TOM BILYEU & LISA: How To Find Your Life Partner & Build A $1 Billion Empire! (MUST WATCH INTERVIEW)

everybody I'm Tom Billy and I'm Lisa Ben you and we are passionate food love the interview there was a reason that we decided to do a second round with this man here Omar's questions are absolutely phenomenal they are well thought out he does his research he really is one of the best interviewers out there and I'm telling you we've seen a lot collectively but home are really is special so it was exciting to be back on had a lot of fun welcome to this episode of passionate view it's your host Omar here and today we have a very special episode with the power couple that is the billion dollar founders of quest nutrition Tom and Lisa bill you and in today's interview we go deep about their story how the couple met and also some of the nuances of their relationship not only as Tom sheriff's thinks he's never shared before but also have a couple built the billion dollar quest bar brand from scratch their mission now and there's tons of lessons in this interview jam-packed whether it's entrepreneurship relationships or practical advice that you can apply right now to take your mindset to the next level so with no further ado I want to encourage you guys to sit back relax enjoy the billion dollar power couple interview with none other than Tom and Lisa bill you enjoy thanks for being on the show today Tom and Lisa thanks for having us man thank you so much Tom Lisa absolutely so let's get right into it a lot of people have seen obviously which you guys have recently built with impact Theory obviously you guys co-founded quest nutrition but let's go back to the very beginning I know we touched on in the last interview where you guys met but let's give the audience some context where did you guys meet and where did this love story all begin so I was teaching film and it was a school for adults I always feel compelled to mention that she was one of my students and that was yeah at the beginning of everything this is back in 2000 was when we met and yeah just hit it off she was here in America and I thought this is wonderful she is legally obligated to leave the country so I can have you know nice little fling romance and she'll be leaving and you know all will come back to normal and I did not anticipate falling head over heels and love and changing the entire course of my life Wow that was how we met and he left out the part that he ignored me for a month and a half yes that's just good strategy thing it was great strategy it made me interested a little hard together yeah he really was it's not even hard to get and this this is actually like I had to learn this I had no game with women whatsoever in my teens and early 20s so you were in a ladies malleable not in the slightest and she literally thought that I was like this big player and little did she know not at all the case but I had finally gotten really frustrated in my early 20s with not being able to get the response from women that I wanted and so I just said okay like anything this is learn about so I went to somebody that had the best luck with women and I said alright dude what's your like what's your strategy what are you doing he was like oh Tom let me let me tell you just be an [ __ ] and I was like there's no way this is so stupid there's no way that's true right but I had heard that so many times that I was like while the words they're using clearly are fundamentally false what are they really trying to get at and I realized that the thing that they were short handing as being [ __ ] was that to not care whether you win or lose and so you're completely yourself and you lead with confidence and you're not trying to win them over you're just being you and so I thought okay I'm almost certain that's what they mean so I'm going to stop trying to impress anybody I'm gonna stop trying to get the girl and I'm literally just gonna be aggressively myself I'm gonna be Who I am and when I'm feeling weird and quirky I'm gonna be weird and quirky when I have something that is shocking to say but I really believe it I'm gonna say it I'm not gonna shock for the sake of shock but I'm just gonna stop trying to be cool or fit a mold and dude that [ __ ] work like a charm and so getting to that level of like being nonchalant leading with confidence not chasing it reads as ignoring I wasn't active ignoring her I just wasn't making any overtures I wasn't pursuing her but you were interested a little bit you were interests I thought she was attractive I didn't know her enough to be interested and so I'm not a guy that just ever in my life just tried to go out and get laid so it was like I always even if I was gonna have something that you know was a one-night engagement I needed to connect like there needed to be something there for me so yes there was no question she is literally my type from just top to bottom so she had caught my eye in that way but I didn't know her enough to be like oh I would want to pursue it anyway but as I got to know her it literally happened the moment I was like you know what she actually is pretty interesting like that very day it was when I how about you Lisa what was your first impression of Tom yeah I'd come to America I'd studied film in England in full I've had enough practical experience so I found this one course in Los Angeles and it was eight weeks intense and I thought this is gonna be so much fun day one I walk in he stand in there and he's he had the posture of just a confident man which of course very much attracted me to him and then he pretty much ignored me which absolutely works as a teacher you mean he just general no he would teach me but it was he never went beyond that but there was something I don't know it was he was cocky enough to get my attention but yet reserved enough to make me curious and then he showed his movie to our class and after that I was wow this guy's very talented and I realized that I'm very drawn to talented people so I was even more interested in he ignored me even more and then we just when he asked me out on a day he had no preconceived notions of what that date would be like and I'm thinking this is gonna be a fun summer fling not realizing he's thinking the same thing right he's a teacher I'll be great when I'm 90 I can tell my grandkids that when I was once pretty cool because she had a fling with an American dude and you know when she was in her 20s and so we went on that first when neither of us pretended and usually on the first day you pretend it's your best version of yourself for that one period of time and I'm just myself because I'm not thinking it's going anywhere he's just himself cuz he thinks it's not going anywhere and that first night we stayed up till 4:00 in the morning 5:00 in the morning just talking if he tried to make his move we just just try to make an impact exactly we just got along so well and my first impression was this quiet doesn't BS like he was so honest and I'd never been on a day ever in my life up until that point where I had someone be that truthful and that honest because he was saying things that could have ended the date there and then and I found that curious and it was so refreshing and so he was a guy who was super confident super honest and yet an utter gentleman he was the first guy that ever held the door open for me I can't believe that's true that's so crazy and he still opens the door now for me but it was one of those like this is so weird I'm thinking this guy's like really cocky and has like this super like fancy car with you know the stereo system that's blasting and bass because that's kind of to be honest what I was used to right and attracted to and attracted to absolutely and so this first date I think he's that type of guy and we walk over to his big Buick and the doors not really working and his back seats full of junk so at this time time you're pretty broke oh yes he took me to a bee restaurant in a strip mall just to give you a night that was offense today if I had known that that was gonna because for years and years and years every anniversary of our first date we'd go relive that night we'd go back to the restaurant eat at the restaurant we go cuz our date was actually at the DGA so we'd go to the DGA and then we would actually go walk by the apartment that I was living in at the time and just like do this whole thing and a lot we've made this like big moment out of this be daivi restaurant with like huge tears in like the furniture and it'd still be restaurant probably well unfortunately it went out of business ended up getting taken over I don't know what the rating is now but so I mean it's just hysterical how did you ask her out that first night you just went up to her that first time when the first like overture I made to her was sit your ass down where do you think you're going I was wondering if he'd yeah no way really yeah you're just that forward with her and keep in mind it was it was fun and funny and appropriate it was like we had a rapport certainly a student-teacher and so she was like most of her class was that we were on set shooting most of her class was done so a bunch of them we're gonna leave but some of them weren't and so she was like all right we're all taking off and I was like sit your ass down where do you think you're going and so she just sat down and I was like oh and I normally play hard-to-get but after a month and a half oh so shook that he said I've been okay it's that time you don't just say okay you've got to play hard-to-get he was almost like a militant February I was so shocked I was like whoa I can't believe like how well this stuff works so it was yeah it was really really interesting to have collec Adam at a moment of great change for both of us where I was trying to you know step into my confidence and really own Who I am and own my personality and you know she was already like really owned herself and was very confident and so for us to to meet at that level where she was really opening herself up to being an artist and like I don't know it's just a really cool like a moment of change for us both and so I think it's why we both had such open minds to when we met it was like this cool collision of ideas I'd never met a woman like her I'd never met somebody that was so self-assured and confident like aggressively so and so yeah it was just really really interesting and then how old were you guys at the time young as hell and I do not advise that people get together as young as we did but when it worked out she was 21 and I was not 25 that's all I know that there's this whole thing she was like going to tell her dad like I'm like really freaking out to tell my dad that I'm dating this guy that's 25 and I was like whoa whoa whoa I never told you I was 25 she was like what do you mean so now I'm thinking oh my god 30 my dad's gonna kill me that I'm dating such an older man right I was 24 that's the joke he was like I was not 25 so what do you mean oh god he's at 24 and then so you were actually her teacher not just in the school you actually was teacher apparently her teacher yet Wow okay and then how do you guys go from that first date to like okay this is a relationship where you know a long-term thing let's get really weird so and you can shut this down or edit it however you want the truth is I really wanted to sleep with her that first night I was like having none of it appreciate the honesty and when we're at dinner having you know but prior to this he's like I'm not the guy that just wants to get laid on the first night so then when he makes a move I'm like you're full of [ __ ] which I pretty much told him and that but the thing was really like at the beginning of the night I didn't know her that well there wasn't that connection I wasn't on my mind I'd never played that you know romance like that but that I mean look it obviously worked out where we get married so when I say it was the most electric moment of my life like I had never met somebody like her and going from seeing her as a student to seeing who she was really like as a woman was like so cool and so I'm literally like John the floor the whole dinner I'm like man this chick is so intriguing and she was just like just more interesting than anyone I've ever met and so as the night goes on I was like whoa like I'm really into this chick and now I have that connection I'm definitely going for the clothes and she shot it down and was like not having it but not in like oh then it created an awkward moment wasn't awkward at all we had had such a phenomenal conversation that we just slipped back into that and it was it was wonderful and so but looking back there is something to like that there was the real want to see her again partly because that you know there was nothing cemented it there was still that hanging sexual question in the air and so we went back out on I mean literally from that first date I've never looked back never looked sideways nothing was just always her not that I was love at first sight it was not I was not in love with her at that moment I was just way way way intrigued mm-hm and so when I was dropping her she loves this story when I was dropping her off I was done playing cool I was like dude you're so interesting like let's keep this going so I was like when am I gonna see you again no she's like oh you know maybe three or four days and I was like oh yeah what you know yeah because he'd played cool for so long I thought well nice you can't show that you're too keen even though first it was kind of based on the truth which is where that we still then played the game afterwards look there is there is a game to be played and no one's certain term for everybody for everybody and the understanding that understanding like how do you influence people how do you have an impact on people it isn't just being aggressively yourself it's being aggressively yourself in a context right like I'm not the same way in a board meeting that I'm gonna be on a first date right right nor would anyone expect me to and it'd be [ __ ] weird if I did it right so I was myself in the context of a first date and so you know you have to put it that way so but realizing at least for me that the rules of the game had changed very rapidly in that I no longer felt like I was on going for a second date it felt like I've connected with you in a way I've literally never connected with another human being in my life to give you an idea so we met when I was 24 I had never told anyone ever other than like my immediate family that I loved them ever so she is my first and only serious relationship Wow so it's like I was always like I'm never getting married like it's not my thing I don't need to be with people I don't have like that pole that some people have where they have to be in a relationship I have never had that I don't have an addictive personality I'm very fine by myself so for me it was like whoa like everything just changed and the easiest way to encapsulate that is eight months later not then because I want to be very clear about this was not love at first sight but eight months later I realized oh I'm either never getting married which is a very real possibility or I'm marrying her but it isn't like oh well I've always known I wanted to get married so it was either I'm never getting married or marrying her simple as wow and he told me a lot of that on our first date like no I don't really care about marriage kids maybe he's not religious so literally all these things he's telling me are completely the opposite of what I thought I was looking for in a guy so I wanted to get married I absolutely wanted a family I am brought up in a Greek Orthodox family so you know he has to be christened for us to get married culture like all these things that I thought I was looking for he wasn't it but that first day we connected on such a different level that it didn't really matter but also when he told me I thought that's gonna be a fling in a way so you don't have to like care that he doesn't care about marriage because he's not gonna be in my future but then after that first day it was like some weird electric so even though I was trying to play cool and hard-to-get after that was I guess soon I think it was like the next day we ended up seeing each other and we pretty much saw each other everywhere they asked for that Wow so let me ask you this Lisa for the audience listening what are some things that are important to know when getting into relationship because a large portion of our audience is entrepreneurs whether it be men or women whether they're in relationships are on their way to one what are some things that you guys have found that have worked and time you can chime in just want to hear Lisa's thoughts first on what are some things that you feel like are important to have compatibility on are things to look for for entrepreneurs that want to get in a healthy relationship because entrepreneurship is not easy so what are things that worked for you guys that you think brought that connection that you could impart to others yeah I think a big thing is what are you looking for in a partner because if you want from a female perspective if you want your husband to come home at 9:00 6:00 p.m. every night and eat dinner with you and be there if you want to have kids and they're gonna be there on the weekends and go to on school trips and be a part of that then I would find it hard to then be with someone who's so ambitious as an entrepreneur because it's the opposite of what they're going to do he's not coming home until work is done or until he's decided I actually need to get some sleep so there'll be weeks on end where we don't necessarily see each other and we'll try to carve out time but accepting that that's part of who he is and that's what I'm actually drawn to so if I'm drawn to someone they're super ambitious and I expect them to come home at 6:00 p.m. that's not fair on him because like I got into it knowing who he is so I think it's really what is important to you and then figuring it out from there but if you're not respectful for the other person and what they want I think if you're just like you know butt heads and collide on your desires for what you wanted the family yeah that makes sense so I think what you're saying is that it's important to accept them for who they are and acknowledge the fact that sometimes you might have conflicting wants right you might want somebody ambitious but you want them home at 6:00 right and so being open enough to realize the difference between what's important versus what's maybe being too needy or not being as understanding I just don't have those two can coexist so there's definitely times where if I really need to spend time with them I will say and he will clear his schedule would do it but that's very few and far between because on a day-to-day for him to really achieve what he needs to achieve and for me and for the company then there's gonna be a certain amount of sacrifices so as a couple we sit sat down and said what are those sacrifices were willing to make what is the goal what are the sacrifices and then let's lay out and basically do we both buy into it mm-hmm so if we both buy into it when he's gone for weeks on end when he's got business when I'm busy we just remind us ourselves that we chose this life so and what's communication something that always flowed naturally or did you guys have to work on it you know is it an ongoing thing where you guys are constantly working on it I just really want to give people listening some insight as to how healthy communication develops or should it just from the start that relationship of communication be there what's your guys's experience been like yeah so from the jump I would say you've got to be clearly communicating you've got to be communicating honestly you have to tell people what you're really about what are you really into you know it's the difference between listening to your audience and pandering to your audience right so you want to listen to the person that you're with and see like how you are are they giving you feedback that would make you rethink some of your beliefs be open to that for sure but at the same time don't be like I bet this is what they want to hear and then tell them that and then you're painting yourself as something that you're really not because you think that's what they'll be attracted to because if it works and oftentimes it does you end up a relationship that's not really you and now you've got all this momentum to act a certain way to be a certain way and it's like this total trap and so what she was saying earlier is we got into the position where we had been so honest because there were no stakes for either of us right it's like hey maybe this like is a fun fling and maybe it's nothing either way doesn't really matter and because of that it's like we were exactly who we were and so the relationship was already built on well I'm attracted to the person you actually are you're attracted to the person I actually am so that's a good start and then man I'll be honest like and this is why I'm such a fiend so as you know she's got a new show called women of impact and I'm always telling guys watch the [ __ ] show because the you you have how many times when people said oh I wish I could be a fly on a wall for that conversation this is the show so I used to read obsessively Cosmopolitan magazine Elle magazine like all of that stuff because I was like I want to know how women think I want to understand like how how do they see a relationship like how many times is a joke have to be the guys don't understand women before a guy goes well I'm just gonna go figure this out and for me because I was never that smart I always had to learn stuff but I just believed that oh things things are learn about you can go read about them and learn and that was ultimately how at the time of my life and I was sort of sliding towards depression it was like I'm gonna go read about the brain and figure this out so to get into a relationship because I could tell I wasn't good I started reading all these magazines and trying to figure out like how do women think and all that and so coming into it I knew okay like across the board when you ask people that have been in a relationship for a long time what's the secret to your success they all say the same thing communication so like how many times you have to hear that before you go oh I better get good at communicating right and so what are the tenants of communication so being honest with somebody being direct enough to be understood being a good listener being caring the finding terms which that was not something I ever read that was some of the you and I discovered together we just realized there were times where we thought we were saying the same thing but we really weren't so if I said something like hey it's really important me that you XYZ and I think and I I said important homie and she's sinking I say important 50 times a day it's just another word it's like emphasis it's like an exclamation point at the age of social right if I say hi to somebody and it doesn't have three exclamation points it's like oh he iced you out right so it's you know really figuring out what the nuances are so we just said all right we have to define these terms cuz we're getting in stupid arguments over stuff like people see us now keep my we've been together almost 20 years so it's like if you saw us in the first couple years like we would have looked like idiots so we didn't know what we were doing we just knew like there's something here that's worth investing in and we both bought into communication is the answer and so let's process through this and like my obsession with brain science I will say served us very well so I had an inherent distrust of emotions I didn't believe emotions told you any truth they just were an indicator that something is going on but it could be a trigger for you and you've got issues you haven't dealt with so just because somebody does something that really hurts you and offends you doesn't mean that they need to be punished into submission right right you may have an issue and so us both looking at that the same way was really advantageous because we were always trying to find common ground so she has an amazing technique where she'll ask herself so I've done something it's really hurt her and she just runs through this mental checklist does he love me do you believe that yes okay if he loves you do you believe that he did it intentionally to hurt you no okay if we've got those two things from there we can build and so we just started collecting little things like that that were like these tools and we would we call it giving the keys to the kingdom we would tell the other person like here's what I'm learning here's how you can diffuse if I get angry here's what you can do to defuse the situation and you would say it in moments of what we call emotional sobriety so you're not amped up you're not already upset about something totally neutral and you're like hey remember a couple days ago we had that fight you know what would have worked you almost did I saw you go to reach to touch me and just so you know in moments like that if you touch me i diffuse I don't know what it it's just the way my neuro chemistry is if you reach out and touch me I'll [ __ ] chill instantly yeah so then the next time you're gonna fight she's like it's like wanting the other person to win and that like if I had to sum up what we're about we want each other to win I love that and when you guys certainly have so let's talk about the entrepreneurial journey I know that you guys have a famous story you know her father does well and said you know hey Tom you know I know you're interested in marrying Lisa but you know my daughter has a certain lifestyle she's accustomed to and you know you have a Buick and not much else going on you didn't even have the Buick in London so let's tell that story for the audience that may want to rehear that because I think that's powerful and what that ended up doing for you motivationally if that's even a word motivationally was all hey if it wasn't before it is now yeah it was it was intense so we were young and in love and when you're young and in love that's all you can see and so for me the hard part was deciding if I was gonna propose but once I decided I was gonna propose like I was a thousand percent committed how are you from when you met her to when you get proposed very briefly yeah oh yeah I think but this is very fast and we spend three months of that pause yeah about four months at that part without social media there was no texting yeah yeah that's crazy crazy to think so yeah so he's looking her father is looking at it from that perspective their young during love that's all they can see but I have a much broader perspective I know how this kind of thing plays out it does not end well they have very different backgrounds and you know he obviously is blessum sweet kid because he was always so kind to me but just like what he saw was a young dumb broke kid who doesn't show any signs of doing anything and I should take his daughter with the way to America without shared what he saw is without shared values he didn't realize that was actually what we had in common and as part of what we should have said in your early question how do you make things work would need you need to share values and we actually did share values tremendously our foundational values are almost identical not entirely even today but almost and so that's what he sees I go to propose to her but I know that I'm gonna have to ask his permission first so I buy the ring literally like two months in advance or something and you're broke at the time so that's right yeah yeah oh my god so to this day I'm so mortified at how small the ring is getting off my hands as much as he's trying literally yeah I want to buy her one that like makes her arm heavy mmm and now you guys can because back let me yes it's like great this moment and I'm stuck but so anyway I have this ring I want to propose to her I make an appointment with her dad and he cancels make another appointment he cancels again well I make a third appointment and he cancels again so he just didn't didn't want I didn't know about this okay well he lived overseas or no literally down the street so we're in London okay so I go to London I'm living in London for the summer because the school that I work for sends me there so they were moving a branch on it if I ran through all the like I don't believe in fate the dude if I ran through all the things that that happened to come together for us to like make this work it tempts me to believe in fate it's crazy yeah but without D railing on that yeah so yeah it cancels the third time and I'm like alright this guy does not want me to propose and I have a bad day at work and I'm coming home and I call her or whatever and I'd say you know I've had this really terrible day and I walk in and she's done so we're living in her mom's house in the bedroom that she grew up in to give you an idea of where our wealth status is at that point and I walk into the room and she's got this carpet picnic laid out yeah and I'm just like to the core of my being I'm like this this is why you get in a relationship relationships are compromised they're they're giving things up but when they're right they give you something back that is so much bigger than what you give up and in that moment I was like Jesus to be emotionally supported and understood like this for somebody it's go I'm gonna turn your day around like it's crazy even all these years later like I can get emotional about that carpet picnic and so we end up having just this extraordinary night and she just it's interesting Tony Robbins said if you really want to help make change in somebody you have to be able to change their state and she had changed my state and I was just rocked and it may have been the first time in my life that somebody changed my state like that so I was like whoa I went from like I'm so miserable I'm so unhappy to like my life is amazing and so we have this picnic and we're talking and you know one thing leads to another and I end up writing this poem on her body in lipstick and I was like this is the [ __ ] sexiest most romantic moment of my life this is unreal like I want to propose to her right now and I'm actually really bad at pattern recognition and for once in my life though I knew that the truth of my wife is if I don't ask her dad it'll never be a beautiful moment for her no matter how romantic it's evening has been it just won't be right for her so she's laying there naked with this poem on her body and I'm like this is not going to make any sense but I have to leave right now and she was like okay I trust you so I got dressed and I literally ran down the street to her dad's house knocked on the door out of breath and he and his wife are like Tom it's good to see you come on in and I said look I want to propose to your daughter and he I want your blessing to propose I never asked for permission I knew better than that but I want your blessing today I'm your daughter and he said no and Wow she had warned me she's like look my dad is going to grill you when she first introduced me to him and he's gonna grill you I've never brought a guy home to my dad before and when I say that the guy hardly looked at me I was like a little hurt I was like wow like he does not take me seriously he does not think I'm here to stay like ouch and after that you know he's always kind always very pleasant even tried to help teach me which I was not open to so I still had a close and teach about business yeah talk to me about business and so all of those things lead him to accurately identify and that's what I want people to understand he accurately identified me as someone who was at that moment going nowhere which was absolutely true and so he was like the grilling that she had promised just came out and he starts asking question after question after question and the the final question was Tom I was born in a small village in Cyprus which until I met her I'd never even heard of Cyprus and I took myself from there at eleven I moved out and was on my own and I went to school in this in the mountains in this village in Cyprus I mean it's just like this crazy tiny beginning and I worked my way to getting a job in this company just through sheer hustle and then ultimately working my way up from this tiny village to running one of the largest shipping companies in the world and living in one of the greatest metropolis is in the world and being very successful my daughter has become used to a certain lifestyle how do you plan to take care of her and I was like I get what you see and what you see right now is a broke uneducated kid from Tacoma and I said that's fair but I'm the most ambitious person you've ever met and one day I'm gonna make your daughter rich and he said I hear you that's you know it's exciting but still don't think that you guys should get married take your time date like just you know see how that goes I said so right here you and I respect that but I do want you to know in the next couple days I am gonna propose to your daughter and so I I left you know with likable [ __ ] least I asked I guess the reaction when you told him that you're gonna ask anyway he would have done exactly that so it's like hey look I know this is never gonna work out but he would never say that and then he is a kind man and when I look back now and pieced together how he was trying to help me break out of the like dead-end way that I was treating my own life it's really heartbreaking to to realize it took me three years at the three-year mark I went back and apologized to him because I said you tried to give me advice that at the time I couldn't hear and I want you to know not only have I heard it it's now the most important advice in my life and I'm living by that piece of advice and in fact I have the chills every time somebody like says oh Tom like the way you research is crazy man like your intros that is from his advice he said if you want to succeed you have to know more about your subject than anyone else and so that's just become the guiding light in my life like to just know more about everything than anyone else to to put in so much work that the amount that I know about something seems like magic but it's just a blinding amount of work and yeah he tried to teach me that three years before that and I was like yeah [ __ ] young and dumb and I can't hear that so but finally yeah I will tamiya t got there and then the punch line yeah well the that was the the proposal part so flash-forward obviously many years I'm struggling to become an entrepreneur to own my life to you know really use that advice and the whole host of other advice that I've gotten from amazing books and struggle struggle struggle and finally after a lot of ups and downs we I go through that moment where I'm never gonna chase money again and I've sort of asked her to accept that I have to walk us backwards so I had finally made us wealthy on paper but not in real life and I was like I'm gonna go give it all back and I'm gonna turn in my equity cuz I I have to quit I can't keep doing this so unhappy which was your first company that ya took it to the millions but you were unfulfilled and then the right before you transition to quest correct so I go to her and say look I I can't keep doing this I need fulfillment I need to feel alive and but I'm gonna go backwards financially and she said look I bet on you and that like was one of the like we were already in a magical relationship but that as it happened is one of those times where you go yeah I'm gonna lean on that a thousand times in the future that like you bet on me and that I'm worth the investment like it's just it's become like this extraordinary bond between the two of us and so I go in and quit my partner's say what I needed to hear which is look we could do this without you but we don't want to which let me connect to something other than the money so we end up staying together as business partners and but then just revamping the way that we approach business which was to say forget about focusing on money we're gonna focus on value creation passion all that and so we build quest and quest turns into this extraordinary success and goes from not existing to being valued at over a billion dollars in roughly five years so during all of that he hadn't been to the US so this is now god I don't know thirteen years into our marriage something like know a little bit less so maybe eleven years or so into our marriage and he had heard a lot about we're doing very well and you know know it's you know it's going well and you're telling him how much it's growing you know but you hear about it's another thing to see it and so he comes to the US and we're walking him around the floor of quest and it's like 300,000 square feet I mean just as far as the eye can see it's tens of millions of dollars of equipment there's hundreds and hundreds of employees like going around people greeting me very warmly follows it coming off the line like 1.5 million bars a day and he's like in the middle of you know Willy Wonka's chocolate fan and then what's the company's revenue at this stage hundreds of millions of dollars hundreds and hundreds yeah and we're walking the floor and I said Andreas do you remember when you asked me how I was gonna provide for your daughter and he said yes and I said how am i doing and he just started to cry and he was like to see you rise up and to see you take care of my daughter and to see how much she loves you he was like you know is the most extraordinary gift and it was one those in my darkest of moments I would lean on it knowing that while he loved me he doubted that I would make it was that part of your motivation for sure that chip on your shoulder no question so is that was that would you say that was one of the core or one of the the most powerful ones or was there several because he was he'd always been too lovely to me for that to be like that was one where it was like I want to show him that I could do it but by then I loved her father and I love him like he is my own father and he has shown me the kindness of a true father like literally my own father and him like I love them so much so you just I don't have resentment for him I really think he saw the truth of who I was and he was just the first person that had the balls to say it and I needed that I needed the wake-up call I needed to face where I really was I needed to come around and this is like this is one of those things where I think people run from pain too much and the one bit of credit I'll give myself was I sat in the pain of he doesn't think I can do it I didn't try to run from it I didn't try to say he's a fool I was like he's one of the smartest most successful people I know and he doesn't think I'm gonna make this maybe he's got a reason and so really sitting down and going I haven't done anything to make him believe ambition isn't the end of the story Drive is needed and I had to face I'm an empty dreamer who isn't executing against his dreams and at the time I was laying in bed for hours a day every day and I started to feel shame around that and I thought he's right I'm really I'm not on a course to do something with my life now thankfully I thought I can get on a course I don't yet know what that is right but I believe there's a way for me to get on that path and so that became really an important part of my development to face that he was right to face that his criticisms were accurately placed and as I struggled I used that sometimes to be like a don't let him be right about you forever like you're gonna have to make change you're gonna have to step up so it was never like oh I'm gonna show this guy who the [ __ ] does he think he is it was like one of the most beautiful human beings in my life has had the guts to tell me the hard truth which is that if I don't change I'm not gonna make it that's powerful now for people listening who might be where you were at that stage what would be your first advice on the first thing they should do to make that shift you know if they're maybe they're laying in bed or maybe they're listening to this maybe they're smoking a joint maybe you know they're just kind of down and out trying to pondering life listening this what would be your best advice on the first step 1 step 2 step 3 to start making your life work if someone's stuck right now yeah so this is a wildly complicated topic that I'm gonna make super simple and very actionable but people have to really follow through there's a reason that very few people ever escape that trajectory number one read the book mindset by Carol Dweck which unfortunately did not exist when I was going through this so I had to fumble through all the [ __ ] and trying to figure it out myself the world of social has changed everything the fact that she wrote that book has changed everything we have access to ideas and people that we just did not have access to back then so start with that read that book now the reason you need to read mindset is mindset will make one thing very clear that once you decide to believe that you can learn anything your life will change forever because most people believe their talent and intelligence are fixed traits and that life's just about making the best of the hand that you were dealt that's [ __ ] the amount that you can learn is so extraordinary and the things that you can shape yourself your personality even some things that people would say are just like hardwired there are things that are hardwired there's no question we are not blank slates but oh my god we're like silly putty you can bend us into a box o many different shapes it's crazytown now you're never gonna stop being silly putty so whatever we're all different we all have predilections towards certain things and others I get early wins for things that are verbal other people do not get the same early win so I get it like but at the end of the day we are far more malleable than people think we are so the reason that's so important is humans lead with belief you don't do something because you believe you can you have to believe you can in order to be willing to expend the energy even try so where people fail is that they either never try which is where most people live or they try once and they fail and they think up that's it so because the reason they try once is they think oh I can do this they realize they can't and and then they're stuck because they don't realize it's that I can't yet well if you put the time and energy to get that skill set then you could so once you get that you get to the point where you allow yourself to believe that you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation even though you know that's a lie but you still act as if and you move forward that your energies will be rewarded with skills now my new mission right now is to get people to understand skills are not a checkbox they're not something for the resume skills let you do things and that once you have a skill you can do something with it you can build something to build a house literally you can have a better relationship because you're better at communication you can help a child you could build anything a business whatever you want but you have to get the skills that allow you to do that thing first and so once I put that together like oh [ __ ] i acquire skills because they're they're actually gonna let me do things so what do I want to do and what are the skills that I need to acquire to be able to do that thing and then you just go out and get those skills so once they're on that like just relentless acquisition of skills then they can go wherever they want make sense and then it's interesting because when you talk about belief I remember you telling us in the first interview we did that you knew two things number one that you would have a six-pack and that you would be a multi-millionaire you don't know how you're gonna have a path carved out but you laid with belief and you made those happen so I want to ask Lisa Lisa can you talk to me about the early days of starting quest I know you and Tom have an awesome story I think even last time Tom mentioned that you guys used to drive around Mulholland Drive in Beverly Hills and say one day we'll live here when you guys didn't have anything and here we are today now you guys live here can you talk to me about what those times were like yeah I think we would drive around kind of pointing out houses that we liked and at this point we had just started quest so we had to give up every luxury so we gave up one car we shared a car the car that we drove had a hole in the exhaust if you went over sixty miles an hour it started like you know shaking yeah but we use that as a a a bonding of like visualizing something together like what are we working this hard for and then it just I don't it having to sacrifice actually put a little fire under my butt because I went from being a housewife and he came along saying we're gonna start this protein bar company if you don't mind helping out that would be great because they were still running the tech company during the day and we started making bars at night so did you guys start question we started conceptualizing in 2009 started selling in 2010 so from concept to action step about a year yeah gotcha probably closer to it well depending on what you mean by action step because we were formulating and all that stuff for about eighteen months so yeah it's probably eight months before we started sewing and and real quick sidebar but when you guys started quest how long was it from like ah we should start a company called quest to like getting the trademark making the bar was it weeks month days well we were a long in process of formulating the bar before we're like alright we really need a name now so it's and this is like the classic entrepreneur trap like I want to give my business card before I actually I mean it's like don't worry about all the cool [ __ ] like go make a product that's rad and that I think is where a lot of people in the social media age are falling down they want to write a book but they haven't learned anything to write literally that's like an epidemic right now with it's so easy to become a personality and nobody has to go through decades I'm just learning [ __ ] and so I think people be far better off like what do you want to learn what is that skillset do you wanna have like what do you want to do and it requires a skill set fact that's what my throwbackthursday is gonna be about this Thursday is like it's this photo of me just sitting and there's like all these on the wall next to me it's like all the rappers and stuff and I remember when I had pinned them all up to like constantly look at them to see how we could make them better and it was like yeah my life used to be like people don't look at me and think oh this is a guy that has inhaled more whey protein powder through his nose just because he's been in a facility where it's like floating there then they'll like almost breathe oxygen it's like I spent so much time like building a protein bar company you know what I mean and before that I was building a technology company it's like we just spent time building companies and then it's like okay now I do have something to offer but taking the time to do that thing because I was passionate about it like that's that's the juice yeah that's the magic that made it real so they were running their tech company during the day and at night we were making bars by hand so he kind of was like well if you don't mind just ship out a couple of bars when we get some orders and we were actually giving them away for free that was part of the marketing plan when we first started so it's like if you don't mind just do a few so I went from eight years of being a housewife with the mission of supporting my husband for us to build a big enough business that we could take the finances to make movies that was actually the original plan and so I was like sure I'll help out was a couple of boxes a day and then so from that in two years I ended up well if I'm doing it from the floor I may as well be the one that does it when we get the ten orders and well if we're gonna go to a garage and ship from a garage I may as well do it because I've got the experience and I kind of started from there I had no prior experience it wasn't like okay you're white person for the job I actually wasn't the right person for the job but I just learnt it because going driving around Beverly Hills looking up with these beautiful houses it was a dream we have together so if I have to pull my way I'm gonna bloody pull my way and if I have to figure something out because it's like all of them you need to for cliff to lift pallet then it's my responsibility to do it because we've both put our hand in a pile and said this is what we're gonna do as a team and this is going to be the goal so I had to for me I felt like the pressure was on that I had to figure it out I had to learn it no excuses just get it done and within two years when the company were about what 18 18 million dollars so we went from zero immediately on the living room floor to 80 million dollars in revenue I had 40 employees underneath me I had two years in two years I had about 20,000 square feet of space I to learn the legalities of holding raw ingredients forklift drivers how to be a boss I had no idea how to even be a teammate in a business level and a boss right so I stumbled a lot but just figured it out because for me there was no other way quitting wasn't an option letting my husband down wasn't an option wait and this is a team and I better step up just like I expect him to step up so if I have an expectation of him to do it then I need to live by that as well and if we really are going to get the house on Mulholland Drive then we really need to figure out what we're gonna do how we do it and go you know all-in and so that was kind of the start of me going from a housewife to being an entrepreneur what were some of the biggest challenges you guys had early on because now people see it as this billion dollar company they know you guys name is you know they know you guys for doing what you're doing now with the impact theory and your show Lisa but talk to me about some of the early times together I mean did that put a strain on the relationship I know you said you were inhaling whey protein you know spending long hours you're shipping learning all this stuff I mean how did you guys manage a relationship and not sort of fall apart what were things that kept you guys together well I'll tell one story so even right from the beginning it was like okay well you're the president of the company and I run the fulfillment so just by title definition he's my boss and even though we're both all-in we put our house up on the line and stuff it's like it had to be very clear this is your role and this is my role and when I transition from running our shipping department to running our media the Ponto actually starting our media department I had no qualifications and I had the degree but it didn't mean I was qualified to build a studio let alone like run it right and so I turned to him one day and I just said look if at any point I'm not the right person for the job or if any point I fail and I'm just doing a terrible job and you need to either hire above me or demote me I give you permission to do that and his response was amazing he was like just to let you know the biggest goal of my life is to take care of my wife and my family so even if my wife is getting in the way of that I'm gonna let you know and I'll fire you on the spot because you're getting in the way of my goal which is take care of you so we had that right from the beginning just understanding where we both lie in that type of dynamic but it was difficult to separate the two initially between it's my husband telling me I'm doing a [ __ ] job versus no it's my you know boss or business partner so emotionally I had to manage that know it makes total sense and then Tom mechanically I know you guys had some challenges with the machines right you guys tried this machine in that machine up until the point where you guys had to manufacture your own machines to deal with the bars were there any other challenges that you guys faced and building quests or things like that yeah I mean the list goes on and on so the the biggest were certainly just the technical challenges of trying to make the bar and everybody said it couldn't be made and people don't say that and then there not be some real difficulty so yeah that that was really hard now I'll give all the credit one of my partners was an Iowa farm boy literally and so he cut the equipment apart and put it back together and got it to work and that was just really really extraordinary to see that happen and but scaling scaling in and of itself is dangerous dangerous as the day is long so trying to keep up with that to manage cash flow to manage the real estate which is a big part of it like to have enough space to move this equipment in so we were constantly moving constantly having to upgrade get more facility signed more leases like Bank on the growth which is always risky hire more people oh yeah we literally there was a time where we could not hire people fast enough it was just bananas so how are you managing all that just putting people in place I mean what was your system for decision-making because I can imagine you have to make tons of decisions with not all the info and then behind that there's more and more and more decisions what have you found looking back was effective and worked for entrepreneurs that might be listening and have to make some of their own decisions to grow or scale what were some things you learned from that extra always better to make a decision and be wrong than be afraid to make a decision so not making a decision is is like a guaranteed wrong answer so going in making a decision than learning rapidly from what you've done like that's the key to not let your ego get tied up into whether or not you made the right decision okay it didn't work out fantastic what are you learning and how are you going to apply it moving forward and so that's one thing that I'll say I'm not afraid to make decisions so I'm also not afraid to be embarrassed I'm not afraid to be wrong I'm certainly not afraid to admit that I was wrong so really buying into the notion of extreme ownership to learn from your mistakes so that was that's any entrepreneur has to be able to do that and the ones that get tricked into thinking that there's a way to make all the right decisions all the time and so they want to go slow when they want to really think about things right yeah it's like they're just gonna end up being paralyzed no it doesn't mean that you don't try to make a thoughtful approach whenever you can but it does mean that you have to be able to make decisions under live fire and you've got to be able to make them quickly and you've got to be able to learn even faster no makes total sense and then going back what would you have done differently had you been building quest again now like knowing what you know I'm sure there's things you like [ __ ] I should've than that probably than that what's like one or two things that you were like I would have definitely done that culture culture culture so the one thing I will tell any entrepreneur out there if the words emotional safety aren't even on your radar then you're making a fundamental mistake that will bite you in the ass at some point for sure guaranteed so if you want to retain the highest quality talent which the only way to build something that scales is to just absolutely collect the most extraordinary humans on the planet that believe in your mission and are gonna show up every day and fight to make that happen for their own selfish reasons okay that's what you have to do that's the only way if you're trying to be a taskmaster micromanaging all that you've already lost and I've made all of those mistakes so this is me saying hey I tried it it doesn't work so realizing that realizing that as much as you may love and care about somebody if they're not meeting the standards of the company then they're gonna have to go that doesn't mean that you can't be graceful and transition them out in a way that lets them keep their dignity and all that but people have to know that there's a standard that they have to uphold and even though this is gonna sound contradictory they have to know that it's people first so you've got to be people first but that does not mean get away with murder so finding the way to make that clear in the culture that like look this is a people first organization I want you to feel emotionally safe I want you to know that people are here to fight side by side with you to help you to lift you up this is not a dog-eat-dog situation but also if you're not living up to your standards it's gonna be made very known so our thing is read the principles by Ray Dalio the most important thing in that book as he talks about the need for radical candor so the way that we talk about it in our company is to say you have to there's two things you have to be able to do here truth and speak truth and I love the way ray sums that up in his book and he says even if you have a criticism that you're willing to take to your grave not even say to your significant other you still have an obligation to say that out loud in this company and at Qwest it was a failure of my imagination I never thought that you could get an organization with thousands of employees to act like that but you can and so that certainly now at impact theory like that is what we're all about like we we say truth we hear truth there's this is not a whisper culture there's no whispering we record our company meetings if you and we do that so that if somebody isn't there and you speak of something that they did that they're able to listen to that and hear what you said if you have a meeting where you like hey I don't think so and so is pulling their weight you have an obligation to say that to their face so it and that's the only way that you can have emotional safety because emotional safety rides on a backbone of trust and you can trust somebody even if you don't necessarily agree with them if you know what they think that they're not saying things behind your back they're not saying to your face you can handle the person that says I don't think you're meeting standards you know here here wherever as long as they're saying that because they're hoping that they can help you lift you up point you in the direction of what you need to learn to excel whatever but that you always know exactly where you stand you know exactly what's expected of you that it just makes all the difference man you you can't grow at the rate that we were growing without just a rock-solid culture and I made so many mistakes on that that's the one thing I so wish I could go back knowing what I know now about how to create emotional safety yeah that would be massive now let me ask you this in terms of the growth because it was explosive growth what do you think was the biggest catalyst not obviously I know you guys are doing everything with influence or marketing and trying to get you know social media influencers to post they give their honest feedback right but at what point did you guys notice like holy [ __ ] this is growing fast cuz I think it's like 57,000 percent growth talk to me about you know really quick what was the process of going from a ready-made bar to your first customer do you guys even remember who your first customer was I don't know who our first page as you may not have been off fest she was the first important fan fan that had a material impact on the business but that was she was holding us to a standard and was a woman named joy she was just an extraordinary sort of brand advocate that wasn't associated with the company but was so rad in our ecosystem like if we were producing everybody was out making bars including the director of marketing so it's like there were times where just nobody was manning Facebook right so somebody would write in and be like oh hey my bars came this side or the other problem occurred and we noticed that joy was responding to them and being like hey these guys are really great like I'm sure if you give him another chance they'll make good on it and so we're like I said to the the our chief marketing officer I'm like Nick is that you like is that an account you've created like she's way too much coming to our bat to be real right and he was like no no it's it's not us like that's a real customer and I was like alright then we need to get her as a consultant or something like I need to know she's not gonna go away this is amazing so we offered to pay her and she said absolutely not that's what I know the world has changed man like this whole social media thing is even better than I thought she just she said I don't want money I just want you to keep making this amazing product and I'm a nutrition coach and I need your bars because it's helping my clients lose weight and so we're like whoa like this is so amazing and so that became part of the ethos of like celebrating that we gave an award out every year in her name cuz unfortunately she ended up passing away very young she got I don't know if you remember this but like in 2012 or something there was like a really brutal flu that went around hmm and and she died from the flu is absolutely bananas and that that really hit me that was the first time I was like because we kind of take this for granted 20:18 but like in 2010 when this all really started like social media it wasn't called social media first of all it's certainly authenticity and transparency those weren't buzzwords people weren't talking about community or vulnerability or anything like that none of that so but that's what we were doing because we were like rebelling against the traditional way of business being done so and to really answer your question it was like you have to have a perfect storm for a company to grow at that rate and the perfect storm was it just so happened having nothing to do with that moment in time that in my own personal life I got to the point where I was not prepared to chase money anymore that I needed to feel alive and that as a person part of that for me is connecting with other people and building community that's just like Who I am as a person and so I wanted to save my mom and my sister that was like my passion points what the product had to be real it had to be good because they had health issues right morbidly obese and so that was driving my why I knew that I wanted to build community because I watched want to feel connected to people I wanted to be doing something I could believe in so like all of this like community building of stuff it was all just really coming from a real place but it just came right before everybody else was doing it so right before everybody else was doing it we were already on social right before everybody else was doing it we were already creating all of our own content we had all our own in-house content creators like all before that was really happening before influencers had a name we had people that were just advocating for the brand so hard and we wanted people that we didn't have to pay that just really believed in the product and so we were doing all the stuff that's now become solidified right but at the time was just it was it wasn't a marketing ploy it was coming from the best possible place and so what we discovered was that oh being a good person and actually wanting good things from people and actually acting in accordance with that desire is the single best marketing message you could have so but we were just doing it before anybody else and so it absolutely blew up now let me ask you this for somebody listening who is starting their own company now what would you advise them to do differently and you know Lisa I feel free to chime in here Tom as well is what would you advise them to do nowadays because obviously the markets saturated with influencer marketing now right everybody's endorsing something if they believe in it are they just getting paid if you guys were to start a company now for somebody listening what advice would you give them on how to you know tactical steps 1 2 3 to turn a product into a you know into appeal for a mass-market so make sure that you're starting with a product that people actually want and I think that's where a lot of people go wrong they start with a product they want to build instead of a product that people actually want so start with a product people want and start with a product that you can give away if you can't give away your product you already have a problem so once you have a product that you really believe in people actually want your deeply passionate about the mission of what you're trying to do and then you're able to give it away to start the ball rolling then you've really got something so I would try to back into something like that right which can be very very powerful and then just make sure that whatever you're doing whether it's a service whether it's a product it adds a tremendous amount of value to people and that you're adding more value than you're extracting when you're in that position then you can take advantage of the social ecosystem which is where people are gonna want to talk about what they just got from you the value exchange is super lopsided I cannot tell you the number of people that DM me Tom how the [ __ ] can I give you money like with there's got to be some way I want to support you in some way that literally people that don't even buy comic books are buying like all of our comic books multiple times just because if I got like I can't have somebody changed my life and me not give back in some way right so that's because we've created a product that is valuable that has real impact in people's lives meaning if you listen to the content you actually do what it says it will change your life I know that for sure without question so and we give it away and so when you're able to do that then you can build a social ecosystem and then don't [ __ ] people I've been telling people since we launched exactly what we're doing which is that one day I'm going to need this community to support something that I'm doing which we're building a studio we're building the next Disney so I'm gonna need you to either show up outside Netflix on the day that I'm pitching them I'm gonna need you to show up on an opening weekend to go see the movie I'm gonna need you to buy the comic book like whatever it is I'll let you know we would at anytime I'm just gonna thank you I'm gonna like [ __ ] pour the value out right and I'm gonna let people know that like I want to be right or die for you and so this is one thing that like I I really want people to listen to this so I've been very successful in my life Lisa and I could have bought an island and retired and yet when I'm invited to speak I will stand there and answer questions until the last question is answered I've done it for 11 and a half hours before without taking a break to pee I literally just stand there and answer questions over and over and over and over for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours why because I want to add more value than I extract and when you do that when you add that kind of value to people's lives they they want to support you so and then if that thing that you need support with is something that's again valuable to their lives then you create the self-reinforcing like marketing and product purchase cycle that really can go on forever no how about your thoughts Lisa exactly what he said and yeah I mean it's exactly I would just be repeating what he said I'm gonna be honest how about this let me ask you guys this before we wrap up here with another few questions is talk to me about the time that I believe time you told me that you guys were in the gym one time waiting for a transfer to clear I'd love this story can you talk to me Lisa or Tom maybe share the story with the audience maybe will inspire a lot of people and so what do you do the setup and all do though all right back at home so we had we have gotten to live really an extraordinary journey in terms of what it does to your mind so we had to work for years and years and years and years and years and years building something that only had paper value right so that there was no like our lives were no different so you guys weren't so the company's doing millions of dollars maybe a hundred oh and you're still not taking away any hundreds even been evaluated a billion dollars at that point yeah that was I mean by the time we crossed it but we knew we were worth roughly that for maybe a year before but I'm trying to even pay back yeah even go back to awareness Tech right so awareness were worth roughly two million dollars on paper but we're living in like a dodgy neighborhood in a whatever apartment you know what I mean yeah and then we were drawing a salary so it was like our life was a little bit better and so we were finally by the time we're at Quest we're living in a house but our house is up as collateral and so it's like if the company goes the house goes you know but we're we were drawing a good salary so I don't want anyone like by the time just doing well we're not living like poppers by any stretch of the imagination like living like we're living now right this is just you're you're putting everything you're reinvesting every dime every dime every dime back into the company so you get to live this like I know why I'm really doing it and it really isn't for the money because I'm not like experiencing some grand moment of wealth speculation so going on going is going very well and then we realized wow like were one salmonella outbreak from the whole company just going under like you just never know yeah that's true you you're constantly at risk for one little thing one ingredient one supplier wrong boom your whole reputation so gone and invested you guys have investors no not at the time Fester's completely self-funded I'll say that was very smart yeah but it was just everything was at risk and everything had been at risk for so many years and it was like at some point you're just playing with fire so we're like all right let's do a diversification round where the company is doing so well we have so much cash flow we don't need the money for growth so it's a founder liquidity event so we sold a very small piece of the company but because the valuation was over a billion dollars just the raw dollars was massive and so and we were equal partners so it was just it was a huge financial windfall so it goes from you have a normal bank account to like literally with you know a couple refreshes of the banking app you were suddenly fantastically wealthy yeah and so the the really cool moment which I'll let her come was so I come in the gym and I'd been hitting refresh because we knew that the funds had been dispersed so it was gonna be a matter of 30 minutes you know whatever and we're talking like millions and millions of dollars millions and millions tens and tens of millions of dollars so you're just refreshing at every like 30 seconds just waiting waiting it's been like even though it felt like you were fresh in you know the whole process of finding an investor doing the due diligence that took months so it's almost a year so really especially for me I was like it's really gonna happen you know it's kind of like selling a house like usually you know someone Belle was the last minute so he's refreshing yeah and that that was like months of intense contracts paperwork negotiations do it so anyway I walk in it had hit and I just went in the Jim Jim what was in our garage and so he literally comes in just with his fist in the air but this is in the morning so it's probably 7:00 a.m. or something like that and so he's you know siding and you know we hug and we you know celebrate and then we'll celebrate is in hugging that was pretty much it and then he turns around he goes through like where you go it's like I'm going to work I'm a license just to completely change like we should go out and celebrate like this spend today let's go do something special and he's like no he's like I'm the man that I said that I was it's not it's not just for the money so why would I not turn up at work today like I've still got a mission and I've still got things to do and like in that moment it was like a real clarity of who he really was as a human being and no one at the company would have ever guessed that we went from zero to extremely wealthy that day because we went back straight back to work he did take me to the Cheesecake Factory though for dinner I will say that appetizer and dessert but but in all seriousness it was when he said like I'm going back to work I was like oh yeah I guess you know that that's true that is really what we're here to do and we went back to work in it again it was one of those days that was so um play such a strong part of you know who I am and who years of that you know we're working for a cause versus just a finish line and then we cross and we're done the one thing I want people to understand is the way you think about money you look at people to have it and you admire them and think that's amazing and their life must be so wonderful that's probably what you did too right yeah and you the admiration that you have for them you think you will have for yourself when you're rich and it just doesn't work like that and so why I think it was so cool that we work for so long with no real financial reward and then all of a sudden it hit all at once was I became the person that I wanted to become in that journey of the grind of you know learning about myself and having to fight so hard without any big you know immediate reward always delayed gratification and and really becoming what I wanted to be and then when the money hit and I realized oh I don't feel any differently about myself like all of my insecurities are still there all of the things that I'm proud of are still there and none of them have been influenced by this monetary event and it's like that's that's the point like money isn't gonna change you and that's why I say the the goal of this game called life is not money it's not success it's not Fame its fulfillment and fulfillment is the thing that I've been fighting for since I went in and awareness and quit and said I can't do this anymore and that's the thing that like all of this stuff is rad money is powerful don't get me wrong people will always chase money myself included because I know how powerful it is I know what it lets you do I know what it lets you create but money is in and of itself inert so unless you know what you want to build with it then it's utterly pointless and if you know what you want to build with it focus on that focus on the thing that you want to build not on the money so in in all of that if you're becoming someone that you can be proud of that should be totally regardless of the money it shouldn't like you shouldn't need the money as validation of who you're becoming right and so it was so powerful to me to see in that moment I don't feel any differently and so if if like I can help people avoid the trap of chasing money because they think that it will get rid of their insecurities their fears their anxieties their depression whatever it will get rid of none of it like how many billionaires have to create commit suicide before we realize it's not the because a lot of people listening to this I can for sure match in the comments well easy for you to say you guys built a billion-dollar company easy for you guys to now say money's not important but you're saying truthfully I still have you know similar insecurities that I did have nothing changed except my ability to purchase material but Who I am on the inside there's no shift yeah I want to be very clear I did not say money wasn't important money is important when he's super powerful right I just want people to understand it doesn't touch who you are doesn't make or break you if you have money you can be an extraordinary person you can also be a total douche and if you don't have money you can be an extraordinary person you can also be a total douche so like money is the great facilitator that's it but it facilitates something so it's becoming the kind of person that wants to build something of worth that knows how to build something of worth and then the money becomes the way in which you're able to do that so money is extraordinary money's more powerful than people think it just isn't what they've been told so once you understand that once you understand that money's gonna let you build something beautiful then you can get behind creating that beautiful thing and that's amazing and it really helped us know what was important to us through that journey because even you know I joke about the Cheesecake Factory but the truth was I just want to spend time with him so the fact like and he was like where do you wanna go outside I don't care she's fat she was fine because it really was after all that time that we had you know been married and struggled and worked really hard the thing that mattered to me most was being with him and spending time together and you know going back to the fulfillment part and that's why he wants to go back to work because the company was fulfilling him and it wasn't just about the money yeah and when you finally hit it big when you're in your late 30s it's like by then you know what I mean like the Cheesecake Factory is still dope that should his fancy eating as far as on before there any crazy splurges you guys did after that big the house the house for sure yeah yeah that like everybody's got their thing for most people it's like a Lambo or whatever for me I was like I was never gonna get a fancy car I was getting the [ __ ] off house yeah on Mulholland Drive in Beverly Hills exactly place my ring which I was in which I wouldn't let him say action you did buy me this ring here but yeah he wasn't going to take this one off my finger I love that now for people who before we wrap up here we play a game but for people who are interested in more of what you guys have going on maybe you want to share a little bit about neon future what you and steve aoki are working on and then you Lisa with your show if you guys want to share a little bit work in the audience find out more about you guys upcoming projects yeah so I think everybody thinks that we are a social content company but in reality we are a we think of ourselves as the next Disney so we do both social nonfiction content and traditional fiction content so our first fiction project is with Steve Aoki called neon future everything that we do whether it's the nonfiction stuff or the fiction stuff is all about empowerment so the reason we talk about Disney isn't just because they're the biggest studio but because they have the discipline to only tell one kind of story from a thousand different angles and in so doing the brand began to mean something so if I say I'm gonna go see Warner Brothers movie or a paramount movie you don't know anything about it but if I say I'm gonna go see a Disney movie and feels you think exactly you already know something about it so my thing is okay if by having that kind of discipline Disney could create the most magical place on earth can we create the most empowering place on earth so that's ultimately what impact theory is about it's why we didn't call it you know Tom Bilyeu Studios like we want people to really be able to take ownership of this this is about something that's about a movements about empowerment so yeah our first project is called neon future it's a sci-fi story set thirty years in the future in a world where advanced technology has been made illegal and it is comes out as a comic but we're obviously trying to translate it into film and TV so we're working on that well and then one of the most exciting things we have going right now is women of impact I just I'm very fortunate to be around a lot of incredible women and I actually felt very selfish and having these like incredible conversations right and be like I've grown so much and I've learnt so much and so how do I help you know get that out there and it started off as there was going to be just a podcast and this man here holds me to a high stand in which I love and he's like why are you doing just a podcast when you have an entire set in your house so it turned into a video format or just get incredible women and we took very raw and honest about insecurities that women have whether it's in business or in relationships being an alpha woman and being married to an alpha man can be tricky so being very real about that real about women's fears and women's hangups for my own sake we've discussed having children I've decided to not have kids so that kind of decision things like that that are very relevant to today's society whether you're 15 year old or you're 60 year old and so I'm very proud of this content it really stemmed from what would have helped me at the age of 15 where I was super insecure I was getting bullied I couldn't get a guy I fell worthless what would have shaken me out of that at that age and so that's kind of what I'm trying to put together here so you can follow that out women have impact or me pass me out at least a billion beautiful very excited for that and then in closing last question before we play the game I don't know if you remember the game Tom first things first it's like a word association game at the end I want to ask you guys if people out there watching this right now you know took a lot of wisdom took a lot of value from this and whether it's in business or the relationships if you could synthesize everything you've learned about how to have a healthy focus on business and relationships I want to get Tom your best 30 seconds to 1 minute piece of advice and then Lisa your best 30 seconds to 1 minute piece of advice if you could look into the camera and say this is what I've learned well what would it be alright which this camera yes all right so this is what I've learned you have to have crystal clarity on what you want and I think a lot of people don't actually know what they want and without a target you're going to miss it every time so really having a almost distressing level of clarity I find that people will say things like I want to win a gold medal okay awesome in what the Olympics yes winter or summer some are fantastic tennis are swimming and it's like until you get down to the exact event you're not going to know how to Train and training is what it's all about those skills so have that level of clarity with what you want in your life know that being an entrepreneur really being anybody is like standing in a room with 999 doors that must be closed and then the thousands door is the one that you're gonna walk through so having the ability to pick that one door to go through that is everything I love that yeah and mines very similar in loss to having just a goal and being very clear as a couple especially if you're you know working with your partner having a clear goal and both buying into that goal so that every time something happens where there is a conflict or it's something that you're doing doesn't move me towards my goal or away from my goal so if we conflicted and we're you know or we're at conflict he has an idea I have an idea and we're butting heads it's like okay well which one's gonna take us towards the goal and it just it's easy to make a decision in that sense instead of putting your emotions behind it and it's like but it feels right that that doesn't get you anywhere so it was a couple of the one thing we've done is we just have that clear goal and we've both bought into it so we very rarely ever come to a head where we can't move forward or don't think we ever have beautiful I have one more before we play the game because it just popped up is when do you think somebody should walk away from a relationship yeah I get in a lot of trouble for this answer you want to kick us off because I think it's gonna be important for people listening because they might you know a lot of times people don't know they give them the benefit of the doubt maybe things will get better when should somebody when should somebody really stand up for himself say hey you know what this isn't right for me I'm out yeah and if it's just a relationship you're not talking about business I want for my very first day I had two very clear things that I would never forgive him for that was to cheat on me or ever put his hand on me and so if he ever does either of those two things I'm out the door doesn't mean that it wouldn't be difficult and I wouldn't be devastated I absolutely would but those are just two non-negotiables in my world right so if that ever happened he's done um other than that at least for me I always believe that there's things that we can get through it if we want it bad enough doesn't mean that we're gonna like the part that we may have to to do that whether that means couples therapy or single therapy and then coming together but I always feel like there's there's a way to get through it now if there's a situation where let's say he's gotta climb and think of something off the top of my head but if there was a situation where I was just profoundly unhappy and we had tried and we tried everything and I felt a level of like maybe disrespect or we just couldn't see eye-to-eye and we tried everything and I think I would walk away because ultimately I love him so much I want what's good for him and the same for me I want what's good for me too so if we came to a point where we just couldn't make it work and we ended up not being good for each other I think that that would have to come a time where we'd have to split ways mmm Wow my thing is I'm going to answer this assuming there are no children because that makes a much easier answer so if there's no kids then I think that the moment of relationship isn't bringing you joy you need to address it immediately so you need to say this isn't bringing me joy you need to identify why it's not bringing you joy together as a couple you need to immediately seek therapy get a professional that will help you if you go through that and realize you have a collision of values that is going to make it impossible for you to rebonding act and make the relationship worth all the compromises that you're gonna have to make for it I don't see any reason to stay together now also you'll notice I think it is a mistake of joy and fulfillment meaning that you'll you'll dampen your ability to get to those things if your first instinct is to break up we don't even joke about divorce literally in in 18 years I've never once made a joke about divorce with my wife ever would joke about dying but not divorce oh that's funny horse is not funny because what it doesn't and the easiest way to explain it so remember the guy that just gave you the advice that if you can't get to a place where it's bringing you joy and all that do you break up listen to how far I'm willing to go to make sure that the foundation is there to make sure we don't get to that place because I think the right relationship is is going to be the single most beautiful thing that ever happens to you like for sure request amazing and I get invited on a lot more podcast as people want to hear about how I got rich then they want to hear about my marriage but my marriage to me is infinitely more interesting and more important to me and if I were given two choices hey you can relive this life and have the business success or you can relive this life and have the same marriage but you can't have both which do you choose it is so easy to say that I would choose the relationship because the amount of neurochemical joy that it has brought me fulfillment a sense of safety all of that has been my marriage a thousand times more than the money it is like that's a no-brainer but what we do the the easiest way to give an example of how far we go to make sure that there isn't just artificial divisive nassif ound it impact Theory Lisa came to me and said hey look you take the company 51% I'll take it 49% and the lawyers were like yes that is exactly what you should do and I said under no [ __ ] circumstances will I ever do that this company is to be split 50/50 create the ultimate divorce nightmare because the reality is while it's only 1% what that 1% says to my wife is I don't trust you to be you if we get a divorce and by the way divorce is on my mind so I'm just saying with knowing the values that we share knowing how much shared experience to me is literally my highest value in life is to have shared this with her that look if you come to me tomorrow and you're like yeah if for for whatever reason for my emotional health in this relationship I need you to shut the company down I'd be like well it sucks but I'm shutting it down so it's just when you're not conflicted about that going back to having clear goals like when you know my highest priority in my life is my marriage then it's like you do whatever it takes so but if I got to the point where I was like hey legitimately I've looked at all this and there is no more joy to be had here our values have shifted we're no longer aligned we've grown apart then I would break up like anything else to me is illogical to stay in a relationship that does not make you more that does not give more that doesn't make you feel better about yourself when you're with a person than when you're without them if you don't feel like you're that person's number one what the [ __ ] are you doing it just doesn't make sense and emotionally for me and you you basically did it emotion is right for me for the 50/50 percent but for me it business isn't emotional and you have to like remove yourself and so the reason why I actually set him to take 51 percent is I knew he puts in a more work than I do and so emotionally it felt great to be an equal partner but I didn't need it because I you know I trust him and we're very secure but when it came to the business I I was very honest I was like I don't need to be equal partners because I know realistically you are going to do a lot more work than I am mmm beautiful and a lot of work you guys are both done all right so and wrapping up we play a game called first things first and the way the game works is I'm gonna rifle off ten words or phrases and you tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind so first I play with Tom and then I'll play with Lisa like games awesome and then it might be it might be cool if we have time actually if you guys play it together that might be pretty interesting all right so Tom you ready yeah I'm gonna write off ten words or phrases you just tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind word or phrase the only rule is that you can't repeat yourself twice okay got it yep okay number one ready money love Lisa yeah the funny thing is it's not people don't understand what I mean by yeah Lisa no no so tom the right the ten words are more yours for Johnson guys you got you so the second word is money my second I'm sorry you're saying word is Lisa oh yeah love so here's the the true answer is when you said money for whatever reason I pictured her which is why I said love so now when you ask me her and even I don't understand that but when you asked me Lisa I'll say safety impact Theory impact neon future film your past I'm surprised by this word painful your insecurities present your future bright team love but you said I can't say loving in I'm surprised by that answer though unity your legacy don't have one and the last word you ready passion core but it wasn't you made me give you a word but the reality is I saw something and that was the glowing center of my being so that's super metaphysical and I'm not like that but that's the what actually happened and you said that word a bonus one fulfillment everything beautiful you so your turn you ready see now all right let's do it okay so if I close my eyes sure ah there helps ready yeah okay number one money power the to quest bars yummy the biggest challenge with women in in the world these days breaking their vision of body image your insecurities always the tough time is when building the company's love debt the moment the tens of millions of dollars cleared in the bank account fleeting Tom why everything a successful relationship difficult your legacy impact and last one you ready yeah fulfillment ever you called - Magnemite my gold mmm beautiful beautiful now you guys play with each other you guys want to say like we have to say yeah yeah Wiki baby and I really want to know build together it's kind of fun Christmas family trust important oh yeah important see you oh contract because that actually is that's like one of our words if you say important you have to drop everything I got key word hmm is a crop see meaningless bankruptcy hmm I'll back to me yeah I want to hear you and startup we would just start something else that's why I'm right oh yeah just let us know when you were asked there's three more okay um I'm ah this is the wrong word but it is absolutely leptin to my head clever that that doesn't that under sells him which makes me very sad that I'll take it oh god I had such a good one as well live forever I know it's not a single word uninterested wow that's heartbreaking I'm only interested because you are very interesting um kids unimportant was the first word that came to mind it's interesting neutral maybe would have been a better way to say it well now I really want to know how kids to you the funny thing is the first word that came to mind was sad but I'm not sad about not having them I'm sad that I can't live two lives where I get to be an entrepreneur and then also be a mother people will say you can do both I agree you can but I don't think you ask any mother they have to make one sacrifice most of the time on one side of another and I've chosen to not want to make that sacrifice so you can have both I've just chosen not to deathbed the notebook I've seen the note but yeah that's how I want us to pass what was together lying in bed I could just see it if she were like slipping away she'd be like looking at me are you coming sex hot romance necessary mmm you check three more words mindset the first word that came to mind I've already used which is everything critical each other yeah I'm thinking I want a girl awesome I really want to know hmm failure inevitable microbiome the bane of my existence yeah last one last one not sure health struggle I've struggled with my health a lot so that's why with my microbiome help hence their microbiome prayer yeah yeah just do one more worthy alright oh gotta make this one at the last one hmmm intimacy shared experience partnership I was gonna say everything but I said that as well how many things that come to mind give the first one word or somebody doesn't know that can be a word or phrase okay can be yeah so that phrases more I say again partnership every everything I just keep wanting to say everything like it's the bane not the bane of my dissing it is everything that I exist so my partnership with my husband partnership you know relationship in our business so it's like everything I just want to keep saying that's a terrible answer there okay I love it that wraps up this episode thank you guys so much Lisa thank you guys for tuning into this episode make sure to check out the links below to follow Lisa Tom and some of their projects and we'll see you guys next time and until then thank you for being one of the passionate few if you guys enjoyed that video be sure to hit that subscribe button right now because every week even is it very best in personal development content interviews and insights help inspire you to take your life in your dreams and make them a reality and also if you want to know how to book dream guests same way I have you can check the link below for my top three secrets so if you have a podcast or a show or whatever is you want to collaborate with them you can click that link below I'll give you those top three secrets to help you get in touch with anybody and also don't forget the passionate view is available on media platforms as well so you can subscribe to the podcast and until next time thank you for being one of the passionate [Music] [Music]

Channel: OMAR ELATTAR & THE PASSIONATE FEW

Views: 158,748

Rating: 4.9021192 out of 5

Keywords: tom and lisa bilyeu story, Lisa Bilyeu Interview, the passionate few tom bilyeu, lisa bilyeu ted talk, lisa bilyeu podcast, tom bilyeu story, Lisa Bilyeu, lisa bilyeu health, tom bilyeu day in life, Millionaire, Billionaire, Business, Motivation, inside quest, Women of Impact, tom bilyeu motivation, quest nutrition, quest bars, Tom & Lisa Bilyeu Interview, billionaire couple, business woman, tom bilyou, tom bilyeu routine, omar elattar, omar elattar interview, power couple

Id: wK9DOp5nzRo

Length: 97min 50sec (5870 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 18 2019