Lessons from an Empire Builder: How to Scale to $500M w/ Tom Bilyeu

You're listening to Freedom Fast lane presented by capitalism.com this is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.

Hey fastlaners, Ryan here. Welcome to the show. Before we jump in, I wanted to personally invite you to join us at the capitalism conference this December 7th, 8th and 9th. This is made for physical product sellers, Amazon sellers, entrepreneurs with a big vision, people who are building something bigger than themselves. It's for entrepreneurial empire builders. If you are building something with at least a seven figure potential, probably have even bigger sites set than that. You understand the importance of dialing in your marketing and sales and your investing in things that give you cash flow and things that produce wealth over the long term. Then you need to be at the Capitalism conference because you are going to be supported in each of those three areas. We brought in some of the best advisors in the world, including celebrity keynotes like Daymond John Russell Brunson, Kimbal Musk, the founder of the Honest Company, all those people that you want to hear from who can also come back and give you the playbook to getting the results that you want. Whether that is building a million dollar company, a billion dollar company, or just having an extra 10k a month in passive cash flow so that you can live the lifestyle that you want. They're all going to be there advising you at the Capitalism Conference. So I'm inviting you to join us this December 7th, 8th and 9th in Austin and you can grab your seat@thecapitalismconference.com now.

Enjoy this clip.

What was it at the beginning with Quest? What was the actual strategy of getting eyeballs into customers enough to be able.

To prove the model for us?

It was to be online. That's all we cared about. Wanted to market socially, wanted to build a community, wanted basically every gym rat, every trainer in the world to be talking about our product and then to when they came to touch the company to find that there was this really warm ecosystem of people that wanted to celebrate your victories. We wanted to know if you'd lost weight or added muscle, gained weight, which we were huge, still are huge in the anorexic community, which was totally new for us and literally was like, whoa, what's happening? But ended up being just this really beautiful relationship between people who are struggling in a direction that we hadn't really thought about. So that was really neat. So it really was going back to build a community, build a community, make the product available. And then we said no to major retailers for over a year. At one point, we actually hired somebody to say no more artfully, because we were. And it's funny, but it was like we were starting to damage relationships where they were like, hey, at some point I asked so many times, I stop asking. And so you have to be really careful about where people will then do things to spite you. And there are still, there are still some regions of some very, very famous stores regionally that won't carry us because of those days. And we kept saying no.

Who are the hires that you found to be the most advantageous during that time of scaling up the online presence? Do you remember what metrics were being measured and who was managing those and who you brought in to really develop the online presence?

Yeah, we had two really critical hires. Our chief marketing officer, who was just young enough that he really understood social in a way. Like, now I get social. I did not get it at all. Like, when, if to this day, if you follow me on Facebook, it's going to tell you that my birthday is January 1st. It's not. I was so paranoid, I didn't want to put my real birthday out there. So that's like this sort of lingering artifact. And now I've got the photos of my wife and I on Santa's lap. So a whole different ball game. Like, I get now what the game is, but didn't at the time. He really, really did. And then another key hire for us not to do with marketing, but was production. You know, we were three guys, we didn't know anything about production at scale. So we finally had to bring on somebody that didn't just work hard, actually knew that world.

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When Quest was founded, you were complete pioneers. You built products that were very, very unique to the marketplace. And then within a few short years, oh yeah, bars, Julian Bakery, all these other companies that were very similar started to pop up. How did you navigate those waters and continue to grow?

And I ask this because there are.

A bunch of people in the room.

Who are just terrified that if they even talk about their product that other people are gonna come out and steal it.

Yeah.

And you put it out there and are like, bring it on. Oh yeah, bars, bring it on. Muscle tech. And they did. And you continue to grow. How did you navigate that?

So only value is sustainable. And let's be honest, our sales be way bigger if those guys hadn't come in, no question like they've come in, they've taken sales from us. That's the reality of competition. So enjoy the time. If you get it where you're sort of the lone wolf and you're out there and nobody else is doing what you're doing, put a clock on it. Know that it's probably 18 months to two years. It's sort of about the maximum. Sock away some money for a rainy day. And most importantly, innovate. Innovate. There's so many other problems that people are facing. There's so many other things that they want that they need from your company. And if you're putting the resources behind developing that stuff, then you're ultimately going to win. Because there is only one thing that wins and that's value. And if you're delivering value, people will come to you time and time again. And if you fail to deliver value, then you will go away, simple as Tom.

I. I think capitalism is the way we solve all the world's greatest challenges. I think Quest is a shining example of that. So thank you for what you do.

Let's give it up for Tom Bilyeu.

Thank you, guys.

Thanks.

Thank you, sir. Real pleasure, appreciate it.