$276 Million: Now That's Motivation

To Anthony Robbins, success is a matter of "Awakening the Giant Within." In his 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., had no revenues from Net operations, nor did it even have a website. In fact, the company has existed only as an obscure provider of medical services which, through what's known as a reverse merger, is giving Robbins a publicly traded stock without the time-consuming and disclosure-intensive process of an initial public offering.

TheShell Game. Here's how it works: GHS's medical business is being spun out to shareholders in a separate company. That leaves a public shell company from which Robbins will launch a yet-to-be-named self-improvement Web site that hopes to include many of the brand names in the industry.

So far at least, the deal has proven to be very lucrative for both banker and motivator. Since May, when Wall Street got word that Robbins was coming aboard and GHS would be recreated as a dot.com, the company's stock has soared from 75 cents to $12. That has given some of its executives a $48 million paper gain on their original $250,000 investment in GHS 15 years ago.

Robbins, who put in no cash, has a stake worth $276 million. What justifies that kind of gain? Not much. The self-help guru gave the new venture exclusive online rights to his name, which it will use to develop Internet self-help seminars, chat rooms, and E-commerce sites. And Robbins' current Web site, anthonyrobbins.com, will be folded into GHS. But his $80 million-plus business selling books and seminars remains private.

By Kathleen Morris in Los Angeles

Muriel Siebert - Wall Street's Big She!

In 1967 college dropout Muriel Siebert made history by becoming the first woman to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). She founded her own brokerage, Muriel Siebert & Co. in 1970.

By February of 1996, Wall Street's top woman executive took her brokerage firm public utilizing a reverse merger with J. Michaels Inc., a defunct, but publicly traded Brooklyn furniture company. By 1999 her firm, Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc. (SIEB) was rated the number one discount brokerage by Money Magazine (June, 1999). Her company's stock reached a 52-week high of over $70 per share.

Ted Turner - Media Mogul

In 1970, with little investment cash, Ted Turner acquired through reverse merger the once publicly traded Rice Broadcasting (WJRJ-TV) in Atlanta. He subsequently created TBS, the first national UHF super station, CNN, and The Cartoon Network. Later he purchased the MGM/UA film library and launched Turner Film Classics. Turner then struck further gold buying a national baseball franchise, which he moved to Atlanta. After an unsuccessful attempt to purchase CBS Network, Turner Broadcasting was itself acquired by the Time/Warner corporation. Today, Ted Turner's personal worth is in excess of five billion dollars.