closer to meeting astronauts and meeting and seeing what was really going on behind NASA, I realized it was never going to happen in the government and honestly NASA had become so risk-averse that it was massively disappointing and
21:24
there was this disconnect between my vision of where the world should be and the way it was and the way it was going and I had this moment in time where I literally when I was at grad school at MIT, I did not submit my astronaut application and I said screw it. I'm forget it. I'm going to take I'm I'm forget it.
21:41
I'm going to take I'm going to do this myself and I made a commitment to myself to work to open up the private space frontier on my own which is an insane concept to think about.
21:53
What was it when did you were you sitting having a cup of coffee and just like looking across the cafe?
21:57
Did some I mean what what was what was the moment when you were like screw it?
22:03
I was in I was in the man vehicle lab at MIT.
22:04
I was doing research on human physiology and I had a bunch of shuttle astronauts in the lab and I was talking to them Byron Lichtenberg and Owen Garriott and a number of folks and I was listening to their stories of how what they had to do to get into NASA and how they had to be a good boy and do what they were told which is not me by any stretch of the imagination. No.
22:25
And and and and then I was told, you know, your chance of being selected one in a thousand.
22:29
If you get selected, maybe you'll fly and if you fly, you might fly once or twice in your career.
22:34
I'm like holy that's ridiculous.
22:37
I I mean this is not this is This is not my vision of way opening up space is going to be and it was so antithetical and I had so much energy and emotion tied to this desire that I literally poured that all into a brand new approach which became Zero Gravity Corporation, X Prize, Space Adventures, Planetary Resources, a whole bunch of things and we're just beginning.
23:00
And and I just I I think it is now possible for an entrepreneur to do anything, to take on any grand challenge.
23:06
And and I think it's it's an important message.
23:08
You can stop complaining about problems and start solving them.
23:12
That's what we're living in today.
23:15
And is there just to look at say the Ansari X Prize?
23:17
So it's $10 million uh going from MIT to say the first X Prize.
23:24
Obviously there there are a lot of of different steps in between, but someone I just I know it's it this may seem like I'm beating a dead horse on this like $10 million but it's such an unfathomable number for a lot of people.
23:36
Yeah, so I didn't have $10 million right?
23:38
I was I was going to say I was hoping you were going to share this part of the story.
23:40
Yeah, I mean it didn't say you walked out with $10 million. Come on Peter.
23:44
You got to tell them the story.
23:44
First time you told me the story is like, all right, you're my brother. All right, cool.
23:48
Yeah, no let's let's get it. them. Tell them. Tell them. Tell them. Tell them.
23:51
So so listen, the fact of the matter is I read this book The Spirit of St.
23:54
Louis that my good friend Greg Maryweather gives me and I hear about it.
23:57
I go, hey, if I can create a prize, maybe that's the that's the means I get my ass into space, right?
24:03
And so I start noodling this as I'm reading the book.
24:06
$10 million bucks is enough money, you know, I'm going to call the X Prize cuz I didn't have no idea who's going to put up the $10 million bucks.
24:12
The X was going to represent the name of the person who would eventually put up the money, right?
24:16
It was a variable to be replaced.
24:18
So long story short, I'm like scrambling for back then, you know, 100 bucks here, 1,000 bucks there, getting the seed money to get this going. And I I end up in St.
24:28
Louis where an amazing man Al Kerth says, I will help you raise some seed money.
24:33
And he was driven and connected by my passion, my commitment to this and he helped me raise about a half a million dollars in 10 and 20K checks from the people.
24:44
And people connect with your passion, with your heartfelt desire to do something bigger than yourself.
24:51
And they're willing to back that to some extent.
24:53
Long story short, over the course of a year and a lot of, you know, worn out knee pads, I raise end up raising a half a million dollars and then we're our fundraising stalls.
25:04
And we make the very bold decision that we're going to announce this $10 million prize anyway with no money in place.
25:09
And uh we end up uh going out under the arch in St. Louis.
25:17
And one of the things I I teach entrepreneurs, in fact, I write about this in my my next book called Bold, uh which is how you announce a big, bold idea to the world really matters.
25:25
If you announce it below a line of credibility.
25:31
We all have a line of credibility around ideas.
25:32
We judge them constantly.
25:32
If you announce it below the line of credibility, people dismiss it out of hand.
25:37
And then we have this line of super credibility that if you announce it above the line of super credibility, people say, "Wow, when is it going to happen? How can I be involved?"
25:44
So, for me, even though I had didn't have $10 million and I didn't have any teams, uh I got on stage to stand by my side, you know, 20 astronauts from Buzz Aldrin and others, uh the head of NASA, the head of FAA, who had seen me over many years.
26:02
And it took a lot of convincing.
26:02
I mean, this is sort of the even getting to that point was a pinnacle of years of work, but driven by this commitment.
26:08
So, we announce this prize, front page around the world, and cuz I'm absolutely, positively sure I'm going to raise the $10 million.
26:17
Who wouldn't want to pay $10 million after a pri- after a person did it, right?
26:20
You It's paid only on success.
26:24
Challenges, 150 CEOs later, over the next 5 years between '96 and 2001, everyone's turning me down.
26:33
Um I finally meet the Ansari family.
26:36
There's a lot more detail here, but listen, the fact of the matter is if I There were many times at 3:00 a. m.
26:41
in the morning when uh I was tempted to give up.
26:46
And it was only because I was being driven by my internally my, you know, my own massively transformative purpose that uh kept me going.
26:55
And then we're here today having this conversation because I did not give up.
26:58
So, I'll leave it at that. No, I love that story.
27:01
And I think what's what's what I'd love to underscore, as much for myself as anyone else, is that you also had the public accountability because you'd made that Uh, I burned my ships, dude.
27:13
Yeah, you exactly you burned your ships.
27:15
So, uh that's a wonderful story.
27:15
Uh Tony, I I know a lot about your story and of course we're going to have a a follow-up conversation to talk about many other things.
27:26
Uh but I've read all your books, listened to a lot of your material, and I know that you weren't always the Tony Robbins that people know of today.
27:36
I mean, there was a point where you were sort of uh well, there there's a lot to the story, of course, but what were what were the triggers for you?
27:41
The influences, the moments where you sort of decided, okay, instead of helping an additional, you know, feeding an additional two people per year or making an additional 10K per year or whatever it might be in those sort of increments, where you went to really getting bold as uh as Peter might say.
28:02
I think it's driven I think it unfolds with time.
28:05
There are moments along the way, but they're inevitable moments that come with growth.
28:10
Um and growth only comes if there's something, as Peter said, that you're passionate about that's larger than yourself.
28:15
Cuz it's very easy to become satisfied, you know, with a certain amount of money, a certain amount of food, a certain amount of sex, a certain amount of comfort, a certain amount of anything.
28:22
But if you said to me, "What is the difference in people's lives?
28:25
And what's the difference between Peter, as I love dearly, and the average person?" It's hunger.
28:30
Um it he's an incredibly intelligent man, you know, he understates who he is in his pure pure level of intelligence.
28:36
But you truthfully, I've seen people that have 1/10 the intelligence accomplish more because that hunger's there.
28:41
And my hunger from the earliest day was to light peop- people up.
28:44
And I think it's cuz I was surrounded by so much suffering.
28:47
I mean, I hate to see people suffer.
28:49
I love to light people up.
28:49
And I found early that what would light people up was answers.
28:54
Answers that could change the quality of life immediately, where they could suddenly shift their body and their energy would change, their body would change.
29:00
They could lose 20 or 30 lb.
29:01
That they could change their relationship, and suddenly something was dead was fully alive, and there was passion.
29:06
Cuz I don't care who you are in the world.
29:08
You can make 10 billion dollars, and I know cuz I get the calls from these people, that's not the game.
29:14
The game is your body, it's your emotions, it's your relationships.
29:17
If everything else in your life is going great, and there's an area that isn't, inevitably it will bite you.
29:20
Cuz we're designed as human beings to grow or die.
29:24
That's just how it works, spiritually, mentally, emotionally.
29:25
So, along the way, I wanted answers for myself to start with. I was short, I was fat.
29:30
Uh we were I grew up in a very tough environment.
29:33
I had four different fathers.
29:35
We had no food, no money.
29:35
Those things kind of trigger you.
29:37
And And as a result, I didn't couldn't get answers in my environment.
29:41
I didn't have access to anybody.
29:42
So, for me, it was books.
29:42
very passionate about the power of what how self-learning can transform anybody, especially in the world we have today, where you have access to everything literally at your fingertips on your phone anywhere you go.
29:54
But I read 700 books in a period I I thought I was going to do a book a day. That was my goal.
29:59
I took a speed reading class, but I didn't do that.
30:01
I read 700 books over 7 years.
30:02
But I read anything I could on physiology, psychology, emotion, anything I could make the difference in the quality of people's lives.
30:07
And then gradually, what happened was I started, you know, going from books to being able to use net time, no extra time.
30:12
I want to listen to things.
30:14
I started listening those days to cassette tapes. That's how old I am.
30:17
And as I went through the process, I then found myself at events.
30:22
And I went to an event that changed my life.
30:23
It was the first real teacher was this man named Jim Rohn, who was a personal development teacher. It was a 3-hour event.
30:28
I sat in this room, and I watched this man who was just so eloquent in 3 hours share with people principles that I knew would change the quality of my life or theirs.
30:36
And I decided to go to work for him cuz I thought, this is what I want my life to be about.
30:41
This guy is the best at what he does.
30:42
I want to live this stuff.
30:42
And so I went to work for him and and the core essence that I got from being around him was the quality of your life is really comes down to your capacity to add value.
30:52
That in life, the only thing that makes you feel fully alive is growing and giving.
30:56
And that evolved my language of it.
30:58
I That's what I pulled by being around him, not so much by what he said.
31:02
But what he said that grabbed me in those early days that started open my world was, you know, my mother wanted me to become a truck driver.
31:07
There was this truck master who was driving school they used to advertise on television.
31:13
And she was obsessed that I could make $24,000 a year, which was twice as much as my father, if I just go to truck driving school.
31:19
And then I'd have this open road.
31:21
And I thought, you know, I don't think I drive that truck far enough, fast enough, long enough to change the world.
31:26
That's not going to change the world.
31:27
That's not what my passion is.
31:28
And so I went to this event and I saw this man.
31:30
I walked out of there and I said, it's about adding value.
31:34
He showed me that all levels, including economics, that if you found a way to do more for others else, you would have the opportunity to grow, expand, have impact, be economically free, have the choices you want.
31:44
The next big chunk is when I got exposed I cuz I was always looking for new teachers to a man named John Grinder who taught neuro-linguistic programming or NLP.
31:53
And I watched this man take people in minutes and create changes they've been working on in decades.
31:57
And so I became obsessed.
31:59
There was nobody in that community other than therapists in those early days.
32:02
And I convinced him that, you know, 18, 19, I guess years old at the time, to let me come sit in his class cuz I was going to put my ear to the door anyway, no matter what.
32:10
And I I took notes like crazy at the end of the class.
32:14
And then there was a day there where this person He was out of the room and this person started going through this this phobic exposure and started freaking out and screaming.
32:21
And I'm in a room with 70 people and they're all therapists and nobody's doing anything.
32:26
And so I just stood up and I just grabbed this person and I just I I I wasn't going to let him suffer.
32:31
And then everything that I'd learned, consciously and unconsciously, came out. And it was like magic.
32:36
and you know 15 minutes later it was gone and John walked in the room and everybody was like, "Did you see what this guy did?
32:42
You know, he's a phenom." I'm no phenom.
32:44
All he did was I cared so much.
32:44
I had so much intensity for the issue.
32:46
And it's like I, you know, I don't know how to give I didn't know how to give somebody mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
32:51
I was in a place with my father-in-law where he dropped and I mean dropped and nothing that I'd learned made a difference and somewhere in my head in milliseconds while he was dying and turning gray, my brain remembered having seen some Andrew Huberman talk about it's not mouth-to-mouth, it's press compressions to get blood into the brain.
33:08
Where does your brain come up with that?
33:10
It comes up because it's attuned to answers when you become in an altered state, a state of passion, a state of commitment, a state of must.
33:17
When when you're listening to Peter, when you put himself on the line, when he, you know, the way you take the as you said, you know, you take the island, you burn the boats.
33:23
In those moments the answers are there.
33:25
So then I started making that my modus operandi.
33:28
I went on, you know, national radio in Canada and I challenged psychologists and psychiatrists after I had four days of training and I said, "I don't care what your problem is.
33:36
I don't care if you have if you have uncontrollable phobias, see me, I'll handle it literally in 1 hour or less."
33:44
And you know, then I got challenged.
33:45
Psychiatrist called me on the phone and made my whole career by saying, "You're a liar, you're a charlatan.
33:48
People like you should not be allowed on the radio."
33:51
And I said, "Sir, I said, "Have you ever met me?"
33:54
He said, "Of course not."
33:54
I said, "Have you ever met my clients?"
33:55
He said, "Of course not."
33:56
I said, "So are you a scientist?"
33:59
He said, "I'm a physician."
33:59
I said, "Are you a scientist?"
34:01
I said, "Good, cuz a scientist would never make an assumption.
34:03
What you're telling me is what you're proposing is your hypothesis.
34:07
Your hypothesis is that I'm a charlatan and a liar. So let's prove it.
34:12
I'm at the Holiday Inn tomorrow night.
34:13
Anyone listening come, bring me your worst patient.
34:15
Bring me somebody you've never been able to cure."
34:16
I said, "I'm sure you've got plenty of those."
34:19
And I entice this guy to a point where he had nowhere to go.
34:21
And so he brought me this woman he treated for 7 years who had a snake phobia where she dream about a snake in the middle of night, wake up four or four or times a night, treated her years.
34:31
And 15 minutes later I wrapped snake around her.
34:32
So, that became my modus operandi, results.
34:34
And that's where I came up with the idea of coaching.
34:37
I said, "I'm not a motivator.
34:39
No one was using the term."
34:39
And so, I built kind of the beginning of an industry.
34:41
But, my idea of coaching was not go get a certificate, is you're paid for results.
34:45
So, I'd go and say, "You pay me nothing. I'll do one session.
34:49
Give me the most impossible task, and I'll turn around.
34:51
You're addicted to a drug, you're smoking a cigarette, you're in this place." And I built it.
34:54
I went to the United States Army, and I said, "Give me a program.
34:57
I'll take any training program you have.
34:58
I'll cut the training time in half, and increase the competency. You pay me nothing." He said, "You're crazy."
35:03
I said, "No, I'm expensive." And I negotiated.
35:05
And I took a four-day pistol shooting program, and turned it to a one-day program, qualified 100% of people, when before they'd only done 70%.
35:11
The colonel wrote the general, and said, "It's the first breakthrough since World War I in pistol shooting."
35:16
I'd never shot a gun before.
35:18
It was this driving force.
35:18
Then I started working with athletes.
35:20
Then all of a sudden I'm working with Princess Diana, then President Clinton.
35:22
Who, by the way, you're absolutely right, cuz he didn't even have an AOL account back then.
35:27
I remember when I first started working with him, I said, "There's this new stuff called email."
35:29
I got this thing called AOL.
35:31
Maybe we'll talk electronically.
35:32
He goes, "I've heard about that."
35:33
He didn't have an account, an AOL account those days.
35:35
So, and it just grew to businesses and individuals.
35:39
So, every time you do something, and you think you've done your best, if you're a growing human being, you find out it's not your best. There's a new level.
35:45
When you get there, there's a new horizon.
35:46
If there is a passion to serve something bigger than yourself, and if you're not not limited just your thinking.
35:52
I believe the state people get in signifies what capacity of their brain they're going to be able to utilize.
35:58
And I'm becoming an expert in changing your state, changing the story that limits that state, and then then finding the real strategies that work.
36:04
Cuz I don't give a what state you're in.
36:05
If you're running east looking for a sunset, you're screwed.
36:07
You've got to have the right strategy as well.
36:09
Those three things are I think what can do it for anybody.
36:12
Change your strategy, change your story, change your state, and you can pretty much change anything.
36:18
And uh Tony, the uh what was the last name of the NLP teacher that you mentioned? Grinder.
36:23
John Grinder, one of the co-founders. Got it.
36:25
And uh so, I I think the the commonality at least or one of the commonalities, if I'm trying to piece together the patterns uh speaking to the two of you, is that you put your reputations where your mouth was, right? In both cases. Yes.
36:39
Uh in slightly different approaches, but uh it just gets me so amped up.
36:43
My hands are like getting sweaty just thinking about big stuff. Just listen to you guys.
36:47
Speaking of big things, I want to make sure that we have ample time to cover something that we're we're all very excited about, and that is the the Global Learning XPRIZE.
36:57
And uh perhaps Peter, you could chat about this.
36:59
Before we jump into it, though, I want to mention a couple things to people.
37:03
Number one, first and foremost, uh very similar to Tony in this in this respect, I've I've been a lifelong reader and autodidact.
37:13
I've I've had many incredible teachers, but uh I've I've My most important teachers in many cases have come from books.
37:20
They've come uh indirectly through words on a page.
37:22
And I I was actually going to be held back my uh for kindergarten because I I didn't learn to read, and my teacher was convinced I couldn't read, which was not the case.
37:34
What What uh What ended up being the problem is that she never explained why I should learn the alphabet.
37:39
And then I got into first grade, and Mrs.
37:40
Vinsky, I still remember her.
37:42
She said, "Tim, I know you don't want to learn the alphabet, but if you learn the alphabet, you will be able to read books."
37:48
And I was like, "Well, why didn't somebody tell me this?" And learn to read.
37:52
And And that is the And so, Mrs.
37:54
Vinsky to this day, uh you know, I ended up being the valedictorian of my uh my grade school because of her. And she had competition.
38:02
So, to just to bring it kind of full circle, she had these little paper race cars that we would make and put them on a wall, and there was a track with the number of books read, and there was a competition to to get to the end. Love it.
38:14
And uh and I I got to the end well, like maybe a a third of the way through the year, and then uh we had to sort of extend the the racetrack, but it was all due to that passion she had for for reading and her ability to explain the benefits of it.
38:30
So, as a segue, uh Peter, maybe you could tell us a bit about the the Global Learning XPRIZE, which I'm so excited about. Yeah, and uh thank you. Thank you, Tim.
38:39
So, when I think about what are the world's biggest problems, the problems that if we as society could fix would really transform this planet, I mean, that every mother and father and every person watching should really care about, uh there's one that when you pull that thread topples others, and that's creating a world of literacy.
38:58
There's a billion illiterate people on the planet.
39:02
2/3 of them are women, and 250 million of them are kids.
39:05
And they live in the parts of the world that will never build enough schools or teach enough teachers.
39:12
And I'll tell you one thing, uh a population of people who are literate are more peaceful, more prosperous, and less populous.
39:17
In fact, it's Bill Gates has a great TED Talk, in which he talks about the fact that the you know, there's something you can do to stop population growth rates, and it's make a population healthier and more literate.
39:29
And you do that, they, you know, growth stops.
39:31
In fact, growth goes negative, and it really is a a key part of our world.
39:35
So, at XPRIZE, we every year pull together the smartest people on the planet and say, "Where should we focusing our next XPRIZE?"
39:43
We call this thing Visioneering.
39:44
Tony's been a part of it, Tim.
39:46
I would welcome your participation in the future.
39:49
And we had this debate and discussion with the smartest and wealthiest people on the planet, and literacy, learning, became the focal point.
39:58
So, we set out to create something we call the Global Learning XPRIZE.
40:02
And here's the question, can we can we get entrepreneurs around the planet to build a piece of software that can operate on any any phablet, any tablet, and take a child where there is nothing, no literate adults, no schools, nothing, and on their own take them to basic reading, writing, and numeracy.
40:25
And that's our challenge and we fundamentally believe it is possible.
40:29
Got amazing support from Nicholas Negroponte who created One Laptop per Child who he and Matt um Keller, who's running this prize for us, actually did an experiment.
40:39
They took tablets uh uh into Ethiopia, into villages that were 100 miles from any schools, uh any anything, and they dropped the tablets off in a box.
40:51
And the kids opened the box, learned on their own how to turn on the tablet, how to use the apps, and how to start learning to sound out words.
41:01
The problem they had was that the software was so poor, it limited them.
41:06
And so our question is can we create what Neal Stephenson, a great author in science fiction, would call the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from from uh Diamond Age.
41:16
Can we create software that allows kids to teach themselves? That's our challenge.
41:20
That's what the Global Learning X Prize is about.
41:23
And uh I think there there a couple of really important aspects to this that I'd love to underscore for people.
41:28
Uh well, first I'll just I'll second the the the Neal Stephenson recommendation.
41:33
If you're going to start with one, I I'm a huge fan of Snow Crash haha and Cryptonomicon.
41:38
But coming back to the uh your boldest mission yet, I think is what you called it in an email that I received. Yeah.
41:46
And uh there there two things.
41:46
I think that the the I think it's worth talking about the old way uh and the challenges of trying to meet the demands of say 250 million illiterate children.
41:59
How many the at least based on what I've read, looks like that would take 1.
42:04
6 million new teachers by 2015.
42:06
Needless to say, doesn't seem like there's any way that the the old way would scale, right?
42:10
And uh another thing I I want to sort of point out to folks is that if if you create a literate uh numerate mother uh or uh particularly younger women, children, uh you you tend to in many countries create educated families.
42:31
So, there's there's sort of a false multiplier effect um by by attacking this.
42:35
And the other thing I'd love for you to talk about is maybe maybe you could just uh obviously comment on how people can get involved, but the the the fact that it's not just using software to make people literate, but there's a time constraint. Yeah.
42:51
So, I think it's 18 months, is that right? Yeah.
42:52
Yeah, it it was a friend Elon Musk that challenged us to do it faster um than we originally planned. It's 18 months.
43:00
So, literally So, the way this prize is going to work, we announced it uh at the United Nations General Assembly.
43:06
Uh if I can say Tony uh Tony's one of our major benefactors underwriting the purse.
43:10
Uh we raised uh $15 million of of prize money for this.
43:16
And we announced at the UN uh GA we at the Social Good Summit and at uh the Clinton Global Initiative I had the honor of closing out CGI with President Clinton talking about this.
43:27
And uh we expect there will be hundreds if not thousands of teams uh competing for this.
43:32
And team can come from anywhere.
43:33
It can be a high school team.
43:35
It can be a team out of Microsoft, a team out of Mumbai. It doesn't matter.
43:39
And you've got to build a piece of software.
43:40
We're going to narrow it down from a thousand plus teams down to a top five.
43:46
And those five are going to deliver their software to us.
43:49
Uh and they're each going to win a million dollars uh of capital right there.
43:52
And that software has got to engage the student cuz if they if it's not exciting for them to use this software, they're going to give up and put the tablet down and it's done. Game over.
44:01
It's got to actually be you know, compelling enough and exciting enough and understand that child's uh favorite movie star, sports star, color, so it engages them and personalizes it in a way that makes them want to learn.
44:14
And we're going to deliver that software, those five finalists are going to be delivered to 5,000 kids in sub-Saharan Africa.
44:21
And on 5,000 tablets, and we're going to measure over 18 months where they go from zero to how far they can go in terms of reading, writing, and numeracy.
44:31
And we're going to crown a winner that has to meet a certain level.
44:33
I'm going to the detail now.
44:36
But the cool thing about this prize, unlike any other X Prize, the winning technology wins, or the winning software wins 10 million bucks. That's great.
44:44
But we also get the right to open source that software.
44:47
So imagine if the best software on the planet for teaching a child reading, writing, and numeracy now became available for free on every tablet and every smartphone put out there.
44:59
There'll be a billion handsets in Africa by 2016.
45:06
I mean, imagine if every one of them became the type of of compelling teaching capability that a billionaire used or teenager mobile used.
45:15
The same The same way that Google is the same for Eric Schmidt or for the poorest kid on the planet.
45:22
No, it's it's extremely exciting, and uh obviously I want to direct people to a few places where they can learn more, but I'd be curious, Tony, to hear from you.
45:30
You There's so many places you could invest your time and resources.
45:35
I'm sure you get asked to contribute to many, many, many, many different things.
45:40
Why is this Why is this important to you?
45:42
And why have you decided to take such a sort of a large position in supporting it?
45:49
Well, you know, I I look at the How do you create the greatest impact on the quality of people's lives?
45:53
And if you listen to the three of us in this conversation as a sampling, uh I believe that the thing that affects that most is learning.
46:01
I mean, we are growing learning machines.
46:03
A person's ability to learn, to grow, to solve problems, to be able to expand is what develops the quality of life for any human being.
46:11
That's what we're made for.
46:11
And it all starts in the world we live today in order to access the resources then reading, writing, and arithmetic, right? Numeracy.
46:18
Those three components, as basic as they are and as boring as they sound to us, they open the door for all three of us.
46:25
I mean, your story, Tim, about, you know, not wanting to learn the alphabet, but okay, but then I could read.
46:29
Cuz you understood at some level even then that reading would open another universe as it did to me.
46:33
I transported myself into other people's lives.
46:36
I transported myself into new opportunities and new concepts, new solutions.
46:40
All three of us have done this.
46:41
All three of us have got this benefit. Elon Musk has done that.
46:42
And I believe that self-learned, self-directed learning is the most important of all because what's going to happen in that environment is people's individual passions are going to let them hack their own lives.
46:53
They're going to let them revamp, especially in the world we live today where, I mean, think about it.
46:58
10 years ago, we had what?
46:58
500 million people on the web?
47:00
It's hard to even imagine.
47:01
We got 2 billion today and 6 years we're going to have 5 billion.
47:04
3 billion people are going to be joining that system.
47:08
But to be able to take advantage of that system fully, you've got to be able to have these fundamental skills.
47:13
So, my whole thing is become a learning machine.
47:15
We sure as hell can't do that when you have such a large population of our society and of our world that doesn't even have the opportunity to start with.
47:23
So, I We all know that children's inventiveness is extraordinary.
47:28
What we really do in here is using tools and technology to literally open up the world so no matter where you live, you know, we're all lucky.
47:35
I mean, but you look at how our lives have changed.
47:37
I'll give you another thing that I believe a principle and that's proximity. We change proximity.
47:42
When Peter came up with this dream of his, he put himself in proximity with a different type of person over and over and over again and shared his passion and story and that proximity opened up opportunities.
47:52
You know, books were a way of getting proximity when I didn't have physical proximity to some of those solutions, but that proximity for someone in South Africa, somebody in certain parts of India, some parts in parts of the third world to have there be no separation from your capacity to have the same education that somebody has at MIT, that somebody has at Stanford.
48:13
That stuff is coming online, but it's worthless if you don't have the basic code, that alphabet you talked about in the very beginning.
48:21
So, I put my time, my energy, and my money on the line in this area because I don't think there's a more important we can give back to society. I think another reason.
48:28
When you look at society and you see the problems that we have, a lot of people think of these problems as somebody else's problems.
48:32
These are our problems cuz if you look at the biggest challenges in the world, they come from the people in society that are forgotten.
48:39
They come from people that become so frustrated they don't have a way to come up with an empower meaning.
48:45
They don't have a way to transport themselves.
48:46
They don't have a way to change the quality of their life.
48:47
And those are the individuals that turn to violence.
48:51
You know, you think about it somebody asked me a few years ago I was in India and I literally left the hotel there in India I think about two days before the big bombing and I literally saw the bombing two days after I'd been there and I was talking with a friend and they were with a group of people and one of the persons was just saying, "How is this possible?
49:07
How is this type of violence possible?
49:08
How could somebody kill men, women, and children in this way?"
49:12
And I said, "You know, it's really possible because I'll tell you what it's not possible for.
49:15
It wasn't a happy person.
49:16
It wasn't a growing person.
49:18
It wasn't a fulfilled human being.
49:20
A happy person is not trying to destroy somebody else's life.
49:23
And if you want to know what makes human beings happy, it isn't money.
49:24
Money will give you a certain level of happiness depending on which study you read.
49:30
It is one thing and one thing only, progress.
49:32
Progress equals happiness.
49:32
If you feel like you're growing, expanding in your psychology, in your humanity, in your emotion, in your capacity, in your economics, you feel alive. We grow or we die.
49:43
And you put a giant limitation on that based on where you live in the world, where you're born, unless you have access to certain resources.
49:49
And the most fundamental resource learning, but with technology now, it doesn't matter where you live.
49:54
If you know how to learn, the world is yours.
49:56
And so, on a zero to 10, to me, this is a 1 million of importance, and that's why I've committed the time, energy, and capital to help make it work, and that's why all the other people are doing the same that are part of this team. Absolutely.
50:09
Absolutely. No, it's well said, and I I I want to point out something else also to this techies listening, cuz I know a lot of a lot of techies out there listening this, and even those who are not necessarily technically trained, I am not, would find the fact that open
50:23
source there's an aspect of open source that we didn't really touch on, and that is not only is it freely available to people to use in some way, in some interpretation, in some like user interface, but people can it is then available to be improved upon. So, I
50:37
So, I think it's it's very fascinating that let's just say hypothetically, we have these teams, five teams are given a million each, they they they bust their asses, think big, create really innovative software to try to solve this problem.
50:52
Finally, you find you find the winner.
50:55
The code is made available.
50:57
People are becoming literate who can then improve upon the software itself.
51:03
It's just a very sort of virtuous recursive aspect to the whole thing that is really really really cool.
51:11
And so, guys, everyone listening, this is those of you who followed me for a while know that I don't get this excited about a lot of things, but I have been waiting to pick this shot for a long time.
51:23
And I've talked about my passion for education and and reforming education, improving education, which is really improving learning since my TED Talk in 2008, and there have been very few opportunities to really use an Archimedes lever to to sort of move the world, and I think this is this is very legitimately one of them.
51:46
So, uh Peter, maybe you could Well, there there are two things.
51:49
The first is uh as we know based on the results of the spectacular results of the X Prize that people respond to incentives.
51:57
And um that's not uh being good or bad, it's being human.
52:00
People respond to incentives.
52:02
So, we have obviously, for those people who are interested in trying to develop this software and compete for the prize, uh where should they where should they go?
52:12
Uh where can they learn more?
52:13
Yeah, if you go to uh just xprize.
52:13
org, um our website, uh you can click on the learning X Prize there, and there's information about how to register as a team, how to pre-register right now, and it's pretty easy.
52:24
Just tell us you're interested in forming a team, and uh get involved.
52:30
We'll take you through the process, you know, if you're a commercial company, great.
52:33
If you're uh a nonprofit or a startup, whatever.
52:36
Uh I know that when we give people a very clear target, uh it drives them and focuses them, and uh it's a great thing whether you enter the competition or the final results or not. So, xprize.
52:48
org is how you can register. Excellent.
52:50
And um I should just mention to people, you know, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine recently who's made hundreds of millions of dollars, and he's a very grounded, deep, soulful guy.
52:58
And we went for a hike because I've I've been trying to decide on sort of about my next chapters, so to speak, the next projects that I pick.
53:07
And the way he encouraged me to think about it, he he gave me a couple of questions to ask myself.
53:10
And one of them was, you know, if your goal were to be remembered in the history books, you know, metaphorically, 2 300 years from now, what could you do?
53:21
And you sort of engineer it in reverse from that question.
53:23
You know, if your goal is to have a big impact, let's get very specific.
53:27
If you're going to be remembered 2 300 years from now or more, what could you do?
53:32
And I would actually pose that to people listening to this, and I would say one of the answers is winning this competition.
53:39
Uh I really feel like it could uh have that great an impact.
53:44
I mean you could really go down in history for this one.
53:48
So, that's point number one.
53:48
Point number two, for those people who just want to perhaps look at some very, very fascinating prizes.
53:55
If you'd like to support the Global Learning X Prize, there's an Indiegogo page.
54:00
So, you can go to Indiegogo.
54:01
com and just search X Prize. No hyphen needed.
54:05
And the first thing that'll pop up, and I'll also include this link in the show notes for people in the Global Learning X Prize.
54:11
But, there are a couple of prizes.
54:13
There are there prizes for every price point, all the way from $25 or $10 even up.
54:18
But, uh Peter, maybe you could comment on I thought you could maybe you could elaborate on one of them, which is the the 10th anniversary Ansari X Prize ticket.
54:31
Um well, actually if I if I could let me give context to why this is important because it's really it's really critical for people to realize we do have amazing people like Tony Robbins, who I love dearly, who has put up a million dollars here.
54:43
We raised the capital and you can say, "Why would my $10 or $25 even make a difference here?
54:49
And And why should I support this?" And let me tell you why.
54:53
Uh as an organization, we have been dependent on a lot of extraordinary philanthropists. I want to change that.
54:58
I really want the X Prize to become an organization where the public decides what the biggest problems in the world that need to be solved are.
55:09
And then vote on those and capitalize those prizes and literally create the future.
55:13
It's like, "We want to solve this problem? Great.
55:15
We'll crowdsource the rules.
55:18
We will raise the capital and we'll solve that problem."
55:21
It's literally creating the future.
55:21
It's It's throwing yourself a touchdown pass.
55:24
And this Indiegogo campaign is a is a means for me to prove to the X Prize board and to the world that the crowd wants to be involved in helping to capitalize these prizes and cares about this model for solving grand challenges.
55:39
So, it's not about the half a million dollars, the million dollars we'll make.
55:43
You know, donate 10 bucks, I'm happy with that.
55:46
But, get involved because we want to open this up so that it's really the world solving its own problems, stopping complaining about problems, and starting solving problems.
55:54
That mindset is so critically important for society today.
55:59
Um the the second thing is where are we going to use this money that we raised?
56:03
So, we today are basically uh taking these uh the software, these tablets out to 5,000 kids in sub-Saharan Africa.
56:11
Our goal is to double that number.
56:13
And in success, we'll go to 10,000 kids, not in 100 villages, but 200 villages to really statistically get the numbers working best and to really see the major impact of this Global Learning XPRIZE can have.
56:24
Um and so, how can you be involved? Uh lots of ways.
56:28
Uh you know, like you said, Tim, it's from 10 bucks up to 10,000 bucks.
56:31
Uh two of my favorite uh if I could is is one of them is for uh uh for for 25 bucks, you can get actually access to the winning software for your kid or your niece or your friend 18 months before it goes open source.
56:50
So, we're going to be uh actually taking the five finalists and making that those finalists available to uh backers of this.
56:55
So, if you want to play with the software yourself, 25 bucks means you care about this prize and we'll give you a a download code.
57:06
When the software is going out to kids in Africa, you'll get a chance to download it, too.
57:10
And they don't have to be technical in order to use it.
57:12
No, it can be it's going to be a an Android app you download and and use uh pretty instantly.
57:17
It's you'll In fact, you have to be as technical as the as the 8-year-olds in Africa that were that were uh that were working with.
57:24
And then another very cool one, if I could, uh is at at 50 bucks, um you get to be involved in visioneering.
57:35
You know, visioneering is this thing that we do.
57:36
140 people, CEOs, top philanthropists.
57:39
You can become a digital visioneer.
57:41
You get to vote on which X Prize we should focus on next year.
57:46
So, you get to help direct where the X Prize what grand challenge on the planet we're working towards next. You care about climate?
57:52
You care about water, health? What is it? You get involved.
57:57
So, this is about really inclusion.
58:01
And that's really why I want people involved here.
58:03
Show you care, get involved, help us really change the world on a massive scale. Definitely.
58:10
And you know, for the for those of you who who are interested in in really doubling down in other ways, you can also you have a chance to to spend some time with with with Peter himself, Sir Richard Branson, and others at the 10th anniversary Ansari X Prize event.
58:26
And then also maybe Tony could talk a little bit about Date With Destiny.
58:31
So, this is an opportunity to spend some time with with Tony himself.
58:37
And that is also an option on the on the Indiegogo page.
58:40
But perhaps Tony you could mention just a little bit about that.
58:44
I didn't even know it was there.
58:45
Oh, well then You've been you've been so generous. I'm glad it is.
58:48
I said I'll support in any way I can.
58:50
So Well well you know, there we go.
58:53
So Date With Destiny Date With Destiny is I do once a year. It's a six-day process.
58:58
It's my most intense program.
59:01
And you have people from sports, entertainment, business, average people.
59:05
We have people usually from usually about 40 to 50 countries.
59:07
We translate six or seven languages.
59:09
And the outcome of those six days is most of us don't understand that there is you know, a software program if you will, an operating system that really controls how you think, feel, and and experience every part of your life. We know of it generally. We know what we value.
59:24
We know what we believe generally.
59:25
But we take that down to a level that's my mind-boggling, where you will understand why you think the thoughts you think, feel the feelings you have, and more importantly, once you understand what's really the controlling force in your entire life, you rewire it.
59:37
Because, you can't change something you're unaware of.
59:41
Uh and then you just have a random life.
59:43
And I don't care some people have had randomness that's brought a lot of greatness to their life.
59:46
So, you find what's great in your life, and you find out what's not, and you find out the real source and cause of it.
59:50
And it's an experience that is I mean, you laugh more, you cry more, you're entertained at a level because it's raw and real, and you see changes that are unbelievable.
1:00:00
You'll see a, you know, a guy that's just come back, you know, the last one we did from Afghanistan, uh who's shell-shocked, who, you know, has PTSD, who can't sleep at night, has got the shivers when he's, you know, tries to hold the microphone, his hand is shaking out of control.
1:00:13
He just stands up, you never know who's going to stand up.
1:00:15
And, you know, you see him 45 minutes later, and he's not shaking, he no longer literally takes his glasses off, there's a physiological change in him where he can have light sensitivity.
1:00:25
Uh I brought him on CNN to give you an example, just show people what's possible.
1:00:28
You see a a young woman whose face has been disfigured, and thinks her life is horrific, and literally there is a transformation her She, you know, we saw her about 6 months ago, and she's got a relationship for the first time in her life.
1:00:39
You see a person that has made more money than God, who's achieved more than they ever have, and they're bored out of their mind and frustrated with their life, and you find out that guess what, you know, that solution's not the solution.
1:00:50
And you see what they're transformed like afterwards.
1:00:51
And and you participate in these processes.
1:00:53
the most intensive individual program that I do.
1:00:58
And instead of doing it with 5 or 10,000 people, it's the most intimate thing I do, where you do it with about 1,800 or 2,000 people.
1:01:03
And you get to develop family with people and friends from all over the world.
1:01:07
So, it's the ultimate, if you want to transform, you want to learn what controls and shapes your life, it's the ultimate of that experience.
1:01:12
And if you make some donation, I don't know what it is, you're in.
1:01:16
And I tell them to just tell you you donated 10 seats at at 10K level.
1:01:21
And that's actually being matched with another 10K.
1:01:23
So, if you donate at 10,000, you get uh uh to come to Date With Destiny.
1:01:27
And Tony, you've said you'll you'll take a photo and spend a few moments with those individuals, which your time is the most precious thing.
1:01:34
And I And I can say that I having done Date With Destiny myself with you, I I learned more in 6 days than I learned in 4 years in MIT.
1:01:41
It's the most extraordinary experience of my life.
1:01:46
Aw, that's really That's really sweet of you.
1:01:47
That is a I love you dearly, buddy. I love you too, bro.
1:01:50
So, uh guys, I know you uh you have uh worlds to conquer out there.
1:01:54
And uh the Global Learning XPRIZE is is really something that has reinvigorated me in a in in a way that uh has kind of been a long time coming for me, I feel.
1:02:05
And I I'm I really feel like for those of you listening who are in any way passionate about education, and you've been wondering how to pick your shot, how to throw that that one touchdown pass, I really feel like this is a an excellent place.
1:02:19
And it's very time sensitive to focus your energy.
1:02:22
And uh I'm going to be obviously getting behind it as I am.
1:02:27
And uh doing some things to to help move the needle.
1:02:30
And uh you can go to xprize.
1:02:33
org uh if if you want to compete.
1:02:35
Plenty of money on the line.
1:02:37
And uh glory lasts forever, right? So, So, that's one.
1:02:40
And then if you want to check out the Indiegogo uh campaign, I will put the link in the show notes so you can just go to the blog fourhourblog.
1:02:48
com and click on podcast and you can find the show notes.
1:02:51
Uh or you can just go to indiegogo.
1:02:52
com and search for XPRIZE without a hyphen.
1:02:55
Before we take off, do you gentlemen have any any parting comments, advice, recommendations, uh restau- restaurant tips, anything at all that you'd like to leave with us before we go?
1:03:10
say something cuz you see the combination in all three of us.
1:03:11
And I see I think you see it in anybody that's enjoying their life.
1:03:14
You know, it's the game never ends.
1:03:17
I mean, life is a game of mastery.
1:03:19
It's about finding a way to do something and do it so well that goes beyond yourself.
1:03:23
That if you can find your passion, you can find anything you're passionate about.
1:03:27
If you don't know what it is, I think it's getting around people that are really passionate.
1:03:30
It's getting around where it's better and letting something hit you.
1:03:33
You can't get around a person like yourself or like Peter and not be touched.
1:03:36
There's something inside of you is going to get ignited.
1:03:38
So, if you don't have that passion yet and you're listening, you know, listening to these podcasts is a way to get some of that proximity.
1:03:44
But, I'd go pursue putting myself in an environment where you're going to be stimulated.
1:03:48
And if you know what your passion is, then the question is how can you surround yourself with the best of the best so you can be challenged?
1:03:54
Because the idea behind the X Prize really is, it's not just the incentives, it's also the challenge.
1:03:59
It's that competition to say, "How can I do more in less time for more people than I've ever done in my life?"
1:04:04
And when that becomes your focus, something happens the vibratory rate of the human brain and insights come. You start seeing things.
1:04:12
The reticular activating system of the brain starts finding answers because you have that focus on something larger.
1:04:17
So, if you don't have it, find it.
1:04:19
And if you don't know how to find it, get yourself in environments consistently where people are living it and something will hit you. Wow. Absolutely.
1:04:27
And that's that's that's part of the reason that, you know, people ask me why I live in Silicon Valley if I could live anywhere.
1:04:34
And that's it's it's not the tech, it's the it's being around the people who believe that they're going to change the world. Absolutely. Uh Peter.
1:04:41
Uh yeah, I mean, it all begins with passion.
1:04:43
There's no better teacher, mentor on the planet than Tony Robbins when it comes down to that.
1:04:49
For me, I'll I'll just add on top of that that there is no problem we cannot take on.
1:04:56
Uh you know, the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities.
1:04:58
I mean, which is amazing to think about.
1:05:00
You know, you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people.
1:05:03
That convergence and the notion that a single individual today, I don't care who you are in the world, where you are in the world, you have access to extraordinary capabilities.
1:05:14
You have access to, you know, the world's knowledge and information on Google.
1:05:18
You have access to AI, to cloud printing, all these exponential technologies.
1:05:21
And at the same time, you've got access to all the expertise you want through crowdsourcing.
1:05:25
You have capital through crowdfunding.
1:05:27
So, my goal here is to say, you know, first and foremost, connect with your passion, let that drive that with you, and then take your moonshot.
1:05:36
Where are you going to take and do something significant and gives meaning.
1:05:40
I love that example you give, Tim, about how you're going to be remembered, you know, 200-300 years from today.
1:05:47
Uh so, it's an amazing time to be alive.
1:05:49
It's an amazing time to be an entrepreneur.
1:05:50
I am thankful, Tim, for who you are in the world, and Tony, and uh and blessed to be on this conversation with you guys.
1:05:57
Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time.
1:05:59
Uh it would would be really fun to to get together in person at some point.
1:06:04
I know we're on different coasts and constantly flying, but uh the the the uh this virtual proximity will do for now, and uh everybody check out the Xprize.
1:06:12
It is uh it is very worthwhile, and there are plenty of incentives for every player in the game.
1:06:19
And uh if you're looking for that passion that that Peter mentioned, and you don't know what that passion is, uh as Tony mentioned, one of the best ways to get passionate is to be surrounded by people who are very passionate and thinking magnitudes of order above the the average Joe or Jane you may be surrounded by.
1:06:38
And a great way to do that, honestly, is just to check out even the page uh that describes this Xprize on xprize. org or on Indiegogo.
1:06:48
And uh you might just find that, as is the case with me, uh it's it's just uh it's it's provided some some intellectual gasoline and some passion um that uh that you might not have uh seen in a while.
1:07:01
So, I think that it's it's worth checking out, and uh I'll be doing a lot more related to it.
1:07:07
So, guys, for the time being, thanks so much for being on. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Peter.
1:07:10
Great being with you guys. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye.
1:07:14
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1:07:16
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1:07:22
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1:07:40
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1:07:41
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1:07:50
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1:07:53
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1:08:00
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1:08:00
And I would love your feedback.
1:08:02
Let me know what you thought of this show, who you'd like to hear on the show next, and any other thoughts, really.
1:08:08
You can find me at Twitter at @tferriss. That's twitter.
1:08:12
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1:08:17
com/timferriss with two r's and two s's.
1:08:21
Until next time, thank you for listening.