How To Build Your Reputation Quicker By Being an Authentic, Value-Creating Marketer - I Love Marketing Episode #248

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and.

This is the I love marketing podcast.

Everybody.

It's drunk Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And I am really excited about what's going to happen here. Dean, are you excited?

I am very excited.

Good, good. All right. Well, we have a really amazing entrepreneur who I recently met a few months ago. His name is Tom Bilyeu. He's the co founder and president of Quest Nutrition. If you've not seen Quest, it is everywhere. He's leading the company's sales and marketing teams as well as providing the driving force behind the company cult of passion and transformation. Having grown up in a family that struggle with obesity, Tom brings an intense enthusiasm to Quest's mission to end metabolic disease. Tom and his business partners have been working as a team for 13 years across multiple companies. Quest, however, is unlike anything else they've ever done before. Historically driven by an obsessive focus on profitability and companies designed to be sold. They found a Quest with the goal of building a company with a mission. A company designed to last. To do so, they asked themselves one question. What would we love doing even if we were failing? The answer to that question was Quest Nutrition. The company built upon the foundation of delivering unparalleled value to customers by solving the grand challenges of human metabolism. By the end of their third year, Quest was named the second fastest growing private company in America, growing at over 57,000%. That is a true number. Via Inc. 5,000. They're growing over 57,000%. So that's the only portion of this episode I will be reading anything. That's the bio. So Tom, great to great to have you. Have you here with us.

Thank you, man. Truly my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. You guys are killing it with this thing.

Yeah, yeah, we're doing awesome. And we recently met at through our buddy Peter Diamandis. You actually spoke at his Abundance360 event, which was super cool. It was originally my idea for Peter to start doing those and I did the very first one with him when it was a small group and now it's much bigger and we have mutual friends like Tony Robbins, who I texted him, you said hello and he's like Tom is awes and so you're killing it out there. So if people listening to this look around, they'll probably see Quest everywhere because it's really. Your company's growing like crazy. So what I'd like to do is have you first give us a background for people that are not Familiar with Quest Nutrition. What do you do? What do you guys sell? And then we'll go into some questions about the beginning of how you started all of this. But let's have you describe what is Quest.

So Quest Nutrition is a food company. And I think most people think of us as a protein bar company, but that was never our intention. We started there just because we saw that there was an unmet need in the marketplace. But at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is end metabolic disease in all of its forms. And I think our definition of what metabolic disease is continues to expand as people realize that more and more of the health problems that we're facing are actually diet related. So people are now calling Alzheimer's disease diabetes type 3, acknowledging it as a blood sugar disorder of the brain cancer. There's a very compelling hypothesis that cancer is also a metabolic disease. So, you know, and a lot of these problems have suffered and suffered because people are only looking at drug interventions and they're not looking at really what is potentially the root cause of everything, which is your diet. So we wanted to come in and really revolutionize the food industry. And that was what we were thinking about from the beginning. And we made a promise to each other. We would either do it right or we wouldn't do it at all. So when we got into it, we got into it with that mission. And that mission has really continued to be the driving force behind everything that we do.

Awesome.

Awesome.

So, Dean, I mean, I know you would ask the same question. So let's go take us back to the beginning of Quest. Where did it all begin? And tell us your story, because I know you're pretty much like a convert of the same sort of advice and things that you now really, because you not only have a product business, but you're out there, you have your, your own. We're going to give all the URLs and we'll put those in the show notes and we'll let everyone know all the stuff that you're doing. But you really are like a coach to probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people along with Quest. But it all started with you kind of transforming yourself not only physically, but also in your business where you were making money, but you were not happy. So tell us about all that.

That is incredibly accurate. So Quest really is a company that was born out of misery. And that's the truth. And that's the only way for me to really start this story. My partners and I, we had a very successful Technology company before this, we had the stated mission of getting rich. We showed up every day busting our asses round the clock, seven days a week. We had a pledge to each other which was we would do anything to make the company more profitable. So if that meant skipping an anniversary or showing up at 2am on a Friday night, then that's just what you did. And we did that for almost a decade. And towards the end, we're making money, we're winning awards because that company in 2010 was named as the 42nd fastest growing private technology company in North America. So we're doing really well. We're standing in this beautiful conference room overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and I turned to my partners and said, what was at the time heresy? And it was, I'm totally miserable and I have no interest in chasing money anymore. And they were sort of taken aback and in that moment realized for themselves that they felt exactly the same. And so we had this just incredible moment where the three of us had never wanted to betray that promise we had made to each other of seeing this through until we had that big exit and just could go retire on an island somewhere. And we really looked inward and started asking and Dean, you, I think some of those 10 questions that you ask yourself that really define how you live your life, so powerful. But we had never done that. So finally, for us to say, wait a second, making a bunch of money, if it were on my top 10, it's going to be really low. So what's really high on my top 10? And we began to understand that finding meaning, having significance and significance in a Tony Robbins way, where it's not, I'm important because I have a gun and I'm holding it to your head. It's significance in the service of other. Once we realized, hey, the real question we need to ask and answer with our lives is what would we want to do and would love even if we were failing? And the answer for that, for three very different reasons, by the way, was to get into health and fitness, nutrition specifically. And for me, I grew up in a morbidly obese family. I had struggled with my own weight. In fact, I only learned about nutrition because I was £230. I was desperate to avoid the fate of my family, who were all just incredibly obese. I had an uncle when I was 12. So, you know, this is back before morbid obesity even had a name. But he, when I was 12, he ate himself to death. And it was just sad and tragic, and I didn't want that for Myself or for anybody that I love. So for me, it was about answering the challenge of how do you get people to make better choices without first having to convince them that it's the right answer, right? And everybody right now, they're going to tell you that they've got to want to change, right? But imagine food very much like a drug, right? So imagine you're looking at a drug addict. You love them to death, but you see that they're creating this turmoil in their life. You want to help them desperately, but they're in the grips of essentially an addiction. And rather than waiting for them to hit rock bottom, which is obviously an unpleasant experience for them, what if we could just really reverse engineer this and look at the truth of why they're eating the way that they're eating. And the reality is it's the human condition. Food's amazing, right? And if you're in a bad mood, a bowl of ice cream actually will cheer you up. And we just wanted to be honest about that. Like, people celebrate with food, they soothe themselves with food. They bond over food, right? Thanksgiving, you all gather around a meal. Christmas, you gather around a meal. There's just a birthday, a meal and a cake. It's like those. That's what's really going on. And it's beautiful, right? And I love that. And I loved how amazing food was for people. I just hated that a certain type of food that we happen to really enjoy eating happens to also be really bad for you. So could we do the hard work of saying, I'm going to make sure that it tastes really good, I'm going to make sure that you want to eat it so that I can take advantage of your biological impulses. But I'm also going to do the hard work of making sure that it's good for you. And looking around, there just was no company asking that question. And to us, there's three questions that have to be asked and answered. Question one, does, does it taste good? Because the people don't eat it. You don't have anything. You don't even have a business at that point. Question two, is it good for you? So you can have a business because people are eating your product, but if you're not asking if it's good for you, you know, got essentially the junk food industry where you're killing people. And then the third is, is it inexpensive? And right now, every food company is asking 1 in 3, does it taste good and is it cheap? And we've got the global pandemic of diet related Diseases that we see, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and then the other ones, which maybe haven't gained widespread mainstream acceptance as diet related diseases. But I think that'll probably pan out and we'll see that this is a pretty big and pervasive problem. So for me, it was so personal, man. I was thinking about my mom and my sister like every day, like I can show up fighting for those two, right? I love them to death and I want to see amazing things happen in their life. So I'm willing to fight for that. So I'm not going to chase money. That's not interesting because I see where that ends up. But look, we're not dumb. We knew that there was a real big business opportunity here. And I fully believe in wealth creation. And I think that people that solve the grandest challenges that we face as a society, they're going to do it because they've access to resources. You know, you can't hang around with Peter Diamandis for too long before you realize like, whoa, with the right set of resources and people, we can tackle any challenge that we face, whether it's getting off this planet, whether it's changing the medical paradigm, or in our case, whether it's completely revolutionizing the food industry. But it does take access to resources. So I'm not bashful about that. I'm all about wealth creation. I think it's super powerful. I just think that for people to really have the sense of fulfillment that they want in their life and that certainly I wanted in my life, it doesn't come from chasing money, because money is not an end. Money is a facilitator. And once you know in your own life, for you individually, what you want money to facilitate, now you can chase that. And that's where this all started. We just finally had that vision of what we wanted the money to facilitate. We stopped thinking about the money, we started thinking about that end goal of ending metabolic disease. And suddenly we could get people to rally around us. We had the energy to fight and to show up every day and just be prepared to kick a ton of ass and learn and grow and improve the business. And then it took off.

Wow. There's so much in that, what you just said. I mean, there's so many things to unpack a little bit. And it just resonates so perfectly with the things that we talk here on the podcast. I mean, we stay to start with a very specific single target market. And I mean, you know, purpose, like you've got your end metabolic disease, the pretty specific purpose but what you've done in terms of personifying it, like attaching it to a real person, your family, you are, essentially, everything that you're doing is for their benefit. I mean, you're doing this for them. And your three questions really resonate with our idea of what would be a dream come true for your client. If you start with that as the beginning, you know, who wouldn't dream of something that tastes good? Is it good for you? And inexpensive. I mean, if you could make. If Oreos were healthy for you, imagine how thin everybody would be or how healthy people would be. I mean, really. Right? I mean, that's. That's the thing. So congratulations. I'm excited. I mean, it's just. It's moving.

Yeah. You know, there was a lot that you actually said there. I mean, we could just take apart. If we just spent the rest of the episode just kind of like going deeper with everything. You said there would be so much value already. I like the part where you said most companies are asking, does it taste good? And is it inexpensive? And right before I hopped on this podcast to record it with you guys, I was speaking to a group for a company I advise called truerest.com. they are literally the leading company in America for float pods. They have a franchise new company, but they're the top currently, and they're just going to get bigger and bigger in this whole new industry. I was telling them that I wouldn't be giving this talk I'm about to give you guys if this was a McDonald's franchise. Do they have smart business systems at McDonald's? Yes. I mean, they do a lot of smart things. They make a lot of money. But what they sell, I don't, you know, this is my opinion. I don't consider it very. You know, it's not healthy. And the truth is, you know, money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And so what I said is that you can be in the transaction business or you can be in the transformation business. And what I see you doing, Tom, you know, aside from your company, you've got, you know, InsideQuest, which I'm going to ask you about in a minute here. But basically, you're not only having this company that sells this food, this nutritious food and package, the way that you have packaged it, but you're also helping feed people's minds because you're constantly putting knowledge and information. So I do want to ask you about that because you're clearly a convert of your own system. I mean, you're learning. You've learned so much. And you said money is a facilitator, but you got to decide what do you want it to facilitate and chase that. I mean, that's a huge insight, and I really want to just highlight that for people, because talk about changing the direction of your life drastically, if you could just get that down. And then you said having the energy to fight, because I really believe the most valuable assets we have as humans, to be resourceful and to get things done and to have human happiness is for one. Where does our attention go? I mean, out of all the different things that you can put your attention on, where does it go? And how do you manage your energy? And that has a lot to do with, you know, doing something that you can really believe in. Because if you don't, I mean, what do you, you know, what do you. What do you wake up every day for enthusiastic about? I mean, and so you clearly know how to build a business and you know how to make money. And you did that for, you know, many, many years, but you weren't happy with it, and you made that shift. So I'd love to have you kind of break down what had to happen to you physically along with mentally for you to make those changes in your life. Because I know you mentioned you're overweight. I'd love to, like, talk about the pain or what was it that that caused you to create what you have now?

I'm very much a move towards Guy versus being a move away from Guy. So it's pretty rare that something like what happened from the business side had to happen. Where I truly hit an emotional low. And doing quest was me rebelling against all the sort of stupid mistakes that I had made. Acting out of step with my emotions, right? Like, I knew, like, just, I don't want to swim in my money like Scrooge McDuck, but that was just the only way, the only way I could think about. I need to have access to these resources so I can go on and do something. But I was foolish and didn't make the demand that you make the money by doing that thing, by serving the people that you want to serve, right? So that would have saved me a lot of time, but, hey, I got there in the end. But when it came to my body, when it came to diet, when it came to getting myself in order to, that was really me getting excited about being in shape. It was me getting excited about feeling good, feeling healthy. And so that was like a classic vision board scenario where I put up images of people who looked like I wanted to look, and I just went after it. And I started surrounding myself with people that were of that culture. My business partners. One of the first things we bonded over, they were physical culture guys, but they were also really smart. So they really helped break that paradigm. Sort of the dumb bodybuilder for me. And they showed me that there's. There's a truly powerful intellectual side to that as well. And the reason that I think going to the gym is so powerful is so many people struggle with confidence, they struggle with insecurities. And the gym is one of those things where it's completely in your control and it begins to give you these little victories that then begin to influence your self. Narrative. And I cannot stress enough, Life to me is about the narrative you tell yourself and how much you actually believe that narrative. Now, if you tell yourself a negative narrative and you believe it, you're in real trouble. If you tell yourself a positive narrative but you don't believe it, you've maybe made the smallest of strides. If you tell yourself a positive story and you allow yourself to prove it to yourself over time with these small victories, then you really begin to embody the confidence, and that emboldens you more. And then you prove more to yourself, and then you really get confident and you get into this virtuous cycle. So I'll break it down in terms of dieting in the gym. So I was a guy that used to keep a big one of those big buckets of Red vine licorice on my desk, and I knew nothing about nutrition, so I thought, hey, it doesn't have fat. It must be good for me not thinking that sugar turns into fat. And that's an absolutely horrific way to go about things. So began to learn about nutrition and just realizing, hey, eating licorice doesn't help. And then not eating licorice, that was a victory, right? I said something intellectually that I'm going to do. I'm no longer going to eat licorice. And then it was, I'm no longer going to eat carbohydrates or sugar or, you know, whatever it is along the path that you end up cutting out of your diet and just having the discipline to pass it up. You begin to feel a certain way and you begin to tell yourself the story of, I'm the guy that's disciplined enough not to eat that, even though I want to. Same with the gym. I'm the guy that's disciplined enough to show up every day. And then you realize on day one, maybe I can't lift a 50 pound weight. But then a month in, two months, in, whatever I can, you realize that you're malleable. And then you just begin to ask the question, how malleable am I? Is it just the body? Is it the body and the mind? And that's when I began to realize, holy hell, the brain is just like the body. As much as you can beef up the body, make it capable of jumping higher, running faster, pushing more weight, pulling more weight, you can do the same with the mind and make it capable of things that it earlier was not capable. Through discipline, practice, and pushing yourself and always living at the edge of your current abilities so that you can extend that out further. And then that has the impact on that self narrative. Right. So then it becomes, whoa. Like I'm the guy that learns. I learn fast. And now I just happen to have more information at my desk disposal, so I'm able to execute on things. Which all of that getting in that virtuous cycle of believing that you can add a skill, then adding the skill, then using the skill, and that skill actually impacts your life. Whether that's more revenue, better relationships, whatever the case may be, but as a real, tangible, measurable result in your life, then you get addicted to the learning cycle. Right. Which is what's happened to me. Yeah.

We're going to need a couple of hours to. We can't. This is crazy. All this wisdom from concentrate is just like, you know, oozing through into my ear holes, right into my brain.

You know what? I've never heard you say that, Dean. Like wisdom from concentrate. That's. That's actually a good line.

I mean, it's, you know, it's one of those episodes. I can tell already. And that's just. I mean, it's fantastic. It's so funny. Tom, I don't know whether you've read Seneca. I've just been reading Seneca lately. Letters from a Stoic.

Well, he did, he did interview Ryan Holiday a while back. So now he's been. He's had.

So Ryan's forced.

Yeah, yeah. You can't be friends with Ryan Holiday and not read Seneca yet. But I have.

But then when you read it, you understand why. I mean, it's just, it's so what? Sounds like when you were saying that chasing money is not the thing. I mean, and literally in the first couple of chapters of the book or the first couple of letters, he's talking about how the two most important things about money are to know how much is necessary and then how much is enough? And that's really like, you know, it's pretty interesting for. And it is empty when you're chasing it just for money beyond when you've reached the point where it's enough and.

Then it's not about money.

And you have just demonstrated when you're saying when you switch the focus so it's not about the money, but it's this massive transformative purpose that that's where everything you, it becomes your lifelong experiment that you get to now really see and push yourself. What am I actually made of? What am I capable of? Pretty cool. And you're saying just even the winds on a physical level transfer over then to your brain and you're really start pushing yourself in all directions. Inspiring.

Yeah, well, I mean, with what you said, you have a company that's now valued over a billion dollars. I don't know what it is, but basically you clearly have put certain business practices and you guys obviously know what the hell you're doing. I mean, you're growing your company. I mean, what are some of the. I mean again, you could probably spend a week describing all of the different things that you do. What are some of the big levers in terms of how you've scaled and built and grown this company that would be useful for all of the entrepreneurs listening to hear about.

You really nailed it when you said that money earned ethically is about value creation. That is so true. And that hit me so hard when we were focused on money and we were chasing money and profitability and that's all we thought about. We never focused on what does the customer really want? Am I delivering enough value? We just tried to be clever marketers. Right? And there's such a difference between being an authentic marketer. Like I'm still trying to market and sell to you for sure. And no uncertain terms, but I'm doing it now in a way where I am actually sincerely trying to answer the question, what will bring more value to you? So when you switch over to that and you're prepared to be authentic and, and you're living in this amazing time that we're all living in now, where you've got social media and you can be rewarded for treating people with dignity, for bringing value to their lives in the most small and sort of tangential ways that gives companies today an opportunity to build a reputation that they will be either rewarded or punished for, depending on what reputation they earn very, very quickly. And we could see. And again, because Quest was such a rebellion against just Trying to be clever, just trying to make money, building a product that I just thought met a niche in the market but had absolutely no emotional attachment to. Like this was going to be okay. Well, if I'm going to keep working this hard, I'm only going to do it if it's something I believe in, if it's actually delivering value, and if it, quite frankly, is the thing that I want to know the most about in the world. Because one of the best piece of advice I ever got was that if you want to succeed in business, you need to know more about everything when you walk into a meeting than everybody else. Right. You certainly need to know more about your industry, more about your company, your competitors. Like, you just need to understand it more. And that's only fun when it's something that you want to be learning about anyway. So we tried to set ourselves up in that scenario.

So.

But to boil it all down, the key thing that we learned was authenticity, to really connect with the people, to connect with the product. And, you know, people often ask, why did we do Inside Quest, which is a show totally about the mind? I almost never bring up nutrition, and if I do, it's only because the guest is asking me some question or it's the only perfect answer to what's being talked about. And I don't do that because I want people to understand, like, this show is meant to bring value to you, and it's not. Not bringing you value by selling the other products I make. But the products that I make are part of a larger of what I'm trying to do, which is help people live a more happy and fulfilled life. Now, one way to do that is to help them with their body by giving them foods that they can eat that they choose based on taste and they happen to be good for them, but the other is to actually help them with the mind. Now, I've had the good fortune, or bad fortune, depending on how you look at it, of starting off my life. And hopefully this language doesn't offend anyone. It's merely meant to remind myself of a place I don't ever want go back to. But I used to have a slave's mentality. I kept my head down, I did as little work as possible, and I avoided punishment at all costs. That was my life. Like, that was me all through high school, college, into my early 20s, my first few jobs out of college. At one point, I was so broke that I was on unemployment. I was paying some bills this month and some the next. I literally, this is Not a figurative story. Literally scrounged through my couch cushions to find enough change the gap in my car at one point. So that's where I started. And I've had to learn how to be an entrepreneur. I am not a born entrepreneur. This has all just been me assessing everything, everything that I believe, everything that I do through one filter. Does it move me towards my stated goals? Yes or no. And once I got to grips with that, because up until I really started being hardcore about that, I often did things that moved me away from my goals. And that was ridiculous. But what it shows you, in fact, I'm going to change that slightly. No one ever does something that's out of step with their goals. Just most people don't realize what their real goal is. And most people's real goal is to build their self esteem. The problem is they build their self esteem around something stupid. And it's usually something hyper fragile like being right or being smart. And when you build your self esteem around being right, you can imagine when you're wrong. You may be like, take a business owner who builds the self esteem around being right. He realizes he's wrong. Oh shit. I'm not going to admit that the only thing I'm interested in is being right. He argues for the right idea, but the right, or excuse me, argues for his idea. So he can be right, but his idea is actually worse for the business. And now why is he doing that? He's doing it because he wants to feel that rush that he feels when he's right and he gets that ego building sensation. Now if that guy was smart, what he would do is he would flip what he builds his self esteem around because he needs to build it around something. We all do. The person who has no self esteem no longer believes they could ever feel joy again. They kill themselves. Right? Like that's where that nasty path ends. But that's a false belief. He could instead choose to build his self esteem around something that's antifragile, meaning the more you attack it, the stronger it gets. And one option is to build your self esteem not around being right, but around identifying the right answer faster than anyone else. And that's exactly what I did. I switched my self esteem from being built around being right, which I was often wrong, from being built around being smart, which I often was not the smartest person in the room to just I'm going to be the guy that identifies the right answer faster than anyone else, admits that he was wrong faster than anyone else, learns faster than anyone else, and then puts more energy into the right idea than anyone else. All the while screaming from the rooftops about whatever amazing person it was that came up with that idea, that taught me this new thing. And in doing that, you create a culture of learning where people want to get better. And it becomes like a race to see who can identify that right answer faster, which you can imagine is very good for business. Which is exactly how we grew by 57,000% in manufacturing because we didn't have to waste time fighting about dumb ideas that wouldn't move the business forward. We were all just fighting over who gets to give the other person more credit for coming up with the amazing idea that actually worked.

Wow, wow, wow.

That's. That's wild. You know, there's, there's so much good stuff there.

Could you, could you give us a.

Little bit of information about your company and the size of it, people where you distribute the products, the product line, some of that stuff? Because I want to. I failed to probably establish that in the very beginning. And I want people that are not familiar with like the backstage of your company, just how much you've grown it and how big it is. And as far as I'm concerned, you probably feel like you're just getting started knowing you just give people some background on like how many people you have working for you and to whatever. Any other relevant information about Quest.

Yeah.

And then we'll talk about Quest Insight, Quest.

Perfect. We started out as a bootstrap company, so we've self finance this thing all the way. There were three of us that founded the company, so call it a founding team of about six people. We've now grown to 1400 employees with about 600,000 square feet of offices. Manufacturing, fulfillment. We have several product lines. Our most famous is the Quest bar, which is a protein bar that really gained notoriety because it didn't have sugar. And what little sugar is in the bar isn't an ingredient. It just has nuts in it. Right. So if you have nuts in your bar, the FDA counts some of that nut as sugar and so you label it that way. But we don't have bags of sugar anywhere our facility. So that was really our calling card. Really simple ingredients, limited number of ingredients, but it tasted like a cookie dough. Excuse me, it tastes like a cookie dough bar. So people were, you know, just literally couldn't believe it. And all we had to do was get people to try it and then read the ingredients and the nutrition facts and people were sold. But we also make protein powder, sticking with our whole Thing about this stuff needs to taste good. We just have flavors that most people don't. And if they do have similar flavors, they just don't taste like the real thing. So flavor has been a very big deal for us and we throw just a lot of essentially titration at the problem, right? We do micro changes, over a thousand plus variations to finally get to the one that works. And we just invest very, very heavily in R and D. We also have a line of peanut butter cups and we have a fiber that's made out of pasta, or excuse me, a pasta that's made out of fiber. And then we have a range of potato chips that actually have very, very little potato in them. So they're low carb, very high protein potato chips that taste fantastic. But the really exciting stuff is the stuff that's coming out now. So going back to significance and wanting to build your significance around delivering value and serving people. One of the challenges that my business partner Ron is just absolutely obsessed with is looking at metabolism, nutrition, disease theta, all of it as mysteries and trying to solve these riddles. And he was looking at what's coming out in the research of cancer. And read this thing. In 1926, this guy named Otto Warburg realized that all cancer cells share a mutation that makes it impossible for them to burn ketones. Now, ketones is one of the two fuel sources that the body can burn. The specifics of this story don't really matter. The punchline is this. The body can burn ketones or glucose, but cancer cells can only burn glucose. So if you could rob the body from a dietary perspective of glucose, you could in theory starve the cancer. But since nobody is going to make a drug out of that, nobody's really looked at it. And it really hasn't been until recently that scientists have said, wow, there's this long standing question out there from a diet perspective, we should really start looking at this. And Ron just became absolutely fascinated by this notion of. It could very well be that cancer is a metabolic disease and what triggers this mutation is, or if the mutation itself isn't diet related, that it's exacerbated by these diets that are incredibly high in sugar glucose. So could food companies such as us contribute meaningfully by creating ketogenic food products? And ketogenic food products very simply are high fat, low protein, virtually no carbohydrate. So we're now developing an entire line of, of ketogenic products which are ridiculously tasty. And we've been working with some high level cancer researchers. We actually personally spend millions of dollars. We created our own nonprofit designed to spend money on some of the just most amazing and astonishing research in this field. We're super honored to be contributing to that and to be working with some of the people that we're working with. And the early answers, and it's all directional and who knows where science will ultimately end out. But, but directionally, the information around ketogenics is just incredibly powerful. So we're a whole line of that stuff coming out in the next probably 60 days.

Wow, that's amazing. That's fascinating. Awesome. Well, one last thing about food too, because I remember reading this online because I love the way you actually responded to it, where someone, I'm not going to get the question or the comment that the person made, but they're basically like, well, aren't you just selling packaged foods? And your reply was great. And I'd love to have you kind of talk about how you think about eating in general because you are a food company and you have so much more to it than that. But I'd love to have you just give your sort of advice as if you were sitting down with a loved one and they were asking you, tom, how do you recommend I eat? What would you say to them?

Yeah, I'm going to back up slightly just because I have to give a ton of credit to your, your mentality. And I watched one of your videos and you were talking about, you know, selling gets a really bad rep. It's just high pressure selling. And you said, look, people love being sold to largely, it's an education process. And what they don't like is being pressured. And that's exactly how we feel. Look, I am here to provide a service, but I want that service to be of value to you. The truth is, if you're trying to lose weight, if you're trying to get in shape, you should be eating whole food foods. You should be eating chicken breast and broccoli. Just to cut to the most simplistic and non controversial, because I would tell you also need to eat a ton of red meat, but that's controversial. So we'll stick with chicken breast and broccoli. Eat chicken breast and broccoli. I'm not incentivized to say that because I don't make chicken breast or broccoli. I'm saying that because it's true. And my goal is to end metabolic disease. If we weren't necessary, if it wasn't necessary to make foods that taste like pizza, pie, candy, cookies, cupcakes cake. If that wasn't needed, then we would just go on and bring value somewhere else. But that's what people want, right? There's just this thing innately wired into us to eat these amazingly sweet and fatty and delicious things. And when you put the hard work to making them good for you, you've really got something quite powerful. But at the end of the day, you should eat whole food whenever you can. So our thing is, if we're really going to end metabolic disease, I've got to stand for trust because we want to be here for the next 25 years. I'm just ballparking it. That's about how long I think it will take to truly revolutionize the entire food industry from how we source ingredients, how we conceptualize and sell food. And if we're going to do that, knowing that the average business used to spend 67 years once it got in the S&P 500 and now spends 15. I know that companies just aren't able to stay relevant for as long as they used to. So we know we've got to stand for trust that you have but one chance to mess that all up and then you don't stand for trust anymore. So if you call me and you really are in dire straits, maybe you're underweight, overweight, whatever the case may be, and you're really trying to get healthy for me to say, you know what the magic answer is? One of my products is A, disingenuous and B, doesn't deliver the value to you that I promised myself that I would deliver. So our whole thing was, maybe this is a bad business, maybe we will tank and lose everything, but I'll be able to hold my head high. So the one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to bow my head. I'm sure as hell not going to bow my head for money. So, yeah, that is a very long way of saying eat whole food whenever you can. No, no.

And then that's great too. I mean, I love the fact of your whole attitude about it and the way that you advise people, which is really cool too. Yes. And I do believe that education based marketing is one of the most useful ways that you could ever sell anything to anyone because you basically tell them how to make a buying decision and why, and you give them options and you don't enslave them with manipulation. What is your social strategy or thinking when it comes to quests with things that you do, like inside quests, which you briefly talked about. But I'D like you to kind of describe why did you create that? Why are you doing it? And all of our listeners, what we try to do on I love marketing is turn people on to anything that's going to help build a better entrepreneur and hopefully a better human being. You're doing the same sort of thing with InsideQuest and I think it's really awesome. So let's talk about that, the business side of it for the company and then also just what it is and what it does for you and what it does for, you know, the people that partake in it.

So I think there's two real strategies anybody has if you're going to build a big business. And they are so simple. It's deceptively simple, obviously, but they're so simple that it just makes it easy to stay focused. One is get the product in the person's life. So in our case, I want you chewing them something, right? Because that's going to be the surest way for me to deliver value. I've got to make sure that when you have that eating experience that you love it, that you want to return for more, that it's delivering from a metabolic standpoint. It's delivering on every promise that we've ever made. So you love eating it and it is absolutely great for you. Those two things from the product standpoint are critical. And so we have to innovate on the product and all that. The other is the brand. The brand needs to mean something to you. And I remember when Apple Computers were really just beginning to get some legs again. Steve Jobs had returned, but they hadn't yet really cracked the nut and beaten PC. And everyone was doing the PC versus the Mac challenge and the Mac was just getting its ass handed to it. It was losing on like every conceivable test you could imagine. But people still wanted it. They wanted it because the brand meant something. The brand stood for something. It was creative, it was the crazy way ones. And he just did such an amazing job of associating the brand with an ethos and an ethos that people wanted to believe. I wanted an Apple because I wanted to be one of the crazy ones that was willing to change things, right? Like that so resonated with me. Or I wanted an Apple because I'm an individual, I'm an artist, right? If you remember the Apple versus PC commercials where the PC was like the stodgy corporate guy and the Apple was the young, hip kid, like, they created a real identity of what it meant to hold that item. And so Here we are in this industry where our most famous product is a protein bar. And how do you turn that into something other than telling the world that you're a gym rat? Right? Which is every protein bar in history up to that point was just, hey, I eat healthy and kind of I'm willing to suffer to do it. Which was really where protein bars were in people's minds for so long. And we came in and we wanted to completely change that paradigm because I knew that wasn't lasting. No one's ever going to make that choice forever. And even if a narrow band of people will suffer their way to good health, the vast majority of people will not. So we wanted the brand to stand for something. And what the brand stands for is transformation. In your own life, you can be whatever you want, whatever you want. And it becomes a question of what are you willing to put your mind to? Because I'm not saying it's like, hey, close your eyes and put the intention into the universe. I'm saying, wake your ass up, go make the hard choices, do the hard work to learn what you need to learn to get what you want to get. Because the reality is between the person you are today and the person of your dreams, there's a huge gap in skill set. And you've got to have the drive and ambition to go out and relentlessly pursue and acquire those skills, put those skills to the test to make sure that they actually work, to make sure they're actually living in service of your goals, and to actually move you forward in a way that you can measure in your own life. That's the kind of transformation that I really want this to stand for. And when you do that, when you go through the process of, of mental, emotional and physical transformation, something so beautiful happens to you. And you guys, I'm sure you say it, and if you don't say it, I know you believe it, that you're essentially the average of the five ideas or the five people that you spend the most time around. And when you start spending time around people who are joyful, they're passionate, they believe they can do anything they set their mind to, they start creating this microcosm of just really, really amazing, amazing stuff. And that's what InsideQuest was meant to facilitate and foster. And quite honestly, because Inside Quest is just about the mind, it was me realizing, I went from, and I always use the analogy of the Matrix, I went from feeling like Neo, I'm trapped, but I don't know by what my life could be more. But I Don't know how to make it more. And then you encounter. What I realize now is the thing that was holding me back, which was my own mindset. And once I began to change my mindset and go through the hard work of beginning to think and act like a true entrepreneur entrepreneur, it changed every aspect of my life, and not just my life, but it changed the lives of those around me. The people that I had the ability to influence saw my ideas evolving, they saw me changing. And that just you get that on a grand enough scale, you get enough people making positive change. And I really, I don't mean this hyperbolically. I mean you can actually change the world and you can change the course of culture. And to me, the question I really want to answer with Inside Quest and with Quest Nutrition in general, what would happen if we found a thousand more Elon Musk's or a thousand more Steve Jobs? Like what game changing, paradigm shifting dreams could we make a reality? Right. I'm so inspired by the big thinkers in the world, the Peter Diehm, the Tony Robbins, the Elon Musk, the Jeff Bezos, the Richard Branson. Like those guys are just regular guys who happen to develop their mind. They happen to build a business, they happen to believe and they're willing to do the hard work to get there and to keep going. And they're having the ball doing it. So I see that those are the people fundamentally changing the world. And I realize that not everybody's going to make that change. In fact, there's a very, very, very, very small number of people. But some of those people would never make the change if they don't encounter the mindset. So I'm trying to get the mindset. I'm trying to pay it forward. It's so changed my life. I feel a moral obligation to pay it forward. And it's the greatest joy of my life to see somebody's moment of awakening.

Wow, that's fascinating.

Yeah. You know what? You know what I really love about what you're doing too is, you know, one of the things I've, and I didn't come up with this, I heard it many, many years ago. There's three ways to learn something. You learn through the school of hard knocks. You go out and bumble your way through life and maybe get bloodied up quite a bit and you just try to figure shit out on your own. The second is you learn through the experiences of others. You read their books, you listen to this modern day podcast and seminars and watch videos and whatnot. The third way is you teach other people. One of the best ways to accelerate learning and deepening of what it is that you're taking in is to go out and share that, that with other people. And you're a guy who clearly is a student, you're extraordinarily coachable. You seek that out, which I really like because I do know a lot of people that are successful, but they don't really help other people by helping deliver to them what it is they know what it is they've learned. And so you're very much a big reader. You give out your reading list of books of where to start with. You're not someone that wants to make it all about, oh, I'm the guru here and I know it all. I mean, there's a lot of people that won't quote people where they learned ideas. They won't recommend books. I mean, they just kind of keep it to themselves. And, and you're just out there doing your best to just teach and help people. And what does that do for you? I mean, how does that keep you growing? Because some people may consider that like, well, God, you're giving away all your trade secrets, you're telling people what to do. Whereas there's, you know, my philosophy is don't try to increase my slice of the pie, try to increase the pie. Just try to make everyone better. And yeah, and so you're just. You do that and you do it very well. So what is, why do you do that?

I try to always act in accordance with fundamental human truth. And the truth is that if you really, really want, want to achieve just the absolute outlandishly impossible in your life, the surest path to that is to give to others, to help others. Now that sounds really fluffy. So I'm going to tell you why that works. Because if it didn't, I wouldn't do works incredibly well because humans are a very social animal and we want to help others and we all have this deep compassion where, and look, it's varying degrees and maybe I'm just more wired for compassion than the next guy. But when you're on a team and you can enjoy your teammate success, first of all, that's just beautiful to me, I love being around that, like seeing somebody else who I care about really win and do something great. But then on top of that, I know the more that I help other people, the more I try to give everything I have away to them, that two things happen. One, that person will feel good about being around me because I want for their success and when I want for their success and I allow them to be selfish, not in a horrible way, but just to really want the things in their life that they want, not necessarily that I want for them. And I allow them that beautiful indulgence of saying, this is what's important to me and I want it. And thank you for giving me the information to help me achieve it. Even though it may not help, but it will help me. Because if I ever need that person, they're going to be there for me because I've given myself really without expectation. Not. It's not like I give them. Give them piece of knowledge and expect a chit in return that I can then play later. You know, you just give and you know that that will come back to you. And think about how many people have given to you. And you were like, literally eager. You were waiting for that opportunity to help them, just to show them the bit of gratitude that you owe them. And it feels awesome to connect. So I know all of that happened. And then the next thing is, man, quite frankly, to me, life is a game. And it's just disciplined practice. Like there is no big game day where now all of a sudden, everything matters. The only thing in life that scares me is the death of my wife and getting brain damage. Anything else, like, I can bounce back from anything else. Losing all my money, losing the use of my body. Just don't mess with my brain.

That's the only thing I'm going to.

Say, like, that was for you, me out, anything shy that, like, I want to play this game and I want to play this game of life to the fullest. And I want to win, but I don't want to win by hobbling the other people. I don't want to win by degrading my enemy. I want to win by putting beautiful things out into the world. By giving every secret away that I have, knowing that the only thing that matters is execution. That's it. You can give someone away. Every secret you have, they're either an executor or they're not. And if they are an executor, they're going to find out your idea whether you give it to them or not. Because that's the person. They don't stop at obstacles, right? They figure it out. So now you've got an opportunity to bond with this beautiful, amazing executor by giving freely, knowing that one day, hey, that may come back to you. Or you close down and hide some things and then people do the same to you. And so you just don't give this open community. I'm not trying to just finish in first place. And yes, I am trying to win for sure. It's just not my highest value. It's just fun to play to win. My highest value is to see how far as a collective can we take this all. So I just think it's the most emotionally pleasurable way for me to play this game called life. That's the truth. But good things also come from it.

Wow.

No, that's awesome. Yeah, Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. I mean, I absolutely believe that. And I love what you just said that you know, the only thing that matters is execution. Because putting that stuff out there. What, what, what do you mean by that? What is execution to you and how does one execute?

Execution is, is the gap between idea and successfully finishing something. So I always find it hilarious when people are afraid to give up. Like, oh, I have an idea for a product, let's say, right? I have an idea for a product, but I don't want to tell you about it because they're worried that I'm going to steal it. But we'll talk to people about products. We open our camorra more than you can imagine at this point. And like, for instance, we're learning a lot about cancer. We're learning a lot about how ketogenics can have in this. Again, it's very early stage, but a lot about how ketogenics could potentially be impacting cancer. Very, very positive. We even invited our competitors to a symposium where we presented all of this data. Now, why I can't patent what I'm learning. So it's not like I'm trying to lock it down and then tease them with the knowledge. I'm doing it because I want them all to go out and put this stuff to use and help the world. Right? So I just think that makes the most sense because my stated mission is to end metabolic disease. My stated mission is to help my mom and my sister. Now, now if that's real, then why would I mind? If a competitor is doing amazing stuff, they should, in theory only, inspire me who looks at life like a game. And disciplined practice is all that really matters to then further up my game to improve and go better because, whoo, now these guys are really making me sweat. I got to really perform. But it all comes down to execution. It comes down to the ability to handle all the day to day stuff that comes your way and whether you're trying to be a great employer. You're trying to run a company. There's no joke. There is a thousand key decisions that happen any day through all the different strata of your company. And it's about being able to make the right choice a high enough percentage of the time to take your company where it's going in order to get across the finish line. Because like with manufacturing, people don't think about the fact that a huge part, maybe the biggest part of my business is something nobody thinks about, which is physical equipment. I have to buy it, I have to figure out how to set it up, I have to re engineer it to work on my product. Specifically, I've got to hire employees to work on that equipment. Right. So that's the execution. The idea is whatever. I've already said, we haven't even launched the line of ketogenic products. I've already told you it's going to go out on your podcast to a whole bunch of people. I'm not worried. I'm worried they won't be able to do it and I'm going to be left on my own. So I think it comes down to if you're trying to die with the most money. Yeah, my strategy is going to be really bad for you in theory. I actually think it's great. Great. But yeah, I can understand how that person for whom it is a zero sum game. They're, they're going to be very tense about giving away secrets. But I don't believe it's a zero sum game.

Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. Well, you know, we got to ask you about some marketing, so let's start with that. Yeah, yeah. You know, we are. This is on. I love marketing.

I love marketing.

What are some of the most effective marketing strategies that you're utilizing at Quest that are working right now that say other billion dollar companies, if they were smart, would implement?

They need to understand that their product has to mean something. So it's what I was talking about earlier. You've got the product and your interaction with it. So if it's a piece of software, then it's meant to perform X, Y or Z function. But then there's also you need it to mean something to the person who's using it. They need to feel a certain way about that. And we now live in an era where you're able to market through content and you're able to do value driven content marketing. So take our protein bars for instance. So that this is an abstract. If you're looking at the marketing that we're Doing what we're doing is reflecting the customer's involvement with the product. Hyper focusing on transformation and fun. So those are two words that are a very big deal for us now. Why fun? This is how I built the, the business. So imagine you're a former technology company owner going into the health and fitness space and you look around and you see that everybody, everybody is using one psychological principle. And that psychological principle is the desire to tap into a feeling of superiority. So you're going to eat this product and get muscle and you're the type of person that sweats it out and grinds it out in the gym and you do the work that other people won't. And that's why you eat the. This product. This product isn't even that good. And you're willing to suffer because that's the kind of person you are. That was. That was it, man. It's what we call chains and veins. Marketing. Everybody was doing it. Every color palette. If you went to our biggest trade shows the year we came in, virtually everybody was red and black. It was hilarious. It was a sea of red and black. And so I'm looking at this going, wow, that's not the type of thing I want someone thinking about my brand. It's the same people. Keep in mind, I'm going after the same audience, but I want them thinking something very differently about my product. And what I want them thinking about my product is indulgence, deliciousness, transformation, fun, pleasure, like all these, like really positive things. So that we became the bar that you wanted to tell your friend about. We became the bar that, oh, man. My friend struggling. So I want to give them this, I want to hand them a bit of joy. And this is how you get six pack abs without suffering, right? And one of our earliest taglines was stop sacrificing. Right. So the entire industry was built around emotionally rewarding somebody for being the type of person that makes sacrifices. We wanted to emotionally reward them for making a really logical choice, which is to eat health healthy and choose the option that doesn't make you sacrifice. Because what's the point of sacrificing if you can get the same result? So we had a blue color palette, which, if you guys know I researched colors, blue is the most creative. You just feel a certain way. And then we picked a very particular shade of blue, which was really played well with men and women, so that we had just a very broad scope of people that we could make feel creative, focus them on transformation and connection. And then all of the actual imagery that we used was of indulging in something or bonding and connecting. So we're running or about to run a campaign now, which is we've received all these, I don't know if you guys use this phrase, but user generated content. So it's ugc. It's basically people with cell phones that have taken pictures with quest bars all over the world in front of the pyramids of Giza, Mount Rushmore, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. I mean just we've been getting these things for years and we were just named America's favorite protein bar just from a sales perspective. So we're now doing this whole campaign using their actual images that they've all submitted. So that makes you feel like part of the community. There's a fun element to it, there's an adventurous spirit. So all thinking about not features and benefits. Right. I'm not even going to tell you how many grams of protein in it. Nah, I'm not focused on on that. I'm focused on how I want you to feel. So getting more marketers to ask, you know, forget the features and benefits, forget what it does. How do I want people to feel about this and move beyond a commodity into a lifestyle.

Love it. That's a fascinating piece of advice right there.

Yeah, I think.

Where did you start that study of that, Tom? Like where did you get that idea? Is that something that you developed through observation or is there something that you, what started you on the path of that particular line of thinking?

Pure observation. So my very random and now very powerful background is filmmaking. So I went to film school at usc, came out, was going to be the next Spielberg. And that didn't quite pan out. And I hated coming to the industry with my hand out, which was originally why I decided I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get rich so that I can fund my own movies. It'll be nice and simple. And then as I got deeper into thinking like an entrepreneur and realized what I really want is to, you know, really control my destiny long term. Abstract. What I thought of as film as being, you know, a specific artistic medium and realize it was really about psychology and being able to take people on an emotional roller coaster. And as a filmmaker, you're constantly asking, how do I make this person feel exactly this at exactly this moment? Now, lo and behold, that's exactly sales and marketing, right? How do I feel exactly this at exactly this moment? So now all of a sudden I've spent the last 20 years focused intensely on psychology because I thought I wanted that to play out in the movie theater. And now realizing, oh my gosh, this applies broadly to pretty much every aspect of my life, from my marriage to my business. And so as a marketer, I'm asking what do I want this person to feel at this moment about, you know, my product or whatever? And you go into it now, at least for me, with a very deep, truly not medical or scientific, but certainly bordering on that. Where I've read extensively about the brain, I've read extensively about psychological principles. I'm truly obsessive about learning about that stuff in my, my own time. And it has such effortless carryover into marketing that it is, it's just continued to serve me well. So looking at why, because, you know, I'm sitting here when we were about to found the company, thinking about all the reasons why for so many years I didn't live a healthy lifestyle. Looking at why my family didn't live a healthy lifestyle, and then just being honest about, rather than try to blunt force trauma, change their behaviors, which is what the bodybuilding industry did before we came along to say they have these certain biological impulses, why don't I leverage them to get them to make the choices that I want? Right. When you sit down in a movie theater, I'm not trying to convince you to feel a certain way about something. I'm going to show you that thing that I know you have a predictable response about. Right? So, and that's why movies work, because, like, there's been amazing books in a film context written about how your ear works and how loud sounds cause a certain muscle in your ear to tighten up. So if you want something to seem really, really quiet, and this has been used to amazing effect in certain films, you'll make something really loud and then have it go instantly quiet. So I think they did this in Gravity. If I remember right at the moment where they want to show just how quiet space is, they build all this noise inside and then boom, we go to space. And now, because your ear has clinched down for how loud it was in the movie theater, you don't even hear the people around you. So it is truly this deafeningly silent moment. But that came from an understanding of the ear, right? And other things about how we blink and process movement. And the film industry uses it to tremendous effect. I just think marketers have to be equally savvy to understand emotion, to understand all of the sort of mental and evolutionary software that people bring to the table as a human being. And Leverage that knowingly to get the effect that you're after.

Right.

You know, it's, it's funny, Dean, because clearly Tom is not very perceptive and aware of what's going on with other people. That is awesome. Let me just say this real quick, Dean. And then, you know, I've, I've often said that marketing is applied psychology because what I've learned by being a marketer is more about human behavior than what a lot of people think. Oh, you're just trying to figure out how to sell something to somebody. And for many, many years, people, you would say marketing and they instantly have a negative reaction because you know, human beings have this tendency, what they're not up on, they're down on. If they don't understand something or they have had like a negative experience with per se, an industry or something that they misinterpret, they don't usually have a curiosity of oh, let me learn about this. They immediately just want to kind of regard it as negative. And marketing, when you say that, has that response with a lot of people because in a lot of ways it's an inherently self serving sort of activity. You're trying to sell something or you're trying to position something. And one of the things that I've had to teach people, like with that video you mentioned earlier, my, my video is selling Evil. Where I was asked that question is selling evil. That actually came out of a documentary footage B roll that they were interviewing me for a documentary and that never made the cut, but they asked me is selling evil. And one of the things that I started saying to people, and this is after being in the marketing business for 20 years, it finally dawned on me that if you just give people a different way to think about it. And I now tell people think of selling as influence and think of marketing as storytelling. If you're more influential, you're certainly going to get further ahead, you're going to be more impactful with people. And if you tell a better story, you're going to get more enrollment, you're going to get more buy in, people are going to understand it. Because there's a couple of quotes that I love. One is if you want to sell what John Smith buys, you need to see through John Smith's eyes. And people don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understand and with what you're doing, I mean, you tell such a great story quest insights, you're just weaving in things so that people feel connected and what you're doing that other companies are not doing, which is. As a marketer, the most important thing that I can help people think about is you got to bond with people. It's not just about Facebook followings or having people see your brand. It's literally about bonding with individuals. And when someone's bonded with you, they like doing business with you. It's that whole cliche that marketers say, do they know, like, and trust you? And if you have no like and trust, you will be bonded with them. But you're a student of psychology, and it's weaved in everything that you just said, what I see you doing in your company. And so I just think it's really powerful. And, Dean, I thought I'd say that in, like, 20 seconds, but it took me longer. So I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry I cut you off earlier.

No, that's.

I mean, boy, this. I feel scrambling because there's so much that we could ask. And I know we've been going for a while here, but we should just.

Go for all day. I mean, Tom doesn't have a giant company to run or anything.

No, I mean, yeah, I've got the time, Joe. Let's do it. Yeah.

And then, by the way, Tom cut us off if there's a. Another thing you need to go to or whatever. But if we want to go for a few more minutes, if you're. If you can, we will.

Yeah, I've got a few more minutes.

Okay, cool.

Go ahead. One of the things I want to kind of have you talk about is this idea of the founding guys that you've had this relationship with for 13 years now, and, you know, talk about the importance of that, because that's kind of where we've talked around it a little bit. But how much of a factor is that? It sounds like something you've used words when you describe it that remind me of seeing Bono on 60 Minutes. And he was telling Steve Croft, he was saying how you two has been committed to each other to see and explore what a band can become staying together. And he said to Steve Croft, imagine if the Beatles had stuck together, right? What we missed out on, because they, you know, basically just blew up. And he said that. He said to Steve Croft, I'm not saying that to compare us to the Beatles because we're not worthy to touch the hem, but he said what our commitment is to see and explore what a band can be. And, you know, the way you've been describing your. Your core group, I wonder if there's any similarities in that or how you look at that as maybe one of the keys of success that's so powerful.

And you make me want to have Bono on Inside Quest. Now that. That really stopped me in my tracks. That is exactly. Without having had those words until now, that is exactly what we're doing. The three of us agree that we are strong as individuals, but we're much, much, much stronger as a group. And one of the things that I realized when we finally were honest that we didn't want to chase money was it made me stop and reevaluate. I told myself for so long that I'll do whatever it takes to control my own destiny and to get of rid rich. But the truth is a. It's not true. And I've always long operated within the confines of my moral compass. And when I really think about what I value in this company, it's the camaraderie of the three of us, and that's my highest value. And I said, look, guys, the truth is that I would let it all fall away tomorrow if I had to, to remain true to you. And I said, my highest. And I told him at the time, I said, I don't need it to be your highest value, but I'm just being honest that it is my highest value. And my highest value is camaraderie. And so I will never betray the relationship that the three of us have to be successful. That would make me feel less of who I am, and that's the one thing I don't ever do. Like, being poor would not make me feel like less of who I am. Betraying my friends, on the other hand, would make me feel less than who I am. So we actually put our hands in a pile. It was kind of silly and beautiful and one of the cherished moments of my life because not too long ago, we took a very small investment from actually a dear friend of mine who happens to also be an investor, so that we could just diversify. We didn't need the money to keep running the company or anything, but just to de risk a little bit. And when we did that, I said, put our hands in a pile. And I will tell you right now, even if I think that the two of you are going to bankrupt me personally with a decision, I'll never vote against you. I'll try to convince you, but I'll never vote against you. And so the three of us made that promise to each other. And that to me, is the one thing that is just incredibly meaningful. You see, families broken up over money because they can't agree on inheritance or. Or whatever. And that, to me, is a heartbreaking tragedy that I just couldn't bear. So the relationship that the three of us have is we talk about it, we talk about emotions, we talk about what we believe in in each other, we encourage each other, and we push each other and we kick each other in the ass. You know what I mean? We're three guys that really want to do amazing things with our life, and we're certainly alpha percent personalities and. But it's. It's a. You know, there's a difference between being in love and being committed. And while there are days where I'm sure each of us would love to just choke the other one just for a minute, we have commitment. And commitment trumps everything.

Boy, you know, hearing you say that is almost mirroring exactly the way Bono described it for you, too. And you see the result of that is here's a band that have been. I think they're the only band to chart original material in five decades, you know, so that's like, wow.

But that was.

Their commitment, is to grow as a band, explore the edges, and always with the. You know, their prime mission is to be the.

The.

The best rock band in the world out of all.

You know, we should. We should, like, do Tom a favor and, like, we should test my whole genius crowdsource blueprint model, you know, with.

How can we get Bon?

Yeah, we could probably have. Because all of our listeners, you should tweet Bono, however you can find him and tell him he needs to be a guest on Inside Quest, as much as I would say he should be a guest on. I love marketing. It's really not. It's not the right fit or format, so I don't think that's going to appeal to him. But InsideQuest, that would be very interesting if a bunch of our listeners said, hey, you really need to do that, because it could plant the seed and we could maybe make this happen.

I will do that for sure.

And he is buddies with my buddy Richard Branson, so there's a possibility that we could pull that off. We'll see.

That would be incredible.

This is the thing. But you second about how having this big vision. I just read something that Peter said, Peter Diamandis, I think it was him that said, we're reaching a time where our capabilities are finally catching up to our ambitions, that we can have big ambition and our capabilities now with craft sources like just what we're talking about. You know, we're on a podcast right now, you know, reaching a global audience. And what are the odds that somebody might know Bono or somebody might have an in or something? You know, it's just. It's crazy.

Yeah.

You know, one thing I have to tell you because I don't think you know this, Tom. Like, we have one of our listeners named Chip Franks, and he lives in Austin, Texas, and a great guy, but I had no idea who Chip Franks was. And after me and Dean went to the Peter's conference last year, we did an Episode number 186 on I Love Marketing. And we're now in 250 or 60 or wherever the hell we're at. And I love marketing in terms of episodes. And we've been doing a weekly one for. For, you know, since 2010. And basically, Chip, here's this episode and I tell this story about how I was in a nursing home with my girlfriend for my friend Janice, whose husband Tom, she had to go into an assisted living home and she was doing a gratitude dinner there. And while I was there, I saw this. There was a group of friends of Tom and Jason, Janice's, and they were there, but outside of the group, there was this older man who just looked really incredibly lonely. And I went up and, you know, said hello to him, and he just was just not. He was just distraught. And I kind of went to the corner with my girlfriend and I got teary eyed and I said, man, there's so many humans that are just. They've lost their loved ones. They, if they have any children or family members, they don't see them frequently.

They're just lonely.

And this is in America. This person's at least in a home. And how many people are homeless and how many third world countries? And there's just how much human suffering exists. And I think that the world is filled with resources. I don't think we have a resource problem. I think we have a distribution problem. And basically I wrote years ago a newsletter about if you're ever feeling depressed or shitty or anxiety ridden or you don't feel like life is working for you, go and volunteer at a nursing home, an animal shelter, an AIDS clinic, a burn unit, a children's hospital, they'll instantly make you feel better when you can be of service to someone. And I went to the front of this assisted living home and I said, if someone wants to volunteer, what do you need to do? And they're like, well, you need to get fingerprinted. And you can call someone on next week and we'll talk about talk to someone. And I could just tell it was like a complicated bureaucratic process. And I. So me and Dean did an episode like what we're doing now, and we talked about, you know, this idea of like, someone needs to create like a match for volunteers, someone that wants to volunteer with people that need it. And so this guy Chip lived in Austin and he has a son with down syndrome. And they would go to nursing homes and they would do hug stations where his, his son would hug the elderly people and they would hug him and it would make both of them very happy. And Chip is a very motivated guy and he'd been listening to all of our I love marketing podcasts, using it in his real estate business where he has about 30 employees. And he really resonated with this idea and he made it real. He registered a URL called Joe Volunteer, named it after me, where any Joe, any average Joe can volunteer and literally sent me this, FedExed me a full blown business plan. Thinking through every aspect of building and growing a business that will link people that want to volunteer with places and organizations that need it. From ongoing things that are needed on a daily basis. Animal shelters, nursing homes, hospitals, recovery centers, to like, disaster relief. If there's a Hurricane Katrina and you need to corral people instantly, how do you do this? So we're basically, we just did a crowdfunding campaign and I had him fly out and we met and he's an amazing guy. We literally are getting ready to launch the app, like an Uber for volunteers to link people that want to volunteer with organizations that need it. Most of these organizations, the ones that are good because there's many that just don't have their act together, but ones that are good, most of them aren't very good marketers. But that all started just from us talking about ideas, this podcast. And so it goes back to Dean's point. I mean, you never know what could happen today just by putting stuff out into the world. And when I asked you earlier, you know, what's your social strategy or thinking when it comes to, you know, inside Quest? And I mean, you know, just, it's amazing because every day, even if people don't, you know, eat your products, if they don't chew them up and swallow them, what it's doing for the minds of people that are consuming this and that's the world we live in today. And I think, I think it's amazing how you can inspire and you can actually make things happen. So that was like, I just wanted to kind of tell that Story. Because things do happen when people listen and hear stuff. And certainly this will be listened to by hundreds of thousands of people. And if anyone does have a really clever idea, I would get a real kick out of being able to somehow figure out how to get Botto to be a guest on the show. So if anyone out there is listening to that and you can actually make that happen, happen, then I will. If someone can really do that, Dean or I, you are welcome to. We'll give you a free breakthrough blueprint three day thing with Dean. Or you can come to my Genius Network annual event. Something, if anyone could actually do something that would facilitate that becoming a reality, because I would get a huge kick out of that. Plus, I'd love to see that interview.

Thank you so much for that. That's so, so, so incredible. And I'm blown away by your generosity to do that really fast. I want to go to that. Back to that story you told, which is amazing. Thank you for sharing it with me. First of all, I didn't know that story, but it is, it's so cool that you have people listening to your show that are impacted. And here's my big thing. People encounter amazing ideas all the time. Time, but they don't let it change them. And when I read a book before I start reading, I actually say to myself, let this book change you. Like, be open to being changed. Now, not every book is worthy of it. I get that. But when you're open to being changed, like the guy that took your idea, like he was one of the people listening to the podcast that clearly is open to being impacted by what he hears. And that's so cool, man. That's really, really cool. I cannot wait to see what you guys do with that. It's also just a good idea. But away. Yeah, Yeah.

I actually shared it with Jeff, who was it, you know, Jeff, who's the chief product officer at Uber, where you were at. And you know, I'm just. We'll see where it goes. I mean, you know, I'm doing my best to let him run the company and not meddle at it too much, but at the same time, I'm doing what I can because it will create, you know, it will create so much help and reduce so much human suffering because, you know, I'm really mowed because my, the people I want to be a hero to, I want to be a hero to entrepreneurs and I want to be a hero to people that have addictions because I've been in, you know, I've had so many struggles in my life with addiction and I know how painful it is and even food addiction. And you're quite aware of that from everything that you've learned, nutrition wise. And so those are anything I can do to help entrepreneurs and help people with addiction to reduce suffering and help them just build better lives, the happier I will be. So just a couple more things and then we will wrap up and tell people where they can go to get involved with Quest. And actually if they just went and meditated after listening to this episode and just think about the things you shared, their lives would improve. Yeah, this seems the appropriate question since we've gone over our typical time frame, but it's so damn good. Tom, you're not a fan of wasting time. So obviously, what ideas or strategies or insights would you have for highly successful people listening to this to become way more productive?

I'm going to start with the easy one. Don't check email. I mean that very much. Literally, I don't check email. So now, in fairness, I have an assistant who checks to make sure there's nothing, just emergency status. But I respond to maybe two emails a day. I'm not joking. So the reason I do that is I have a vision for what I'm trying to do with this company. And what are the odds that someone's going to send me something out of the blue across the transom into my email box that wasn't important enough to call me on the phone or send me a text message that's going to change the direction I want to take the company. It's virtually zero. So that's somebody hijacking my schedule, which I don't do that. So that's number one, you need to break down exactly what you're trying to accomplish with your building in the very, very short term, medium term, long term, and then obviously those three things need to feed into each other. So I start every day. I have a list of the most important things I could be thinking about right now, today. And every day starts with going down that list. So sometimes I start at the top, sometimes I start at the bottom. But if I twice go over an idea and I don't take action, I remove it from, from the list. Because clearly if it's not important enough for me to act on, then it's just not that important. I constantly prune and trim that list to make sure that it stays super, super fresh. And it really is the most important things I could be doing to driving my business towards my midterm and long term goals. And Then having those goals, knowing exactly, and I'm talking with freakish clarity, knowing exactly what you're trying to do with your company. Having clear goals now gives you something to march towards. If you don't have clear goals, you don't have a filter with which to know what you should be doing with your time. I find that most people, they mean the time is going to get used. I don't know many people that stare at a wall. The problem is their time becomes less efficient because they don't have a clear objective that they're trying to obtain. One or two. They do have a clear objective, but they let other people take over their time instead of them being ruthlessly in charge of how they spend every minute.

Yeah, awesome. Awesome.

That is. The don't check email thing is so true. Most people are like cringy going, how can I survive without it? But you're right. So part of this would be setting up the mechanisms in order to do this. There's so much more, but. But we have to actually let you go on and do the things that you're doing today. Any questions that we could or should have asked you that would have elicited really amazing stuff that we did, not that you could think of, like, what's the question that people should ask you or that we should have asked you that many people don't.

I'm going to flip it around and I'm going to take this opportunity to say something that I hope every guest of this show ends with, which is what you guys are doing is amazing. This show has so much more broad appeal than just marketing. I love the specificity of marketing. Obviously, gotta have it. But you guys have just a real talent for letting it go in any useful direction. And having met Joe in person, dude, they're so something about you. You are like one of the most amazing connectors I've ever seen in my life. And I think that is such a gracious talent to have cultivated. So I'm incredibly, incredibly grateful to know you. I'm incredibly honored to have been on the show. I think what you're doing is empowering people. And empowering people is always important. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I really, really appreciate that. And where can people go to get involved with Quest? I mean, clearly it's sold all over the place, but I want to not only Quest the nutrition products, but also InsideQuest or anything else that you could direct them to so they can get deeper with your learning and with all of the great value that you're putting out in the world.

One you can follow me socially on Omdillu. Sadly, it's spelled funny, but it's T O M. Last name is B as in bravo. I L Y E U. Quite socially active. I'm very responsive. So if anybody has any questions or anything, they can ping me. And then InsideQuest is InsideQuest.com and then Quest Nutrition is QuestNutrition.com and on those places you'll be able to find anything and everything you want. InsideQuest is a show. We record its visual so you can watch it on YouTube or you can listen to it as a podcast on itunes.

Wonderful. Awesome.

Well, Tom, thank you so much. Always a pleasure. Hopefully in the future we can catch up and do. There's so much more we could talk about. You're just doing such great things. And to all of our listeners, there's probably lots of of people that could benefit by hearing this episode. So please share it, give us your comments and if anyone knows how to track down Bono, then put the word out there.

That would be amazing.

Yeah, we've had that happen. Like we wanted to interview certain guests and we'll just say to our listeners, hey, could someone just track them down? And we've actually had that happen. So it works really well. So thank you and. And yeah, until next time, everyone. Rock and roll. Have a great day.

Thanks, guys.