Self-made billionaire Tony Robbins went from being a janitor to making his first million by 24—he shares the 3 skills Gen Z need to thrive in today’s job market
From earning $40 a week cleaning floors to coaching Bill Clinton, and joining the billionaire’s club, Tony Robbins says these are the three skills Gen Z must master to find success.
Tony Robbins knows that feeling well.
Long before he became a self-made billionaire, best-selling author, and one of the world’s most recognizable motivational speakers, Robbins was a janitor making just $40 a week with no plans to go to college and little clarity about his future. By his early 20s, he was scrambling for opportunity—studying successful people obsessively, seeking mentors, and testing ideas in real time. By 24, he had made his first million as a motivator.
Now, decades later, Robbins—whose past coaching clients include hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones and former President Bill Clinton—recognizes today’s young people are facing a similarly disorienting moment. But he argued the path forward hasn’t changed as much as it might seem.
According to Robbins, the most successful people aren’t those who predict the future perfectly, but those who learn to master patterns. And in today’s volatile economy, Robbins said three pattern-based skills separate those who thrive from those who stall.
1. Pattern recognition
The first step, Robbins said, is learning how to recognize patterns—across industries, careers, and even belief systems.
“What’s the common pattern? What’s [the] common belief system?” he recently told The School of Hard Knocks. “Pattern recognition takes you out of fear.”
For young workers, that might mean studying the advice of successful leaders to spot recurring themes, or tracking which industries and roles are growing in opportunity despite economic headwinds.
2. Pattern utilization
But just spotting patterns isn’t enough—the real advantage comes from learning how to apply them.
“If you look at somebody’s good in finance, it’s because they learn how to not see the pattern, but use the pattern,” Robbins added.
Pattern utilization can be the key to turning insight into income. In reality, this might mean adapting proven business models, borrowing successful habits of high performers, or recognizing market cycles early enough to act on them.
And if you make a mistake, that’s OK—it’s all part of the process. In fact, when he was 25, he admitted he once took the advice of a woman driving a Rolls Royce to invest in penny stocks.
“I took her advice and put my money in those stocks,” he said in 2014. “And I lost everything.”