Speaking in San Jose to a packed stadium of around 12,000, many of whom paid between $650 and $2,995 to attend his Unleash the Power Within (UPW) event, Robbins, a world-renowned life coach known for his profanity-laden approach to self-help, characterized #MeToo as a negative example of people attempting to gain “significance,” according to multiple audience members. It is one of the 6 basic human needs (according to Mr Robbins) and 90% of the audience agreed that it was a need and motivating factor for them. Robbins argued with a woman named Nanine McCool during a March 15 Unleash the Power Within event about how the #MeToo movement is being used. McCool posted another video on Saturday , after the NowThis video went viral, saying she didn't plan on having that exchange with Robbins, but is "grateful and honored to be the catalyst for this discussion." "If you use the #MeToo movement to try to get significance and certainty by attacking and destroying someone else… all you’ve done is basically use a drug called significance to make yourself feel good. Certainly there are people who are using it for their own personal devices, but there are also a significant number of people who are using it not to relive whatever may have happened to them, but to make it safe for the young women… so that they don’t have to feel unsafe.” After a round of applause, she continued: “And I think you do the whole movement a disservice by characterizing it the way you have. I just want to say, Tony, I love you.” 
 
 
 
 The two then went back and forth in an exchange where Robbins said, "I don't feel attacked" and that she was “using it differently than some other people.” He then did an exercise where he told her to hold out her fist, then pushed her fist with his own to make the point that “when you push someone else it doesn’t make you more safe, it just makes them angry.” 
 
 Of the pushing, McCool said, “I thought, 'OK, we're going to fist bump.' Tarana Burke, who started the #MeToo movement, said on Twitter Saturday that Robbins' representatives reached out to her. I thought he wanted me to show how strong I could be and push back, but that's not what he wanted. I initially started pushing back but he immediately pushed back harder. “One was a woman, two were men. In response to Robbins going on about this for a moment, McCool said, "You are a leader and an influential man, and you are doing a disservice in my opinion to the #MeToo movement," a statement that was greeted with applause from the audience. When someone in the audience yelled what sounded like, "Say you're sorry," Robbins laughed and said "I'm not gonna be inauthentic and say I'm sorry about something I'm not sorry about." Jennifer Connelly, a spokeswoman for Robbins, told VICE that in the full context of his speech, Robbins’s remarks about the #MeToo movement were not derogatory and offered the following statement: 
 
 “Tony Robbins is and always has been supportive of the #MeToo movement. On Saturday, McCool posted a personal message to Robbins on YouTube, urging him to reach out and reiterating her respect for him as a person. "I hope what we can actually do is create a discussion with Tony Robbins instead of at Tony Robbins," she said.
– "I'm not gonna be inauthentic and say I'm sorry about something I'm not sorry about," said Tony Robbins on March 15. On April 8 came the apology. The self-help guru found himself in the crosshairs after comments he made about the #MeToo movement during a March event started grabbing attention. CNN explains the seed of it all: a conversation Robbins had with an audience member named Nanine McCool during his Unleash the Power Within event in San Jose, one that was projected onto the big screen. McCool told him she thought he misunderstood the #MeToo movement; a key line of his response: "If you use the #MeToo movement to try to get significance and certainty by attacking and destroying someone else, you haven't grown an ounce. All you've done is basically use a drug called significance to make yourself feel good." Where things went from there: CNN reports McCool posted a video of the 11-minute exchange on YouTube on March 25. Two days prior, Vice ran an article on Robbins' comments based on the accounts of a few of the event's roughly 12,000 attendees. One explained that Robbins characterizes "significance" as one of our "6 basic human needs. ... Tony went on to say, in a nutshell, that women in the #metoo movement were motivated by this same factor (to be significant)."