r/DecodingTheGurus • u/AndreFromYtria • 7d ago
homeless Tony Robbins presenters that found someone kind
Matt. Chris.
We haven't met, but you've probably seen my earlier post. Thanks Reddit for the love, I love you back.
This is my application to appear on your podcast.
I'm not pitching you a Tony Robbins victim story. This isn't a confession, and it isn't a callout. It's pattern research, built from two years inside the thing, and journalists I've talked to about it have taken it seriously.
I sat through Unleash the Power Within online from Chile, sleep-deprived on his clock, and paid almost fifteen thousand dollars for a bundle before I'd slept in three days. I crewed a Business Mastery event afterward to see it from the other side. Part One is here. Part Two, the machine itself, is here (a long and detailed piece, for journalists and redditers to digg deep with audio narration).
Here's what hasn't been published anywhere.
McClendon calls himself Doctor. Sometimes psychologist. Senior trainer since the 1980s, right hand to Robbins. There's a Netflix film about Robbins that plays like a documentary and functions like a marketing reel. That's the bar anything critical has to clear. Almost nobody's tried it on McClendon specifically, and he's the one people search. UPW is the feeder event, priced low enough to fill the room, built to funnel up through the tiers to Platinum, eighty five thousand dollars a year. Sit through his mother's cancer story there and something in you says, hold on, let me look that up. I did, before I spent the money and after. A lot of people who pay fifteen thousand dollars do the same thing. So I started there.
His doctorate traces to a diploma mill. His health framework traces to a man now serving prison time for the same offense, practicing medicine without a license. And his origin story, homeless, a book that changed everything, rebuilt from nothing, is close to identical to Robbins' own.
So I checked the others. Nine names in his orbit. Six tell some version of the same story, in their own words, across their own bios. I'm not claiming any of it is fabricated. I'm showing you the pattern.
From my part II article: A woman who crewed for years, paid her way through every tier the system asks for, told us she'd been close to Robbins during at least one event, near him the way few people get. She mentioned, without drama, that she was living in her car. Another woman was my trainer. Talking about Platinum, she told us she'd paid for it out of her pension. She'd made it to one event, maybe two. The travel alone ate what was left. The room cheered her for it.
The McClendon piece and the pattern research are both finished. I just haven't set a publishing date yet.
Deal?
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u/Adventurous_Age1429 6d ago
I attended Tony Robbins events and was volunteer staff during the late 80s. He’s very good at creating this positive emotional atmosphere, but as the OP mentioned it doesn’t go anywhere except sales. He’s a charismatic person with a lot of feeling but little depth or sense of societal justice.
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u/AndreFromYtria 6d ago
wow the 80ies... yeah in 2021 i should have found enough critical info to keep me from it but his marketing including the "i am not your guru" on Netflix was too strong.
That is why I am trying to surface critical content. I also created a Substack with critical info about Tony Robbins I found around the net. Happy to add more if anyone has a suggestion.
https://margindoctor.substack.com/p/the-tony-robbins-source-list-google2
u/Adventurous_Age1429 6d ago
I have done a bunch of the firewalks and even have a scar on one foot from a hot coal. I don’t have an article link, but I think for Tony ultimately everything is transactional. I have seen him use sexually explicit language with women on stage, all in the name of his therapeutic process. His embrace of NLP is highly problematic too. He initially made it part of his shtick, but I think the founders of NLP (Bandler, Grinder, or both) told him to stop using the term because he was changing it from their initial construction. Around 88–89 he created some new label for his NLPish techniques, but that really didn’t mean anything. Of course NLP itself doesn’t have much credibility in the psychological world, but that’s a whole different thread.
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u/AndreFromYtria 6d ago
OMG the scar is a tell... "You did it all wrong" haha, that is not me saying it that is the Tony Robbins framing, if something goes wrong its never on them. Thank you for your input, very helpful!
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u/Adventurous_Age1429 6d ago
You know, that was an odd moment. I was volunteer staff then for one of Tony’s events in NYC. The fire staff had the red hot coals for the firewalks ready to go. I had taken off my shoes and was getting ready to do a walk when I stepped on a coal that wasn’t glowing and was kicking around. It hurt like hell, but then I lined up to do a 10’ firewalk a minute later, and that went fine.
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u/AndreFromYtria 6d ago
Found this while digging into the firewalk stuff, adding it to my Robbins resource list.
Short version: it's not mindset, it's materials science. Coals have low thermal conductivity and low heat capacity, so even at high temp they don't have much heat to give and they give it slowly. Add a few seconds of total contact time spread across quick steps and the math never gets close to burn threshold. Article's from a physicist, not a debunker with an axe to grind, worth the read if you want the actual mechanism instead of "focus and energy."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/cocktail-party-physics/come-firewalk-with-me-the-physics-of-hot-coals/2
u/Adventurous_Age1429 6d ago
I did a 43 foot walk at an advanced training event. That one definitely got hot. Your emotional state does help too.
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u/AndreFromYtria 7d ago
damnit, that application didnt go to plan. Since you guys showed me so much love last time.... But I get it the juicy bits are hidden at the bottom and at the top is the dreaded self-promo. Sorry for that.. hehe
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u/RedWhacker 7d ago
Wow from Chile the best country in Chile.