To Tony Robbins, success is a matter of "Awakening the Giant Within." In this case, that giant is worth a ton of cash. The broad-jawed spokesman for self-esteem pulls in more than $80 million from sales of books, tapes and seminars annually. And now, he's self-helping his way into the dot.com craze. Trading on little more than name and charisma, the 39-year-old has become chairman and majority owner of a publicly traded Net company whose value now exceeds $480 million. "We are developing the eBay of personal and professional empowerment," says Robbins.
The new company, GHS Inc., has no revenues from Net operations. As of September 1999, it did not have a Website. In fact, the company had existed only as an obscure provider of medical services. Now, through what is known as a reverse merger, the company is giving Robbins access to  publicly traded stock without the time-consuming, expensive, and disclosure -intensive process of an initial public offering.
Since May 1999, when Wall Street got word that Robbins was coming aboard and GHS would be recreated as a dot.com, the company's stock soared from $.75 to $12. This gave the broker who organized the deal a $48 million dollar paper gain on their original investment. Robbins, who put in no cash, has a stake worth $276 million.
The increased value of GHS stock will enable the group to purchase additional assets. They recently acquired the rights to SanFrancisco-based "The Learning Access" which has more than 700 not-for-credit courses.
Excerpt from Business Week Magazine
Sept. 13, 1999 Pg. 48 By Kathleen
Morris