Last week I spent five days, averaging about 13 hours per day, trying to become a better person and a better business person. I know some of you will say that isn't enough time or my goal is impossible and you might be correct. My family and I attended a Tony Robbins virtual seminar. It is not the kind of thing I would normally do but I did come away with some very interesting observations and yes a lot of knowledge.

My first observation was confirmation of what I suspected based on limited exposure to Tony Robbins. He is a dynamic speaker and has an ability to boil things down to root causes and solutions. He is also an egomaniac. Which to be as successful as he has been you must have a very high level of self-confidence and a very clear vision of what you want to accomplish and how you are going to do so. Yet his inability to even attempt to stick to his published schedule and turn 12 hour days into 15 or 16 hour days for his clients who are paying a lot of money and divesting a lot of time shows that it's all about him. I have no doubt that he really believes he cares about the people he interacts with and I think he does on some level but he is first and always will be.

There were 2000 people attending from 64 countries. Let me put it this way—there were 2000 accounts logged into the zoom call many of whom, like us had three or four people or more attending. At an average of $8500 per account, Tony's organization raked in $17 million over 5 days. That does not take into account the book sales, the T shirt sales, the people who became platinum members (I believe that cost is somewhere around $85,000 per person). The guy has built a business that makes a lot of money not just for himself but those that work for him. And yes he does help other people build their lives and businesses beyond what even they imagined it could be. He has definitely earned it.

But we were in several breakout groups discussing topics working on projects or otherwise engaging each other. Many of them were from different parts of the world and it was amazing to see the entrepreneurial spirit that permeates people who want to make their lives better. Many of them will succeed by coupling what they learned over the week with their own knowledge and drive. But I also realized how many people live by the P.T. Barnum principle of a sucker being born every minute.

Many of the attendees had zoom backgrounds that promoted their NFT business. Tony interviewed 1 man from the Middle East who is making a fortune from selling NFTs. for those of you that do not know, an NFT is a non-fungible token. It is something that does not exist in the real world, but only exists on the Internet. You can never touch it but you still own it. It can be everything from art to tennis shoes that you can put on a video game character. If you can imagine it or see it in the real world you can own it in the digital world.

Nike just purchased a company that makes one of a kind tennis shoes not just for video game characters but as collector pieces. It is believed they paid upwards of $100 million for the company. People who purchase the shoes pay on average of $150 per pair, but some of them will sell for thousands or 10s of thousands of dollars. There have been pieces of so called art that are NFTs selling for $69 million.

You are probably asking the same question that crossed my mind at the time: what keeps somebody from copying the image that I own? I do not understand blockchain technology, the technology that is the basis for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but the geeks claim the coding prevents you from duplicating anything. Because it's a computer technology, I have a hard time believing that. If it's true why isn't my identity kept on blockchain so that no one can steal my credit card?

People are paying good money for these creations and maybe there is some logic behind it although I'm not there yet. And if you can sell something to someone else, making a profit, then more power to you. This isn't like snake oil promising to cure an ill. So people should go into it with their eyes wide open understanding what they are paying for and that they'll never be able to touch it. By the way, I have an image in my head of a beautiful sculpture. I believe this image, if it were able to be carved out of granite or marble, would rival anything that the masters have ever created. I'd be willing to sell it to you right now for the very reasonable price of $10,000. Just send me an email, mike@silvercityradio.com, and we will arrange payment. I will then send you a description of it.