Unshakeable by Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins pulls back the curtain on the 401(k). In this bonus episode, Tony discusses with Tom Zgainer the real problem with 401(k) companies and the source of the confusion surrounding it all. As Tom told Tony in Unshakeable, the 401(k) business is “the largest dark pool of assets where nobody really knows how or whose hands are getting greased.” As we know it, the 401(k) should be – and can be – a powerful tool for building wealth, if it’s used correctly. Unfortunately, this process has not been made easy. Hidden fees and deductions on top of what seems to be a good investment are some of the sources of confusion in 401(k) investments. We are an impatient society, and reading through pages and pages of financial disclosure agreements is not in our daily plans. This can be a daunting realization when we consider your 401(k) is what will fund your retirement and future family life. It is hard to find a good investment that eliminates brokers, commissions and high-paid middlemen. Tom goes into detail on why this is, how to avoid these situations, and how his business ABk is working to better your experience with 401(k) plans.

It is not about living somebody else’s dream, it is about living a magnificent life on your terms. Tony’s shares his life mission on helping people find just that. To find this, there are two main focus areas you must understand: the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. He goes into further detail in his book Unshakeable, but in this episode, you get a sneak peek on how to truly succeed.   In the science of achievement, there are three steps. The first step to achieving anything you want is focus. There is no way to reach a goal if you cannot focus on it. The second step is one we generally understand because we can see it – it is to go beyond hunger, drive and desire. Tony discusses how to activate those emotions to get yourself to consistently take massive action. The third step to achieving whatever we want is grace. Not necessarily religiously, but acknowledgment of the fact that “life happens for you, not to you” and allowing that grace to grow with your appreciation. As important as achievement is, there’s a second skill that you’ll also need to master if you want to create an extraordinary life. This skill is what Tony calls “the art of fulfillment.” The art of fulfillment is an even more important skill to master because if you master the external world without mastering the internal world, how can you be truly and sustainably happy? That’s why Tony’s greatest obsession today is the art of fulfillment. There are two main principles to focus on:Growing and Giving. Tony explains why when we are growing and giving, we are living to our fullest. Know that money does not equal happiness; success without fulfillment truly can be the ultimate failure. If you have no one to share it with, what is the point – without your best success what is there to share?

The 401(k) plan was a beautiful invention, but it seems to have lost its track. In this episode, Tony goes over the history of the 401(k) and where this amazing tool for financial wealth got derailed. You might not believe this, but for almost three decades, the companies providing 401(k) plans were not required by law to disclose how much they were charging their customers! Financial firms easily gave in to the temptation to take advantage of this lack of disclosure. Handling our retirement money is a sacred trust, and this is concerning. Now that the law has changed, the problem has yet to be fixed - the whole 401(k) system is still a black box. Most participants would not have the time or patience to go through the 30-50 page legal and financial disclosures, allowing for these companies to blindside you with fees and hidden agendas. Some 71% of people enrolled in 401(k)s think there are no fees, when, in fact, the vast majority of plans are characterized by huge broker commissions, expensive actively managed funds, and layer after layer of additional – and often hidden – charges. If you could save just 1% in fees, you could save over 10 years of retirement savings. Tony walks through the tips and tricks to not drowning in the sea of 401(k) confusion.

In your life, you have probably sought out (or been approached by) a “financial advisor” to help you better understand your finances and reach your goals. Have you ever wondered whose interest they had in mind? You would never choose someone who did not have your best interest in mind, although most people do just that! In the strange twilight zone of the financial industry, about 90% of fiduciary professionals are not working within your best interest. If this is the case, how do you know who to trust with your financial future? In this episode, Tony Robbins clarifies what a broker is and how to identify one. Although, brokers are not the only ones to watch out for. Those with dual registration as a broker and financial advisor live in the grey area of interests where they could swing in your favor or that of their firm. Further, Tony reviews the 7 key questions to ask any advisor to uncover any potential conflicts or concerns that may impede your best interest. You will learn how to find an independent advisor who truly deserves – and will richly repay – your trust.

“Where should I put my money?” In this episode, Tony shares seven facts that show you how the market works from his book Unshakeable. These facts can free you from all of the fear and anxiety that dominate most people’s financial lives. That’s why Tony calls them Freedom Facts. Based on more than a century of financial history, you can learn to understand that corrections, bear markets and recoveries follow similar patterns again and again. Once you have the power to recognize these long-term patterns, you will also have the power to utilize them. When taking control of your financial life, you are taking responsibility. Most people never take responsibility; they prefer to blame the market for whatever happens to them. But the market never took a dime from anyone! If you lose money in the market, it’s because of a decision you made – and if you make money in the market, it’s because of a decision you made. The market is going to do whatever it’s going to do. But you determine whether you’ll win or lose. You’re in charge.

In the hustle and bustle of day-to-day living, it can be hard to focus on your quality of life. Never forget that your quality of life is multi-faceted including elements of your physical body, emotions, family relationships, career, mission and finances. If you live your life with a constant emotion of stress and frustration, then your quality of life is not at its peak, it is you feeling stressed and frustrated. In this episode, Tony shares several 2-minute messages from his novel Unshakeable to plant seeds into your mind to better shape your quality of life. Why stop at your quality of life when Tony can pinpoint stressors in your financial freedoms?  Freedom Fact 1: On average, corrections have occurred about once a year since 1900. When you’re in the midst of a correction, you might find yourself becoming emotional and wanting to sell because you’re anxious to prevent the possibility of even more pain; you are not alone. These widespread emotions create a crisis mentality. Tony helps you understand how to be Unshakeable in the face of the inevitable storms.

We all dream of achieving our inner peace, comfort, independence, and freedom. In short, we all dream of being unshakeable. When you are truly unshakeable, you will have unwavering confidence, even amidst the storm. In this episode, Tony goes into detail on how he will increase the likelihood that you’ll not only master the material but also take action to truly better your financial life. People say knowledge is power, but in Unshakeable, Tony reveals knowledge is only potential power. Unshakeable gives you a power-packed action plan that you can put into effect immediately. With this book, Tony promises to provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to get the job done and truly become unshakeable.

How will you know when you’ve reached true wealth? Is it when you have your dream home? Once you own an expensive car? Perhaps the signifier is when you’re wealthy enough to have your own private airplane? In Tony’s opinion, these are the wrong things to use when measuring your wealth. The people with mansion-sized homes, with three sports cars sitting in the garage, with a private plane that takes them to and from their vacation home – these people may not necessarily have access to true wealth. None of these are indicators of true wealth; they’re indicators of monetary wealth. True wealth is the ability to live life on your own terms. It’s freedom. Tony explains that money itself isn’t wealth, it’s a vehicle – a tool you can use to achieve financial freedom, to go after the dreams you didn’t think were possible, to design your life in a way that makes you feel alive and fulfilled. While Unshakeable is a financial freedom playbook, the process of becoming unshakeable is a mindset that extends far beyond the stock market. Being unshakeable, in your investing strategy and your lifestyle, is about managing your head and your heart in order to design the life you deserve. What’s the point of achieving financial freedom? It’s not the concept of having money that makes us yearn to become financially free; it’s the freedom part. True wealth – true financial freedom – is being free to focus on the things that matter most to you in life. Unlike the investing world, there aren’t clear cut rules for achieving happiness. Fulfillment will come in different shapes and sizes for different people, but there are common principles we all can follow to help us find emotional and psychological fulfillment. With the tools and strategies from Unshakeable, anyone can become financially rich. The question is: Are you going to be rich and happy, or rich and miserable? Join Richard Bradley, Editor-In-Chief of Wealth Magazine, and Tony Robbins in this episode of the Unshakeable Podcast, and learn about Tony’s approach to happiness, the secrets to true wealth and what we can do to fight against the impulses of our own minds. For more visit: unshakeable.com

How often would you like your financial advisor to think of what’s best for you when giving you financial advice? Half of the time? All of the time? It almost seems like a silly question to ask; why would you say anything less than “all of the time?” The whole point of hiring an advisor is to have someone you can trust to help you make the best choices possible with your money. The sad truth is that many financial advisors don’t view this as the primary function of their job. Out of the 310,000 financial advisors in the US, how many do you think are required to act in your best interest? 50%? 25%? The shocking truth is that less than 10% of all financial advisors in the United States follow the fiduciary standard — which legally requires financial advisors to put your interests ahead of their own. It gets even scarier. Of the 10% of financial advisors who are fiduciaries, many are dually registered — meaning they can act as both a broker and a fiduciary. Legally, they don’t even need to notify you of their dual status, or whether they’re acting as a fiduciary or a broker at any given time! Talk about trust issues; would you ever go see a doctor who is only required to give you “good” medical advice during half of your visit? (And she doesn’t have to tell you which half of the visit.) If you can’t trust 90% of financial advisors to act in your best interests, and many of the remaining 10% will only act in your best interests some of the time, then who can you trust? That’s just the question Tony set out to answer when he wrote Unshakeable. Designed as your go-to financial freedom playbook, Unshakeable gives investors the knowledge they need to be truly unshakeable — unfazed by financial winters, prepared for anything, and wise enough to know who they can trust and who they can’t. Having someone by your side who you can count on to give you the best advice for your money is a key part in planning for the financial future you want. That’s why it’s so important that you make sure your financial advisor — even a registered fiduciary — keeps you on track, and doesn’t prioritize their own needs over yours. Even though the numbers look stacked against you, it’s possible to find a trustworthy financial advisor. There are over 5,000 firms and individuals in the US that will act in your best interest. In this episode of The Unshakeable Podcast, Richard Bradley sits down with Tony and Peter Mallouk to explore the process of finding a financial advisor you can trust and how to identify the ways your financial advisor may be working for personal gain, instead of for you. This episode of the Unshakeable podcast has been brought to you in collaboration with Creative Planning, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor, where Tony Robbins is a board member and Chief of Investor Psychology. Mr. Robbins receives compensation for serving in this capacity and based on increased business derived by the company from his services.

Richard Bradley interviews Tom Zgainer and Josh Robbins of America’s Best 401k When is the last time you went to the store and bought something without knowing the price? Never? You may have laughed at the absurdity of the question when you first read it — who would buy anything without knowing how much it costs first? It turns out most Americans do. Over 70% of people who invest in 401(k) plans have no idea how much they pay in fees to their plan providers. That means more than half of Americans are paying to invest in a 401(k), without first knowing the price! Why are so many Americans unaware of the fees they pay? Why don’t more people ask to review the fees, before agreeing to a plan? Sadly, most people wouldn’t even know what to ask. For over three decades, the companies offering these 401(k) plans weren’t required to provide any information to you about how much they charge you in fees. Even now, when they are legally required to do so, 401(k) providers use convoluted documents to hide their fees in plain sight. How can you ask about the cost of fees for your plan, if you didn’t know there were any fees in the first place? In Chapter 4 of Unshakeable, Tony Robbins and Peter Mallouk break apart the complicated industry of retirement plans, and the fees they try to hide from you. More than 90 million Americans invest in 401(k) plans. For most of us, it seems like a no-brainer. Your employer takes the contribution straight from your paycheck, which helps you save on your taxes every year — plus you get to save for retirement. Even if you do pay some fees, it’s not that much money… right? It turns out that paying even 1% more in fees than you need to can dangerously slash your nest egg. Take the example of an average American worker, making $30,000 a year and putting 5% of each paycheck into a 401(k). Over the lifetime of this investment, an extra 1% in fees will result in a loss of almost $154,000 — and that’s not even including what you would have earned, with compound interest, if that money had been invested in your plan. For each 1% in unnecessary fees, you lose potentially 10 years of retirement income. So much for the “golden years.” Making matters worse, most well-meaning business owners are just as unaware of the fees as their employees. They may think they’re providing the best for their employees, but the convoluted nature of the industry makes it just as difficult for them to see the true cost of fees. When it comes to 401(k) plans, employers and employees are on the same side — as most business owners are also heavily invested in the company’s 401(k) for their own retirement savings. In this episode of the Unshakeable Podcast, Tom Zgainer and Josh Robbins of America’s Best 401k speak with Richard Bradley, Editor-In-Chief of Wealth Magazine, to shatter the misconceptions in the complicated world of 401(k) plans. Advocating for yourself — and your investments — may be more important than you realized; it may make the difference between thriving or barely surviving retirement.   Legal Disclosure: Tony Robbins is a board member and Chief of Investor Psychology at Creative Planning, Inc., an SEC Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) with wealth managers serving all 50 states. Mr. Robbins receives compensation for serving in this capacity based on increased business derived by Creative Planning from his services. Accordingly, Mr. Robbins has a financial incentive to refer investors to Creative Planning.

Tony and Peter Mallouk discuss the hidden fees your financial advisor probably isn’t telling you about, and how Unshakeable can arm you to remove these fees before they damage your future. What do you see yourself doing when you’re 75 years old? Many of us have plans for a worry free retirement but sadly, the fees that most people are paying could make that an impossibility.   There is a hole in the boat and it could very well sink you without an emergency fix.   If this sounds dramatic, that’s because it is. In Unshakeable, Tony reveals the truth about the hidden fees that most financial advisors and fund managers won’t talk about: they have a dramatic impact on your net returns and your financial security, without giving you any added benefit. In Chapter 3 of Unshakeable, Tony and co-author Peter Mallouk take an in-depth look at the real impact fees have on the average person’s retirement savings, and why these fees often go unnoticed. Overpaying in annual fees on your mutual funds takes an enormous bite out of your nest egg.  The worst part is, you’re not paying for better results — as 96% of all actively managed mutual funds fail to beat the market. The average investor is simply overpaying for underperformance. In this episode of The Unshakeable Podcast, Tony and Peter explain the severe impact hidden fees and taxes can have on your financial future, why the industry makes it difficult to uncover these fees, and how you can remove hidden fees from your investment strategy — putting more money directly into your pocket.   Legal Disclosure: Tony Robbins is a board member and Chief of Investor Psychology at Creative Planning, Inc., an SEC Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) with wealth managers serving all 50 states. Mr. Robbins receives compensation for serving in this capacity based on increased business derived by Creative Planning from his services. Accordingly, Mr. Robbins has a financial incentive to refer investors to Creative Planning.

Tony and Peter Mallouk introduce their new book, Unshakeable, and explain what motivated them to write it. Like the predictability of cold winter storms that show up year after year, market corrections and crashes will continue to rear their ugly heads.   We’ve all suffered losses, or know someone who has; maybe it was when the tech bubble burst in the late 1990’s, when the stock market plunged in 2001, or when the housing market crashed in 2008, and those losses can shake you to your core. So just how does one achieve financial security and peace of mind in a new era of volatility? In the first episode of The Unshakeable Podcast, world’s leading life and business strategist Tony Robbins and his co-author Peter Mallouk (ranked #1 financial advisor by Barron’s for three years in a row) remove the anxiety of economic winter. They discuss the facts and myths surrounding bear markets, why they make us so fearful, and how to not only prepare, but even profit when the market dips — all key concepts straight out of their latest book, Unshakeable. Written as your go-to financial freedom playbook, Unshakeable offers investors of all levels — from millennials to baby boomers — the knowledge, tools, and techniques to become an unshakeable investor; to dispel any fears you have of bear markets, build a strong diversified portfolio, and gain peace of mind amid economic uncertainty. Throughout The Unshakeable Podcast, a companion series to the book, Tony Robbins and Peter Mallouk sit down with Richard Bradley, Editor-in-Chief of Worth Magazine, to discuss core principles for unshakeable investing, and how you can apply them to reach your own financial goals. In this episode of the Unshakeable Podcast, Tony and Peter dive into the 7 “Freedom Facts” that can open your door to financial freedom, and Tony explains why he was inspired to partner with Peter to write Unshakeable in the first place.   Legal Disclosure: Tony Robbins is a board member and Chief of Investor Psychology at Creative Planning, Inc., an SEC Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) with wealth managers serving all 50 states. Mr. Robbins receives compensation for serving in this capacity based on increased business derived by Creative Planning from his services. Accordingly, Mr. Robbins has a financial incentive to refer investors to Creative Planning.