Fan Favorite: Tucker Max on Reinventing Yourself in an Unpredictable World

Tucker Max transformed himself in ways most people wouldn’t have predicted. He’s evolved from writing New York Times best-selling non-fiction about the sex-filled, drunken escapades of his 20s, to being a devoted family man and passionate entrepreneur set on helping others. Tucker shares the major turning points in his life and everything in between on this episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 1-9-18 SHOW NOTES: Tucker breaks down the process of reinventing himself. [4:00] Tucker discusses the breakthrough that turned his life around. [10:30] Tucker describes how therapy helped him change. [13:30] Tucker shares the steps he took to become more self-aware. [17:45] Tom and Tucker discuss taking ownership of your life. [23:50] Tucker reveals his goals as a parent. [29:04] Tucker explains when he recognized he wanted something new in life. [33:04] Tucker shares the impact he wants to have on the world. [46:48] FOLLOW TUCKER MAX: TWITTER: http://bit.ly/2CPJVWD http://bit.ly/2CPJVWD%20 WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/2EQMVme http://bit.ly/2EQMVme%20 BLOG: http://bit.ly/2COLXGs http://bit.ly/2COLXGs%20 INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/2EOJNr4 LINKEDIN: http://bit.ly/2Am8qYJ FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/2E5fQ4H http://bit.ly/2E5fQ4H%20 What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu 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?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:07Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Impact Theory Podcast, your source of empowering ideas and actionable techniques from the world's highest achievers. Join host Tom Bilyeu, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the billion-dollar brand Quest Nutrition, on a journey to unlock your potential and realize your vision of success. Welcome to Impact Theory.

• 1:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. You're here, my friends, because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it. So our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. Okay, today's guest has sold over 3 million copies of his books and is one of only three authors ever to have three books simultaneously on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List. He's also the first author to take a book from blog to bestseller, and his website was generating millions of views long before that was a thing. He was nominated-- The Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential List in 2009 unsurprisingly,

• 2:14Tom Bilyeu?

  as he appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List for an astonishing six consecutive years. But with titles like "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" and "Assholes Finish First", his astonishing success baffled many, but not future New York Times bestselling author Ryan Holiday. Working side by side with him, Holiday quickly realized that today's guest was a brash and brilliant marketer, as well as a raw and authentic author. Holiday would later detail many of the techniques that today's guest pioneered in his book, "Trust Me, I'm Lying." While he'll tell you that he's just a normal guy who's lucked into much of his success, his resume tells a slightly different story. He graduated college in just three years with the highest possible honors, went to Duke Law School on an academic scholarship,

• 2:59Tom Bilyeu?

  and has even had a movie made about his life. In 2012, however, he announced that he was going to be retiring from the genre of nonfiction he'd helped pioneer called Fratire. He'd evolved as a person and wanted to begin a new journey. That journey saw him embark on psychotherapy and evolve into a devoted family man and dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur dedicated to using commerce to help other people solve their problems. From that, his wildly successful company, Book in a Box, was born, which even in its relative infancy has already done eight figures in revenue. So please, help me in welcoming the man who turned his drunken exploits into a publishing empire that has now helped hundreds of people become published authors and share their wisdom, the former asshole who's still finishing first, Tucker Max.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Thank you, brother.

• 3:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Dude, my life sounds pretty cool when you put it that way.

• 3:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Your life is pretty cool.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  I was sitting there being like, "I've done some baller stuff." That's pretty cool.

• 3:58Tom Bilyeu?

  You have done some baller stuff.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  You never think about it on a day-to-day basis.

• 4:01Tom Bilyeu?

  I suppose, yeah, you don't. When you're interviewing somebody, though, you're, when I'm researching them anyway, their whole life collapses down to like this basically 12-hour timeline for me, where I get to go on the full journey, seeing you, because, I mean luckily, all this stuff got captured on film. So you see you as a 20-something, being interviewed by the news and people being somewhat antagonistic, and you being, you know, quite flippant and very much the man of your books. And then watching you go through the evolution, it was really, really fascinating.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  I haven't even done that, dude.

• 4:36Tom Bilyeu?

  You should do it. It's, it's pretty.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  I haven't gone back and looked at any of the media, especially like early on. I think probably because the few times I've done that, I'm so mortifyingly embarrassed. And I'm like, oh, what are you thinking? Not even like with the attitude. It's like, if you're gonna have that attitude, at least do it right.

• 4:55Tom Bilyeu?

  As someone on the outside, I'm really glad that your 20s were captured so vividly. But I'm really grateful that mine weren't. So like, yeah, it would be pretty tough to look back on that stuff. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is reinvention. Like, you, you have, in full public view, which I think most people get trapped by and they're never able to get out. And I remember the first time I met you, which I think the first time we shared the same physical space was at HustleCon. And I had no idea like what to expect.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:26Tom Bilyeu?

  So it was really, because I had read, I hope they serve beer in hell. And so that, that's sort of my snapshot, and then fast forward, you know, however many years later, almost a decade later.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:37Tom Bilyeu?

  And we meet. And so it was really, really interesting that you were so successful at getting out of that persona and establishing yourself anew.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:46Tom Bilyeu?

  What was that process like?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  So, well, the first thing was, everyone, I understand why everyone thinks this and they say it. They, they ask me, well, It's funny you use the word persona. Most people use the word brand. And what they mean is how did you change from this persona or brand to this one? Meaning like, how did you change the perception of you, right? And I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but when most people ask this question, that's what they mean.

• 6:16Tom Bilyeu?

  That's exactly what I mean.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Right, so my answer is always the same, is that it's not, you can't think of it like perception, right? I never, I never thought to myself, okay, I'm projecting this, now I want to project something else. But there's this hidden self that's different.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  One of the reasons I think I was so successful, almost in spite of myself early on, is because I didn't create a, like a projected front. The guy that I wrote about, the guy that, that showed up on those, in those interviews, that was flippant and all that, that was really pretty much exactly who I was. Most people, most people in the public eye, you know this now, you've been in the public eye for long enough, you've met enough famous people, where like you're on stage with them, or you meet them in media, and then you go in the green room and they're like something, you know, different, right? Like, we know a lot of the same people. And a lot of those people, for better or worse, are different in private than they are in public. Which is never the case for me.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  So for me, the change was not about how do I change my persona, it was how do I change myself? Which is just a totally different thing. And as I grew and changed and developed as a man and matured, it was like I left my, my quote "brand" behind, but it wasn't leaving a brand behind. It was like, I don't want to drink and hook up and act stupid and party anymore. Like, that was cool in my twenties and early thirties, and I'm done with it. And I want to change, and it was like, I almost couldn't, right? So I had to, that's why I had to like publicly retire from writing this stuff. And I had to cut all of that off and move on. Because, to answer your question, it wasn't like, how do I change perception?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  How do I change brand? It was how do I change my honest, authentic self? And then go in a fundamentally different direction. That was hard dude.

• 8:10Tom Bilyeu?

  That's the process I really want people.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Man, that was like, so the first thing I had to do was I had to accept that this was something I wanted, right? Cause look, it's not obvious that I ever had to change. Like I was doing pretty well, I was selling a lot of books, I was making money. I was famous enough, like I had plenty of girls, like I had everything that at nineteen, if you had told me like I was gonna have half of what I had, I would shit my pants in excitement. I'd be like, are you kidding? This is coming for me. This is amazing. And then I got it and it was like,

• 8:45Speaker 02

  it's not that it was bad, because it wasn't. It was fun and there was a lot of good stuff. Here's the thing, people who go, and I say this being as a person who did it, uh, someone who goes intentionally looking for fame, which I did, um, they're always, part of the reason they're doing it is to fill a hole in their soul, some sort of hole, right? And, and I, I was definitely, um, uh, it's true of me. And then once you get that fame, you realize as awesome as it may be, it doesn't fill the hole, right? And so then, and everyone famous, uh, in any way, shape or form, that intentionally went to go get fame, right? Not someone who like is doing the work on their own and all of a sudden, you know, like the world sees them.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  I'm talking about people who go, you go to Hollywood, you go to New York, I'm gonna be famous. Then if, if you achieve it, then you have that, uh, you, you have that moment of truth where you realize I got everything I wanted or more. And I'm still lonely and unhappy or whatever it is you're trying to compensate for. And you gotta have that moment of truth and ask yourself, okay, what do I do now? You know, like, do I lie to myself and tell me that this fantasy that I created in my head is everything I wanted when it's not? Or do I start looking for the truth? And so, in my case, I lied to myself for a long time, right?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  And it's easy to, man, when you're selling books and, and people wanna interview you and girls come, like, want to hook up with you and they don't even know you, it's like, what is this magical world of celebrity? This is incredible, right? And it's not like I was that famous, but I was like famous enough where, where I understood what it was like. And, um, but then it's like you go through it enough and you realize like, oh wow, this is hollow and empty. And it doesn't really mean anything, it's just, it's like the trappings of success. And so it took me about three, four, five years to come to terms with that. That like, the thing that I thought would make my life perfect, didn't. And then,

• 10:51Speaker 02

  it culminated with a movie that was made about my first book.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  And like seeing that kind of like not do well.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Which is so, dude, think about how crazy this is. This is the most first world rich white person problem. There was a movie made about my life that didn't do fifty or a hundred million dollars at the box office and it was like a crushing blow to me, right? Like that, like, uh, which at the time was truly crushing, but if you think about that in the span of human history and, and human suffering, it's like, what the fuck is wrong with you dude? Like, that's what crushed you, but it did. Cause that's just the way our brains work. And so it kinda culminated with that. And so then I had to like really-

• 11:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Meaning that becomes like a turning point for you?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really was. In fact, I'll, I'll dive in, I'll really tell you. Like, there was actually a very specific moment.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I was in a hotel room and, um, it was the, the, the, the day before the movie was launching, or the day it launched. And we got like the numbers back. And you, you know, you know immediately, right? Like, uh, and we knew that like, you know, it's gonna do fine. I think it did like a million, two million, three million at the box office, whatever. And it did really well on DVD. But like, I was expecting this to be like the next, you know, Wedding Crashers or, uh, anything, something like that. And so, um, I was in my hotel room. And dude- It was, I mean, I wept, like I cried and like by myself, like didn't want anyone around, no girls, nothing.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  And I wept and I cried and it was like, it was, it was an ego-cracking, soul-crushing moment for me. Um, as ridiculous as it sounds, it was. And then from there, I had to accept, okay. I, I, I got all this fame and all this stuff I thought I wanted and it didn't make me happy. It didn't fill the hole in my soul. And, um,

• 12:51Speaker 02

  and if I really want to get to the, the sort of the, the peak of the mountain, I've got to realize I'm on the wrong mountain. Like I'm on the peak of this mountain. I'm trying to get the peak of this mountain, but they're different mountains. And so I had to go down and up. And so then that, from there, basically I realized, the first thing was I had to look honestly at myself. Right? Like, why did the movie fail? Because I had an amazing book. We had an amazing script. This should have worked.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  And, um, of course I started doing, what does, what does everyone do, right? When something fails, you blame everybody else, or at least I did. Uh, I blamed the director, I blamed the producers, I blamed, and listen, they were, they made mistakes. But then at the end of the day, I picked the director, I picked the producers. And I created a lot of issues and all the material was there for it to do well and it didn't. And it was my fault. And that was a, man, that was a hard turd to swallow, dude. It was bad. Because like, um, it, it, it's the hardest thing ever is to realize when you don't succeed, it's because of your own. It's not even like I made a, I gambled on something I lost. This should have worked. It should have. There's no reason it shouldn't have.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  And, and I just, it was my own fault. And so then I had to really start down that path of recognizing all the, the truths in my life that I was ignoring. And I was avoiding and they were painful and awful. And I got pretty far along that path by myself, but then I kind of reached a sort of an impasse. And so then I realized I needed someone to help me. And, um, there's a lot of ways to get help. I picked, um, uh, like therapy, talk therapy. And there's a lot of different types of talk therapy. I ended up, uh, going with psychoanalysis, which is just a very specific type of it. And I spent four years in analysis going four days a week.

• 14:40Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:22Tom Bilyeu?

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• 16:07Tom Bilyeu?

  The follow-up actually happens instead of living in your head. When you can't pick up at all, QUO's agent does. It answers questions, gets the details and texts them a link to book an appointment. By morning, you've got the summary and you can jump right in. It's also an official connector in Claude and ChatGPT. Ask who called while you were out and it's handled. QUO is the number one rated business phone on G2. It's trusted by over 90,000 businesses. When money is on the line, always say hello with QUO. Try QUO for free plus get 20% off your first six months at quo.com/impact. That's Q U O dot com slash impact. What was motivating that?

• 16:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Was it a positive feeling of I have the sense that I can get better? Or was it like this hurts so much, I just need something?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  It was, it was, that's a great question. It was, it was not self-improvement in the sense of like, you know, like um, I'm gonna go like lift and workout and get in shape. Like, I love doing that. But that provides a pretty immediate reward and it's pretty straightforward. This was much more about um, unpacking painful trauma. It's not like I was just in misery every day, cuz I wasn't, man. Like, I had money. It's not like the movie failed and like I was destitute, right? Like, I had money. I like, I still had uh, friends. I was in shape. I was still young. Like, I'm still young. Like, I like, everything was great objectively in my life.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Like, there was, like I said, it was a total rich white person problems. Like, I hadn't, there was nothing to be sad about. Um, so really what it was for me was understanding that like, I had to go back to, why was I looking for fame? Right? Like, why? Why was I trying to fill this hole? What made this hole? Right? And um, it goes back to me for a lot of, I had parents who just weren't very good at being parents. Like, they were perfectly nice people. Like, it's not, no one beat me as a kid. No one hit me or anything terrible like that, right? Like, uh, like, thank God. But I just had parents who were like, I, archetypical, iconic baby boomers. They just didn't care about anyone but themselves.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Their whole life was about like them. And they had a kid, which is fine if you don't have a kid, right? But they had a kid. And so, I grew up uh, uh, sort of, lonely and ignored, but in like the most western, sort of rich, uh, middle-class way. You know, like, I was never hungry. I had nice stuff. I went to good schools. It was just like, I just, they just weren't good at being parents. They were perfectly fine caretakers and humans. And so, I just missed a lot emotionally. And so, you know, I mean, one way to deal with trauma is um,

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Promiscuity, and I don't just mean sexual, anything. You do anything to an extreme, whether it's gambling, sex, working out, achievement. Like, a lot of the entrepreneurs I know, and probably you do too, I'm convinced the reason that they are so successful is because they are, it's not just they want to succeed, they are just driven beyond belief. And it's because that's their way of sort of filling their hole, the hole in their soul, which is, at least is productive, like, that's great. And I picked a path that, you know, a lot of people pick. I drank, hooked up, um, I didn't really even go that far. I just wrote about it. The only reason people know me about this is just because I wrote about it in a funny way. Um, and then I kind of, it kind of took off and it led me to success. And then I kind of went a little excess.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  But if you ask me at 26, I'm like, no, no, no, no. My parents, you know, they were fine. Everything's great, I'm perfectly happy, are you kidding? Everything's wonderful. It's not true, it just wasn't true. And I just never thought about my emotions. I had never really connected with them. I had never really, I just, I'd never really had those conversations with myself, um, or with anybody else, really. And so, part of therapy was understanding, first recognizing the pain was there. Then, it was accepting that it actually existed, right? Um, which is hard, like, you think, well, if you recognize it, you accept it. But no, no, no, no, like, I was in denial for a long, oh, well, I'm not, you know, all the stories, like, you tell yourself, oh, well, but other people have it worse. They do, doesn't mean like, that my stuff doesn't deeply impact me.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Or, you know, it wasn't that bad. It may not have been, it doesn't mean it's not having an impact on me. All those sort of, that sort of stuff. So I then had to accept all this. Then, I had to give myself space to really investigate, like, okay, like, what am I feeling? Like, so really kind of connecting my thoughts to my emotions. Um, which sounds like really basic, and... I don't know, I just wasn't there. I think most people aren't.

• 20:57Tom Bilyeu?

  What did that process look like? This is so useful.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:00Tom Bilyeu?

  And I don't know if you have a sense that this is so unique to you, it'd never be beneficial, but like I get this question over and over and over.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Right, no, I'm happy to talk about this.

• 21:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Like people don't know how to become aware of what they're going through.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  No, I'll talk about it. If you're, if you're, listen, I'll talk about it. Alright, so, I mean, all I can do is tell you what I did, right? Like, I'm not gonna sit up here and go, "Here's the eight ways to do it," and I don't know. I only know my path. So, for me, like, that's why I picked psychoanalysis, because it's intense. You're going four days a week for an hour a day, right? So, for four years I did this. And what you're doing when you go is, it's not like, it's not... A good analyst, and I had a pretty good analyst, is very, um... It's kinda like the classic, you know, um, image of like, you know, laying on the sofa and the analyst is kinda behind you. It's like that. It's mainly you're talking and then about what you're thinking, what you're feeling.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  And then they essentially do their best to present basically a mirror to you, right? So, they ask questions or they point things out. They never like say, "Oh, well, you're doing this wrong," almost never give advice. They never, um, tell you what's right or wrong. They're definitely not judgmental. Uh, it's very accepting, it's very, like, they care, it's very caring, but it's also like very reflective, right? Like, it's very much like, um, kinda like the, you know, like in Return, uh, Empire Strikes Back where like Luke goes to see Yoda and then he's like, you know, uh, he has to go in that cave where it's like, he's like, "What's in there?" He's like, "Whatever you bring in there is what's in there," right? And he sees Darth Vader and he's like freaked out and...

• 22:37Speaker 02

  It's like, that's what analysis is. It's whatever you bring in.

• 22:39Tom Bilyeu?

  I love that scene in Star Wars, because when he cuts Vader's mask off, it reveals himself, yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  It is.

• 22:45Tom Bilyeu?

  It's a cool moment.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  So, um, so for me, what my, my analysis was very much about...

• 22:53Speaker 02

  I mean, like, I was just in denial for a long time about like, um... It's not that I denied that my parents were, like, I intellectually understood. I, I saw them clearly for who they were. I didn't connect to the emotion of it, right? Like, I refused to accept that I was scared or lonely or sad.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  I mean, even intellectually, I would, but emotionally, I wouldn't connect with that. Right? The difference between me now and me, let's say, 10 years ago, in this realm, is that now, the emotions don't go away, right? So, anyone who tells you that they have a way for you to control your emotions, or get rid of your emotions, is either lying to themselves, or lying to you, and trying to sell you something. So, it's not that any of this shit goes away. It's that now, I recognize it. Like, I recognize the feeling, I accept that it's there, and I can, like, not let it overwhelm me, or let it control me without understanding. For most people, the only way you can get past this stuff is to bring it out. Let it, let it have its voice. Accept it, and then, you know, like, see, okay,

• 23:58Speaker 02

  I, like, I know, I think I'm skipping ahead a little on your questions, but this ties directly into something in my life now, that I'm a father, right? I have a three-year-old son, Bishop. And, um, this happened like, four months ago. I'll never forget it. So, something, Bishop knocked over a glass, or something, whatever. He spilled something, he's three. And, uh, and I kinda like, you know, I was having a bad day, and I was in a bad mood, I kinda snapped, I'm like, Bishop, what are you? Why did you do that? What are you doing? Be careful. Like, really, almost exactly like that tenor, right? And like, it, I didn't, it didn't even occur to me that I was snapping, or being mean, or whatever. I was just like, talking, you know, you, whatever, reacting. But I looked at his face.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  And that kid's face, man, it looked like I had stabbed him in the chest with a knife. Like, he was crestfallen, like, broken. And I remember looking right at him, and, and understand, in a flash, understanding, I had done to him what my dad did to me. And at that moment, I had a choice to make, about the type of man, the type of father I was gonna be. Like, either I could rational, oh, well, you know, like, he deserved it, or I need, he needs to toughen up, or I could rationalize this, or I could accept that I had hurt this kid, my son, and I had done it unintentionally, intentionally, it doesn't matter. I had done it. And that, um, I had to accept it, and then... Deal with it, right?

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Deal with the fact that I had done this. And, and of course, thank God I went through therapy, right? Because I was able to see it in the moment and understand in the moment what I had done. And accept it and then deal with it. And dealing with it is actually pretty easy if you'll accept that, right? Uh, but it was really painful. I mean, like, it's still painful to think about the fact that I did, like, I did it. There's no way to undo this. But, you know, I picked him up, I said, "Oh buddy, come here." "Are you, are you sad?" And he's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Okay." "Why are you sad?" And he's like, "I, you know, I don't know." He's, I'm like, "Are you sad because daddy yelled at you?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Okay, well, you know, daddies make mistakes too. Daddy shouldn't yell, should he?" "No." "Well daddy makes mistakes and what do we do when we make mistakes? We say we're sorry and we clean it up."

• 26:12Speaker 02

  I'm like, "Okay, well daddy's saying sorry to you, okay? Because daddy shouldn't yell. Daddy made a mistake and daddy's sorry. So let's, give me a hug and I'll clean it up, right?" And like, um,

• 26:24Speaker 02

  I don't know. Like, that was, to me, like, uh, if there's a happy ending, that's a happy ending, right? That's what therapy taught me.

• 26:32Tom Bilyeu?

  And if you had to boil down, so that particular thing, to me, from the outside, it sounds like ownership is, is the key there.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Ownership of, of yourself and your emotions and your desire to seek and to feel the painful truth, not just intellectually recognize. The truth in therapy is about connecting with the emotions you are running from and feeling them, no matter how painful or awful they are. Because almost certainly, they're awful and painful to you. Otherwise, you wouldn't run from them. Like, you're not running from happiness, right? It's not like, "Oh, remember that great memory?" "No, no, put that away, hide that." No, no, no, that's not the problem. It's the painful stuff. You know?

• 27:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, yes, I totally get that. The fascinating thing to me is, in my own life, the thing that has become the most powerful thing for me isn't, isn't, um, maybe internalizing or connecting to my emotions? Maybe that wasn't the problem that I had? And it's kind of interesting seeing you from the outside because there have been times in my life where I almost wish that I was a little less connected to my emotions.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:34Tom Bilyeu?

  I see now, though, that also leads to somewhere not very effective. But the thing for me that was really powerful was learning to take responsibility for everything that I did. And that that was where my entire life changed. And the most, um, Intentionally provocative, but the most unintentionally controversial thing I've ever said is around the notion of taking ownership and how people really get riled up. Now, maybe I pushed it too far, but I used to, one of the first blog articles I wrote was about, if I got hit by a drunk driver, I would blame myself. And people just went fucking ballistic.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Well, I can see why. With that title, I can see why.

• 28:10Tom Bilyeu?

  So, the take home message is, I could have made different decisions that would have had a different outcome. So, it doesn't mean that I wasn't victimized, but being a victim moving forward is a choice that I have to make.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:21Tom Bilyeu?

  And once, and I wrote it, understand, I wrote it from a place of like, I'm giving you the best gift I know how to give you. In fact, one of the questions I was trying to formulate in my head is, like, if you were gonna take the gestalt of psychotherapy and hand it to Bishop, and like, one, just one key thing to take away, like, what would that be? And, and I do want the answer to that question. And so, writing that article was me saying, the single most important thing I've learned in my life

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:49Tom Bilyeu?

  is that if you get hit by a drunk driver, as unfair as it is cosmically, as much as it isn't your fault from anyone else's perspective, the gift I'm gonna give you is if you're willing to say, "I could have made a different choice and gotten a different outcome", everything in your life will change.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:05Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's very hard

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Cause then you take ownership of everything that happens going forward. I get it. And I get your point. I can see how someone will misinterpret that, but the point is rock solid and amazing. Yes. Own everything in your life that you have control over. You don't have control over a drunk driver, but you have control over everything that happens after that. Yeah, fuck yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, like, for me, it was, um, yeah, like, I've never had problems taking ownership over my life. I've had problems, I think, and this might be a different version of taking ownership over your life. I've had problems recognizing painful, unpleasant truths, which I think is just actually, if you think about it, it's a subset of taking ownership over your life. You know, like, um, the movie thing's a great example. It took me

• 29:52Speaker 02

  six months to a year to fully accept, and clear as day, it was my fault. It's not like this is like some sophisticated, you know, multi-level thing where like, I had to unpack this mystery. It was clear, everyone involved with the movie could be like, "Oh dude, you totally fucked this up." Like, without, but it took me a year, about a year, to fully emotionally own that.

• 30:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Was there a voice in your head that was like, "Look, motherfucker, you know this was you"?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  No, no, I don't think so. Because that's one of the downsides of being, and like, this is gonna sound like a ridiculous humble brag, it kind of is. But one of the downsides of being smart is that it's really easy to rationalize. You know? And I'm really good at rationalizing. So I'm really good at creating narratives that really are true in a way, but they hide an underlying truth. My analyst would always say, um, I would be, you know, 20 minutes down the path of this amazing story that was essentially rationalizing or justifying something. And she would look at me and she would say, "The best defenses are true." Ah, can, cuz, cuz I, like, what I would be saying, like, I could tell you a story right now that is factually correct about the movie that would place all the blame off of me,

• 30:59Speaker 02

  but the underlying truth is that it's my fault. Right? Um, so yeah, I think there are different ways of saying the same thing. I would totally 100% agree. It, um, that was the last, I'd always done a good job owning my life in terms of taking action. I think I'd done a very poor job owning responsibility, uh, emotional responsibility. Especially for the way I made other people feel a lot of times. I didn't, I did a terrible job at that. And I don't think it was that I didn't care. It was that I was so disconnected from my own emotions. It was like, how the hell am I gonna feel hers or his or yours? Like, it doesn't even occur to you that that's a thing. Like, why would that yelling bother you? It doesn't bother me. It's like, well dude, not everyone's like you. Like, it took, it took me a long time to really internalize that

• 31:44Speaker 02

  on an emotional level. Um, yeah.

• 31:48Tom Bilyeu?

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• 32:30Tom Bilyeu?

  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. God, I hope people see this interview in the context of how brash and successful, by the way, you were early in your career and how different you feel now. Like the interviews that you did or the books that you wrote, which were all nonfiction, by the way.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 33:07Tom Bilyeu?

  So it is really, really fascinating and especially for me because this is over such a collapsed time period. It's like I really got to go in that massive swing in this really finite period of time. It's been really, really interesting. All right. I do want to get the answer to the question. If you had to wrap up your like big takeaway from psychotherapy for Bishop, what's that breakthrough you hope he never needs psychotherapy for?

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, right. If he needs, if he needs psychotherapy, then I fail as a dad. I mean, he'll, he's going to experience traumas in his life, but I'm just hoping they're not in the core family. The takeaway of psychotherapy is the exact same takeaway of Buddhism. They just are 180 degree diametrically opposed ways to get at the same truth. And the truth is, um, the truth is that you are going to suffer. But the way to deal with suffering is accepting that suffering and then recognizing that it is suffering, accepting it and then letting it sort of have its say and then moving on from that. Right? So to really condense that, I would say, um,

• 34:13Speaker 02

  the, what I would tell him, this is what I try to do with him and my daughter Vaughn is we help them connect what they're thinking to how they're feeling. Right? Because I think so many people disconnect those things. And, and that's why, like even the example I gave you with Bishop, like, you know, three years, three years old, they feel, but they don't know how to articulate their feelings. So I spent a lot of time with him, helping him understand what he feels, you know, not telling him what he feels. Like I'll give you a great example. Every kid falls down, they hurt themselves, right? And I learned this sort of indirectly in analysis. Early on, my wife would be like, "Oh, you're okay, you're okay." Because her instinct is like, you know, motherly, wants the pain to go away. I said, "No, no, no, stop doing that.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Don't do that, because what you're doing is you're actually confusing him. You're negating his feelings. Because he fell down, he skinned his knee, he hurts. And you saying you're okay is a very confusing thing. Because like I'm saying to my wife, you're the center of his universe, you're his mom. So the better thing to say is, "Hey, how are you okay?" And then let him tell you. "No, I'm not okay," or "Yes, I am okay," right? That's a great example of something I learned in analysis, is just understanding, "What am I feeling?" And then connecting it to what I'm thinking. I almost think of it like two different parts of my brain. The feeling part and the thinking part. Because actually, literally, you have three different parts, right?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  But you really, literally do have like two different parts of your brain. And it's not quite biologically, neurologically accurate to say thinking is only in one part and feeling is only in another. But roughly, you're close enough. Dude, I'll give you a good example. Coming in here, I was actually a little bit nervous for this interview. The weird thing is, is like, because I've seen a bunch of your episodes, and you get great stuff out of people, like Simon's. Simon Sinek's a good friend of mine. And he, like, his, like, has been viewed like a couple hundred million times, right? Right, exactly. So I'm showing up like, "Man, I can't, I can't screw the pooch on this. Like, I gotta really show up and do a good job." But it didn't freak me out, because like, I reckon, standing right there, 20 minutes ago,

• 36:23Speaker 02

  I recognized, okay, like, I got chills, it's not cold in here, I'm a little bit nervous, no big deal. I've done this before, I can talk about this stuff. I just, I recognized the anxiety, I accepted it. And then, actually, another technique I use to reframe it is like, okay, I'm gonna reframe it as excitement and energy, and I'm gonna use it to really dig deep and do like, a great interview. But like, yeah, like, that's what I would tell him to take away. And that's what I try to teach him, is thinking is awesome, but emotions are kinda what drive you, and you've gotta connect those to really, kind of, have a happy, successful, um, life.

• 37:07Tom Bilyeu?

  I love that. That's a pretty damn good takeaway. I wanna go back to something you said. You said, "I'm on this mountain, I'm at the peak of this mountain, and I had to really realize that I'm actually on the peak of the wrong mountain, and so I had to go down before I could go back up." What was that process like? And then, how did you recognize that you wanted something new? And what were you telling yourself as you knew I'm gonna have to go down first?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sucked, dude. It sucked, cuz you work so hard, and you think this is the mountain you're trying to climb, and you climb it, man. Like, I climbed the mountain, right? Like, I was there, and then I kinda looked around, and I realized I wasn't happy. I didn't really have what I wanted. I had what I thought I wanted to be happy, right? I had, like, I'd set the X on the map, and I got there, and I actually did better than I thought I needed to be to have everything, right? Everything I wanted. I did even better. Like, I would've been happy, you know, selling half a million books, right? And be having one year on the Best Star List, and I went way past that. And so, like, uh, it was, it ties into what you mentioned earlier.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  The one thing that I think I do better than most people, if I had to attribute my success to one thing, other than hard work, which is you can't succeed without hard work, that's just table stakes. But one thing I think I do better than most people, even successful people, is I'm always willing to face the truth, once I know it. Like, I'll fight it for a long time, right? I'm really good at rationalizing it. But once the truth is, like, that's why the movie failing was such a turning point in my life, cuz you can't argue that away, right? And so, like, um...

• 38:47Speaker 02

  That was the thing, that was the thing that made me realize I'm at the top of this mountain and it sucks. Right? Cause if it didn't suck, if I was at the top of a mountain I wanted to be at the top of, then the movie failing would suck, but it wouldn't crush me. It wouldn't break me. Like that really, that cracked my grandiosity in a real way, dude. Like I really, I felt like I was gonna die. I mean, which, it seems ridiculous, but anyone who's really ever gone through a serious, like emotional, like painful thing, you know what I'm talking about. And I really, totally, subjectively, emotionally felt like I was gonna die. And that was the thing that woke me up, was like, okay, like, at least that started the path to understanding I'm on the wrong mountain. Alright, so then how did I go down?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  So that's when I finished my other books and I retired at the end of the last book, right? And that was a very intentional thing. Like that was kind of a symbolic, I'm a big fan of ritual and like, I used to think weddings and all those things were so stupid. And then I got older, I'm like, okay, maybe the way we do weddings is stupid, but I get why you have rituals and why you do public things and like, they are very impactful, right?

• 40:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Why? That's, I believe that more than you know, but I wanna know why you say that.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Because rituals done right, I think, integrate thinking, feeling, and accountability in a public way. And they commit you to something that, that you want. You stand up in front of everyone and say, this is what I want, or who I am, or what I'm committing to. Then it integrates all parts of yourself and your community and lines you up in a direction. And that happened for me, like that's why I retired from Fratire. Because part of it is, cause I just, I'd outgrown it, man. Like I just didn't, you know, I was thirty-five, thirty-six when I did that. And it's like, I didn't, you know, I hardly drank anymore. Like I didn't go out and like go into a bar at thirty-five, it's like, ugh, kill me, right? Twenty-five is the greatest thing ever. Thirty-five, like it was the worst.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  And so, so retiring was like a way for me to... To step off the stage and to to find something else. So that was a that was a ceremony that was very important for me.

• 41:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Really fast, before we move off that, was part of the reason that you wanted to do that? Because the way you built your persona, everything that you wrote, you your book was literally titled Assholes Finish First. Self-identified asshole, around the movie, there were people, you incited a riot on yourself.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:18Tom Bilyeu?

  So there were plenty of people that wanted to see you burn at the stake. That had to cross your mind as you're like, I'm gonna retire and I open this vacuum for people to like, pounce on me and say, fucking finally, it's about time this guy shut up, like that kind of thing. Did you worry about that?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Hmm, not, I don't, not consciously, maybe unconsciously, dude, I don't know. I grew up very independent, right? Like, they they unintentionally taught me at a young age how to be self-reliant. Like, I was cooking my own meals at 10. I mean, like, I'm never worried about losing everything or whatever. I know I can start again, I know I can handle myself. And also, I've just never worried that much what other people think. You know, like, I didn't have a tight circle of people who loved me and cared about me and nurtured me, who also taught me to be very, um, uh, very conscious of their opinions, right?

• 42:16Speaker 02

  I grew up like, kind of on my own, uh, it it and so like, it never occurred to me to worry about what these people think, who aren't in my life and don't impact my life. I mean, if they like me, okay, that's cool, like, I like that. If they don't like me, eh, well, fuck them, like, it doesn't, doesn't impact me, you know? And so that was really one of the reasons why I was able to write what I wrote. God knows, I was not the first person to get drunk and throw up on myself and fall down, right? I was the first dude to write about it in an honest way, under my own name. And I think the reason why is because I didn't care about embarrassing anyone, because I had no one to embarrass, right? It didn't bother me what people thought. And there was no one around me that like, I was gonna shame by doing that.

• 43:02Tom Bilyeu?

  And is that part of what then made the gave you the ability to go down without too much overwhelming pressure?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it it was like, Well, let's be honest, money helps. Like, I'd sold a lot of books and it was like, okay, I have a chunk of money, like, you know, maybe I'm not, I don't, I don't have your house yet, you know? But like, uh, I don't have a jet yet, but like, I, I don't have to work anymore. So I don't have to answer to anybody. Uh, and even if I did, I could always, there's a lot of ways to make money, I could make more money. So it was like, well, why do I care? Like, it doesn't matter to me. Like, I, I, I've done what I had to do, I've said what I had to say about Fratire in that point in my life. And I climbed that mountain and I thought that was the peak. And then I got to the, there's, there's a great Buddhist saying, uh, when you reach the top of the mountain, uh, you'll, uh, there'll be another mountain, right? And like, I, I didn't think that and then I did it and I realized, okay, great.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  And so it was like, alright, uh, and then I retired. Coming down the mountain was not hard, right? It, it's really easy to lose momentum. Like, it's really easy to kind of step off the stage, cause there's always a hundred people waiting to replace you. So that was not hard at all. That, going down was easy. Climbing the next mountain was really hard because that required therapy. That required me to really be honest with myself, about myself, to discover hard things, find hard truths to, to, and it just, it required me to shed a lot of the things that had made me successful in the last mountain. Right? Like, um, being the rambunctious, devil may care, flippant asshole,

• 44:36Speaker 02

  works great if you're gonna be that character, right? Or if you're gonna live, and I wasn't even a character, it was who I was. But if you're gonna essentially occupy that, that, that niche. But when you're climbing a different mountain, then you've gotta let those patterns go. And because it wasn't a brand, it wasn't a, a persona, it was who I was, I had to really kind of relearn in a lot of ways how to be successful. Um, and how to, how to successfully deal with people. Cause if everyone knows, oh, that's that guy, that's that guy who wrote Beer in Hell, then they give you a wide berth, like, you can be an asshole? And people actually think it's funny, like, it's like, oh yeah, that's, that's Tucker Max, he's supposed to, you know, throw up, uh, on the table or whatever, right?

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Um, but when you're like, an angel investor, or an entrepreneur, or at a business meeting, like, that shit doesn't fly. Like, professionals, you can't deal with that, right? And like, a serious, successful adults, like, they might, even people who like, might have thought my books were funny and liked them a lot. There's just like a certain level of maturity that they expect, which is totally reasonable. And most of the time, I was perfectly fine. There were just a lot of things that like I had to either shed or learn going up them, either about the world or about myself. It was tough, dude. It was hard. You know what the hardest part? The hardest part is, I think there's this expectation that once you're successful at one thing, you just get to be automatically successful at everything else, right? And like, that's just not the truth.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  A good friend of mine, actually, my editor, told me this great saying. He said, "Tucker, all success gets you is the conditional opportunity to prove yourself again." And at first, when he told me that, I was like, "Fuck you. That's bullshit." Like, "I'm already successful. People should just accept my genius because I'm who I am." And of course, that's nonsense, right? It took me a while to relearn that. But yeah, like then it became very clear. I've got to re-earn every day. Especially in the new arena. I've got to re-earn success.

• 46:38Tom Bilyeu?

  That is something I understand completely, having exited Quest and I think everybody looking at me like I was out of my mind. And knowing, I mean, we talked as a team about this is re-earning your stripes, you know? And if you know the J.J. Watt quote, which I'm sure is him quoting somebody else, but "Success isn't owned at its least and rent is due every day." And I just, I love that beyond measure. Do you meet that with excitement? Do you meet that with trepidation? Like, how do you think about?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  It's definitely excitement. It's not... It's actually both, man. I don't thi... I think those are two sides of the same coin. I'm excited... So, I am blessed enough, I've worked hard enough and made enough money that I get to pick what I want to do, right? Not everyone has that ability, although I think more people have that ability than they realize. But, um, so I wouldn't be doing the company that I'm in, the business I'm in, if I didn't like it. If I didn't, if it didn't, if I didn't wake up excited to go do this, I would not do it.

• 47:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Talk to me about your willingness to fire yourself as a CEO.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's 100% because of therapy. That's another one. 100%. Like, in fact, one of our clients was this guy, JT McCormick. He was the president of a $100 million software company, just like another software company in Austin. And he had, like, come on when they were 2 million as a sales guy and had become president, like, in six months and scaled the company, turned them huge, like 100 people, whatever. And this is after he'd already run, he'd had a long history in sort of scaling businesses and doing all kinds of cool stuff. And I kept going to him for advice, like, dude, what do I do with this? And he's like, oh, man, you guys are dicked up. You gotta do this and this and this, right? And he kept giving me all this amazing advice.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  And so I started inviting him to our executive meetings, like, asked him to be your advisor. And eventually, he's like, look, man, no offense, I don't think you can handle this. I'm like, I know I can't. That's why I keep coming to you for advice. And he's like, why don't you just hire me? I'm like, dude, you made last year in salary probably about what we made in top line revenue. Like, we can't afford you. Don't be ridiculous. I'm like, when we get to 10 million, we'll hire you. He's like, no, no, no. You're not gonna make it to 10 million doing what you're doing now. He's like, you actually need me now. And I'm like, yeah, but we can't afford. He's like, eh, let's talk. So turns out, his company hadn't given him any equity, and he was kind of looking for his next thing.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  And he loved our process. Like, and I sat down with him, painted sort of our long-term picture, because like, about what our vision was, and he was totally on board. And he's like, I'll come on as president, you can stay CEO. Like, I'll take over ops, whatever. You can be you. You can be the face of the company, all this sort of stuff. And I was like, no. No, no, no. That's bullshit. Like, if you come on, you need to be the CEO. I will step aside because, like, everything you're gonna be doing, pretty much, are CEO tasks. And so if you are president and I'm CEO, then it's like, it's bullshit. I'm just a figurehead. I'm like, I'm really good at certain things. Clearly, I'll stay in the company. I'll go run marketing. I'll go, you know, run product.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  And you run the company. You scale the company. And it was hard for me at first to, like, kind of accept that. But when I say hard, it was like a couple of days, right?

• 50:02Tom Bilyeu?

  And what was that process? Because that is exactly what I want to understand.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:05Tom Bilyeu?

  The number of people that can do that from an ego standpoint is vanishingly slim.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  The only reason I could do that is because of therapy, man. It's because what happened on the movie. Because I know the last time I tried to keep control of everything, I ruined it. And I went through therapy and I kind of addressed that stuff in me. You know what it came down to, Tom? It came down to, did I actually care about our mission and our team? Or did I care more about myself? Because if I cared about the mission and the team, clear as day, JT should be CEO. And if I cared more about myself, then I should say CEO. And once I framed it that way, then it was a painful decision, but it was easy.

• 50:45Tom Bilyeu?

  I love that. All right, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you online? Learn more about Book in a Box?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so bookinabox.com, pretty simple. Me, I have a site called tuckermax.me. Well, I actually wrote a whole article about why I stepped aside. And then my email is tucker@bookinabox. That's probably the best place, yeah, to start, I think.

• 51:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Awesome. All right, what is the impact that you want to have on the world?

• 51:14Speaker 02

  I gotta give two answers. Because one is gonna seem trite and probably won't be fulfilling for the audience, but it's the God's honest truth answer. And then the second one is also true, but is like the second thing I would say, but is something I think the audience will take more from. So the impact I most want to have on the world, God's honest truth is, I feel like I will be a success at life if my children, I have two now, Bishop and Vaughn, if they look back after I'm gone and they are, they miss me and they love me and they are proud to be my kid.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  And they feel like I, my wife and I, gave them everything they needed to succeed at life or to set them up. Because they're gonna have to fight their own battles. But we set them up the best possible way. I feel like that's the impact that's most important to me. If I'm a hero to my kids, a true honest hero to my kids, that's the impact that matters the most to me, by far. Now, in terms of impacting the world outside of my children.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  The company I'm working on now,

• 52:31Speaker 02

  from the outside, it's like, oh yeah, we help people write books, right? Okay, pretty simple. But I think it's a lot more than that. One of the great tragedies of human history, I feel like, is when Caesar got mad at Cleopatra and burned the Library of Alexandria, which at the time held basically all of the world's knowledge. Like, the Egyptians were obsessive. They were obsessive scribes about copying essentially what everyone else knew. And at the time, it was said that the Library of Alexandria had at least one copy of all recorded knowledge. And it burned, and so a huge swath of wisdom was lost.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  And I feel like now, even though we have so much technology and so much ability to record knowledge, I think almost everything that's recorded is essentially garbage nonsense that no one will care about, and even a week, much less a lifetime. But I feel like there's so many smart people who know so much, who don't record their knowledge. They don't, and not because they're bad, not because they're trying to hide it, not because of anything, but because it's hard to really turn your knowledge into, it doesn't have to just be a book, but to take your knowledge out of your head and put it into a form that you can share with others that they can utilize in their life, right?

• 53:55Speaker 02

  And I just feel like I have the ability, and my team and my tribe at Book in a Box, we have the ability to unlock the world's wisdom, right? To get it out of people's heads and to get it into not just books. Books are what we're doing now, but we plan to expand to a lot of different verticals. But essentially, we want to create a community that can take people who know things that are valuable to others, like know how to do things, right? Or how to, anything that's valuable, put it into recordable, shareable forms.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  And share it with the world? People who aren't good, like you've got the resources and the ability, you're good at media, so you can get your wisdom out of your own head. But how many people are, uh, know, maybe not as much as you, but know, like the equivalent in their niche, but either don't have the time or the money or, or the, uh, desire to go to all this effort, right? Why should their knowledge die with them? God knows, man, what, what I wouldn't give to know at 18 what I know now, or at 25 what I know now, right? What would you pay when you started Quest to have a book that, that, of what you know now, just about the, like that business, right? It would be priceless.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  So that's, that's the impact that we are trying to have as a company, um, is we're trying to, to unlock the world's wisdom.

• 55:14Tom Bilyeu?

  I love that, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's absolutely incredible. Guys, this is somebody who I'm telling you is the most amazing example of the extremities of human transformation that I have ever seen in my life. Do yourself a favor, go look at where he started, read some of the early books, and then watch this interview again. It, it is unimaginable, the lengths to which you can reinvent yourself, change yourself, if you're willing to do the hard work, to look inside yourself, to do what he says, and really connect what you're thinking to what you're feeling, and, most importantly, know what mountain you're actually trying to summit, and make sure that you have a plan to get there, and to have the internal fortitude, the sense of self, to be able to go down that hill first.

• 55:58Tom Bilyeu?

  And I know this is where a lot of people get lost. You get that first level of success, and you've still got the ego in the way, and you're not able to allow yourself to descend before you go back up the other side. You don't have the humility to recognize that what stands between where you are and where you want to go is a really hard to acquire set of skills that's going to require a lot of work internally and externally to get that. We didn't even get to talk about his background in MMA, and I'm guessing that's where the bruises on the arms come from, and what he's learned on the mat. And one thing that, um, I came across in the research that I just thought was really incredible is he says that he feels a sense of gratitude to everyone that he grapples with because they give him a chance to show where he's really at.

• 56:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And I love that. And I think in life, in business, in your family and everything, that you do owe the people that show up to really let you show yourself where you're at and to be who you are at that moment. And then are going to be on that journey with you as you change and push and grow. I think it's absolutely incredible. And honestly, honestly, in all the people that I've interviewed, this guy sums that up the best and is one of the most profound transformations I've ever seen. And doesn't bullshit. He says, look, I enjoyed who I was then. So this isn't that. It's not me running away from something. It's me really evolving as a human being, reassessing what I want, doing the work, looking inward and becoming something new. And I think that is absolutely incredible. So

• 57:24Tom Bilyeu?

  I hope you guys take as much away from this as I did. It was really incredible. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you, dude.

• 57:38Tom Bilyeu?

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• 58:23Tom Bilyeu?

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