The ULTIMATE ADVICE For Every Young Person! (HOW TO SUCCEED IN LIFE) | Tom Bilyeu (Fan Fav)

Have you ever realized that the very things that lead to success, purpose, and fulfillment are the things nearly everyone runs away from? Discomfort, hard work, uncomfortable situations and conversations, are the things that no one desires more of, and yet… The ability to build a wildly successful and scalable business is within reach for nearly everyone reading this, and yet through self-selection on the few will do what needs to be done to rise to the top. Of the few that rise to the top, even fewer will do so feeling fulfilled in their life. It takes much more than skills and relationships to be successful. It takes grit and determination to do the hard things. It requires you go through emotionally taxing, ego killing moments of failure, humility, and self-realization to become adaptable and become who you want to be. In this keynote, Tom reveals the hard facts of entrepreneurship and what it takes to be in the 1%. “If you’re only good in the beginning you lack grit.” After watching this it’s time for a hard self-talk and challenge to yourself. It’s time for a no B. S. approach of what will it take to build yourself into the person you desire to be. Don’t underestimate what you are capable of, stop thinking too small and get uncomfortable. “To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures.” -Nietzche SHOW NOTES: 0:00 | Introduction to The Journey Is the Win 0:22 | Entrepreneurs Survive Rock Bottom 9:12 | Connect to Purpose (Not Money) 16:41 | Develop Your Mindset First 24:16 | 6 Ways to Develop New Skills 37:13 | How to Develop Grit 46:16 | Identify Your Passion & Develop It 51:03 | Building a Scalable Business 1:01:29 | Value of Online Community 1:14:17 | Success Requires Clear Goals Are You Ready for EXTRA Impact? If you’re ready to find true fulfillment, strengthen your focus, and ignite your true potential, the Impact Theory subscription was created just for you. Want to transform your health, sharpen your mindset, improve your relationship, or conquer the business world? This is your epicenter of greatness. This is not for the faint of heart. This is for those who dare to learn obsessively, every day, day after day. Subscription Benefits: Unlock the gates to a treasure trove of wisdom from inspiring guests like Andrew Huberman, Mel Robbins, Hal Elrod, Matthew McConaughey, and many, many, moreNew episodes delivered ad-freeExclusive access to Tom’s AMAs, keynote speeches, and suggestions from his personal reading listYou’ll also get access to an 5 additional podcasts with hundreds of archived Impact Theory episodes, meticulously curated into themed playlists covering health, mindset, business, relationships, and more:⁠Legendary Mindset⁠: Mindset & Self-Improvement⁠Money Mindset⁠: Business & Finance⁠Relationship Theory:⁠ Relationships⁠Health Theory⁠: Mental & Physical Health⁠Power Ups:⁠ Weekly Doses of Short Motivational Quotes Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://apple.co/3PCvJaz⁠ Subscribe on all other platforms (Google Podcasts, Spotify, Castro, Downcast, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Podcast Republic, Podkicker, and more) : ⁠https://impacttheorynetwork.supercast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby, and then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University, and the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Taylor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Taylor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.

• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. So here's the bad news. I am not a born entrepreneur, and that is very important for you to know about me. I had a what I'll call a slave's mentality. I kept my head down. I did as little work as possible, and I avoided punishment at all costs. That's where my life began. Thank you for laughing at my pain.

• 1:29Tom Bilyeu?

  In fairness, I have been to Mars, so there's that.

• 1:34Tom Bilyeu?

  You weren't supposed to mention it, though. But thank you, guys, so much for having me. I want to know, how many born entrepreneurs do we have in the crowd? Don't be shy about it. How many born entrepreneurs do we have? Let's hear you. All right, there we go. So here's the bad news. I am not a born entrepreneur, and that is very important for you to know about me. I had a what I'll call a slave's mentality. I kept my head down. I did as little work as possible, and I avoided punishment at all costs. That's where my life began. Thank you for laughing at my pain. It really was brutal. Growing up, for me, I felt entirely lost. I felt entirely out of control. I had visions of what I wanted my life to become, but I had absolutely no idea how I was ever going to get there.

• 2:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And understanding that and really believing that, that that's where I started, the rest of my journey becomes that much more interesting to you. Because I have some fundamental beliefs. I believe that we're all trapped in the matrix. And the matrix are the limiting beliefs that you've pulled over your own eyes. They're all a bunch of lies. And so it's really learning how to get yourself out of that, to get rid of the limiting beliefs, so that you can execute against your dreams. But it starts with belief, and humans lead with belief.

• 2:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Growing up, I knew two things about myself. I grew up in a morbidly obese household that teetered between blue collar and white collar. And I knew, in my future, two things would be true. One day, I would have six-pack abs, and one day I would be rich. I had absolutely no idea how I was gonna make those come true, but I knew that they were gonna be two of the things that I was gonna make come true in my life. Now, it's important to understand that Quest Nutrition is a company that rose from the ashes of misery.

• 3:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Each and every one of you, at some point in your life, you are going to hit rock bottom. The question isn't, "Will you hit rock bottom?" The question is, "What are you gonna do with yourself when it happens?" And for me, I was teaching film, and I met these two buff, rich guys. And I thought, "Oh my God, six-pack abs and wealth."

• 3:43Tom Bilyeu?

  "I've gotta follow these guys." It's literally like I was meant to meet them. And they said, "Tom, you're coming to the world with your hand out. And if you wanna control your art, if you wanna control your life, you've gotta get rich. So hey, come on. We're starting this technology company, we need a copywriter, you'd be perfect for the job." So I went and I did it, and they said, "But don't think of yourself as a copywriter. Understand, this is a startup. You can have any job in this company that you want. You just have to become the right person for the job."

• 4:15Tom Bilyeu?

  So I took them seriously and I started working my ass off to get better. To focus on the things that I needed to do in order to get good, to grow and be able to execute. And I got so good that by the time we sold that company, I was the chief marketing officer and they'd given me 10% of the company just based on performance. So imagine giving somebody something that amounts to millions of dollars just based on how hard they've worked. That was the kind of blood, sweat and tears that I've put into it. But when I came into it, we all thought it was gonna take us about 18 months to sell the company.

• 4:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Eight and a half years later, in the depths of despair, I realized something had to change. And I went to my partners and I quit. And I said, "Guys, here's your equity back. I don't believe I should get anything. I don't plan to cross the finish line. I'm gonna go do something that makes me feel alive." And let me tell you right now, I said that from the position of being in a place where I had ownership in a company worth millions of dollars. I was making more money than I'd ever made in my life. I was standing in a beautiful conference room overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the house of a company that we had built that was winning awards. And I was so fundamentally unhappy

• 5:37Tom Bilyeu?

  that I finally had the first of what would become a string of very profound and important realizations. And that is, the game you think you're playing is money. But I promise, the game you're actually playing is brain chemistry. If I gave you $4 billion tomorrow, but inside you felt suicidal and you felt worthless, what would be the point of the money? Conversely, if I gave you $3, but you felt fulfilled and like you were contributing not only to yourself, to your family, to other people, you felt alive inside and what you're doing meant something to you and you felt that you had significance, what does the money matter?

• 6:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Anybody ever read the poem Richard Corey?

• 6:21Tom Bilyeu?

  I read this poem when I was like nine years old and it left a lasting impression on me. And it was about the best looking, richest guy in town. The guys wanted to be him and the girls wanted to be with him. And the poem ends with Richard Cory going home and putting a bullet in his head. That's the human condition. How many people have you met in your life? You think they're spectacular, they're amazing. And yet they're so fundamentally unhappy that they're in the grips of depression. We're living through a mental pandemic right now. It is almost ubiquitous to know somebody who has depression and/or anxiety. And the reason is people don't understand the game they're playing. The game you're playing is a game of brain chemistry.

• 7:06Tom Bilyeu?

  It's chemicals that flow through your brain. It's a mindset. Once you understand that, then you can begin to structure your life in a way that actually makes sense. This is a long ass quote, but I'm gonna read it all to you because these, "Once you understand this, you will understand everything you need to know about life. To those humans who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with the profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished. I have no pity for them.

• 7:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Because I wish them the one thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not. That one endures." That's life. That's the human condition. Most people think that Charles Darwin said that it's the survival of the fittest. Darwin never said that. It was said years after his death. What he did say, and burn this into your nervous system. What Darwin said was, "It's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather, the most adaptive to change."

• 8:29Tom Bilyeu?

  The reason human beings are the apex predator is because what we are good at is change. What we are good at is taking a stressor, a stimulus, and changing our body. Look at the people around you. Look at homie over there, jacked to the nines. Tommy shredded. They were not born like this. Okay, I grew up in a morbidly obese family. I'm not supposed to be lean. We adapt because we force ourselves through something that is painful and we endure. What was Tommy talking about, the takeaway from Angela Duckworth's book that really stuck with him? Many people start, but few endure. It's not interesting whether or not you guys have a dream. I don't care if you have a dream.

• 9:11Tom Bilyeu?

  I am so uninterested in empty dreamers, I can't see straight. What I care about, do you have the fortitude to fail? And what do you learn from that failure? Do you get back up? Do you keep going? Do you force yourself to recognize that this is a question of adaptation? You simply have not done to yourself what you need to do in order to be good enough to succeed. And it really is that simple. Once you accept that the thing that separates you from the rest of the animal kingdom is an unimaginable ability to become.

• 9:50Tom Bilyeu?

  You have an unimaginable ability to become something. In 2014, private companies averaged 8% annual growth. After I went into my partners and I said I quit, and I'm gonna go do something that makes me feel alive, they were totally shocked. And I got all the way to my house and I was on the phone with my wife. I did it. I had been unhappy for so long.

• 10:23Tom Bilyeu?

  And I said, "I did it." I told them I quit, I gave back the equity. Here I am, and I'm pulling into the driveway at my house. And my phone rings. And it's my partners. And they say, "Come out to dinner with us."

• 10:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Out of respect and love, I went out to dinner with them. And they said the now-famous words, "We could do this without you, but we don't want to." And that gave me what I needed to connect to something other than money.

• 10:53Tom Bilyeu?

  It reminded me of the brotherhood. It reminded me that I had fallen in love with these guys as human beings, that there was something more than money. There was something more than being a clever marketer. That I remembered for a second who I am, the things that make me unique, that I have a desire to connect, that I actually enjoy communities, that I'm not a guy with a killer instinct. I'm not interested in stepping on my competitors' necks. That's just not how I'm wired. I'm wired to build something. I'm wired to see people shine. I love seeing other people win. I think it's incredible. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't want to win. I want to win at the absolute highest level. I want to be the greatest of all time.

• 11:35Tom Bilyeu?

  I want more people to write about me going to Mars because they're terrified to try to match my intros. I want that, right? And I hope each and every one of you wants to play at that level. I hope each and every one of you looks at the greatest of all time and says, "If I'm willing to break myself and have to get there, I could do it."

• 11:55Tom Bilyeu?

  But being honest with who you are, being honest that if there's something else that you want to bring to the table, that you find a way to do that. And so, I said, "Guys, I will come back and work with you on one condition. I will never prioritize money again.

• 12:12Tom Bilyeu?

  My highest value in business is camaraderie." And at the time, that was sacrilege. We had made a pact with each... There was three of us. The three of us had made an actual pact that we would do whatever it took to make our technology company more profitable. And if that meant skipping a family vacation, if that meant waking up at 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday to meet and brainstorm, we did it. Both of those stories are real. We did things like that. I would go away with my wife for Christmas to see her family in London, and I would literally take a camera with me so I could watch... The company back in LA. I've never switched off. I didn't take days off. I was working. No matter where I was, I was working.

• 12:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Seven days a week. I didn't take a real vacation, meaning that I wasn't actually working while we were on it for six and a half years.

• 13:02Tom Bilyeu?

  So if I'm gonna go back to that, this is gonna be in service of something that I can believe in. This is gonna be something that makes me feel alive. This is gonna be something that I'm passionate about. It's gonna be something that I actually feel like I'm contributing to the world, that I would be willing to do all of that with a smile on my face. And I said, "The only question I will ever ask again in the context of business is this. What would I do and love every day, even if I was failing?" If you guys can get on board with that, if we can build something from a position of wanting to bring value and not worrying about the money, then we can work together. And so they said that they felt the same way, and we started this crazy protein bar company called Quest Nutrition.

• 13:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Everyone told us that we were out of our minds. I was talking to Ben earlier about, "Imagine you're a 15-year-old who wants to play in the NBA, and all you hear all day long is, 'Kid, you're never gonna make it.'" And to have the fortitude as a teenager to push through that and believe in yourself. It's what I call the arrogance of belief. I was so on fire with the notion that now I was gonna do something that I believed in. Now I can think about my mom and my sister every day. My mom and my sister both morbidly ob- There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60, and it isn't the cashmere. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for. Quince just works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman.

• 14:29Tom Bilyeu?

  So there's no need for a markup and no logo tax. The $60 goes to the actual sweater, not the fancy name on the tag. That's why everything they make runs 50 to 80% less, and it's not just the cashmere. I ordered a few things myself, their fleece joggers, a couple of their tees, which I wear obsessively. First thing I noticed was the quality. Soft, well-made. Built to hold up. They make down jackets and wool outerwear now too. So upgrade your stuff to things you'll actually wear. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 15:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Impact Theory. It's the best way to support the show. Let's talk about something that genuinely keeps me awake at night. My team at Impact Theory gets hit with phishing scams from bad actors pretending to be me all the time. And they keep getting more sophisticated attacks with details specific enough to look legit. AI has made a lot of things possible, including scams like this, but AI still needs raw material. It gets it from data brokers who sell your name, address, phone number to anyone willing to pay. Incogni goes after that supply.

• 15:52Tom Bilyeu?

  They handle removal requests across 420 plus harmful broker sites. And they keep checking back as brokers constantly try to relist you. On the unlimited plan, the exposure scanner hunts down your information. Send a link and their privacy experts handle the takedown. Track your progress in the app and get a monthly risk assessment showing exactly where you stand. Go to incogni.com/impact and use code IMPACT for 60% off an annual plan. Incogni is I-N-C-O-G-N-I.com/impact. Promo code IMPACT. It's completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee. Beast, I knew they were gonna die too soon if I didn't do something about it.

• 16:37Tom Bilyeu?

  I believed it was my problem to solve. I believed there was nothing I couldn't do if I set my mind to it. And armed with that, armed with the passion to know that I'm showing up every day fighting for my mom and my sister. I'm not thinking about money. I'm not gonna make decisions based on profitability. I'm gonna make decisions based on what is metabolically real? What is the actual answer to the question of how do you end metabolic disease? And I play a game called No Bullshit, What Would It Take? No bullshit, what would it take to end metabolic disease? And the answer is you have to make food that people choose based on taste and it happens to be good for them. That's the only way it's gonna happen on a global scale. And so that's what we set out to do. But when you're armed with the notion of I want to end metabolic disease,

• 17:21Tom Bilyeu?

  not I want to get rich, not I want to sell my company. I want to end metabolic disease and you let that be your driver. Now you know what your why is. And we'll get to that more in a minute. By putting that mindset at the forefront, from 2010 to 2013 alone, Quest grew by 57,000%. Comparative companies were growing by 8. We grew by 57,000. I'm telling you right now, saving the world, doing the right thing, thinking about your customer, wanting them to win, wanting them to shine, wanting great things for your employees, it's big fucking business.

• 18:11Tom Bilyeu?

  At Quest, we made more in a single day than our previous company made annually.

• 18:20Tom Bilyeu?

  All by putting the customer first. All by saying we're only gonna do what's actually metabolically advantageous. Because how does it serve me to make a product that doesn't when my mission, in my opinion, was to save my mom? And I would ask myself of every decision, tough decision that we had to make, which decision actually helped save my mom? And then we would make that decision.

• 18:46Tom Bilyeu?

  We hit number 2 on the Inc 500 list. We were officially a unicorn company. We were a startup that bootstrapped, believe it or not, and made it all the way to a valuation of over a billion dollars. Alright, if you guys want to have success in your life, and I don't care what it is that you're trying to do, there's gonna be 2 things that you need to do. We're gonna talk about the first one now, which is develop your mindset. We'll get to the second one later, which is build your business. But we'll get to that. For now, let's just talk about your mind. The most important thing is your mind. Make no mistake about that. Right now, the only thing that is holding you back, I promise you, and whatever excuse you're telling yourself, it's bullshit. The only thing that's holding you back... Is the way that you think about yourself in the world.

• 19:31Tom Bilyeu?

  That's it. Flat. You have not built the mechanisms in your mind that you need to free yourself from the Matrix. And, boys and girls, the Matrix has you. Who knows David Foster Wallace? You all have an assignment to do. And by the way, if you don't do this, don't think for one second you actually want to be successful. Stop fucking fooling yourself and go do something easier. Because this video is like 18 minutes long. It's one of the most profound things you'll ever watch. David Foster Wallace. This is water.

• 20:11Tom Bilyeu?

  In the talk, what he makes clear is the fish is the last one to realize that it's in water. Think about it from a human perspective. We had to discover air. We had to discover gravity. They're so ubiquitous, you literally don't see them. You take them for granted as just being there. And that's how people take their belief system. Right now, you think you're capable of certain things and incapable of others. And that is your water. And until you can identify it, until you can see that you're telling yourself lies, and they are disempowering lies, by the way. Because I am not some grand fan of the truth. I'm a grand fan of doing and believing that which moves you towards your goals.

• 20:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Do and believe that which moves you towards your goals. That's it. Once you put that belief at the core of your being, you will be amazed at what you're able to accomplish. When I say, "Take the red pill," what I'm talking about is waking up to the way the world really is. The amount of potential that you have, I always say is nearly unlimited. But I only say that so I don't have to get into stupid arguments with people about throwing absolutely ridiculous things out just to try to defeat the notion. And that's somebody who wants me to be wrong. But ask yourselves right now, if my message is you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation, don't you hope I'm right?

• 21:42Tom Bilyeu?

  And even if I'm wrong, how much farther will you go? Simply because you were willing to believe. Humans lead with belief. Humans lead with belief. You won't take the first step down any path unless you believe you can actually get where you're going. And this is where people get stuck in the matrix. You don't push yourself hard enough. You don't make big enough demands. You think small, you dream small, you make small demands of yourself. If you want to see what big demands look like, look at David Goggins. Anybody know David Goggins? For those of you who don't, let me tell you a quick story. David Goggins is a Navy SEAL. He wanted to honor fallen SEALs. To do that, he wanted to pick the hardest thing that he could think of. It was a 135-mile race.

• 22:26Tom Bilyeu?

  The person who put on the race said, "You can't enter my race unless you run 100 miles in a 24-hour period, have you?" The answer was no. He said, "There's one four days from now. If you can complete..." Four days, he weighed 250 pounds. "In four days, if you can complete a 100-mile race, literally running around a high school track, think about how torturous that would be. If you can complete 100 miles in 24 hours, then you get to run my race and raise the funds for your charity." So David decides he's gonna run that race. He wasn't prepared, he was overweight. By mile 70, he had broken both of his feet, he had shin splints, his calf muscles were

• 23:11Tom Bilyeu?

  beginning to tear off the bone. He sat into a chair because he literally had nothing left to give. He urinated on himself, blood, because he couldn't move. He couldn't get up to go to the restroom, so he defecated on himself. And as he's sitting there in the chair, peeing blood, in total agony, with feces on his back, the only question he had was, "What do I need to do to finish the remaining 30 miles?"

• 23:41Tom Bilyeu?

  And so he taped his feet so that they would go numb, and he would stop feeling the pain of the broken feet. He ate something so that he would have the needed energy to keep going. And he got up and he started walking. And he walked for, I don't remember how many miles. And his wife said, "At this pace, you're not gonna finish." And so he ran the remaining 19 miles. Broken feet, stress fractures in his shins, blood, excrement, and he finished on time. That's what a human being is capable of. That's what a human being is capable of.

• 24:26Tom Bilyeu?

  We limit ourselves, and it's only us. There's nobody else that's doing it to you. You've chosen to adopt those beliefs. And once you've pushed yourself outside of that comfort zone, what becomes possible is absolutely miraculous. Now, I choose to believe that my potential is limitless. And because of that, I've gone from scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car, that is a true story, to building a billion-dollar business. All right, how do you do it? If this is about building your mindset, how? To me, it's about mind the gap. There is a gap between who you are now and who you need to become. And that gap is a gap of skill set, plain and simple. Remember, you're an adaptation machine.

• 25:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Your job is to place yourself under stress and then force yourself to grow. So back to Mr. Yoked, you don't get those muscles by looking at the weights. You get those muscles by going under the weight and not stopping when it hurts. You stop when you can no longer recruit the muscles enough to move the weight. That's when you're done. And when you're able to do that, what you're actually doing is tearing down the muscle fiber. And a lot of people, when they begin working out, they don't realize that's actually the name of the game. The name of the game is to break the muscle down. And then the body comes and builds it back up. The conscious part is tearing it down. Your job is to put yourself in stressful situations.

• 25:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Your job is to push yourself to the limit of what you think you're capable of, and then go past that. And when you're able to push yourself past that, when you're able to get into the Goggins reps, as I call it, when you're able to exist in that zone, long past where it started hurting, long past when it got boring, long past when you were terrified that you'd never be able to do it, that's when you'll begin to adapt, because you're telling your body, "Adapt or die." That's how you're gonna get where you want to go. Now, I love the movie The Matrix, as was made very clear in the intro.

• 26:31Tom Bilyeu?

  The real question is, what is your Kung Fu? You've got to figure that out, right? This is a path to execution we're talking about right now. Path one is about the mindset. So what is your Kung Fu? My Kung Fu is business. I knew that I was gonna have to learn business in order to control the resources, in order to control my art.

• 26:52Tom Bilyeu?

  And this is how you're gonna develop your Kung Fu. One, always be reading. The most important mathematical formula you will ever encounter is right there. Ii equals Io. It stands for ideas in equal ideas out. If you want to solve a problem and your business has become particularly tricky, you need to be taking in a ton of data so that your unique mind, your unique worldview, your unique life, having grown up the way that you grew up, the way that your brain is wired, all of it, you will come up with ideas that nobody else is gonna come up with. But you first have to be getting that stimulus. Now, I doubt I have to overpreach that one to a bunch of people that have come to a conference like this.

• 27:35Tom Bilyeu?

  These are literally the kinds of ideas you want to be encountering. Two, open yourself up to being changed. I can't tell you how many times I've recommended people my list of books, which by the way, you can find on ImpactTheory.com, Tom's reading list. It is the 25 books any human being that wants to excel should read in order. And before every book, say a little prayer. And the prayer goes like this. "I am open to being changed fundamentally and for the better by this book."

• 28:07Tom Bilyeu?

  "I am open to being changed fundamentally and for the better from this book." You've got to go into the book wanting it to be right. You've got to go into the book hoping that it gives you some piece of knowledge. Remember, everyone, everyone is your superior in some way. And once you learn to check your ego, sit at their feet with absolute humility and be open to their ideas, especially the one that contradicts what you believe today, then you'll get somewhere. And I've got some really amazing news for you guys.

• 28:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Your current skill set has already taken you as far as it's going to take you. If you don't, put yourself on a path to learn and very aggressively. Where you are now is where you'll be in five years. The key is crossing that chasm of skill set.

• 29:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, realize what you believe is a choice. This is something that's really hard for people because they think some things are objectively true and other things are not. And that's simply a lie. And that's why the Matrix is the perfect metaphor. Think about this for a second. Your brain is locked in total darkness. It never sees light. Your brain is locked in total silence. It never hears sounds.

• 29:39Tom Bilyeu?

  What your brain does is take stimulus, the agitation of the air, and it transmits it into chemical, electrical signals. It does the same with photons falling on your eye.

• 29:52Tom Bilyeu?

  But ultimately, this thing that you're experiencing, the distance that you feel from me, it's all happening in your mind. There's actually two dime-sized blank spots in your field of vision where the optic nerve connects to the eye, and yet you don't experience it. It's right in the center. So why don't you experience it? Because your brain is insanely good at guessing what should be there and filling it in. That's when I realized, my brain is lying to me. Now, it may have all the best intentions in the world, but make no mistake, your brain is making shit up. And it's making up a lot of shit. And so you've got to choose what to believe. Who here has a negative voice in their head that tells them to be careful, be safe,

• 30:37Tom Bilyeu?

  you probably can't do it, this is all gonna go wrong? Now, do you believe that voice to be objectively true? Okay, so that voice is lying to you as well. Now, it has great intentions. It's trying to make sure you don't get eaten by a lion in the bush. That doesn't happen a lot in modern society. So maybe a little less useful in today's day and age. And then the really protective one is trying to make sure you don't get ostracized by the group, which in years past would have meant certain death. But now, you don't need the group. You can survive just fine. There's a grocery store around every corner. You can get shelter of some kind. It may be lonely as hell, but the chances of you dying from being ostracized are virtually zero.

• 31:19Tom Bilyeu?

  So you've got outdated software, outdated algorithms running in your mind. Your job is to develop what I call an overwatch mechanism. The overwatch is the emotionally sober part of you that distrusts every signal and impulse that your brain gives you. And once you can get over that, in fact, there's a great quote from Da Vinci, "The greatest form of control is control over oneself." So the reason I love Star Wars is because it's all about mind control. But not mind control over other people, don't worry about that. Mind control over yourself. Being able to tell yourself, these are not the droids you're looking for. That's when this gets really powerful.

• 32:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, so belief is a choice, we're gonna talk about that more. Be an eternal student, we've talked about that. And last one, become anti-fragile.

• 32:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, we're gonna go really deep on anti-fragile, so I won't belabor the point and develop grit. Alright, how do you become anti-fragile? This is probably one of the most important things you guys need to learn. Becoming anti-fragile was literally the thing that changed my life. And I remember the day that it happened. I had just started working for my two partners. They were very smart, clearly much smarter than I. And I had built my self-esteem around being smart and being right. And now all of a sudden, I found myself with these two incredible minds that could process data more rapidly than I can. So I'm not gonna place a value judgment. I'm not gonna get into an argument about how valuable IQ is. I will just say that a high IQ, in my opinion, means that you're processing raw data faster than somebody else.

• 32:57Tom Bilyeu?

  So you can run through the list of possible scenarios. For instance, that can be very helpful going into any negotiation. You've just thought through all the possible permutations. So they made me feel badly about myself. So as you can imagine, I didn't always wanna be around them. And the times that I was around them, I wanted to find some way to be right. And so we were arguing about something, a way to do something in the business. And I had an idea, and then they threw out another idea. I recognized immediately that their idea was better, and yet I kept arguing for mine. Ever come across somebody who does that? I promise what's happening in that moment is they're feeling insecure. You've triggered their insecurities. And now they're gonna fight for it because it's theirs. Because if they can at least win that argument,

• 33:41Tom Bilyeu?

  while they may not feel smart, they may get reflected back to them that they were smarter than you in that moment, they could convince you of something. So I had this moment of crisis because I actually convinced them. And I convinced them that my way was right, even though there was a voice in my head screaming, "It's wrong, dumbass. You know it's wrong. What are you doing?" It was insane. I was literally heading in this collision, and I couldn't stop myself. So at the end of it, I asked myself, "What do I really want?" Because I tell people I wanna get rich.

• 34:12Tom Bilyeu?

  But my actions say I wanna feel good about myself.

• 34:17Tom Bilyeu?

  And I had a moment of crisis because I realized I need to feel good about myself.

• 34:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Everybody needs self-esteem. In fact, what suicide is, is when somebody no longer believes they'll ever feel good about themselves ever again.

• 34:35Tom Bilyeu?

  And if that were true, it's not, but if that were true, suicide is actually a reasonable option. Why would you want to go on living if every day you're miserable and there really is no way out of that? So I knew I couldn't give up my self-esteem. I couldn't accept some weird role where I just was always the dumbass sitting in the corner. Right? So in that moment, I realized if I'm actually going to move towards my goals, I've got to pick something to build my self-esteem around that's anti-fragile. Now, this is a term that comes from Nassim Taleb in his book By the Same Name. And in the book, he points out something that is resilient, something that is strong, something that endures. They are all defined ultimately by their breaking point.

• 35:19Tom Bilyeu?

  They still break, they can just take a lot more abuse before they break. Anti-fragile, on the other hand, is something that the more you attack it, the stronger it becomes. So think of it this way, if I pride myself on being smart and you tell me I'm dumb and you put up a pretty good case for it, that's going to damage my self-esteem. My self-esteem in that situation is very fragile.

• 35:44Tom Bilyeu?

  If, on the other hand, you tell me that I'm dumb and I build my self-esteem around being the learner, now I'm going to say, "Thank you, please tell me in what way that I'm dumb, because you will open my eyes to something that now I can address and I can go learn about that thing and I will have a new skill and I can go out and push and execute against that skill."

• 36:06Tom Bilyeu?

  That's anti-fragile. The more you try to tell me I'm dumb, the more areas that you point out that I'm weak, the more things you tell me I need to learn about, my eyes are open to something that if true, I'm going to go down that path and I'm going to learn how to do that. And that is absolutely critical.

• 36:23Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. Identifying as smart as a deadly trap, as is the notion of being right. One of the most powerful things that you could do is become the person that admits that you're wrong really fast. And it's crazy how much credibility you will earn with people simply by admitting, "I was wrong." Like 30 seconds ago, I was fighting so hard for something. I was really fighting for my position and then somebody says something and I realize, "That's actually better." Imagine that. You're in the meeting, you're going diehard because you believe it. You should stand up for what you believe in, you should fight for it. But when you find somebody that when they actually, because they actually listen and they hear, "Holy shit, like that's actually a better idea." And they say it in real time.

• 37:07Tom Bilyeu?

  And not just say it, but like, "Oh my God, that's a great idea. I'm totally amped, I'm on that. Now I'm gonna be the energy for that idea." It was crazy. When I started doing that, people would actually come to me with their great ideas because they knew if it was right, I would get so enthusiastic about it. I would give them all the credit because I did not pride myself on owning the idea. I prided myself on recognizing the idea. And so people would keep coming to me with these great ideas because they wanted me to be the energy. And so even though all I would do is try and point out whose idea it really was, in like every breath that I mentioned the idea, talking about the person who actually came up with it, I would get credit for it because I was the one actually moving it forward. Because at the end of the day, only execution matters.

• 37:51Tom Bilyeu?

  You can build an amazing reputation for yourself. And one of the best ways that this plays out is that time when you hold steadfast and you refuse to bend. People know you're not doing it just to argue for your own idea because you've shown a thousand times, as soon as somebody gives you a compelling idea that you think is better, you'll move on it. And that there's no ego in it.

• 38:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, how do you develop grit? If grit is as important as we say it is, sustained interest over time, that's really what grit is. And a lot of people talk about, in fact, the title of my speech is supposed to be about how you develop a passion, which we will talk about in a little bit, but this is gonna be one of those things. When you have passion, one of the things that comes out of that is you've got the ability to sustain your interest over time. Do the hard things.

• 38:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Do the hard things. I can't emphasize that one enough. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations just to find the mental tactics that you're gonna need to deal with the hard things. It's getting those tactics. Who knows the Stanford Marshmallow Test?

• 39:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright. For those of you that don't, this is one of the most breathtaking examples of the human condition. In the Stanford Marshmallow Test, they bring in, I don't know, they're five or six years old. They bring them in, and the person in the white lab coat says, "Here's a marshmallow. I'm gonna go out of the room for a minute. I'll be back in just a few minutes. If you wait till I come back, I'll give you a second marshmallow." So essentially, double your money. Not bad. Now, what the kid doesn't know is the researcher's never coming back. And all they wanna know is how long will you wait before you eat the marshmallow? Some kids have literally gobbled it up before they even get to the door. Other kids are like singing to themselves, putting their head down, getting up, dancing around the room. Some of them bite like the underside

• 39:50Tom Bilyeu?

  and try to put it back so you can't see.

• 39:55Tom Bilyeu?

  And here's what's scary. They followed those kids for 25 years. And based solely on the length of time they were able to wait before they ate the marshmallow, predicted their level of success in school, predicted their level of success in the job market. The people who waited the longest got into the best schools, got the best grades, went on to have the highest paying jobs.

• 40:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Just your ability to delay gratification. Your ability to find tactics that work to get your mind off something. There's no greater control than control over oneself. Anybody here ever done a three-day water-only fast? Not intermittent fast? You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent, AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes.

• 41:08Tom Bilyeu?

  After it, it drafts your CRM updates to review and approve. So there's less admin and more selling. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact, and you can be up and running in minutes.

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• 42:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Do it. You will learn something about yourself. And it will be profound. And what you're gonna learn is that your body is manipulative. And I did a three-day fast just a couple of weeks ago. And I had the flu right before, so there were cough drops laying around. And every time I walked by those fucking cough drops, my brain was like, "Eat one." And I was like, "Motherfucker, like, you know I'm fasting." And I literally couldn't believe like, how consistently, every time I walked by those damn cough drops, that my body like gave me this really intense impulse. And that's when I realized,

• 43:01Tom Bilyeu?

  like, the notion that there are multiple voices in your head, by the way, is very, very real. And I will give you one quick example. Who knows what the corpus callosum is? Alright, the corpus callosum is a thick bit of tissue that connects the left and right hemisphere of your brain. If you sever that, you will get people that have literal multiple personalities. One on the right, one on the left. Some of the most intriguing stuff is, one of them will be devoutly religious and the other will be devoutly atheist. In the same brain. And you can talk to them differently. It's absolutely crazy. But the multiple voices notion is real. There are multiple factions, if you will, pieces that your brain is broken up into.

• 43:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And by the way, you have the equivalent of a cat's brain in neurons, just in your digestive tract. So the whole notion of gut instinct, think of all the coolest shit cats can do.

• 43:57Tom Bilyeu?

  And you've got that in your digestive tract. Neurons! It's literally the same material that your brain is made out of is in your digestive tract. Utterly fascinating. So we have all these competing things that we want. But inside, if you think of that Overwatch, that one person, that's you.

• 44:19Tom Bilyeu?

  That's meant to say, "I have goals, and I'm going to act in accordance with my goals. I'm never going to sell out what I want most for what I want right now. I wanted a cough drop, right now. But I wanted to get on the other side of the three-day fast and say, "I did it." And I wanted that more. And in learning what your tools and tactics are, so for me, I welcome hunger like an old friend. And I literally, people must think I'm schizophrenic, because you'll walk into the room, and I'll literally be like pinching and poking at my fat, going, "Hunger, thank you. I'm so glad you made it back. It is so good to see you. I'm glad you're here. I know that you're oxidizing my fat, and I'm very grateful for that. So, thank you."

• 45:03Tom Bilyeu?

  And in doing that, I reframe it not as something that is unwanted or painful, but as something that is doing exactly what I want it to do. And learning those mental tactics, that's the game. Learning those mental tactics, that's the game. That's how you're gonna get good at whatever it is that you want to do. If you want to start a business, learning how to deal with your employees is absolutely critical. But let me tell you right now, if you lash out emotionally, your employees will lose respect for you. But it's just like the cough drop moment. Now, if somebody had seen me walk by the cough drop, they wouldn't know that I had literally had to stop myself from lunging at a cough drop. They didn't know that, because I have control of myself. I've practiced things like that.

• 45:47Tom Bilyeu?

  I do three-day fast. I do what I call "bright lines." So, I have a bright line. During the week, I don't eat my second meal before 11:30, under any circumstance. My wife, one time, brought my food 30 minutes early. I was preparing for an episode, it was so sweet of her, but I don't eat before 11:30, under any circumstance. So, the food literally sat on my lap, smelling so good, and I was so hungry. And I said, "Hunger, thank you so much for showing up, because you're giving me the opportunity to prove to myself what a badass I am. Because I'm gonna smell how delicious you are, knowing my stomach is grumbling and tying itself in knots,

• 46:32Tom Bilyeu?

  because I want to eat so badly, and I'm not going to." And in those moments, you earn credibility with yourself. I hate working out.

• 46:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Absolutely despise it. It's why I do it first thing in the morning. And the reason I hate it, the weights are heavy and your muscles start burning when you get into the supposed good reps. So that just seems shitty and backwards. So it is not in any way, shape or form fun for me. But I earn credibility with myself because it is something that I don't like. I earn credibility with myself showing up every day and it also reminds me how much I can transform my body. It's very easy for me to show you my before and after picture. I used to be 60 pounds heavier. It's very easy for me to show you when I was heavy and then show you six pack abs. You get it. But what you don't see is the body is just a reflection of the mind.

• 47:25Tom Bilyeu?

  What really happened was I changed my mind and I had garnered skills. I had garnered tactics. The things that allowed me to not eat the coffee drop were the things that allowed me to not eat the things that I wanted, to not have a bowl of ice cream, to not indulge in things that are wonderfully delicious. But instead ask myself, what are my goals? And then back in with my behaviors. All right. The thing about grit that I really want to highlight is boredom. Boredom is the thing that I think kills most entrepreneurs. It's not lack of funding. It's that 90% of the things you're gonna do suck. They're tedious. I actually had to get in a fight with the IRS to get my EIN number for my most recent

• 48:10Tom Bilyeu?

  company. That shit was boring. I was flying into a rage because it was wasting so much of my time. I literally had to get an advocacy group to help me go through the process. That's how painful this was. And I literally, I remember stopping and telling my team, this is where entrepreneurs fail, right here. Like it is so tempting to just be like, peace everybody, go home. I'm not dealing with this shit anymore. I'm gonna go get a job. Like that would be so much easier, let somebody else deal with this.

• 48:41Tom Bilyeu?

  It's the boredom that erodes people. And to get through the boredom, you have to know what it is that you want. When you know what you want, then you're gonna have the energy to get through. Now, to have that energy, you're gonna need passion. The number one question I get asked, the number one question I get asked, I get asked this question multiple times a day, every day from all around the world. I've had people in Australia, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Brazil, Paraguay, I mean, literally everywhere. They all wanna know, "How do I find my passion?" Asking how you find your passion makes the assumption that your passion has been lost somewhere.

• 49:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Your passion has not been lost. Your passion has never been developed. Passions are created, they're constructed, they're developed. And it starts with interest. You wanna identify an area of interest. So if you've ever wondered like, "Oh man, that person is so lucky." Like, "How do they get lucky to find their passion so early? And now they get to do it and live like this amazing life?" And you're searching inside your mind for that thing that's gonna be like a lightning rod that's hidden under like a lampshade somewhere in your mind. And you're like, "There it is, I finally found it." But it doesn't work like that. It starts with these areas of interest. And if it's something that you're trying to turn into something that you can monetize,

• 50:09Tom Bilyeu?

  it starts with ideally overlapping areas of interest. So you've got multiple interests coalescing. And it coalesces with "Can money be made here?" But even that is not enough. Now, once you have that, you've gotta start going deep into gaining mastery. And it's in the process of gaining mastery that you're gonna find out if that interest turns into a love, then turns into a passion. People who are passionate are willing to fight through the boredom. Think about a musician. If you want to become the greatest musician of all time, let me tell you how many hours, literally, days, weeks, months, years of your life will be dedicated to playing a scale. Do, do, do, do, do. Do, do, do, do, do.

• 50:51Tom Bilyeu?

  All day, every day, the fundamentals, blocking and tackling. And what makes people great, and I know Ben will back me up on this one. What makes the greatest basketball players? They walk out onto the court at 4:00 a.m. and they say, "I'm not leaving until I've made 2,000 shots from the perimeter." Simple, period. It is what it is. They put in the work. Now, they're not doing it thinking, "Oh, my God, this is so much fun." They're thinking, "I want to win. I want to play at the highest level and I am willing to break myself in half." And this is the thing that I cannot get entrepreneurs to understand. If you want to be great, I promise you, as Tommy said, you already have in you what you need,

• 51:35Tom Bilyeu?

  which is the ultimate, evolution-approved ability to adapt. So you can change to get great. You can change to become whatever you need to. And if you're leveraging an earlier win, so much the better. If it's something that you have, that little spark of early talent, and now you're just putting the work on top of that, fantastic. But it is the people that are willing to literally break themselves in half to get the result that they want. Research Michael Jordan. The absolute symbol of being the greatest. His work ethic is way more impressive than what he did on the court. If you haven't read Tim Grover's book, Relentless, read it.

• 52:20Tom Bilyeu?

  And what he talks about? Michael Jordan has darkness in him. And if you've ever watched his induction into the Hall of Fame speech, he just lays that shit out.

• 52:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Michael Jordan's a dark motherfucker. But as Star Wars taught us, there's power on the dark side. And understanding how to leverage that. But what I want you guys to understand is, intensity is required. Putting in the work is required. Doing more work than anybody else is required for greatness. There are three things that you can do. Work hard, work smart, and work long hours.

• 53:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Most people get real weird when I say they should work long hours. But Tom, if I'm working hard and smart, why should I work long hours? I'll tell you why. Because I'm also working hard and smart, and I'm working long hours on top of it. So I will beat you every time.

• 53:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Right? Because I'm willing to do all three. But why am I willing to do all three? Because I believe in what I'm doing. I know why I'm doing it. It isn't about the money. It's about knowing where you're trying to get to.

• 53:39Tom Bilyeu?

  And this is how you build your business. We live in a very, very new world.

• 53:47Tom Bilyeu?

  That new world has been defined by social media. For anybody that in the last year has spoken ill of social media, get rid of that matrix style belief immediately. It is the greatest revolution in business ever. It is the reason that you're going to be able to build a business without gatekeepers being able to tell you yes or no. Social media has completely democratized access to consumers. Think about that for a second. Back in the day, you had to pay for radio ads, or you had to be on TV. That was it. Those were your options. And it was so expensive. And that's exactly how the big companies wanted it,

• 54:32Tom Bilyeu?

  because they could keep you out. So you may have a superior product, but the world's never gonna know, because they have a way to ice you out. That is gone. Like, really think about that. And I'm seeing some young faces in the crowd. You may not realize, it didn't used to exist.

• 54:47Tom Bilyeu?

  It didn't used to exist. You, to get to a mass audience, you had to pay hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars potentially, to reach those people. And they made you buy in bulk. It's not like you could do one commercial and see what happens. They made you buy in bulk. They made you commit to big dollars. Now, not anymore. Not only that, when I was growing up, commercials had to be high quality.

• 55:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, you can film shit with your iPhone. Be like, "What's up, girl?" And you can sell product doing it. Michelle Phan, you guys know who that is? Built a multi-hundred-million-dollar empire by doing vlogging with her phone on YouTube.

• 55:31Tom Bilyeu?

  The world has changed. And thank God, it really puts the power in your hands. But you have to understand exactly what kind of company it's making room for. In a hyper-connected social world, everything is different. And the reason that Quest grew as fast as it did,

• 55:54Tom Bilyeu?

  besides us having Yemeni, who you guys will get to hear speak tomorrow,

• 55:59Tom Bilyeu?

  the reason that we grew as fast as we did was because we understood social media before anybody else. In 2009, when everyone was saying that Facebook is just a distraction, "How's it ever gonna be good for business?" And we were preparing to launch our company, we realized that it was a megaphone. And it gave people the opportunity to comment on your company within minutes of an interaction with you to a global audience. And if we put value creation at the center of our company, then we had an opportunity to get you to say something powerful. And so, we said, "We'll never ask you to say anything in particular. If you love it, say you love it. If you hate it, say you hate it. But please, just say something." And then, our job is to make sure we do the really hard work

• 56:43Tom Bilyeu?

  of making sure that that product kicks ass, that it is actually delivering results, that for people that are trying to lose fat, that they're gonna lose it, and they're gonna be excited, that it's delicious. But understanding that Generation Millennials and Generation Z, they want impact. They have an inherent distrust of companies. So right now, and let me tell you, because I've been through this. What's gonna happen? First, you start as the undiscovered band. And the first people that find you, they love you like no other. You can do no wrong. They'll follow you like in the van on tour. They'll stay at the same dirty, filthy motels that you stay at just to support your product.

• 57:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Then, you start getting big. And everybody's like, "Yeah, I discovered them first. I knew these guys before anybody else." And then you get really big, and you're a fucking sellout. And now, "I don't wanna hear your music. That shit's played out. I'm on to the next, looking for the small guy." Because what you failed to take into account is they wanna know what kind of impact they're gonna have by using your product. Sometimes, that's the product itself. Quest, having the mission to end metabolic disease, really got people to understand what we were about as human beings. The fact that we were investing millions of dollars of our own money into cancer research because we believed that it may be a metabolic disease. That let people know who we are.

• 58:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Who we are as people. Me, starting to do a show and stepping out front and coming and giving talks like this so people can look me in my eye and ask me questions. Which, by the way, every time I do a talk, I will stay and answer questions until there are no more questions to answer. I've done it for eight hours straight before. So at the end of this talk, even if they kick us out, we'll do it out in the parking lot, whatever it takes. I will answer every single question that you have. That's the world that we live in. When you're a servant to your customer, when you understand that that's the level of obligation that you have if you wanna build a real community. That's the new way of doing business. And I now get people that write to me every day saying that I've changed their life.

• 58:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Imagine building a company and having people write you from all over the world that you changed their life. That their life is fundamentally different and better because of you and your products. It's an unreal time that we live in that you can get that kind of feedback and interaction. Alright, who knows Simon Sinek? Booyah. Alright. Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start with Why. This is one of the most important things. If you're looking to build a business, I promise you, and this is, it'll happen tonight. Even though I'm gonna say it right now, I know it's gonna happen tonight. One of you is gonna come to me and you're gonna start describing your product. You're gonna ask me how you should market it. And all you're gonna describe to me are features and benefits. And I'm gonna say, "No, no, no, what's your mission?"

• 59:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And you're gonna say, "We wanna make computers faster." That's not a mission, that's a feature and benefit. What's your mission? "We wanna empower entrepreneurs with faster, cheaper computers so that even low-income entrepreneurs can launch companies." Okay, helping low-income entrepreneurs launch companies, that's a mission. The faster computer thing is a path. And understanding the difference between a path and a mission is critical. I'll give you an example. The mission at Quest is to end metabolic disease. What if we found that food is totally irrelevant to that? What would we do? Well, our mission wasn't to make protein bars.

• 1:00:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Our mission was to end metabolic disease, so we would change. As we got deeper and deeper into cancer, it looked like this whole high-protein thing may actually be really dangerous in a cancer environment. You may have to go high-fat. And so, even though everybody considered us the high-protein, low-carb company, we started investing massively into high-fat.

• 1:00:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Everybody thought it was crazy, "What's going on? What are you doing?" But we were looking at the data. We were looking at what just metabolic truth was showing us. So don't ever be married to a path, but be deeply convicted about your mission. And choose your mission carefully. It needs to be real. It needs to be something that sits at the heart of who you are. There's an awesome quote often attributed to Mother Teresa. "No one will act for the many, but people will act for the one." I showed up every day thinking about my mom and my sister. They were very real to me. They were people that I know, that I love, that I see frequently, that I will be mortified to my core if they were to die.

• 1:01:34Tom Bilyeu?

  So it was very personal. It was very easy to fight and push. Because when you know why you're doing what you're doing, when you have your mission, and you are hell-bent to make that come true, when things get boring, when things get tiring, you're still gonna do it.

• 1:01:50Tom Bilyeu?

  And when you have that thing, you're able to take advantage of one of the kingmakers: transparency. There are two new kingmakers. We're gonna talk about both of them. The first one is transparency. Social media allows you not only to reach people, but it allows you to reach them in a super transparent way, where you can tell them who you are, what you're about, what your mission is, and let them see your company from multiple angles and see if you actually hold to what you say you're about. And don't get me wrong, in some ways, it's actually harder to build a business now. Because there's no corporate veil. Right? If you've got a billion dollars to start a company, you were way better off before. It was so much easier.

• 1:02:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, you could just hide things and lie and tell people what they want to hear and put out marketing messages, anybody in the cigarette industry. I mean, it's unbelievable how well it worked and for how long it worked. Those days are over. I promise you, the bullet has already been fired that's gonna kill the old way of doing business. They are bleeding to death and they just don't realize it yet. Now you're gonna have to be transparent. Now you're gonna have to tell people what you stand for. And the thing you stand for better be the creation of value. Don't think about profits. Focus on value. The reason you want to focus on value is it's the only thing that you can sell sustainably. You can trick people with clever marketing, don't get me wrong, but it's always going to be short term.

• 1:03:17Tom Bilyeu?

  The only thing that lasts is something that actually adds real tangible value to somebody's life. When people write in and say, "Dear Quest, I've lost 150 pounds using your products. You've changed my life. My wedding day, which I never thought would come, is now just two months away. I couldn't be more excited. Here's a picture of me and my fiance." We would get stuff like that all the time.

• 1:03:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Because we were focused on making a product that was actually real.

• 1:03:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Finding your passion for something and building a product that's better than what anyone else is doing.

• 1:03:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, leverage technology to connect. People get really lost, like I'm not a digital native. I didn't grow up with this stuff. But once I understood what it was really allowing me to do, in fact, many of you came up and you saw me sitting out there and it looked like I was working on my phone. But what I was actually doing is engaging with my community. Because if you ever get a response from me, it's actually me. So you can imagine, I'm writing and replying to people a lot. But I do that because the technology is meant to facilitate that connection. Once you understand that building the community is the thing that gives you power. And I'll give you an example. At Quest, we had a decision to make. Do we go to retail first, which are known as the traditional kingmakers?

• 1:04:42Tom Bilyeu?

  A retailer can make a brand. If you get into Walmart, you can go from nothing to 100 million in like 12 months.

• 1:04:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Same with Costco. They can pluck you from obscurity and make you a big brand, almost overnight.

• 1:04:58Tom Bilyeu?

  So do we do that first? Or do we go direct to consumer? We decided to go direct to consumer because we wanted to build a community. We wanted the power on our side. We wanted customers going into retailers and saying, "Why don't you carry Quest?" So we said no to retailers for a year. In fact, we ended up hiring somebody just to say no to the retailers in a nicer way. True story, because we didn't want to burn that bridge. But the contracts they were sending us were so one-sided, so aggressive in the favor of the retailer, that we never would have been able to be profitable. And that's how Walmart puts companies out of business that have been around for 115 years. They're squeezing your margins so tight, they become so much of your business,

• 1:05:44Tom Bilyeu?

  that one misstep in like the cost of lids or something, which is what I think killed, what was it, Lastic Pickle or something? They'd been around for over 100 years, gone.

• 1:05:54Tom Bilyeu?

  So you have to have the power going into the negotiation. And you're living in a time where you can build a community that believe passionately in you and your product. And you can mobilize them to go in stores and start asking for the product. You can even do it region by region. Think about that for a second. "Hey, we wanna, right now, today, guys, it's gonna be Phoenix. We want everyone going into whatever store you would sell into. We want people going into the Phoenix area, going into the store and asking for this product." And they'll do it. It's absolutely crazy to get nothing for it. Other than the pride of being in that community. Because you've done something positive. You've sold them something of value that's touching their life, that's making their life better. You're transparent, you're stepping out front. They know who you are, they'd recognize you.

• 1:06:39Tom Bilyeu?

  They feel like they've looked you in their eye. And you do things to go above and beyond for them.

• 1:06:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, this is the face of authenticity, my friends. This is actually an Instagram post that my wife and I posted. Every year, we go sit on Santa's lap. And I thought, "Hey, we really do it, it's really a thing for us, so share it with the community." And it's stuff like that, as embarrassing that it is, it's stuff like that that lets the community feel like they know you. And in today's world, you need somebody in your company that people will warm to, that they will feel connected with. Because what's gonna keep people from losing faith in your company as you get bigger? Is feeling connected to a person.

• 1:07:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Companies aren't nameless, faceless organizations. And you don't want them to feel like it. Our customer support department had their own Instagram. Just so people could see the people that they were talking to. Alright, don't market, build a community. That's critical. How do you build a community? It goes like this. At the top, there are thought leaders. Thought leaders are the people that, when you hear them talk, you don't understand what they're talking about. Neuroscientists, all the people that are publishing papers, doing it. If they've ever done an abstract, then they are very much a thought leader. Influencers, in the middle. That's who is listening to the thought leaders. They understand what they're saying, but they have a way of making it accessible to the masses. The masses ultimately are who you're trying to sell to.

• 1:08:12Tom Bilyeu?

  But if you're going to find the people that you need to find, you're going to get to them through influencers. They're called influencers because a lot of people listen to them. Your job is to get a thousand screaming fans. The way that you do that is by partnering up with influencers who already have the trust of those people. Now, when most people think of influencers, they think of people like this. But really, you should be thinking of people like this. And I'm guessing most of you don't even know who they are, but I'll give you one random example. This woman here, Jenna Marbles. Anybody know Jenna Marbles? Alright. Jenna Marbles has a reach of over 20 million followers a day. A day. That's prime time TV numbers.

• 1:08:57Tom Bilyeu?

  One person can reach 20 million people a day. Now, how do you get social influencers? How do you create momentum with them? So first of all, you need to identify them. You need to add value to them and their community, and you need to go above and beyond. So Jenna Marbles is somebody that we actually worked with. And how did we get Jenna Marbles to post a photo of huge stacks of our bars?

• 1:09:24Tom Bilyeu?

  We sent her knitted sweaters for her dogs.

• 1:09:28Tom Bilyeu?

  And she loved it because she felt like we understood her, that we'd gone above and beyond. She felt a sense of obligation to post that photo because she was so touched by what we had done. And we did the research to find out what she really cares about. She loves her dogs, always talking about how they're cold because they're so skinny and they don't have fur. And so we knit them sweaters. She loved it and then staged that whole photo for us, took the picture, which was huge for us because it reached such a huge audience. And you do that and start turning those relationships into partnerships and beginning to work with them. Cassie Ho, anybody know Cassie Ho? So Cassie Ho was one of the first influencers that we started working with. She has a total social following

• 1:10:11Tom Bilyeu?

  somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million people, just absolutely massive. And getting her coming in, and first it was just a paid relationship, but then as she got to know us and know everybody at the company, we actually turned that into an ongoing relationship where we've teamed up and partnered. Now to the point where my wife and co-founder in Impact Theory is actually creating a podcast with her and just goes to show that when it's authentic, real connections, that you really can transcend the normal sort of day-to-day sterile nature of a business relationship and not being afraid to recognize that the times really have changed. Following some of your vendors on their social feeds

• 1:10:54Tom Bilyeu?

  and getting to know them can be a really interesting way to spark interesting conversations, to feel more invested in them as people, and I can't stress that one enough. And then at the end of the day, if you're using social media, you've got to publish. You've got to be creating content. Who here has an Instagram account for your work? Instagram account, Facebook, all of that. Okay, the only thing I will tell you that you're doing wrong, and I don't even have to look at your account, you don't publish enough. The consistency of publishing is what it's all about. Every time I do an Instagram story, I get 30 inbound requests on my feed.

• 1:11:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Just gotta be putting it out there. Now, it's gotta be value add, but you wanna be publishing, publishing, publishing. Alright, how do you grow your community? So now you have them, how are you gonna breathe life into them and really get them to go somewhere? You've gotta be where your customers and fans are. I routinely get asked, "Tom, which platform should I address?" And the answer is, wherever your customers are. If they're on all of them, you need to be on all of them. And I know that that means it's a lot more work and it's redundant. And yes, Snapchat and Instagram stories are basically the same. And maybe Snapchat is going away, maybe it's not. But if your fans and customers are there, then that's where you need to be. And by the way, this stuff is gonna turn over every two years. It's gonna be constantly on the move, constantly different. Maybe Twitter pulls it off and they race back to the top.

• 1:12:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Maybe Facebook makes a misstep and they've gone too heavy into video and something else comes up. You've gotta be there. And as much as you can be an early adopter, so much the better. Cause it's always the early adopters that win. So keeping your eye on where the technology is going is absolutely critical.

• 1:12:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, be true to the platform. Every platform is different. I'll give you one just quick example. Even within a platform, how different it can be. So first of all, I'll do Facebook versus Instagram. On Facebook, if I'm gonna do live content, I do live content with three cameras on a beautiful set. And we switch between the different cameras so that the live feed feels like a live television show. When we do that on Facebook, we get huge numbers. If on Facebook, I were just putting the camera phone on a tripod and talking to the camera, my numbers will plummet. But on Instagram, if I just grab the phone and hold it right in front of my face and talk to all the people coming through in the feed, "Hey Bob, hey Sally, so good to see you."

• 1:13:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh my god, "Oh hey, what's up everybody? Oh, we've got Denmark in the house." Do that kinda stuff, my numbers just keep going up, up, up. So understanding what each platform is looking for, how they wanna be talked to, how they wanna interact with you. Twitter, right? One-on-one communication. Rapid, real-time, news-based.

• 1:13:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Now Instagram, even within the platform, there are different ways you want to interact. So I'm very formal, for the most part, in my main posts, but my stories are playful and a little bit more intimate look into my life. And they perform well like that. If I take something that feels right on a story and I put it in my main feed, it won't perform well. If I put something overly formal in my story, then it doesn't perform well. And this comes from publish a lot, pay attention, look at the data. You've got to be really, really data-driven. Alright, and boost what works. So, once you find what's working, then you want to put some ad dollars behind it. Okay, and ad dollars gets very tricky.

• 1:14:27Tom Bilyeu?

  You don't have to throw a lot of money at something to get a big result, because what you're gonna do is do a bunch of free stuff and look at what pops. And when something pops and it's outperforming all your other stuff, which both Facebook and Instagram will tell you, this is performing better than 95% of your other posts. Well, that's probably a good candidate to put some money behind. Also partnering up with other people in your space to do crossovers or trade shout-outs, things like that.

• 1:14:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, what if I told you your customers hate your content? Hopefully you would believe me, because chances are that they do. Because what most people are trying to do with their contents are trying to sell. Don't try to sell with your content. Try to add value. Your content in and of itself should be a value add. So at Quest, a lot of what we do is cooking, cooking with the product sometimes, not cooking with the product, but really trying to think, what does the consumer want? What would be value add for them? What are they looking for?

• 1:15:26Tom Bilyeu?

  And those are the things that are going to allow you to continue to build that community out. High-value content. It's all about value add. You're living in the era of value creation. So not only does your product have to be amazing, but your actual marketing in and of itself can't feel like a commercial. It's got to be true to the brand, it's got to be true to the brand ethos, but it has to be, in and of itself, interesting and valuable. So rethinking that, moving away from traditional features and benefits by this.

• 1:16:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, I mentioned this earlier, only value is sustainable. The only thing that you're gonna be able to sell over time is that. So you guys need to be having meetings in your company, talking about value. What is the value of this ad? What is the value of this marketing? What is the value of this product? You have to know why that thing is valuable. That is absolutely critical. And execute. At the end of the day, only execution matters.

• 1:16:27Tom Bilyeu?

  You all have a dream, that's why you're here. There's something that you wanna do, there's something that you wanna create. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is your ability to execute. So get really good at that. Crossing that chasm of skillset. And I can't say that enough. The only thing that stands between you and executing on your dreams at the highest level is skillset. It's getting good at something.

• 1:16:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Alright, have very clear goals. It always freaks me out. Most people stop at the first sort of vague notion of what they wanna do. I'm gonna punch myself in the mouth. If somebody comes up to me again and says, "I wanna help people."

• 1:17:09Tom Bilyeu?

  That's rad, that comes from a beautiful place, like I totally get it. But that's like coming to me and saying, "I wanna win an Olympic gold medal." Awesome, winter or summer? Summer, fantastic. Swimming or tennis? Swimming, excellent. Backstroke? Freestyle? Like at some point, it's gotta get so specific because you have to know what skills you need to acquire. You have to work backwards from the goal. And the goal has to be hyper-specific. So if boredom is the number one killer of entrepreneurs that they're not able to make it through, the next one is, they don't have clear goals. And the worst part is, they think they do. That's the part that terrifies me. The worst part is, they think they do.

• 1:17:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Until you know exactly what your mission is, and exactly what your business model is, and what problem you solve. What very concrete problem that people are freaking out to have solved. Until you do that, you don't have the necessary ingredients to build your business. Alright, don't be romantic, be pragmatic. Look at the data. The data will tell you what to kill. The data will tell you what's working and what's not. This was the single best piece of advice that was ever given to me and I ignored it for three years. I'm so embarrassed by that that I always make sure, any talk I give, people hear this. Know more about your product, service, industry, whatever, than anyone else.

• 1:18:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Than anyone else. If you guys have ever seen my interview show, the reason that it's doing as well as it's doing is I know more about the guest. One guest actually said this, "I know more about the guest than their mother."

• 1:18:54Tom Bilyeu?

  I just put in more work than their mother. That's the truth. I go out and I research and I read everything and I watch every video that I can. And so I know so much about that person. I know I'm gonna give a different interview than anyone has ever given before because nobody's done that level of research. Not only does it blow the guest away and totally endear them to me, but it gets us to the point where we can give an interview that has unique value. So know more about what you're doing than anyone else in the world and grind, baby grind. For two years, for two years, that's what I look like every day. Hairnet, lab coat, gloves.

• 1:19:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Put in the fucking work.

• 1:19:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Put in the work. And this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you're really gonna separate the people that are wantrepreneurs from the people that are real entrepreneurs. You've gotta wanna grind. You've gotta learn to love that. You've gotta learn to love to put in the work. To be proud of yourself that you showed up and put in the work. To be proud of yourself that you taught yourself how to suffer. To be proud of yourself that you're developing a mindset where you believe, "I can do anything I set my mind to." And by the way, once you believe that you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation, how you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration.

• 1:20:18Tom Bilyeu?

  How you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration. Because you could be doing something. If you want to end hunger, end hunger. What's stopping you? Bill Gates is actually gonna end malaria. He's gonna do it because he had the tenacity to generate the resources. And because he has a mind that allows him to work on the infrastructure and figure out how to actually solve that problem. Do not, under any circumstances, make Bill Gates or anyone else extraordinary to let yourself off the hook. Don't fucking do it. Don't sell yourself short. And this is where I see people go wrong all the time. They look at somebody who's amazing. And they say, "Well, they're just naturally gifted." I could never do that. You couldn't do it because you believe you can't.

• 1:21:03Tom Bilyeu?

  And because you believe you can't, you don't start putting in the work. Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team. He wasn't exactly showing all the promise in the world. My own mother, when I left for college, quietly assumed I was gonna fail and didn't admit that for years. I showed no early signs of promise. I actually have a version of this talk where I show photos from my childhood. And people are like, "Yeah, motherfucker, you just look stupid."

• 1:21:32Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's true. I used to dress like a clown. And I mean that almost literally. So my waist was size 36. And I wore size 54 pants. I wore literal jester hats. I had one of those big chains that connected to my belt. I had shoulder-length hair. I did not exactly look the part. And I didn't take myself seriously.

• 1:21:59Tom Bilyeu?

  It really is a game of transformation. It really is a game of understanding that you can become something. So even though I didn't start with the requisite skills, even though I wasn't a born entrepreneur, which is why I start this tale with that. Even though I wasn't a born entrepreneur, I could acquire and did acquire the skills that were needed to execute. It is a very long road.

• 1:22:26Tom Bilyeu?

  That leads you here.

• 1:22:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Right now, most entrepreneurs in the world are thinking about one thing. Winning a championship ring.

• 1:22:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Once you understand the difference between wanting to win a championship ring, and wanting to be capable of a championship performance, then you'll have the breakthrough that you need. Because most people are okay winning a ring while sitting on the bench. I am not. That holds no interest for me. I don't want to win the lottery. I don't want something handed to me. That was why, when I quit, I gave the equity back. I didn't want it.

• 1:23:11Tom Bilyeu?

  If I didn't do it, if I didn't earn it, if I didn't make somebody's life better, if I didn't force myself to actually develop my potential, which for me, the very meaning of life, write this down, the very meaning of life is to find out how many skills you can acquire that have utility, and then put that utility to the test in service of something bigger than yourself. I'll say that again. The very purpose of life is to find out how many skills you can acquire that have utility, and then put that utility to the test in service of something bigger than yourself. If you do that, not only can you build a big business that adds tremendous value to people,

• 1:23:56Tom Bilyeu?

  but you'll have what's called techni. You will have something beautiful, a skill that you have fought hard for, that can help someone else. And that, my friends, is fulfillment. And going back to the game that you're actually playing, which is brain chemistry, it is not money, it is not accolades, it is not number one on the INC 500 list. The game that you're playing is being proud of yourself. The game you're playing is being able to look yourself in the eye and go, "Damn, you left it on the field." You really played to your full potential, and you're prepared to go back to the gym to get better. When you know that about yourself... Everything changes. Like, people always ask me, "Tom, you work so much, when are you gonna take a day off?"

• 1:24:39Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm like, "I'll take a day off whenever I want one, I've earned it." I'm not conflicted. I know how much I work. But I didn't take a day off for six and a half years at the beginning of my journey, because I didn't believe I had earned it. Some part of me was guilty, because I was still fighting my own mindset. I wasn't always doing the things that I should be doing. Once you get to the point where you know you leave it out on the field every day, take a vacation whenever you want. It won't even be a second thought for you. This is the most fundamental belief that I have. I've hired drug dealers. I've hired former gang members. At one point, the staff at Quest, literally,

• 1:25:22Tom Bilyeu?

  I had Bloods and Crips working the same production line. It's a true story. Because I told the neighborhood, "I don't care who you are. All I wanna know, who do you wanna be? And what's the price you're willing to pay to get there?" Boys and girls, I promise you, once you answer that question for yourself, once you know exactly who you wanna become, and you're willing to pay a price that is higher than anyone else is willing to pay, you will win. That's the only path to success.

• 1:26:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Think about what you know about humans. Your job in building a company is to get people to feel so bonded to you, so bonded to your company, that you dazzle them. And have you ever dazzled somebody by lowering their expectations and then comfortably delivering more? The phrase that makes me want to break something, under-promise and over-deliver. Fuck that. If you tell me you want to under-promise and over-deliver, you're dead to me. I don't even want to talk to you. Because I know what you're trying to do is manage my expectations. You are not trying to be the greatest of all time. You are not trying to be capable of the extraordinary. You will happily win a championship ring while sitting on the bench. I'm not looking for that.

• 1:26:50Tom Bilyeu?

  What I'm looking for is somebody who knows who they want to become, and they're willing to pay an extraordinary price to become that. Because all that matters to them is becoming capable of the extraordinary. And when you get to that point, the only way you will know how to act is to set the bar ridiculously high. So high, you're almost embarrassed to say it out loud. And then, my friends, you're going to surpass all expectations. Thank you. My parents' biggest frustration was that I was epically lazy. And if they handed out gold medals for being lazy, I would have won, I assure you, hands down. There was a period in my life where I would spend between

• 1:27:34Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:28:18Tom Bilyeu?

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