MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (2 page)

As a former litigator with years of experience working around Wall Street firms, it’s fair to say that a few liars, crooks, and con artists have crossed my path. Since both the legal and financial fields cultivate their share of professional hustlers, I’ve learned to quickly separate the good actors from the bad.

I am also a skeptic by nature. So when Tony Robbins sought me out for this project because of the company I founded in 2007, HighTower, I was curious but wary.
Is there really anything new to say about personal finance and investing? And is Tony Robbins the man to say it?

I was, of course, aware of Tony’s tremendous reputation as America’s number one life and business strategist. And like many, I knew that he has worked with everyone from US presidents to billionaire entrepreneurs, transforming their personal and professional lives along the way.

But what I didn’t know until we met was that Tony Robbins
is
the real thing. The
man
lives up to the hype of the
brand.
His authenticity was evident, and his passion was contagious. Rather than rehash the sins of the financial industry, Tony came to this project with the goal of democratizing financial services and offering tactics and solutions that had previously been appreciated and used by only the wealthiest investors.

Tony and I hit it off right away because we share a mission of helping empower people to make better, more informed financial decisions. That’s the heart of my company, and it’s what drives me personally. While the financial crisis of 2008 brought to light the conflicts and injustices inherent in the financial system, few people could come up with real-world, practical solutions that would actually make a difference for individuals and families.

Why? Because there’s an inherent conflict in the system.
The largest financial institutions are set up to make a profit for themselves, not their clients.
Investors may think they are paying fees for high-quality, unbiased advice. Instead, they are all too often paying for the privilege of being offered a small sample of “suitable” investment products and services that are in constant conflict with improving the firm’s bottom line.

HighTower is a solution to these problems, and that’s why Tony originally came to interview me for this book. We offer only investment advice, and we have a platform of leading technology, products, and solutions that meet advisors’ and investors’ needs. We do not engage in the many toxic activities that create conflicts of interest within the major banks. We brought together some of the nation’s best financial advisors. Simply put, we built a better model for transparent financial advice.

Tony’s mission is to organize and bring to the masses the most honest and practical financial solutions—some of them are even “secrets.” He understands that people need more than knowledge—they need a clear road map to a financially secure future.

The guidance provided within these pages is the result of unprecedented access to the leading minds in the financial world. I don’t know of anyone other than Tony who could pull off such a feat. Only Tony, with his wide range of client relationships, his contagious enthusiasm, and his unrelenting passion could have convinced these individuals—among the best in the industry—to share their knowledge and experience.

Like me, these people trust Tony to capture their thinking and simplify it for a broad audience. And because Tony’s passion lies in empowering people, he is able to take these conversations from theory to reality, offering tools that nearly anyone can use to improve his or her financial situation.

Tony challenged me to look at the solutions we had created for wealthy investors and figure out a way to make them available and applicable to the general public. I’m proud to say that we are deeply engaged in a variety of projects, and we are excited about the positive impact that together we will have on so many people.

True to his calling, Tony is using this book to empower individual investors while simultaneously helping those who have slipped through the cracks or been left behind by society. While two-thirds of Americans are concerned they won’t have enough to retire, two million people have lost access to food stamps in the past year. Many of these individuals don’t know where their next meal will come from.

Tony has stepped in to help fill the gap. He’s spoken openly about his own experience with homelessness and hunger, and is committed to improving the lives of these often-forgotten populations. Tony is personally committed to feeding 50 million people this year, and is working to double that effort—feeding 100 million people—through matching contributions for next year and in the years ahead.

Tony has also partnered with Simon & Schuster to donate copies of his bestselling guide
Notes from a Friend: A Quick and Simple Guide to Taking Charge of Your Life
to those who are in need and just starting to embark on a new path of empowerment. His goal is to feed minds
and
bodies.

I am honored, humbled, and grateful to be a part of this project and eager to see the change we can enact together. I’m excited for you, the reader. You’re about to meet the force of nature that is Tony Robbins and go on a journey that will truly be life changing.

—ELLIOT WEISSBLUTH,
founder and CEO, HighTower

INTRODUCTION

I first met Tony Robbins 25 years ago inside a cassette tape. After watching an infomercial on late-night TV, I took the plunge and bought his 30-day self-improvement program
Personal Power.
I listened to his tapes every day during my one-hour commute to and from Oracle Corporation, back and forth between my home in San Francisco and our office in Redwood Shores. I was so moved by Tony’s words that one weekend I stayed home and did nothing else but listen again to all 30 days in just two days, and I quickly understood that Tony was truly an amazing person, and his ideas were unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
Tony transformed me.

At the age of 25, as the youngest vice president at Oracle, I was massively successful—or so I thought. I was making more than $1 million a year and driving a brand-new Ferrari. Yes, I had what I thought was success: a great home and an incredible car and social life. Yet I still knew I was missing something; I just didn’t know what. Tony helped me to bring awareness to where I was, and helped me start defining where I really wanted to go and the deeper meaning of what I wanted my life to be about. It wasn’t long before I went to Tony’s special intensive weekend program called Unleash the Power Within. That’s where I really refined my vision and committed to a new level of massive action. With that, I dove deeper into Tony Robbins’s
work and launched full-force on my journey to create and build
Salesforce.com
.

I applied Tony’s insights and strategies and built an amazing tool called V2MOM, which stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measurement. I used it to focus my work, and ultimately my life, on what I really wanted. The V2MOM program took five of Tony’s questions:

1. What do I really want? (Vision.)

2. What is important about it? (Values.)

3. How will I get it? (Methods.)

4. What is preventing me from having it? (Obstacles.)

5. How will I know I am successful? (Measurements.)

Tony said to me that the quality of my life was the quality of my questions. I soon began to model everything in my life, my work, and my future simply by asking these basic questions and recording my answers. What happened was amazing.

On March 8, 1999, the first day that we started
Salesforce.com
, we wrote a V2MOM, and today all of our 15,000 employees are required to do the same thing. It creates alignment, awareness, and communication, and it’s all based on what Tony has taught me over the last two decades. Tony says repetition is the mother of skill—that’s where mastery comes from—and so we keep writing and improving our V2MOMs. It’s one of the reasons
Forbes
magazine just named
Salesforce.com
the “World’s Most Innovative Company” for the fourth year in a row, and
Fortune
magazine says we are the “World’s Most Admired” software company, as well as the seventh “Best Place to Work” in 2014. Today we produce $5 billion a year in revenue, and we continue to grow.

I can truly say that there would be no
Salesforce.com
without Tony Robbins and his teachings.

This book you are about to read, with its 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom, has the potential to do the same thing for you that Tony Robbins’s
Personal Power
audio program did for me. It is going to bring Tony’s wisdom into your life (along with the wisdom of 50 of the most brilliant financial minds in the world!) and give you the tools you need to make your life even better. As you read
Master the Game,
I am sure you will translate what Tony is saying into your own life, and create your own methods to achieve success and realize freedom.

When Tony told me the title of this book, the first thing I said was, “Tony, you’re not about money! You’re about helping people create an extraordinary quality of life!”

I soon discovered this book really isn’t about money, it is about creating the life you want,
and part of that is deciding what role you want money to play in it. We all have money in our lives; what matters is that you master money and it doesn’t master you. Then you are free to live life on your own terms.

One of my closest mentors, General Colin Powell, former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this about money: “Look
for something you love to do and you do well. Go for it. It will give you satisfaction in life. It could mean money, but it may not. It could mean a lot of titles, but it may not. But it will give you satisfaction.” General Powell and Tony Robbins are saying the same thing. The real joy in life comes from finding your true purpose and aligning it with what you do every single day.

General Powell also urged me to consider the role of money as I pursued my vision of creating a software company that would change the world. He told me that the business of business was not just to make a profit but also to do good—to do good while doing well. Tony Robbins’s focus on contribution, even 25 years ago, also made a strong impression on me and influenced my thinking. When I started
Salesforce.com
, I aimed to do three things: (1) create a new computing model for enterprises now called “cloud computing”; (2) create a new business model for enterprise software based on subscriptions; and (3) create a new philanthropic model that tightly integrates the success of a company with its ability to give back.

What has resulted over the last 15 years is a company that today has completely transformed the software industry and achieved a market capitalization of more than $35 billion. However, the best decision I ever made was putting 1% of our equity, 1% of our profit, and 1% of our employees’ time into a philanthropic pursuit called Salesforce Foundation. It has resulted in more than $60 million in grants to nonprofits all over the world, more than 20,000 nonprofits using our product for free, and our employees contributing more than 500,000 volunteer hours to their communities. All of this happened once Tony helped me build the tools to gain clarity about what I really wanted to build, give, and become. And nothing has made me happier or brought me more satisfaction and joy in my life.

That’s also why I have joined Tony in his quest with the nonprofit Swipeout program to provide meals to more than 100 million people a year; provide clean, disease-free water to more than 3 million families a day; and to work to free both children and adults from slavery.

I’ve sent my parents, my closest friends, and my most important executives to Tony’s seminars to study his work, and they have all said the same thing: “Tony Robbins is one of a kind, and we are lucky to have him in our lives.” Now, with
Money: Master the Game,
Tony will open the same door for you that he opened for me. I am confident that with him as your coach, you too will transform your life and find a path to gain everything you really want!

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