Becoming Anti-Fragile - Tom Bilyeu

Okay, our next presenter, this dude is freaking awesome. Did a podcast episode with him, which is killer. People love it. And how I first heard about him was I was having a phone call with Peter Diamandis about a year ago and he's like, I've got to introduce you to this guy. He's running a company that's doing over a billion a year now. He's a total badass. And he told me about this individual and I was like, great. It'd be great to meet him at some point. And then earlier this year at Abundance360, I had an opportunity to meet him in person because he actually presented at Abundance360. So he's going to talk about fragile. The dictionary defines the word fragile as easily broken or damaged, not a great quality for an entrepreneur to possess. However, if you could become antifragile, that word is defined as you actually grow stronger the more you're attacked or fail. And that's what Tom Bilyeu is going to discuss with us. Tom is the co founder and president of Quest Nutrition, which began making healthy protein bars in their kitchen. Here's one of the protein bars. All of you have one of these in your bags and we're going to have more in baskets outside for all of you. And in just three years, Quest Nutrition exploded and became the second second fastest growing private company in America. And today is over a billion dollar a year business. Tom went from a broke employee living from paycheck to paycheck and at one point actually scrounging through his couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in his car, to building a billion dollar business by changing his mindset and building a belief system that made him truly anti fragile. You can do the same thing. Tom's title is becoming Anti Fragile. Please welcome Tom Bilyeu. Hello.

How are you?

Awesome, brother. Hello.

What's up, my man? Thank you so much to be here.

Thank you.

You got it. So becoming antifragile, that is really something that's defined my life. But before I can get to that, I have to tell you, I am not a born entrepreneur. And I know that there are many born entrepreneurs here. And I'm sure I look somewhat like an alien species to you. I did not have a lemon stand growing up. I did not arbitrage baseball cards or candy. I was forced to get a paper route, but I was so lazy that I didn't collect the money, so I actually did the paper route. You get paid half of it just for doing it, but the other half you have to go door to door. So I did it for half. That is the profound way to which I was lazy as a kid and not at all thinking like a problem solving entrepreneur. But somehow, someway, even with that going against me, I was able to do something to my mind that allowed me to go from, as Joe was saying, scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car. That's a real story. I wish it weren't, but that's a real story. To co founding and building a billion dollar business. Now the question is, what did I do to my mind in order to get to that place? And to tell you that story, I'm going to walk you through exactly what my entrepreneurial journey looked like. So I met two guys who ended up becoming my business partners. And, and they made a pitch to me. Hey, we're starting this technology company. You seem like a really bright kid. We've got a role as a copywriter. Why don't you come on and be the copywriter and then don't think of yourself though as a copywriter. This is a startup. You can have any role in the company that you want. You just have to become the right person for that role. Now I was just young enough and just dumb enough to believe them. I thought that sounded awesome.

Yay.

So I joined the startup and then began the long and arduous process of getting my ass kicked. And what was happening was I didn't have the skill set to keep up with these guys. My business partners are incredibly bright. Their IQs far outshine my own. And I'm just talking from a pure ability to process raw data. I don't overvalue iq, but I understand that it has certainly its applications and they're just two incredibly bright guys. So here I was, I had this goal in my life and that goal at the time, it's since changed, but that's a whole other 10 minute talk. My goal at that time was to get rich. I wanted to get rich more than just about anything. So I had the ambition to do what I needed to do, but I didn't know what that was. And so I would find myself in discussions with these guys where I would present my case, something that I believed in, something that I thought was right for the business. And they would just out argue me. And they would out argue me all the time. Now if you're somebody who is foolish enough to pride yourself on being right and this is such an important thing to understand because what you build your self esteem around matters and the whole punchline of this talk is going to be that how did I go from being broke and having the traditional employees mentality of keeping my head down, doing as little work as possible, and avoiding punishment at all costs? The way that I escape that was, was by finally realizing the thing that was holding me back. And what was holding me back was I had a fixed mindset. If you know Carol Dweck, I had a fixed mindset. I believed that my talents and intelligence were fixed. That was it. They were as good as they were ever going to be. There was nothing that I could do about it. It was kind of like height. Now I've done nothing to earn my height and yet I can say, hey, I'm six feet tall. And I try to stand around people that are shorter than me. I try to avoid NBA players, I try to avoid NFL stars, I try to avoid Tony Robbins. If you've ever stood next to Tony Robbins, that guy is nuts. He's so big. One of the most heart wrenching photos of my life is Tony holding me in a warm embrace, making me look like a child. But the intellect to me was the same way. There was nothing that I could do about it. So it was what it was. And my job was to put myself in situations where I could shine. Now the problem was now I was working with these two guys that I couldn't shine anymore. They were way smarter than me. And it wasn't exactly hard to see that not only were they able to process data more rapidly than I could process data, but they'd been in business for like 15 years before I met them. So now I'm in a position where everything I do makes me feel bad about myself. And so I hatch a plan. I'm going to get really good at arguing and I'm going to debate because I have two choices. I can either remove myself from this situation or I can find a way to feel good. Because people are going to feel good about themselves. And when you think about what suicide really is, suicide is the moment when somebody believes they can no longer feel good about themselves. Now it's false, but that's what they believe. And because of that belief, they check out. And why wouldn't you if it were true? If you could never feel good about yourself again, what would be the point? So I was going to get good at debating and I was going to win some of these arguments and I was going to find that chink in their armor and I was going to explode it so that I could, even if I didn't feel smart about myself, that I could get that reflected back from them, that they thought I was smart. And so I remember the day that it finally happened. We were debating something and I knew their idea was right, which really sucked. But I had gotten so good at arguing that I convinced them to do my idea. And then I thought, oh shit, what have I done? Because if my goal is to get rich, I'm now acting in complete opposition to that goal because I know that their idea is right and I've simply used a trick to get them to go my way. And so I had a values crisis, values and identity, drive, behavior. And in that moment, I wasn't sure who I was. Did I want to get rich? Was I willing to do what it took to make money? And if I really did want to get rich. And again, it's changed since then. But that was my focus then. If I really did want to get rich, why on earth did I fight so hard to be right? Because I never said I want to be right. I never said I want to be smart. None of that was happening in my mind. I said I want to get rich. So here I was, moving myself away from that and I realized I've got to make a decision. And if I really am here to achieve my goal, then I need to decide what my goal is. And I can't have both. I can't feel good about myself the way that I defined it, about being smart, about being right and achieve my goals. So I realized I was either going to have to totally abandon self esteem. I actually considered that I'm going to have to totally abandon self esteem, put my head down and just grind it out for a few years with these guys until we can have an exit and I'll be rich and then I can worry about loving myself again or. And this was what changed my life, I could change what I built my self esteem around. Now, unfortunately, I did not have access to Carol Dweck's book, but I realized that instead of fighting to be right, I could put all of my time and attention to identifying the right answer. And once you identify the right answer, you can earn tremendous credibility with your team for saying, hey, I was wrong. That's right. Now I'm gonna put all my energy behind that. And so that's what I began to do. And as I began to do that, I found that the only thing that was standing between me and where I wanted to get was a skills gap. Now that skills gap is what I call mind the gap. And for you Brits, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Mind the gap. That skills gap is everything. Now, the way that you close that skill gap is painful because it starts with the following mantra. I am not yet good enough. It's one of the most controversial things I ever say. Whenever I tweet that out, people freak out. But what I'm saying is, if you're trying to achieve this objective and you do not have the skills to actually accomplish that, you simply are not good enough yet. That's just the truth of the situation. It's the math. As Elon Musk says, boil it down to its physics. That's the physics of the situation. But if you have a growth mindset, you know that you can acquire those skills. And once you set about living your life by the following phrase, everything will change. Do and believe. Do and believe only that which moves you towards your goals. And that brings us to becoming antifragile. As Joe said, when people hear antifragile, they think resilient. They think tough. But both of those things and every other synonym around there is defined by that thing's ultimate breaking point. It is resilient simply because its breaking point is distant. It is strong simply because it can move a lot of weight before it breaks. But they both have breaking points. If you want to be truly antifragile, the game is, the more you realize you're wrong, the more somebody attacks you and tells you you're stupid, the more mistakes you make, you see in that one thing and one thing the ability to get better. And when you see in your failures an absolutely fundamental, bedrock foundation piece of your belief system, which is that, oh, dear God, thank you for pointing out how wrong I've been. Thank you for showing me that this mistake was just that, that it's a mistake. Thank you for making it clear I am not actually moving towards my goals right now. I'm not making progress. Because when you can do that, the more people assail you, the more mistakes you make, the more times you fall on your face, the stronger you get. Because you respond to that with the acquisition of skills. It's the acquisition of skills that matter. Another talk that I would love to give at some point is the fact that we are all in the Matrix, but the matrix is just a metaphor for your mind. And if you have the mind of an entrepreneur and you really can see that acquiring skills will lead you wherever you want it to, you'll truly become capable of the impossible. Thank you.