Tony Robbins, born Anthony J. Mahavorick, is a self-help writer and made a name for himself as a professional speaker. His bestselling books, featured on numerous infomercials titled, Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement and a second, called, Awaken the Giant Within, have helped to make Tony Robbins a well known name in the industry.
Personal Life: Mr. Robbins grew up in North Hollywood, California. After his parents divorced, he picked up the surname of Robbins from one of his stepfathers. In 1994, he was diagnosed with a condition called acromegaly, which causes abnormal growth, which explains his large size and hand size (he is 6 foot, 7 inches tall.) Later, he married his wife, Becky. They later divorced, and this spurred the creation of his book called, Ultimate Relationship Program. He later married again, this time to Bonnie Humphrey.
Career Life: Tony Robbins began his career working for Jim Rohn, when they were teaching neuro linguistic programming. Tony learned this from John Grinder. Interestingly, it was Grinder who would encourage Tony Robbins to learn to fire walk. Fire walking was an instant crowd pleaser at various seminars he held and it helped to get him media coverage for his event. He would continue to each Neuro Associative Conditioning, or NAC. This helped him to write the book, Awaken the Giant Within where he speaks of how individuals have a greater responsibility for their own change rather than those around them.
To describe his own style of speaking, Tony Robbins says that he is not a motivational speaker but rather a peak performance coach. He states that he works to find out what people do when they are at their peak. Moreover, once he finds this, he helps those people to find a way to get to that peak state whenever they need or want to do so. He believes that this method is a better option over providing motivation, which only offers temporary help.
Mr. Robbins is popular for the many seminars that he has had. These include the following.
- Unleash the Power Within Seminar (four day seminar with Tony live
- Mastery University (which includes the seminar Life Mastery, video presentation
- Date with Destiny
- Wealth Mastery
- Mastery University (includes Life Mastery, may include lectures by Deepak Chopra and John Gray and includes Date with Destiny)
- Leadership Academy
- The Learning Annex Real Estate Wealth Expos, he headlined as a speaker there
- The 2007 Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, or TED
In addition to this, Tony Robbins is also the founder of Anthony Robbins Foundation. This foundation has a mission of helping to empower students, to help prisoners to improve their lives and to fund Discovery Camp, a program designed by Robbins. The foundation also sponsors food drives.
Tony Robbins has endorsements from numerous people and he has met people like Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and many others. He has worked with various sports figures to help improve their results including the Los Angeles Kings, Mike Tyson, and Greg Norman.
