EXIT THE MATRIX: Completely CHANGE YOUR LIFE in 2022 | Tom Bilyeu & Lewis Howes

I act as if I just need to keep acquiring skills. And I have yet to reach a point of diminishing returns. I still am learning so much so quickly that I'm encouraged that I could accomplish enough to be remembered.

Now keep in mind two things.

One.

What's your greatest insecurity now and what was it in the first five years of marriage and kind of business?

My greatest insecurity I think will always My greatest insecurity has been the same since I was like 12, and that's that I'm not smart enough to play with the big boys.

Who are the big boys?

Einstein, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Walt Disney, like the people who history remembers. And I actually don't know if I have the raw intellect to pull it off. Now, I think that I meet minimum requirements. And so I act as if I just need to keep acquiring skills. And I have yet to reach a point of diminishing returns. I still am learning so much, so quickly, that I'm encouraged that I could accomplish enough to be remembered. Now keep in mind two things. One, I don't think about legacy ever. So it's a North Star of seeing if I am gonna be a fast pig or if I actually am gonna be a racehorse. But knowing the only thing that I value in a conscious active way, 'cause clearly my desire to be smarter is tied to something. Maybe it's truly intrinsic and maybe we all have this desire to be the best at something. Maybe that really is like every single human will live a less joyful life unless there's some narrow band somewhere, something Where they're the best at, I'm the best at picking weeds, drawing a straight line, pouring milk, whatever. But there's something, right, that like, have you ever seen the documentary the King of Kong? No. The guy who holds the world record for Donkey Kong.

That's gonna, I gotta watch that.

Right, but we all like, We found his thing. Yeah, like some niche and you go ultra hard and it's like, I'm the best at this. So maybe that's true, I don't know.

But maybe it is. But you don't wanna be great at.

Some niche, you wanna be great at something Grand. Yes, but what I'm trying to separate here is I don't consciously value myself for intelligence. It is proven to me that that is an emotionally dangerous game because all too often I meet people that are smarter than me and I'll even define smart, the ability to process raw data quickly. So I routinely meet people that can process raw data more quickly than me. There is some subset of raw data.

We'Re talking about, like numbers or whatever.

If I said Lewis, Should we think more about the School of Greatness YouTube or the School of Greatness podcast? Now, I will come up with a profound answer to that if you let me think about it for two weeks. But there are other people that will come up with a profound answer in seven seconds. And I find that just astonishing. And I'm so in awe of the ability to think quickly. And because I speak quickly, people think I think quickly, but I don't. And other than my wife, I don't think anybody believes me when I say that, but I assure you that is true. I just think a lot. And because I think a lot, I've solved problems in my own life and some number of those problems that I have solved in my own life are useful to other people, but it's rumination.

So who are the five icons that you look up to the most, whether alive or dead, that you just multiply?

Can I just multiply Elon Musk by two and Walt Disney by three? It's like, Those two to me tower over everything, but really the people that I just listed, Walt Disney, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Einstein. Einstein. But I'll pull him off because he's, while I find that kind of intellect very powerful, there's nothing in my life that even hints at that. I've never sort of tasted that kind of view on the world, whereas the other guys, I feel like I get them, though I do not compete with them. Right. I get them. Steve Jobs, if I didn't already say that. That's an area I can picture him Spielberg. To round out, I think that's five. If I could mash them all into my brain, I would be a very happy man. A very happy man.

No, but some of those people weren't this, I mean, I think of Elon, sure, okay, Steve Jobs, maybe, Was Walt Disney the smartest? Or the most creative?

So this is where it gets the separating the-- Wasn't he like an average drawer or something? He was hired from a job at a newspaper for not being creative enough. But that's one of those early sort of who you are early, I don't get too much in a twist about, because it was the fact that he spent some ungodly number of hours creating animation in his garage, literally, that just put him ahead of other people. So, I mean, if you really want to talk about success, success is a large amount of discipline and timing. And so he had both. He was working in a garage when there was no money to be made, and everybody said, what are you doing? All animations played out. Well, animation's dead, baby. It's dead. And he just loved it enough that he was there and ready for that second wave of success.

Timing.

It's exactly what happened with Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk was huge, and then skateboarding died. Died. But he loved it. And so even when it was just like backyard skateboard competitions, he just kept going and going and going and going and going. For no money. For no money whatsoever, no prestige, nothing. And then it has this resurgence in the 90s, and he's the only one that anybody knows, because everybody gave up. And so now it becomes Tony Hawk Pro Skater, and boom, he's like the biggest name by a factor of 100. That was the same thing with Walt Disney. He didn't need to be the smartest. He needed to be the one that put in all the time when everybody else gave up. And then the world had to meet him. They almost went out of business during World War II. And Roy Disney sort of keeps them afloat and they do like sort of propaganda films and stuff. And then they come out of it as like the only survivors. And because he had been so passionate working so hard and he had that discipline and that work ethic of what he was doing in the garage to innovate, So you have this guy that wants to innovate, so he's doing things other people aren't doing at a time where not only were there no other innovators, everybody else had fallen by the wayside and given up because there was no money, and now he was the best of the best, and he had that discipline and the work ethic, and then the timing met him, and it's just, you get these, so, dude, I will just say this to everybody watching, because it'll be, this will be a time capsule in five years. I mapped something out seven years ago. that is now coming to fruition. Louis, I promise you, I have a vision. People can go watch it right now. I mapped it out. It's called, if you in YouTube type Tom Bilyeu and Master Plan, I laid.

The whole thing out.

And I am executing against it every single day.

Seven year plan?

No, no, no. It just happened to be seven years ago. It was the first time I said out loud, this is what I'm doing. So then, whatever, three years ago, I said, we need to record this. So four years into it, I said, I want to plant a flag so it's not people having to believe. No, no, no, I really did have this master plan. That I have it and people can watch me execute it and see if I pull it off. Because I think I know where the puck is going to be and that there's something happening right now in media that's opening up this a moment of tremendous timing that I'm aimed precisely to be in the middle of that timing so that I can create another gigantic, successful company. This one will take longer because I have to have built something up to be ready to take advantage of that opportunity that's coming in a way that like when you're selling something people can eat, it's not the same problem. Although we did have our own lucky timing there. Yeah.

So it sounds like, I mean, you've got the work ethic and the discipline like Disney. He had timing.

He had timing.

It's not because it could have been no one cared. So it's like he wasn't more brilliant. It seems like he was brilliant, but it wasn't more brilliant. He was dedicated in a craft that had timing and that's why I don't.

Know it's through my obsession with, because you just asked what my insecurity was. That's the truth. Whether it makes any sense or not is a totally separate debate.

Because you don't need to be smart to be Iconic.

It is entirely possible that I meet minimum requirements to become an icon, yes. I don't know yet.

I don't think you need minimum requirements.

You don't need that.

You do, you do, my friend.

We both know that. In terms of intelligence, I think- I don't want that to be true, but it is true. The US military has run the experiment. They said if you have below 84 IQ, I think it is, that they would rather just not have you, because.

Even peeling potatoes, you'll create more chaos. I don't even know if my IQ is that high.

It's not 84.

I swear, I promise you.

I have no idea.

I promise you, no matter how much you may struggle with reading or whatever, your IQ is well above that. And then on top of that, like you're sort of dancing around, there are other things other than your ability to process raw data quickly, okay? Which will sort of round to IQ. There are things that are just as important, maybe more important than IQ. I heard this real story once, and I want to do a fictionalized version of this. that at one point in the US, the guy with the highest IQ in the world lived in the US and he was working as a bouncer in a bar and had done nothing with his life.

What?

Now imagine that. A guy who, if I remember the numbers correctly, Einstein is 160 and this guy was like 220.

Shut up.

So think about that. The average in the US is like 115, I think. So if 115 is normal and then Einstein is 160, There's a bigger gap between Einstein and this guy than Einstein.

And your average guy.

And the guy was a bouncer at a bar. Because if you don't meet minimum requirements in sort of all the areas, social skills, interpersonal skills, the ability to manage your own emotions, right? Maybe this guy had suffered trauma and he just could not get himself to a place where he could engage or wanted to engage. You know, so it's like, I get it. I somehow at some point in my life chose subconsciously to value intelligence. I'm in awe of it when I see it. I wish I had more of it. I don't. I don't cry myself to sleep tonight, you know, at night about it. But if there was a button in front of me that said, you, could be the smartest person in the world, the only thing that makes me hesitate is would I still be able to enjoy my time with my wife? And because I used to say yes, I would hit that button. And then Lisa was like, I know this is make-believe, but if I could put a request that you hesitate before hitting it, because she said, would we still relate to each other? And I was like, I actually don't know. So if I knew that I was still related to my wife, I would pound the life out of that button.

So why is this the biggest insecurity? Because it's- Because you're doing pretty well for yourself.

I really feel like I have, I don't spend a lot of time in insecurity, but I'm trying to give you a real answer. So when I think about things that still do like, ah, that sucks, It's when I see, like when I look at Elon Musk, I am not equal parts because I'm more inspired than I am crestfallen that I just don't have that ability to process data like that. That's astonishing. Like when you see what he's done, I am, I'm going all out to build the next Disney. And I think I might pull it off. But he's building a company to take people to Mars.

Yeah.

While building the most dynamic car company on the planet.

And an underground tunnel company, right?

And yes, and Solar City. It's like, Hyperloop is, he just had an idea and so he published what multiple companies are now using to build. He gave away his patents. I mean, it's insanity. The guy is the chief engineer of SpaceX. He taught himself-- Watch it, sorry. Dude, he taught himself. He got books and taught himself rocket science. That's insane. So that to me is, I choose to let it be on inspiring. Even if there, I could only ever be a fast pig and who knows, I'm not running the experiment. But I think in terms of there are some areas where you get disproportionate rewards on your time. If it has to do with verbal or emotional abilities, I get disproportionate return. Me and somebody else could read the same books, and I'm just gonna walk away with more. I could give the same number of speeches as somebody else, and I'm just gonna be a little bit better than they are. So that's an area where I've really poured myself into.

If you could hit a button right now, That would say you are one of the smartest people at, what did you say? Something with data?

The ability to process raw data.

Same data?

Yeah.

Be the smartest or one of the smartest in the world right now, or guaranteed to be the same level of intelligence you are for the rest of your life, or incrementally better with the amount of process you take and be bigger than Disney, guaranteed.

That's so easy. Bigger than Disney. Nothing brings me more joy than storytelling. Nothing.

So why obsess over the, maybe you're not sure.

I'm not sure that it's smart. I don't know that it's a good use of my cycles. But you're so good at asking that really pointed question and it's tempting to dodge, right? And just because I give you some BS answer. The truth is, for whatever weird reason that I have not been held back enough by to worry about, The thing that I worry about in my life, at least some small amount, is my intelligence. So it's probably stemmed from growing up, I was just always around, maybe it's pure luck. Maybe if I had grown up anywhere else, I would have been the smartest kid. But I was in a group of friends where I was not the smartest.

And so I became the funniest. And that has served me very well. And you became the hardest working and you became...

I haven't tracked enough of them to know, I was not then, I will assure you of that. Now, whether I'm the hardest working of all of us now, but we're a bit of a Stephen King bunch where everybody's scattered to the wind and we've not stayed in contact. But I do think that line in Stephen King that you never have friends like you had when you were 12, that is true. The friends that I had at the age of 12 was like a magic Stephen King novel, but unfortunately I've not stayed in contact except for one of them, which is a whole thing unto itself. He's a fucking fascinating guy.

But anyway, they were smarter than me, many of them. Don't you want to not be the smartest person in the room?

Yeah. You'll end up in a death loop because I think it's dumb. I should not be obsessed about wanting to be smarter, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't. It is an area where, yeah, it would be cool. I won't lie. But I know how to emotionally center myself. I know how to be beyond grateful for the talents that I do have. I am able to generate an extraordinary amount of joy With the talent and intelligence, like if 50% is hardwired and then the other 50% is making the most of that, I am really having a ball making the most of what I was given. So I'm good. But am I insecure? Yes. Am I paralyzed by insecurity?

No.

Do I invest in that insecurity? No. I don't think it makes any sense to wallow in like, oh, I should be smarter, you know what I mean? Like I'm not stuck there. But that's the honest answer.

That'S interesting.

A very poignant.

That's interesting.

When you launched Quest, there were 1600 other protein bar companies that launched in 2010.

Flavors or companies. Yeah.

Flavors or companies. Yep. What gave you the audacious mindset to think that you could compete against all those, plus the 10, 20 years of other nutrition companies out there and, and beat them?

Yeah, it's.

Without having any experience in this.

Yeah, I'm gonna give you a phrase that I play in my own head that I know when I say out. it allowed. 50 of people love it and 50 of people hate me for it. But it's true. So, hey, here we go. I have the arrogance of belief. I believe in myself. Now, I believe in one thing about me. I am not the smartest guy. I got a 990 on my SATs. I took it twice. That's my combined score. Better than me. That's bad for both of us. I always joke with people. A monkey smearing feces on the test could score higher than I did. Like, it's literally terrible. But I always believed that I could do whatever I set my mind to. So that's the only credit I will give myself is when other people break and give up and stop, I just don't. And it comes down to the story you tell yourself about yourself. And that's the story I tell myself. I was just this last weekend, I was at an entrepreneurial organization and they brought a world-class mountain biker in and said, Hey, anybody that wants to go for a ride with her, go. and I thought, okay, you know, I'll go and, and because she's saying we can do a beginner course or whatever. I thought, oh, that's perfect. You know, jump on the bike and go. I've never been on a mountain bike before, ever in my life. I haven't been on a bike of any kind, probably, in 15 years. So that was probably stupid. And we're in, oh, God, Sun Valley, Idaho. So it's not exactly Flatland. And we go mountain biking and I'm dying. I'm just done. It's at, like, 6, 000 feet, first of all, so I cannot catch my breath. And I keep stopping and everyone's like, oh, you know, It's okay, man. Go ahead and turn back. It's all good. It's all good. And I'm like, I don't think you know the story I tell myself. There's no universe in which I stop. So I keep going. Finally, they've done the loop. Some people have turned back, whatever. They've done the loop and now they're coming back and they're passing me. I'm still headed out. And they're like, you need to turn around. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, but I'm not gonna turn around. And they said, okay, but then we're no longer responsible for you. And I was like, okay. I'm like, it is what it is, man. I appreciate that. No worries, I'm a big boy.

Go.

And I just kept going. And I must have come in an hour and 20 minutes or something after everybody else. But I finished. And that meant so much to me. I was like, I'm gonna ignore the fact I got my ass handed to me and I came in dead last. But I'm gonna be proud that I didn't quit.

Interesting.

Did you say arrogance of belief?

Is that what you said? The arrogance of belief. You know, it's interesting, when I study champion athletes, There's one thing that they have over everyone else, one of two things, and it's a belief in themselves or the beliefs in something higher giving them that strength, courage, athleticism. Whenever I listen to champions on interviews after the Super Bowl, whatever it may be, the first thing they say is, you know, how do you feel that the broadcasters are going to say, you know, I want to say, you know, thanks to God who gives me all the glory, who gives me all my strength, my courage, everything. I believe 100% in Him and His power. and in that power. Or the other athletes like, I believe in myself so much. I'm the best. I'm the greatest. I believe I will do whatever it takes. I believe that I can go through any adversity. It's that belief, that arrogance of belief, either way, that I believe makes people great or not great.

Yeah.

And even if you're, you know, the other person may have a lot of belief as well, and sometimes it just doesn't fall your way. You know, Tom Brady has been in, has lost a number of Super Bowls, also won a number of them. But it's getting to that opportunity, I think. You got to have that belief either way. That's a good point right there. What makes you guys different than everyone else?

There's really two things. One, the product is just different. We were the first ones. In fact, I never really answered your question. There's 1600 bars products into a declining market. Everyone told us we were crazy. But there was nothing in the market that we would eat. We knew there was at least a market of three.

Too much stuff in it, too much chemicals.

We just thought, look, man, if we can deliver this product that's real, people will respond. and wanting to build a company of value so that people could love it in two ways. So one was just we created a better product. And then two, we said right from the beginning there's two things that we export, our product and our philosophy. And that made us weird right out of the gate. And we said, Look.

But different is good.

Yeah, right. And this was really different in a positive way because we wanted to own up this, there's two things going on with the company. There's the ability to make this superior product and get it out into the market and all that. And then there's the mentality that we have that has allowed us to do this. And we want to share that mentality with other people. And we have a similar global desire by exporting that mentality, which is we shorthand it to Elon Musk, but I mean, the next Bill Gates, people doing big things, world changing things, right? We want to find those people. We want to give them the arrogance of belief in themselves or a less controversial way of saying we want to give people the confidence of belief.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So that they can be confident that they can believe in themselves enough to take a risk and quite frankly survive failing. And a lot of people I think get eaten up by failure, which is not useful. So helping people develop a mentality that inoculates them from the pain of failing, from the pain of not being chosen, all those things that really knock people back, we want to export that philosophy. And that certainly plays well for the brand because the brand was always meant to be empowering. We had to make a decision early on. Is a Quest Bar what you give to somebody who has six-pack abs and you say well done son, you get to eat one of these. So is it a trophy or is it a catalyst for change? Hey, I see somebody, this guy, this gal, they're struggling and I want to give them an inclusive community. I want to give them a product that feels good that they can celebrate with, that they can reconnect to joy and that's what we want to be. We don't want to be a trophy. I want to be a catalyst for change. So when you're already just in the mindset, we want to be a catalyst for change and you're trying to put that out into the world in ways that, by the way, do not serve you from a financial standpoint in any way, shape or form. It actually allows you to create an authentic connection with the consumer and being real and really connecting with them, that does serve you from integrity of the brand.

Sure, yeah. You said eight and a half years of your life you feel like was taken from you.

I sold it cheaply. I won't allow myself to say it was taken from me.

You sold it cheaply.

I sold it cheaply.

I'm curious, what were the biggest lessons you learned about yourself in those eight and a half years that you apply now to your business? And also, do you feel like you would have such a big company and mission and purpose with Quest without those eight and a half years?

I definitely wouldn't.

And.

Is it the classic case of I wouldn't change anything because it brought me to where I am? that's not an interesting mindset to me, right? Because I don't want to sit here and fumble for the next eight and a half years. Now, I want to be deadly efficient. So that is the, it's a better framing device for me to say that that was time sold cheaply to remind me not to make the same mistakes again. But I have reframed it in my mind as well and I understand I learned very powerful lessons. So what lessons did I learn? I learned that you really have to set your mind to acquiring a certain set of skills with all the efficiency in the world that you can acquire those skills, first of all, that anything is possible as long as you set your mind to it. And that the most, and this is probably the most important lesson that I learned, that what is working against you is your own mind. Now, if you stop there, you're in trouble because it's not specific. So we all have insecurities that get triggered and then we start acting foolishly as a result of that trigger. Now, the one, so we all have a superpower, I'm sure you've heard that before. We all have a superpower. Mine is the ability to understand my own emotions. and drivers even when they're petty and ugly. And I just admit to them. And I'm talking within seconds. Like if I have just a horrible, petty, thought-feeling driver, I'm like, okay, I'm doing this for a really stupid reason. And because I'm aware of it, I can't always stop it. So this is not like yay me. I can't always stop it, but because I at least recognize it, I can then train it out of myself over time. Because it's like, okay, when you do that, it's because this person triggered that insecurity and you're dealing with it this way. And that also lets me then teach other people. So if you walked into a meeting at Quest, it would be really weird because we're talking vulnerable, like we're being totally vulnerable with each other. We're being really honest about what insecurities are being triggered. And if somebody makes a weird face when somebody else says something, I'll just be like, you made a weird face. Let's talk about the weird face. Because I know that weird face is because some insecurity is being triggered. Right? And what happens when people's insecurity is triggered, they'll fight for a dumb idea just because it's theirs, right? And they don't want to feel stupid, so they want to win the argument. And the thing that I think I learned over the eight and a half years that a lot of people don't really understand, and if I could give this gift to people, it'd be very powerful for them, that everyone is going to build a massive ego. Everyone, everyone in this room right now, the three of us, we all have big egos. I promise you. It's only a question of what did you build your ego around? Did you build it around something that's positive and empowering? or did you build it around being perfect, something that's very fragile, something that you could never uphold so you're going to end up fighting to protect your ego to what may be essentially a really bad idea, but because it was your idea and it made you feel good, you're going to fight for it. So I realized very early on because I'm not as bright as my partners and intelligence is not a predictor of success or whatever, that's not a big thing for me, but I'm really not just like on a raw IQ Sure. Level, I'm not as bright as my partners. So they can process data much more quickly than I can. And in the beginning, it made me feel very inferior. And so that triggered an insecurity. And so I would fight for dumb ideas because they were mine. And sometimes I could actually convince them. And it was one day realizing I actually won that argument and now I'm terrified because I've convinced them. I'm not sure if it's the right thing or... Not only what if, I know it's not. I know it's the worst idea, but I've just out argued them, right? Like I've fatigued them. They no longer wanted to fight over it. And I thought, wow, that's really dumb because if I'm goal-oriented, if my goal really is XYZ, right? I want to end metabolic disease, then you know you're either moving towards that goal or you're not. And so having that realization made me go, I need to build my self-esteem around something that is at all times empowering. So rather than building my self-esteem around being right, which is what I've been doing up to that moment, and being right still feels good, right? Everybody loves it. But there's a more powerful one, which is to identify the right answer faster than anyone else, which means you may have the right answer. And then I'm gonna be like, Lewis has the right answer.

That idea is so badass.

And then I'm gonna get so hardcore behind your idea and be the driving energy behind it that people will-- To everyone else. Yeah. And the whole time I'm gonna be screaming, this is Lewis's idea. Lewis is a genius. This man did it. But everyone is getting behind me because I'm running harder and faster than anyone else. And because I'm bringing so much energy to the right answer, it makes me feel good. I feel rad. I feel as rad as I would have if it actually had been my own idea.

Let's talk about self-awareness because it sounds like you have a lot of self-awareness. How important is it for everyone to have self-awareness and how do you cultivate that understanding, that skill set?

It absolutely is critical. I think it's probably the most important skill that you can develop. And here's how I train people to do it at Quest. so I'll give you one specific application. There's many, obviously. So this will be very, very specific in interviewing. The first thing you need to do, you need to keep a seven second journal. In the first seven seconds of meeting somebody, you have a feeling, and that feeling usually emanates from your gut.

Right?

You're either drawn to that person. You want to hang out. They make you feel uneasy.

Whatever.

You probably don't understand why you like them. You may not understand why you don't like them, but you have a reaction, and it comes. way too quickly for them to talk you out of it. So just take note. Then what I do is once I recognize, oh, I have a positive or, oh, I have a negative feeling for this person, I then open my mind up. If I love them, I open my mind up to they may be terrible here. Or if I really don't like them, I open my mind up to they may be the best thing ever. And so I go through the rest of the interview simply remembering what the first seven seconds told me. Then I get to spend, let's say, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour with that person just trying to find out who they are, revealing myself, getting them to reveal themselves. And through that, I will form a new opinion. And it may be the same as my first seven seconds. It may be wildly different. And then if I hire them, I get to test. Was I right? And which one was right? If I initially reacted poorly but then ended up hiring them, was I right the first time or the second time? So you just over the repetition of going through that, I have an emotion that I don't understand, but I'm going to make mental note of it. And I actually tell people to write it down. Going through that process and then later identifying it, that becomes really, really useful because you can start to test the hypothesis. I feel this way and I think it's because of this and then you see over time if it was or not.

How many people do you stick around more than six months once you hire them?

Do I hang around?

How many people stay at the company? Stay at the company for more than six months? Is it like a quick decision if you know in the first 30 days is like a marker? where they either make it or they don't and you're like, okay, it's probably not the best fit. How do you judge that?

You know, that's actually something that I struggle with because I would say we have a relatively high turnover rate and the reason is we're a really, really particular flavor and for people that have a growth mindset, you will not find a better place to work. But if you have a fixed mindset, we sound like lunatics, right? Like imagine you walk in with a fixed mindset, you actually you're as smart as you're ever going to be and that's that. Some people are born with more than others and that's just the way it is. You think of yourself as a very bright, very intelligent person. Thank God, right? And to you it's like height. You either have it or you don't. And you walk into a meeting and somebody makes a funny face and I can tell they're shaking their head because there's some historical disagreement between these two and I say literally just today, by the way, this is a real example. I'm like, you,'re shaking your head because you believe you've told somebody something and they have haven't listened, right? To somebody with a fixed mindset, that's like, this isn't a therapy session, dude. Like, what are you doing? But to me, knowing how people entrench themselves into bad behaviors that they can free themselves from, and that's all judged by efficiency, by the way. So it's not like frou-frou, Tom thinks this. It's we have a goal and I judge every behavior, every smile, frown, whatever, against does it move us towards where we're going or away from where we're going? So Yeah, for the people that stay, they stay for a very long time. For the people that leave, they leave fast.

I believe that we can't achieve our goals without a great team. And it sounds like you're building a great team, but with everyone turning over quickly, how does that dynamic fit in with creating connection with people if their office mate right next to them is gone within a month and they're being vulnerable and opening up and sharing and connecting and being honest and sticking to these 20-25 bullet points, these values, How does someone fully open up and express themselves and trust that they can if they're going to leave and go do something else and be gone?

Yeah, so the way that we have it, I would say probably about, it's going to be north of 90% of the people that once they're in, they're in. So there's this ever building snowball of people that have been working together now for years. So there's like a cultural lexicon. So, the way that we refer to it is the island has voted you off. So, it really becomes that collective of people who make up the core of the company are like, this guy just, he's not having fun. We call him clock punchers. He's a clock puncher. He's a nine to fiver, right? He hasn't bought and invested into the brand. Yeah, not even that, because we don't think like that. I don't want people, the dream to end metabolic disease is my dream. If you happen to share that dream, wow, that's fantastic. But if we're not serving something that's intimately personal for you, you shouldn't be here. And when someone is serving themselves, everything about them is different. They've got more ideas, more energy, they put more time into it with a bigger smile, they're just more energetic. So when people walk into Quest, the first thing they say almost without exception is, Whoa, there's a real energy here. Because that's people, that's whatever, 1300 people that are there for their own selfish reasons. So while I say we have a high turnover, it's high by my standards because I want everybody to have a growth mindset and to really fall in love. But yeah, I mean how we compare to other companies, I don't know.

Sure. And are you accessible to everyone? Do you give your time if anyone wants time with you? Are you just like, let me clear my schedule? Do you have set hours where you say, I'm available to schedule time with me if you have any challenges or you want to talk about anything or how does that work?

It's been evolving. So yes, if anyone says they want to see me, they will get to see me for sure and they'll get to see me very quickly. Oh, the next 48 hours for sure. But I know the truth of being available is to go sit out in the middle and beckon people to you because as much as I hate it, there's an intimidation factor to the position. So people think, oh, he's the president, he's the owner, like I can't go up to him. Absolutely hate that and that holds them back which means it actually holds my company back. So it's like I would love nothing more than people to kick my door in and be like you work for me, you know what I mean? Like that's when okay now I know you're here for selfish reasons. You're trying to make something happen. So I used to sit out in what we call the living. So if I'm awake and not in the gym, I'm at work Monday through Friday obviously. So I'm in there really early and I stay really late. and I used to sit out in what we call the living room and just invite people to come and talk to me. And it was awesome. And I had this touch point. People could tell me what was going on. And I got to continue to push out the mindset and, you know, let people see it from, like, a thousand different angles, like how I would handle this problem or that problem or whatever.

You sit on the big bean bag now.

I don't anymore, but that's exactly the space I'm talking about.

Yeah. Yeah.

And what I found was, in fact, this is why I ended up starting Inside Quest because it didn't scale. I could maybe touch 10 people at a time, but when you've got 1,300, that's not enough. And I thought, we've got 1,300 now. Where are we going to be in five years? So we started thinking, okay, how can we make this scalable? And the answer was to do a show where I bring on people like you, and we get to go back and forth and really push each other and sort of challenge ideas and let people see that and engage in it as much as they and now that A, it lives forever and B, they can come in and see it recorded in real time. They can ask you questions. Yeah, yeah.

And ask some questions as well.

What is the strategy you've learned from all the people you've interviewed in your own just personal tests and experiments of soothing and kind of getting back to a place of heart rate slowing down, getting back to a rational state of mind, letting go of the hurt 12 year old that's not smart or whatever it may be that's hurt in that moment and reactive. What are those soothing techniques besides having a blankie when you're a child and something gets dumb?

Well, so I'll get the mechanistic one out of the way. Meditation is big. That has been a lifesaver for me. That's helped me manage stress in very stressful situations. But the thing that maybe people haven't heard before is I always ask myself one question. So I have a goal.

I know what my goal is.

That's very, very important in my entire rubric. Everything that I say assumes that the person knows what their goal is. Big goal or the goal just in that moment. So let's say your goal is I want to feel good about myself. So getting back to center. Okay, I want to feel good about myself, but I just did something to embarrass myself. And it has real world consequences, right? It really was embarrassing and it really will stick with me maybe if for a year, maybe 10 years, maybe this is a thing that now is associated with me forever, right? It's out in the internet, whatever. So how am I going to recenter? I use one question. Will it serve me to feel badly about myself because of this? And if it does serve me, and by the way, sometimes it does, like you need that sting of like, oh, I messed that thing up. I don't want to mess up like that again. And being upset by it never more than 20% of your time, but in that 20% leaning on what I call the dark side to be like angry about it, be upset, hold yourself accountable and not just let yourself off the hook. Be like, yeah, you screwed that up. You weren't paying enough attention. Your skill set wasn't ready, whatever. But nine or eight times out of ten, I guess the right answer is no, it's not going to serve me. And even if kicking my own ass served me for a little bit, it's not going to serve me for long. so I need to very rapidly transition into forgiveness, into just not focusing on it, letting it go, and knowing that. So I have a belief that I've consciously instilled in my life that I only do and believe that which moves me towards my goal. So if, even if it's true that I'm a, believing that isn't going to serve me. So I just go, okay, well, that's not going to serve me. So I need to at least believe I can get better. Okay, I can get better. Cool. Then I'm just going. focus on that. And that simple reframe pulls me out of that. And I just, it's a pattern interrupt, right? Using cognitive behavioral therapy language. I don't allow myself to death spiral.

About what a moron I am. You know what's interesting? I probably spent 27, 28 years of my life, maybe 30, obsessing over being a moron internally, right? Internalizing like, God, stupid, you're an idiot, whatever it was, around a relationship or something in my business, something. I would obsess about it. And I think when I turned 30, I finally was like, well, that doesn't really serve me anymore. And I feel like a lot of people in the world continue to obsess about calling themselves something negative, that they're no good or a moron or a god or an idiot for doing this thing. And we obsess over it. Why do you think we obsess so much for decades of our lives until we die, most people, it seems like?

You're having a biological experience. so one of the physics of being human, this is the actual structures of the brain are designed to do the following. It's designed to keep you alive long enough to have kids that have kids. That's it. Now, you trying to be the alpha in your tribe is actually very dangerous. You're gonna have to put yourself out there, take risks, try to build alliances, all that. So that's why people are so afraid of making a mistake, public speaking, doing something that could get them ostracized. Now in a modern context, it doesn't make sense anymore to have that fear, but the programming is there. So also we have a negativity bias. So if you think of it as the sort of snake stick effect, you are better off assuming that a stick in the grass is actually a snake than you are to assume a snake in the grass is a stick. Because if a stick is, you know, just a stick, but you react like it's a snake, you look silly and people might chuckle. But if it's actually a snake and you react like it's a stick, you're dead. So you're way better off skewing to the overreactive. Same with negative. You are way better off going, Louis, you really embarrassed yourself. You never should have done that.

You should have just kept your mouth shut.

Stay safe. Stay safe yourself. Yes, because you are better off fitting in than you are sticking your head up. Now, if you win the lottery and you become the alpha male and you get access to more females and you procreate, It's a risky strategy, but when it pays off at Genghis Khan and it pays off, you know, I mean, he can, his impact can actually be measured in the gene pool. It's insane, but it's a dangerous strategy, man. So that's why you have all this like negativity bias. You're something like five or seven, I forget what the stat is, seven times more likely to believe something negative than you are to believe something positive because if it's positive, then it's just you didn't get ostracized, but you don't get a lot more out of it. Whereas if you really misstep and you're in danger of being put out of the group, you need to address it immediately and go into damage control.

Have you ever done anything where you felt like, oh, I really messed up?

I mess up daily.

But I mean like, oh, I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have done that thing. Or I got too much negative comments than I normally get. Is there a moment you can think of that Stands out where you felt like, I held on to this for a few days of beating myself up because I knew I needed to take accountability.

You're asking about whether I hold on to something too long or whether I make mistakes. Were they legit?

What was the mistake that was a big one for you where you were like, okay, I had to beat myself up, but I had to hold myself accountable for a few days longer than I normally would to recover.

I don't have a quick answer to that. Partly because I don't lash myself for mistakes and haven't for a very long time now. I make mistakes routinely. I've made huge mistakes with building culture.

Really?

Dude, you want to talk trial and error? Trying to figure out how to build a culture in a company was very, very difficult. When I used to mentor somebody, I would do this thing where I would say, they would come to me inevitably and say, hey, I want to be you in 10 years. And I would say, okay, then I'm going to start talking to you the way that I talk to myself. that was a mistake. Most people are not ready for that and like finding a way to stair step them into that and sort of help them begin to process things that you know, I've had my entire life to earn my own respect or credibility with myself. So and then also I could never understand and Lisa really had to show me. She was like, when you speak, people don't hear Tom Bilyeu the teammate. They hear Tom Bilyeu the CEO. And it's like, she was like some of your staff has only ever interacted with you when you're on camera. And so to you, it's like you have both the sort of you're the boss, you pay their paycheck and you're a celebrity in a very micro way. Trust me, I'm well aware of that. But like that's the perception that they have. But because I don't think of myself like that, I don't feel that way internally, that I cannot think that, oh, when I say this thing and I'm a very forceful person, so now I'm saying it forcefully, but I don't I don't want deference. I assume you're not giving me deference, but in reality that person is hearing the CEO, this guy could fire me, and he's, you know, now he's coming at me hard, which he did ask my permission to do because I came and said, but it just, it didn't work. So I don't use that strategy anymore. Just a lot of little things like that where it seemed like I really was trying to do something amazing, but it was a terrible strategy. Yeah.

What would you say is the wrong way about getting into a business partnership with your married couple as a married couple and the right way to do it? What have you learned in the last five years that's really worked and what has been like, man, maybe we shouldn't have done a business together if we would have went down this way?

If your relationship isn't high functioning, if you don't have insane levels of emotional stability, a sense of longevity, you know that you're in this forever, and that you've shown over a certain period of time that we have the chops to solve disputes. That's the key. The second key is what are the roles? Maybe I don't care who takes what role, but you better have some roles. So for instance, when Lisa and I created Impact Theory, we said to the lawyers, make this the ultimate divorce nightmare. Lawyer said, no, no, no. One of you should take 51%, trust me. Everybody thinks this is all going to be sunshine and rainbows. And Lisa was like, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Tom should have 51% and I'll take 49%. And I said, Over my dead body.

Wow.

You are taking 50%. This is half your company. You have earned over the life of our marriage, you've earned half of everything that we have. Like if my wife were cheated on me with an entire football team. I would still give her half because half of it is hers. She has earned that half and becoming a horrible wife does not negate that she earned her half. And so I would just close that chapter. I would give her half, never look back and just go do my thing. And because I believe that to the core of my being and I believe it for two reasons. One, she really has earned her half and even if she hasn't, the only way to make sure that my marriage is my number one priority is to say to her, no, no, no. I trust you implicitly. If you're gonna burn this business down, do it. Please don't mess up our marriage, but like, I don't care about the business like I care about you. And I wanna be very clear and I want my actions to show. It isn't like, oh no, it doesn't matter. But you know what? I'll just put the 51 down just so you know. The lawyers are telling us, no, no, no, 50-50. But let's be very clear. I will try never, ever, ever to move forward without us agreeing. and you will convince me sometimes I will convince you I am very open and I she knows me. I never argue for an idea just because it's mine. I know where the company is trying to go. I have built a skill set over multiple businesses in many, many years of being good, not perfect, but being good at knowing which movement is most likely to get us where we want to go. So, my beloved wife about to be my business partner, if we ever find ourselves At an impasse, I can't convince you, you can't convince me, we've exhausted our ability to communicate, you know, to move each other. We will every single time go with my idea. Now, if you're comfortable with that.

We're 50/50 though.

Correct, but we have roles. Yeah, I am the CEO. I am the visionary.

Interesting.

She is an unimaginably good executor and she has also amazing visionary ideas just as I know how to execute. But when you look at the dominant trait, I am dominant when it comes to vision. She's dominant when it comes to execution. So if it's something around execution and I think she's crazy, we're gonna go with her idea because I know she is the right person to listen to. But when we get to loggerheads on something where let's say we were equal, like no one has more experience, no one has proven to be better at this thing, then ultimately I'll make that call. Now, because that's your role. That's my role. and again, you're not gonna step on.

Her execution role if she's like, no, we're gonna do it this way and her 1% will probably win out over that. Is that true or no? Whoever is the right person to listen.

To, like Jocko Willing makes it very clear, if you wanna be a good leader, you have to know when to follow. And that's another thing that we talked about in the culture document. You better be prepared to lead, but you also better be prepared to follow. So I would follow her, I have no problem with that. There's no ego tied up. It's just somebody has to be the tiebreaker. There's only two of you. It has to be agreed upon ahead of time who has the final say. Interesting. And that will force you to cross a line in your relationship where it's like, we're gonna say it, we're gonna write it down, there's gonna be no uncertain terms. When we don't agree, and if it's area by area, we're going to write the areas down. Right. And then when something falls into a gray zone, who makes the decisions in the gray zone? Write it down.

So it's clear.

Yeah.

Very clear. Now you had 15 years under your belt of building a successful marriage and partnership of trust and relationship and shared experience together. What if someone's in the first two years of their marriage? Would you say you should it's still good chance you'll have a great business experience together and not crush your marriage in those first?

If your relationship is high functioning, you'll just learn the lessons in a business context. So, a marriage is way more high stakes than.