Born in downtown Los Angeles in 1960, Tony Robbins comes from humble beginnings. His stepfather, a former minor league baseball player who was working as a salesman, struggled to get by, and the family often couldn't afford to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Robbins has coached some of the world's most high-profile people, including Oprah Winfrey, Andre Agassi, Bill Clinton, Paul Tudor Jones, Serena Williams, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana, and Mother Teresa.
His six-day "Date with Destiny" seminar costs $5,000 per person, and he regularly gets paid seven figures for one-on-one personal coaching.
He's also quietly built an empire. The Anthony Robbins Company isn't just limited to his speaking engagements: it's a diversified group of businesses in industries such as hospitality, education, media production, and business services. The companies reportedly have a combined revenue that is approaching $6 billion a year.
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdToday, Robbins lives in Palm Beach, Florida. "I'm a freak for the ocean," he told Fortune. "It energizes me." His house has a 165,000-gallon infinity pool and a master bedroom that overlooks the ocean. Robbins also owns homes in Palm Springs, California; Sun Valley, Idaho; and the small town in British Columbia where his wife, Sage, grew up.
He also owns the Namale Resort and Spa in Fiji, a five-star resort which offers luxury villas, spa cuisine, massages and hydrotherapy, and scuba diving trips to nearby coral reefs. It has been rated the top spa and resort in Fiji for nearly ten years.
Along with Magic Johnson and Mia Hamm, Robbins invested in the Los Angeles Football Club, a new Major League Soccer franchise. He and his partners are building a $250 million state of the art stadium in downtown LA using their private funds.
He has made cameo appearances in the movie "Shallow Hal" and TV show "The Sopranos" as himself, and played an alien in the movie "Men in Black."
Robbins is known for being a high-energy speaker, and he finds that taking a cold plunge into an ice bath helps him recover from the intensity of his seminars. He also uses a cryotherapy machine to expose his body to –220° F temperatures for three minutes at a time, and avoids alcohol, caffeine, red meat, and chicken.
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdHe travels exclusively by private jet, and says it has changed his productivity more than anything on earth. "There's nothing that changes quality of life when you travel as much as I do, as that," he told the So Money podcast.
Robbins hasn't forgotten his humble roots. The Anthony Robbins Foundation feeds more than four million people around the holidays each year through its international "Basket Brigade," and provides fresh water to over 100,000 people a day in India, where water-borne disease is the leading cause of death for children. His foundation runs programs to help the homeless, encourage youth leadership, and provide his books and tapes to prisoners.
In 2014, Robbins contributed $1 million to the $15 million Global Learning X Prize, which will be awarded to an organization that finds an innovative way to transform learning with technology.
Now see how the founder of Spanx spends her billions: