Tony Robbins

Full name: Anthony Jay Robbins, born Anthony J. Mahavoric. He took the surname of his stepfather, Jim Robbins, who legally adopted him at age 12.

Born: 29 February 1960, North Hollywood, California. He grew up in Southern California and attended Glendora High School.

Residence: Manalapan, Florida. He also owns the Namale Resort and Spa in Fiji.

Robbins married Rebecca “Becky” Jenkins in 1984 after meeting her at a seminar, and adopted her three children from previous marriages, including actress Jolie Jenkins. The couple filed for divorce in 1998.

His first child, Jairek Robbins, was born in 1984 to his girlfriend Liz Acosta and is also a coach and trainer.

In October 2001 he married Bonnie “Sage” Humphrey, now known as Sage Robbins, and the couple had a daughter in 2021. Sage co-hosts some of his events and podcasts.

Robbins attended Glendora High School in California and did not go to college. He has described his home life as chaotic and abusive, and he left home at 17, later working as a janitor.

He has said that he educated himself through extensive reading of biography, psychology and personal development, treating the authors as mentors.

As a teenager he grew 10 inches in a year, a growth spurt later attributed to a pituitary tumour.

At 17 Robbins began working for the motivational speaker Jim Rohn, promoting his seminars. Rohn’s emphasis on personal responsibility and self-improvement strongly shaped his early thinking.

He then studied neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and began teaching self-improvement seminars of his own. He also learned firewalking and made it a signature exercise in his events.

Robbins describes himself as a life and business strategist. His work covers several connected areas.

• Personal development and peak performance
• Business strategy and executive coaching
• Personal finance and investing
• Relationships and communication
• Health, wellness and longevity

His methods draw on NLP techniques, physical state change and goal setting.

In the 1980s Robbins built a following with energetic seminars featuring firewalks, and his book Unlimited Power (1986) brought him national attention. Infomercials for his audio programme Personal Power made him a familiar face on American television.

• 2010: NBC aired Breakthrough with Tony Robbins, cancelled after two episodes; OWN later picked it up.
• 2012: Oprah Winfrey walked on fire at his Unleash the Power Within seminar for Oprah’s Next Chapter, and he co-hosted Oprah’s Lifeclass on OWN.
• 2014: Published Money: Master the Game and joined the investor group behind Los Angeles FC.
• 2016: The Netflix documentary Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru was released.

In recent years his focus has widened to investing and longevity.

Robbins’s books range from personal psychology to investing and health.

• Unlimited Power (1986): his first book on peak performance and NLP.
• Awaken the Giant Within (1991): his best-known guide to taking control of emotions, health, relationships and finances.
• Money: Master the Game (2014): a #1 New York Times bestseller based on interviews with investors such as Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn and John Bogle.
• Unshakeable (2017) and The Path (2020): co-written with Peter Mallouk.
• Life Force (2022): on precision medicine, co-written with Peter Diamandis and Robert Hariri.
• The Holy Grail of Investing (2024): co-written with Christopher Zook.

Robbins has worked one-on-one with public figures including Bill Clinton, Hugh Jackman, Pitbull and NFL player Justin Tuck. He has counselled business leaders such as Peter Guber, Steve Wynn and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, who has publicly credited him with helping Salesforce grow.

Tennis champion Serena Williams is among the athletes quoted on his official site. A 2014 Fortune profile described him as a “CEO whisperer” for his work with senior executives.

Robbins teaches that people can change quickly when they change their emotional state, their beliefs and the meaning they give to events. He often says that “the secret to living is giving”.

• State and physiology: Posture, breathing and movement shape emotions and focus.
• Modelling: Studying and copying the strategies of successful people, an idea drawn from NLP.
• Six human needs: Certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth and contribution drive behaviour.
• Progress and action: Happiness comes from progress, and knowledge is only potential power until acted upon.

In 1991 Robbins founded the Anthony Robbins Foundation to support young people, the homeless and hungry, the elderly and prisoners. Its best-known programme is the volunteer-run International Basket Brigade, which delivers food baskets to families in need, inspired by a Thanksgiving basket his own family received when he was a boy.

In 2014 he donated the profits of Money: Master the Game, plus a personal gift, through Feeding America. That 100 Million Meals Challenge grew into the 1 Billion Meals Challenge, which reached its goal in November 2023, two years ahead of schedule.

In April 2025 Robbins and Feeding America launched the Next Billion Meals Challenge, a new ten-year effort.

Robbins’s seminars and training programmes run through Robbins Research International. His current speaker biography describes him as chairman of a holding company of more than 120 privately held businesses with combined annual sales exceeding $22 billion.

• Hospitality: Namale Resort and Spa in Fiji.
• Sports and esports: Investor in Los Angeles FC (2014) and Team Liquid (2016).
• Health: Fountain Life diagnostics and, from 2024, The Estate longevity hotels with Sam Nazarian.

Robbins’s net worth is commonly estimated at around $600 million. He does not publish his finances, so figures for his income and the revenue of individual events remain estimates.

His wealth comes from seminars and coaching programmes, book and audio sales, and stakes in the businesses he chairs or has invested in.

The documentary Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru, directed by Joe Berlinger, followed his 2014 Date with Destiny event in Boca Raton. It premiered at South by Southwest in March 2016 and was released on Netflix on 15 July 2016.

On television he hosted Breakthrough with Tony Robbins (2010) and co-hosted Oprah’s Lifeclass (2012), and he had a cameo in the film Shallow Hal (2001). He also reaches audiences through infomercials, audio programmes, a YouTube channel and podcasts.

Robbins advises speakers to address only subjects they are passionate about and believe they can add something unique to. He stresses preparation and understanding an audience’s wants, needs and fears before speaking.

His own events rely on audience participation, music, movement and long sessions designed to shift emotional state.

Robbins’s official biography notes that Harvard Business Press named him one of the “Top 200 Business Gurus” and that American Express chose him as one of the “Top Six Business Leaders in the World” to coach its entrepreneurial clients. It also says he was in the top 50 of Worth magazine’s 100 most powerful people in global finance for three consecutive years.

In 2014 Fortune profiled him as the “CEO whisperer”.

His career has also drawn legal scrutiny. In 1995 Robbins Research International settled with the Federal Trade Commission for $221,260 in consumer redress without admitting wrongdoing. In 2016 dozens of participants reported burns at a Dallas firewalk. In 2019 BuzzFeed News published allegations of sexual misconduct, which Robbins denied; he sued BuzzFeed in Ireland but discontinued the case in 2025.