Review of Tony Robbins' Get The Edge

Introduction

I first did Tony's Personal Power 2 in the summer of June 2002. Overall I got some useful information out of the program and I liked it. So I decided to try some of his other programs. I tried Time of Your Life a few months later but I got bored half way though and I didn't finish it. Then I took a Robbins break. I must admit I didn't continue doing the things I learned in PP2. So I figured I needed a refresher course and decided to try Get The Edge.

The program is supposed to teach you to (quoted from the website):

Master your emotions and massively enhance the quality of your life
Develop deep and lasting relationships for profound fulfillment
Transform your body into the lean, vibrant machine it was designed to be
Capitalize on once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for achieving financial freedom
And more!

Day 1 - Your Hour Of Power

The summary of this tape is to take the first hour of every day and do things for yourself. Tony suggests exercising for at least some of this time (if not all). You can use this time to send emails to your friends and family, work on a project you've been putting off, etc. This isn't a bad idea, but I find during the week my time is especially limited so this isn't as easy to do. He says we must do it to put ourselves first. I usually put my wife first. I don't see my wife that often during the week (I work a lot and have a 1 hour commute each way) and if I come home and tell her I need to do my "hour of power" she would probably kill me.

Day 2- Results Workshop

It's funny, I just did this CD last week and I don't remember much about this tape. I think that's my main gripe about the program. Tony claims you will learn all this stuff, and after you've finished the CD it's hard to remember the details. Maybe if I listened to the CD again I would be able to retain it all. Or maybe all the information wasn't there. The overall point of this CD is to inspire you to work towards your goals.

Day 3- Power of Relationships

This was a pretty good CD, I enjoyed this one. I think Tony gives solid advice here on relationships. It's more geared towards people who aren't married, but I found the information was still useful to those of us who've already choosen our life long partner.

Day 4- Pure Energy Live!

This CD was total bullshit. It was during this CD that I realized Tony is often full of shit. I mean I suspected it, but in this tape he made it totally obvious. First he started talking about acid and how it's bad for the body. I became suspicious but thought maybe it's possible. But then Tony started talking about measuring energy in Mhz. Yes MegaHertz! He claimed a Big Mac has 5 Mhz of energy. I knew from all my science classes that this was complete bullshit! I couldn't believe Tony was saying this. Couldn't he verify his material with a scientist or nutritionist? Hertz measures frequency, not energy. In food energy is measured in calories. Ok, so now I'm suspicious of Robbins. Later he talks about cleansing the body with a wheat germ drink for 10 days. It just so happens his pal Dr. Young has an entire line of products for sale to help us achieve this cleansing! Ok, now I'm really suspicious! Tony's not going to get away with this I say!

Day 5- Power Of Emotions

This CD is OK, the material makes sense but I can't say it benefited me. I don't even remember what it was about and I just listened to it yesterday.

Day 6- Financial Freedom

Tony starts this CD off with a portion of one of his live seminars. For over 10 minutes I listened to how poor he was. How he would go to the grocery store and eat food right there in the store because he didn't have enough money to buy it. How he took a girl to a restaurant and prayed she wouldn't order anything expensive. After 10 minutes of this I had had enough and shut the CD off. On day 4 he made his stupid claims about nutrition, and now he's telling really sad stories of how poor he was. It doesn't take a genius to see what's coming next: How to get rich! He had already mentioned his new business venture DreamLife.com a few times and invited the listener to invest in it (it has already IPO'd and been delisted after going bankrupt).

The next day I finished the tape, and to my suprise Tony gave really solid advice here on investing. I can sum it up right here in two sentences: Invest early and regularly to take advantage of compound interest, and use asset allocation. These are two very simple yet effective rules for investing. I find it a bit misleading that Tony sells this CD package promoting "Capitalize on once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for achieving financial freedom" which turns out to be nothing more than two common pieces of investment advice and advertisements for his seminars and investments. Actually I find it a lot misleading. Don't get me wrong, the advice is very good, but it's advice you can easily find with Google.

Day 7- The Purpose Of Life

It's been less than a week sine I did this CD and I don't remember much about it. The main message was to figure out what your purpose is in life. I guess it relates to goal setting. Like day 2 and 5, I consider this material "fluff". It's only purpose is short term motivation. More on that later.

Summary

I stated in my Review of Personal Power 2 that PP2 contained useful information, rambling, and commercials for seminars. I must add one more ingredient for Get the Edge: A little bullshit. So now my issue is how much of what Robbins is saying is true and how much is false? That's the problem, once I catch someone lying they have lost my trust. I still think Robbins has some good information and good ideas, so if you can separate the useful stuff from the bullshit you can really benefit.

Ignoring the "bullshit", this program contains two sorts of information: Basic useful information that is pretty much common knowledge and can easily be found for free elsewhere, and less useful information that serves mainly as short term motivational material. The useful information was the advice on relationships and the investment advice. The motivational material will make you feel good when you listen to it, and even get you excited about life, but then it wears off and you're left with very little. I think this is a key part of Tony's marketing: He is good at "pumping you up" and making you excited, and that's when he promotes his seminars. And after the motivation has worn off, you're probably even more likely to want to attend a seminar to get this feeling again.

Overall there is no way this program is worth the $200 price tag. There's no groundbreaking material here. There's not even anything new (except for the Big Mac 5Mhz claims). Unlike Personal Power 2, I really felt Get The Edge totally lacked any material to justify any price. Fortunately for me I didn't pay a penny for it, which is about how much I think it is worth.

And finally the most important point in the summary: Robbins' goal is to get you to the seminars, which cost $10,000 (after the "high pressure discount"). His introductory programs are designed to weed out suspicious people like me and to hook naive people with money. Once he gets you to his seminars he will sell you devices that don't work (The Q-Link), investment opportunities that will leave you broke (Dreamlife.com), and of course more seminars (the more advanced ones are held in Fiji where it will cost you over $4,500 per couple for airfare, hotel, and meals, in addition to the $10,000 price tag). I've learned a lot about Tony since starting Personal Power 2, and the more I learn the less I like him.

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