Proven Millionaire Habits to Start Practicing Today | Bedros Keullian (Archived Episode)

Are your daily habits helping you stack daily wins you need to get closer to the success you dream of? The answer is either yes or no. Your current situation is a direct result of your current routines and habits. Either they are working for you and helping you move forward or they aren’t. Today’s guest is a self-made millionaire who has mastered the savage mindset that allows him to get sh*t done and build multiple million dollar businesses and franchises. Bedros Keuilian is the CEO of Fit Body Bootcamp and the mastermind behind the BK Podcast, The Squire Program, and many more. Becoming hyper successful is anchored to your ability to master your routines and live your life by rules that help you succeed. If you’re not sure where you’re getting your morning routine wrong or how to approach the battle of business, and you’re worried about failing this is a must watch for you. Not seeing success now just means it’s time to assess, pivot and move quickly to start living the life you want. Maybe it’s time for you to get savage. [Original air date: October 4, 2022]. SHOW NOTES: 0:00 | Introduction to Bedros Keuilian 0:20 | Do This to Start Your Day Right! 10:57 | Temporary Defeat Is Not Failure 14:18 | Self-Awareness Is the Path to Impact 27:33 | Breakthrough Your Limiting Beliefs 42:20 | Evolution of Everything / Being of the Moment 50:07 | Turning Ideas Into Empires 1:01:38 | Algorithmic Social Division 1:15:48 | Social Media Rules of Engagement 1:20:33 | 5 Rules for Ultra Success 1:24:21 | Get A Savage Mindset CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://landroverUSA.com https://landroverusa.com/ Momentous: Shop now at https://livemomentous.com https://livemomentous.com/ and use code IMPACT for 20% your new Momentous routine. Betterhelp: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://betterhelp.com/impacttheory and get 10% off your first month. Netsuite: Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at https://netsuite.com/theory Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Follow Bedros Keuilian: Website: https://bedroskeuilian.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BedrosKeuilian YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/bedroskeuilian Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/ 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 athttps://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/0482bfe8-8502-11ed-af5d-3bdc320068d7/podcasts/0a41f61a-9ddf-11ed-9eb7-dbb3a40775f5/episodes/8ac68366-8a85-11ef-bb65-abca3ffdcf54/www.twitch.tv/tombilyeuwww.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?

  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. What's up, guys? I am so excited to bring you today's episode with a powerful rags to riches story with a self-made millionaire. Bedros Koulian is a mastermind entrepreneur with a savage mindset for success. He's behind multiple brands and businesses, including his own FitBody Bootcamp. Today, we're exposing how hyper-successful people get their morning routine and habits right,

• 1:29Tom Bilyeu?

  how to set yourself up to win the battle of business, and the rules and rituals you need around your social media use. I hope you guys love listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. And if you do, please leave a review of our podcast. It really is the best way to support what we're doing so that we can get the show out to more people so that they can develop an unbeatable mindset for business and success. I'm Tom Bilyeu, and welcome to Impact Theory.

• 2:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Bedros Kuliyan, welcome back to the show.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Tom, thank you for having me again.

• 2:03Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm stoked, man. So, why is it that people that are hyper-successful are so obsessed with getting their morning routine right? And what should everybody watching this right now do to make theirs crispy?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  That's a really good question. I think the morning routine is something that will set anybody up for success, right? Because when you wake up, and I wake up, and the next guy wakes up, we all have about the same number of time.

• 2:27Tom Bilyeu?

  About the same?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Actually, exactly the same number of time. And so, since we know that, that means what you do versus what I do matters. And so, if I'm screen-sucking, the moment I get up, I'm looking at social media, what's going on Facebook, who's talking about what on Instagram, and you're like, hey, I've got this GSD list. I call it the get shit-done list. And the GSD list is you're just gonna wake up and dominate your day. Like, my morning routine is wake up, never hit the snooze button. We've talked about this on your show previously. Drink my 30 ounces of water, because Sean Stevenson said so. And then, take a shower, and then end up downstairs with my protein shake, and my coffee, and more water, and work off my GSD list. Like, that sets me up to win. Checking in on social media is not part of my morning routine,

• 3:10Speaker 01

  because all of a sudden, something on social media might trigger me to feel like I'm missing out, might trigger me to feel like I should have been at an event, might trigger me to feel like a sense of guilt, a sense of shame, a sense of whatever. And any of those things, any of those feelings and emotions are not things that I would take into the battle of business. And I'm in the battle of business, because of when I make money, I can have a greater sense of meaning with it. And, and so, I cannot take emotions and feelings and thoughts that I got from social media, especially in the morning, to the battlefield of business, where I do most of my heavy work in the morning. So, that morning routine sets me up to win.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  And soon as I'm done with my GSD list, by about 9:00 a.m., like, you can set your clock to me. I go right to the gym. Workout, intentionally put my phone in my cubby at the gym. And, cause again, I'm susceptible to looking at the screen. And if I'm doing that, all of a sudden, my workout is less than stellar.

• 4:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Which means I feel like a failure. And now I'm more likely to compound failure throughout the day. So that's how I look at it. So conversely, if I slept in, hit the snooze button, didn't drink thirty ounces of water, just took a sip of water. Now I'm gonna be late to work. I feel rushed. Subconscious mind is telling me that I'm a loser, I'm a failure. I'm an imposter. How are you gonna go lead a international franchise, or a supplement company, or a, or write another book? When you're a loser dude, right? The subconscious mind speaks to us. That's the inner critic. And so to shut down the inner critic and give voice to the inner advocate. A strong morning routine sets you up to win the day. You win the day, you win the week. And then off you go, you've won a year, and then a decade.

• 4:52Tom Bilyeu?

  It's so crazy to me how much that matters. Like, you can get off by just a little, and your efficiency starts to be off. And then the day just isn't as useful as it could have been. And it really, it really does start with the morning. Like, getting people to understand, if you get the morning right. Then the rest of your day, you're gonna be able to be far more productive. And when you start stacking those things, that really is the difference between somebody that accomplishes a lot and somebody that doesn't. Look, I don't wanna deny that intellect plays a big role. Education plays a big role. But if you are inefficient, to your point about, okay, we all have the same number of hours. So it comes down to how are you spending your time?

• 5:34Tom Bilyeu?

  But there's something like, I find myself wanting to say more words, because there's something ineffable that I'm not capturing yet. Which is, there is a really subtle difference between a high-performance day and a mediocre day. And when I think about, certainly the thing that has been my superpower is, I'm able to generate momentum. So I can go from standing still, nobody knows who I am, nobody believes in what I'm trying to do. Uh, we don't have a company incorporated, like, all of that. And then, oh, you know those first, like, getting the machine moving is so hard. That's what I can do. And whether that's a new project, whether that's a whole company, whatever. I can get those early things going. Every day feels like that.

• 6:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And on the days where I am battered and beaten psychologically, and I, what I call hiding in bed. And I'm hiding in bed. And you just, even if I just miss getting out of bed, because I give myself 10 minutes. If I get out of bed in 11 minutes, I'm like, uh, I know where this goes. There's something I'm pushing against that is stopped. Either I didn't go to bed on time. I didn't sleep well. I'm stressed, whatever. But there's something going on that made getting up unusually hard that day. And then it just spirals. And so getting people to understand how important it is to do the most important things first, do them efficiently,

• 7:03Tom Bilyeu?

  get the psychological momentum going so that you can believe in yourself. You have that credibility. You get going. It really makes a big difference. But it's hard to explain.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  It is hard to explain, but sometimes you don't need an explanation. For example, if you just watch what winners do and do what they do, odds are you will eventually have a similar outcome. Great example is, I believed, I believe you may have shared this at either Fleischman's Elevator Nights when we all spoke there, or it might have been when you were kind enough to come and do my podcast. But you said, if I wake up within, correct me if I'm wrong, if I wake up within 20 minutes of my alarm going off, I don't go back to sleep. I just get up. I'm like, I'm adopting that. I'm adopting that. Now, if it was some crackhead who robs banks says that, I may not adopt that. But you're someone I respect, that I want to be like and emulate. You know what? I'm going to add that to my repertoire.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Like, I don't know why Sean wrote in his book that you need to drink 30 ounces of water in the morning. I don't care why. I trust him and I trust that he's a great scientist and he's all about human optimization. I'm going to do that. I trust you as an entrepreneur and someone I look up to in this category of life. I'm going to do that. And so I just started adopting things. And I think there's a gift to just being. For lack of a better term, ignorant. Like, you know, they say ignorance is bliss.

• 8:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  So much of my success has just been because no one told me that I couldn't fly. No one said those, you don't have wings. And so I was just like, watch this, and I flew. You know what I mean? I created a software company with no software background, a franchise without any, without, I dropped out of college in thirty-two days, bro, out of junior college, right? They're like, well, you don't have a lot of green.

• 8:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's pause on that. Why did you drop out?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  I, I just felt like I didn't belong. I, I was constantly, just like high school, I felt constantly behind. And I figured, all right, I'm gonna go to junior college and see if I can get on track. Because, you know, they say go to college where you're new to, like, I would be the first family member to graduate college. Because remember, we escaped Soviet Union, came here when I was six. And so it was a big deal, and I felt that pressure on me. And I truly wanted to have a college degree just to say, I've done this, right? But just like high school, it felt like I didn't belong. It felt like I would have to study three or four or five times harder than everyone else. And I remember in col, in high school, the, the foil method, remember foil, first, inner, outer, last?

• 9:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Nope.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  See that? No one does.

• 9:29Tom Bilyeu?

  I've never heard that.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  But it was part of algebra or something.

• 9:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, God, I cheated my way through all of mathematics. I have no idea.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  God bless you. I was so bad at it that I remember showing my answer, and the teacher going, but that's, you're not gonna get credit because you didn't do foil. And this is the only thing I remember about high school, because she like chastised me so much. She says, you didn't do the first, inner, outer, last. You didn't show your work, yet you got the answer. I remember thinking, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, man. I'm gonna produce the results.

• 9:55Tom Bilyeu?

  You already knew that?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I, I knew that, I was gonna be my own boss.

• 9:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Wow.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be my own boss. I need to produce an outcome. And people are gonna produce outcomes for me. I don't care how they produce it. Don't produce it unethically. Don't produce it by cheating someone, killing someone. But produce the outcome I want, and I will actually reward you for producing it faster. Instead of doing this amount of work, if you can do this amount of work and produce the outcome. Our industry rewards that. The education system doesn't. And so the same thing happened in college. So like thirty one, thirty two days in, I'm like, all right, I'm out. I'm falling behind. I feel like a dumbass. I'm having to study three, four times as much to remember things that I feel are irrelevant to where my path in life. And so I moved on, was like, all right, full win entrepreneurship.

• 10:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Did any of that chip away at your belief that you could do the entrepreneurship thing? Or you just knew, ah, this isn't gonna matter?

• 10:44Speaker 01

  I felt that I was so unemployable in terms of like every job I had gotten fired from also, right? Except for Disneyland. I worked at Disneyland for six and a half years. I didn't get fired, I quit. Every other job I got fired from. The bagel store on Balboa Island, Adventure City, you name it, every place. And so I was like, I'm unemployable, no one wants to employ me. I know I can be a better boss, like, and have people like me who are, I don't know, maybe a bit of misfits, free thinkers, outcome producers without showing the work, work for me, and I'll create my own little tribe. I've always known I was a black sheep. And so, school and not doing well in school did not deter me from being an entrepreneur.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  In fact, all it did was say, this is your only path, dude. No one's gonna employ you. You're unemployable, you're gonna lose every job you have. And it was because of the conflict that I have. I always questioned authority. And I think that's a great behavior to have, but know that if you constantly question authority, you're probably not employable, right? The whole idea of having a boss is there your source of authority. And so I always questioned authority, I questioned the education system, and so I knew that I had to beat my own path. So all it did is solidify my resolve.

• 11:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, interesting, the idea of questioning authority. So that's always been my problem. I've always had a problem with authority. I'm not even sure, so I mean, look, fifty percent of us is hardwired, so I'll say that for whatever reason, I've just always had an issue with that. Uh, so yeah, that's definitely, but I'm very employable. I was an amazing employee. So it's weird. It's like this bizarre conflict of I hate it. I hate people being able to tell me what to do, which is why I was so hell bent to become my own boss.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 12:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, but I would silently conform. So it's really interesting and bucking out of that is difficult. I actually want to talk about that. There's gonna, I think a huge part of this conversation will end up being about that. But first I want to talk about imperfect action.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:40Tom Bilyeu?

  So we've got our morning routine. We know we need to be hyper efficient. I still think I failed to convey like that, that real subtle nuance of what a big difference. But if people can just, like you said, model the behavior, great. So people have that on lock. But they're going to, most people are diminished by the failures, by not being good at school, by whatever. They've been kicked in the teeth enough in life.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:03Tom Bilyeu?

  So they convince themselves they're not going to be able to do it. And the number of people, no matter how many times I say, cause I talk a lot about you need to learn, right? So whatever you're gonna do, you're gonna learn about it. But then people end up in the death loop of like, oh, I'm gonna learn for nine years. Because I don't think I understand. And I'm like, no, no, no. If you learn something in the morning, you start using it in the afternoon. So like you have to go right away. Otherwise it's, it's all gonna be, um, book knowledge is not gonna be practical.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:29Tom Bilyeu?

  It's gonna be theoretical. It's not gonna be applied. So what is imperfect action and how have you mustered the courage to actually do it? When you know that failure is so possible?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  So I'll start with the idea of failure first. And I learned from Napoleon Hill's book, Outwitting the Devil, that there is no such thing as failure. I have reframed it in my head as I will experience temporary defeat many times in my life, but I will never experience failure. And once you accept that.

• 13:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Why? What's failure? Why won't you experience?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Failure is a choice. And so if you choose not to, like if you choose not to drink any more water from that cup, no matter how much I make you, you choose not to drink it. It's not gonna happen.

• 14:08Tom Bilyeu?

  So is failure when you actually stop trying?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  It's when you stop trying. It's a choice to stay down, right? And it's okay to stay down and gather your wits and then get back up, hence making it temporary defeat. The moment you choose to stay down by because of not trying, you have given up. So let's just say giving up instead of failure. Failure shouldn't even exist. It's temporary defeat. So once I know that, then I'm like, well, there's no such thing as failure because I choose not to accept it or acknowledge it. Therefore, I will only see temporary defeats in life. And the more things that I attempt to do that are new, the higher the probability of having temporary defeats. However, each one of those defeats are a lesson that I could learn from and improve because the human mind, the psyche and body are very adaptable. Playing ping pong against one of your guys here

• 14:53Speaker 01

  was different than playing against Lisa, your wife, who's a beast at it. And so I had to adopt, the body is so adaptable. So knowing that, if I learn something first thing in the morning, I want to be able to use it as soon as possible. I don't want to wait till it's perfect. I don't want to wait till we have the trademark or the copyright. Like I was the one out the gate launching Fit Body Boot Camp before it was trademarked and my attorney was like, stop. I will always lean into imperfect action because I do know that the universe will collude with me, will conspire with me when I am leaning into imperfect action. I can always course correct as I go. See, people always, we're so black and white, bro. We are so black and white. And I was the king of black and white. Like, if I do this and if it doesn't work out, then I will fail. Well, fuck. With that mindset, and if that's the only outcome you choose to accept,

• 15:38Speaker 01

  that's scary, that it's either gonna be a win or a fail. What if it's somewhere in the middle? That there's a temporary defeat and therefore you can back up the car and go down the next road. And then temporary defeat, back up the car again, go down the next road. So imperfect action tells me that the person, the universe, universe will reward the person who acts the quickest. That's just how the universal collective consciousness works. If we know that to be true, then I will take an idea that I learned, I will launch it immediately and I will course correct as I go and the universe will reward me because of that.

• 16:13Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you mean when you say the universe? A, you're a man of faith, right?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  I am a man of faith that there is a God, a higher power. The book that you gave me, my friend,

• 16:26Speaker 01

  The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell, really talks about consciousness and our human animal. We are consciousness riding in this meat sack. It's a human animal that has impulsively wants to eat and lean into comfort and convenience and greed. And you know, if this was the only cup of water left and a few hours went by, one of us are gonna wanna attack it. That's what the human animal wants to do. Consciousness goes, I'm just gonna look through these windows called the eyes. I'm gonna control my human animal. Most people are, their light, their inner radiance is so stifled. The way I show it at the project, and we'll probably get into the project later, but imagine this light bulb, and it glows bright within. That's our radiance. We are connected to the source, to God.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  And all of our consciousness together is

• 17:17Speaker 01

  the universe. And so if I take that bulb and I put a black blanket over it and another layer of black blanket and another black blanket, soon you barely see the glow. Most people, their radiance has been stifled because they put food, drugs, alcohol, infidelity, pornography, laziness, binge-watching television, all these layers of distraction over their radiance that's supposed to glow so bright,

• 17:44Speaker 01

  that if you were able to remove all that, everyone's got that great consciousness. But all those blankets on top of your light stifles it, and therefore you become more of a human animal because you've stifled consciousness. And so the word, greatest work we can ever do in our life is the work we do on ourselves, which is really removing all of those layers of blankets so that the light can shine bright. And then, you know, this, you walk into somewhere and people are magnetically attracted to you. It's not for any other reason other than you've done the self-work. You're Tom 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, just like I'm Bedros 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. And therefore, people are like, man, there's something about this person. That's the universal connection. We all have consciousness. Their human animal can see that this person...

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Is glowing brighter and they're attracted to that. And it's our job then to go, let me help you expose your radiance as well.

• 18:39Tom Bilyeu?

  So how do you, how do you start pulling those napkins, the black cloth? How do you peel those off?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Self-awareness, right? Self-awareness first.

• 18:48Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:29Tom Bilyeu?

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• 20:14Tom Bilyeu?

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• 20:59Speaker 01

  Until you realize that you are a human animal. I realized that I was a human animal.

• 21:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Meaning you have impulses?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Impulsive, that you're emotional, that you react on emotion and not logic. That you make decisions on feelings. And sometimes those are somewhat permanent decisions on temporary feelings. And we've all made those. I'm not pointing fingers. I was the king of making bad decisions on temporary feelings that later led to regret. But 11 years ago, I had this massive panic attack and I talked about that in my book. And thank God, man, for that panic attack because I was 37 years old. I thought I was having a heart attack. I'm like, I'm at the peak of my prime. Fit Body Boot Camp's starting to thrive, like just blowing up. It's becoming this international brand. We got recognition from Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yet my marriage was starting to fall apart. My babies at the time, they're 14 and or 15 and 17 now. They wouldn't come running to me when I'd come into the house because I gave off this tense energy. Right? And I would impulsively just emotionally eat when I'd get home. Bagels and cream cheese because I needed a dopamine hit. Yet I was running a fitness franchise, so I was incongruent with the fitness industry that I'm supposed to be in. I'm making videos at the time on YouTube from the chin up because I didn't really want to show the poor and out of shape that I was in. And so I share all this with you because that panic attack led me to realize. Okay, one, it wasn't a heart attack, thankfully. The doctor did the EKG test and was like, hey, you're good.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  But how's your life? I'm like, well, I'm stressed. I'm like drinking NyQuil to fall asleep every night and taking Vicodin to fall asleep. And I would wake up and take Adderall and drink a whole bunch of coffee to then, kick that foggy headedness from the drugs the night before. And so I was always behind on schedule, felt like an imposter because I would expect something from my employees that I wouldn't even do myself. I share all this with you because that panic attack, which felt like a heart attack, led me to start doing some self-work. The self-work started with a therapist because I didn't want to take, they gave me Xanax, dude. I was on Xanax for four days. And I don't know if you've ever taken Xanax, but for me, it felt like someone turned off my creativity switch.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Like if we have all these different switches, someone just, like a dimmer switch brought it down to like one. And so, all right, I don't feel anxious. But I also don't feel like trying anything, so I'll just chill out at home. Like, four days in, I'm like, this is how I lose it all. So I went back to the doctor, I'm like, dude, I can't take this stuff. He goes, well, to manage your, your stress and anxiety, have you thought about talking to a therapist? I'm like, oh, that's for crazy people, right? But reluctantly, I found a good therapist, Dr. Kevin Downing in Brea, California. And we spent the next, like, fifteen months, every Monday after work, I'd drive to Brea, and I'd sit on his couch, and some Mondays, I was like, Kevin, could I just, can I just curl up on the couch, pay you to just let me sleep here?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Just take a nap, I'm just drained. And he would just have lighter conversations with me those days. Still charged me, but lighter conversations. And then there was days where we did the heavy work, where I just felt like I was just walking to my car in this parking lot, like I was just walking through molasses. Like, we peeled away a lot of scars from childhood trauma, like being molested as a kid in Armenia by two older boys, to just being bullied when we came here. But all this to say, Kevin brought to surface self-awareness for me. And I realized that, dude, I shield and I soothe. The ego is a real thing, and it is there to protect us. But the ego will help us shield and soothe. So if I make a lot of money, I can surround myself with yes people, and yes people are gonna be good to me. They're gonna, they're gonna do it.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  So, of course, I wanted to make a lot of money. All this to say, self-awareness comes from self-work. Once you do the self-work, you become self-aware. You're like, oh, my God, I am flawed, Tom, I'm a horrible friend. When you're like, hey, how's it going? And I'm like, what do you mean by that? That's because I'm reacting to some weird feelings that I haven't processed through. It may have happened as a kid, man, just because the way you said something gets triggered. It triggers me, right? And so I started to do the self-work. It was ugly, it was not fun. I had weeks at a time where... Had to process about what happened to me as a kid, man. Do I tell my parents who are in their eighties? No, there's no point in telling them. They're just gonna feel this guilt and why don't you tell us sooner? And they're gonna die with that memory? Like, so why keep it to yourself?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  You know, so those are real things that have to process. Do I share this publicly? Well, I feel like I'm supposed to serve humanity. And the most selfish thing I do is each time I serve humanity, I serve myself. So, alright, I'm gonna try and talk about this on stage one time. And one day I came out on stage and I could see the whole audience squirming in their seats. Because who the hell wants to hear that? Hey, look, if you've been molested or sexually or physically, emotionally abused, you probably have trauma and you carry this shield. And you're either shielding or soothing. Soothing with drugs, alcohol, infidelity, whatever. Or shielding as in not letting people in. And so how is that showing up with your kids?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  With your friendships, business partnerships, your wife, your husband? And so the more I talk about it, and so I very quickly realized that, oh my God, talking about this allows me to have more aha moments. More aha moments lead me to taking off yet another layer of that blanket. And the light gets brighter and brighter. And the brighter the light gets, the more people wanna hear from me and talk to me and do business with me and stay around me. And I realized, this is how we make impact. We all wanna serve humanity. We all know that we're on this planet for a reason. We have a higher level of purpose. And so we feel the gnawing in our gut. Like, I wanna impact lives, I wanna change lives, I wanna inspire people.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Cool, start with fixing victim number one before you go fix everybody else, you know?

• 26:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Talk to me about the light. So, there's two ideas in here. There's the universe is conspiring with you. I'd definitely love to know more about that. And then there's the idea of the light is sort of already on, but you've covered it up and you just have to peel it away.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 27:10Tom Bilyeu?

  How much of it is the light itself? Even if you didn't have it covered up, do you? Is there a way to make that brighter? Like, whatever that thing is? Or do you feel like, nope, we're born perfect and life diminishes us?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  I do believe, and again, I've got no science to back this up. You probably have far smarter people sitting here at this table who could back this up with some kind of science. But I, again, I'm so convicted in my beliefs. And how about this? Maybe I'm absolutely all wrong. But just because I believe in this so much, that I make it so. If that alone... Makes me successful and happy in life and feeling like I've had some sense of meaning and significance. I'm good to go, man.

• 27:51Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting. You actually said something earlier and I wanted to say, you know how crazy you sound right now, right? But it's so effective that um I so here's another idea. I don't know how to get people to embody this. But so what you said that made you sound crazy, but to me, I'm totally with you is uh you were talking about the failure and you're like, I refuse to acknowledge it.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Tom Bilyeu?

  You both and you talked about this, but you both have to look at it, assess what went wrong, look at the data, learn from it so that you can do something more effective next time. And at the same time, you have to completely ignore whatever temptation you have to believe that that means that you're not going to succeed in the future and that this is somehow a commentary on your capabilities. It's this really weird schism of you have to look at both things. So.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 28:44Tom Bilyeu?

  And and I think that it's true what you're saying. So I'm not a believer in the universe is conspiring. I think the universe could give a shit. Like it just it it is. There's obviously something that we don't understand. So whatever, there is some sort of god-ish thing. There's something I don't understand, right? Why is there something instead of nothing? Arguably the most profound question that you can ever ask.

• 29:09Tom Bilyeu?

  I won't derail us on that, but so there's obviously something. Yeah, there's obviously something that I don't understand, but I don't think it's working for me. I think that there are a set of rules. The world works a certain way. And so when you were talking about human as animal, that resonates with me. We I'm I have told uh my the people in Impact Theory University like a dozen times. If there's gonna be an epitaph on my tombstone, I would like it to read, you're having a biological experience. Meaning even if there is a god, that god has given you a set of physics, chemistry, biology, and they work a certain way. And if you try to fight them, your life will be miserable because you will be unable to predict the outcome of your behaviors.

• 29:54Tom Bilyeu?

  If you can't predict the outcome of your behaviors, you won't be able to take right action. Meaning the action that moves you most efficiently towards your goals. So, I don't think it's working with me, but I still think everything you said is true. In that, if I align myself with the way things actually work, I'll make rapid progress. So, why does the world, I think the exact word you said, where the universe will conspire with the person who acts fastest? I think that's true. I just don't think the universe is, it's not the language I would use.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:25Tom Bilyeu?

  So, but it is so in alignment with the first person to act will learn faster than the next person. They're obviously not afraid to fail. If they can lower their ego enough to take in the lesson of whatever failure they get by moving first, then they can improve and keep going. It's the action, improvement, and continuing to move that's the conspiring. But whether you believe that it's God that's gonna work with you, the universe is gonna work with you because you do it, or you just fucking do it, whatever, as long as you're on that path, you're going to win.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  So, I think we might be saying the same thing, bro.

• 31:00Tom Bilyeu?

  A hundred percent.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:01Tom Bilyeu?

  There's no doubt.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Because you just said that on your tombstone, if there's gonna be anything, it's gonna say that you're having a biological experience. And this biological experience set by God or whoever else, whatever else, right? There's rules to the game, is kind of what you're implied. And that if you play by the rules, that you're gonna win. If you don't play by the rules, if you don't understand the game, you're, it's gonna be a painful life, a painful human experience, right? We can agree to that. And so, the way I look at it is, it's just that the source, universe, all of our collective consciousness together, is like, we've all agreed, subconsciously, these are the rules. Every person knows that they gotta lean into imperfect action.

• 31:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Do they? I don't know that they do.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  If you take out the layers, bro, take out the layers.

• 31:47Tom Bilyeu?

  It's a lot of fucking work, though, man.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  It is a lot of work. This is why we all start off as some level of radiance. Like, you look at a child, so pure, going back to the question you asked, like, is that light just on? I believe we all have, I don't know anything about electricity, so I'm gonna say, whatever. Let's say this is a 20-watt light, light bulb, right? We're all born with a 20-watt light bulb, and it's, nothing's covering it. Ah, and this is beautiful baby, and we hold it, and, ah, there it is. And then, mom and dad are like, ah, you're chunky. Ah, you're clumsy, now that you're starting to walk around. These are layers being put on. Now, they plant you in front of the TV a lot. And now, because mom and dad wanna go on date nights, and they don't, they can't afford a nanny. They're gonna slap the iPad in front of you on date nights. So now you're screen sucking and now you're just seeing all this. More blankets are being put on, this light.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  The light, the source, your radiance is being stifled. Soon you become addicted to watching television. It becomes your thing and you don't connect and you don't know how to build rapport. Now you're a teenager and you're awkward and you're strange and you don't know and you're now playing video games instead of socializing. And I share all this with you because that radiance, layer by layer, from food to names, like, oh, you're clumsy, you're chunky. We're all, our family, everyone in our family's fat. You know how many times I heard that in my life? So I was like, okay, I'm gonna be fat, strong. And so when I made this like big proclamation in 2010, like, fuck it, I'm gonna train for six weeks and run a marathon. Like, my inner voice was like, bro, you're a fat dude that just lifts weights. You power lift.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Like, but now I'm gonna run a marathon. You just watch. So literally, inner critic and the inner advocate are fighting within me. And that was the first time I allowed the inner advocate to win. And I hired a running coach and I, and I said, make me a running program. I'm gonna run the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon. My wife at the time ran marathons, like, three a year. And look what a freaking hypocrite I was here, Tom. Jokingly, I told my wife, many years before we got married,

• 33:47Speaker 01

  we're still dating. I was like, hey, you know, if you marry me, I'll run a marathon, right? Just jokingly. But again, subconsciously, deep down inside, there's some truth to this. That was me testing whether she's gonna say yes or no, right? We're still dating, we're new at this whole relationship. So she's like, fine, I will, right? So then, let's say, three years later, four years later, we got married. Bro, it was nine years in and she ran three marathons a year. So almost 30 marathons later, I had yet. What a liar I was, what a hypocrite I was. Now, one could say, well, I just jokingly said that. I didn't really mean it at the time. I'm like lifting all these weights. I'm deadlifting, I'm squatting, I'm benching, I'm a big boy lifting big weights. God's made me to lift weights. You can justify it any way you want.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Then you can always find evidence to back it up, right? Look at my traps, look at my shoulders at the time, right? So I share this with you because one day she's like, hey, I'm gonna run the Rock and Roll Marathon. And I was like, cool, awesome, have a great time. I then left on a trip that day. To run one of my masterminds. The time I used to run my masterminds in Miami, San Diego, Las Vegas. We're in Las Vegas and there's like forty, fifty of my coaching clients. And Craig Ballantyne is there as well. I invited Craig to help coach this group with me. He was the guest speaker. And Craig's telling one of the people who was complaining about procrastinating, "Yeah, I just keep procrastinating and I just keep doing all these things because I don't want to launch my products. I don't want to face the rejection of it, potentially, whatever."

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Right? New entrepreneur. And so Craig, very curmudgeonly, goes, "You know what you need to do? You need to cut that deadline. You need to cut your deadline in half again." And then he just starts lacing into this person. And I'm sitting here, I'm like, "Oh, my God, he's speaking to me right now." Here I am, nine years later, almost thirty marathons. I've yet to make good on my promise. So I text my wife under the table. I'm like, "When did you say that marathon was?" She goes, "In like eight weeks." I'm like, "Great, sign me up for it," right? So she goes, "I'll sign you up for the half." Every marathon has a half marathon. I'm like, "That's bullshit. Sign me up for the full marathon." Because I'm also all in on everything I do, which is a great thing unless you're like going to do cocaine or heroin. But I always make sure my addictions are good these days. These days.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  These days. Full disclosure. These days. I am pretty obsessive. And I think that is a gift, but it could also be very damaging. Under the right circumstances, you would find me dead in a gutter. And so I have to be vigilant and militant in my schedule and the people that I surround myself with, my thought patterns, all of it.

• 36:16Tom Bilyeu?

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• 36:57Tom Bilyeu?

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• 37:18Speaker 02

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• 37:48Speaker 01

  Going back to Diana and the marathon. So she books me for the rock and roll marathon. I find a running coach and how the universe colludes with us, my friend. You ready for this? In that group, in that coaching group was a woman named Jill Brewer. Her website, I shit you not, runwithjill.com. She's a running coach. So at lunch, I'm telling her about it, not even connecting the dots. Like, hey, I just signed up for a marathon. I'm a bit nervous because I could deadlift, I could squat, I could bench, but run? I've never had to run, right? She goes, do you need a running program? I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm going to find me a running coach. She goes, that's what I do, runwithjill.com. I'm like, oh, my God. She makes me a running program. Lo and behold, I trained for six weeks, run the marathon, everything's fine.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  I broke through some glass ceiling, some limiting belief that I was only made to do this. And so when we were born, we have this radiance, this light. And families, meanwhile, your aunts, your uncles, your moms, your dads, but soon they call you chunky and fat and clumsy and all this. And you begin to buy all those things and your radiance goes away, your light dims, and you're just like this robot living other people's stories or narrative that they put on you. Until one day, you decide to do the self-work and peel back painfully the layers to expose your radiance of your whopping 20 watts. Then you could do even deeper work and raise the wattage like a dimmer switch to whatever.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  I don't know what the level is because I'm still a work in progress. If you ever have me back 10 years from now, there might be a higher version of myself. But that's where I am today is raising that wattage.

• 39:25Tom Bilyeu?

  It's really, it's a very interesting metaphor. And I think that as people learn about the way the mind works, and they realize that you have to be really thoughtful about what you allow yourself to think. I'm a big believer that you are what you repeat. And so whatever you allow yourself to repeat, you're gonna become. And even, so the negative stuff, no matter how absurd, if you repeat it enough, you'll actually start to believe it. And the positive stuff, no matter how absurd at first it seems, you'll start to believe it if you allow yourself to repeat it. There's a really great book called Feeling Great by David D. Burns. And in it, he talks about pattern interrupting. Like you have to pattern interrupt your negative thoughts. And that was something that really served me.

• 40:10Tom Bilyeu?

  In the beginning, I was so prone to believe negative things about myself that I just had to learn. I had to make a rule in my life. I don't allow myself to repeat negative things about myself, even if I think they're true. Because it's not going to serve me.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  How do you interrupt your patterns these days?

• 40:27Tom Bilyeu?

  I literally say, I don't allow myself to think that. No, stop, like whatever. I'll sometimes even say it out loud. Also, I have found if people ever find me making this face, that face breaks negativity. I can't hold that look on my face and feel negative. It puts me in an aggressive move forward posture. Now, also, I find that I'm gonna have that, those lines etched into my face because I do that so often. But it really makes me feel powerful. And so, doing little things like that. No, I don't do that. Overwhelm is one. I don't do overwhelm. And so I say that to myself all the time. Because I feel myself getting overwhelmed. And so, I'm always trying to tell people, when I say I don't do overwhelm, I don't mean that in like a cool way, that like, oh, I'm so tough.

• 41:12Tom Bilyeu?

  I just don't allow myself to go down that path. And because, to your point about self-awareness, I've spent so much time identifying why I feel a certain way without judgment. Oh, that's insecurity, it's emotional weakness, whatever. Not, not in any way, shape, or form trying to be cool about it. Just, okay, I feel that way because I'm insecure about this thing. Cool. But because I have that level of self-awareness and because I force myself to do things that take my emotional awareness, I'm feeling a thing, to being able to articulate what thing I am feeling, and then why I'm feeling it, when I feel, to me, it feels like my brain is revving up. That's what overwhelm feels like. My brain is moving faster and faster and faster and faster,

• 41:56Tom Bilyeu?

  to the point where it's not, it's not a level of efficiency, it's overwhelm. It's just, it's too much. It's revving too fast. It's like being in first gear and stamping on the gas.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  That's exactly what I pictured in my mind's eye to a car in park, yet stepping on the gas. You hear all this rev, but it's not in any place where it's gonna get momentum.

• 42:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Correct.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  That was a very interesting analogy.

• 42:16Tom Bilyeu?

  That, that is exactly what overwhelm feels like to me. So when I hear the I'm like, nope, I don't do overwhelm, stop. And just by saying that, breathing from my diaphragm, it's like you can change the neurochemistry. You're having a biological experience. So I'm reminding myself, even going back to what you were saying, you're having a panic attack, you think you're having a heart attack, you go outside, I happen to have heard this story. So I know you feel the sunshine on your face, you get some fresh air, you take some deep breaths, oh whoa. Okay, it's passed, even if it was a heart attack. And so, changing your state, you know, just stealing directly from Tony Robbins, the ability to change your state will change your life. But you have to get control of that.

• 42:59Tom Bilyeu?

  And so, getting people, this all goes back to this, you have this glowing orb inside of you. You have to understand, I think that your point about you can raise that up over time, that's the area to focus. Whether you have it or not when you're born, to me, whatever. Our job is to uncover it, and then to raise that dimmer so that it's, it's really kicking off some wattage. But to do that, you have to think right.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Bro, what if the whole meaning of life was? Like, we're all born with

• 43:32Speaker 01

  That orb are light, lit, fully covered with dozens of layers. Maybe you have 20, I have 18, he's got 32. Meaning of life is uncover it. And when you don't, you will suffer with depression, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, which is consciousness telling you you're not doing what you should be. You're shielding, you're soothing, you're distracting, you're doing all these things instead of working on self. Because when you take off that last layer, like, potential has been achieved. But well before taking off that last layer, maybe five layers, six layers in, now you're hitting your stride in life.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Like, I feel like the last, you know, the so 11 years ago was when I had that panic attack, anxiety attack, that led me to Dr. Kevin. Uh, that led me to so much self-work, a decade of self-work. But about, I'd say about five years, years in, so I start feeling like this rhythm. Like, alright, man, like, I'm really doing it. And FitBody hockey sticks and more businesses and more opportunities. And I get in the best shape of my life. And it's not even like you have to take off that last layer to achieve bliss. Maybe that's like your peak state. And whether we all get there or not, I don't know. But I think, what if that was it? You just nailed it. All of meaning of life is, there's your orb. Congratulations, it's covered with a shit-ton of dunk. Your job is to take the layers off.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  And in the process of taking those layers off, that's the self-work. That's doing the deep work. How boring would life be if we're like, yeah, I'm not what I'm supposed to do?

• 45:06Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting. So I think that the, that is so close to how I would define the meaning of life. The way I've always thought of it in my head is the, first of all, whatever, life only has a meaning that you give it. I don't think there is any truly intrinsic meaning. But I think everybody should have an answer. My answer is, the meaning of life, the reason we're all here, is to see how much of your potential you can turn into skillset. And so if, pushing the metaphor, and I'm not sure this is entirely what you meant, but if that glowing orb is, it's, you now have something that's useful, that lights the way, that allows you to move forward in the way that you want, that, that feels really close to, to what I think people ought to be doing.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  It seems to me, and I've been on this path, like intentionally.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  And in a very focused way, like in a ruthlessly focused way, the last decade. That for me, again, that is the meaning of my life. To just keep removing the layers. What is Bedros 2.0, 10.0 gonna look like? And again, but I'm also so convicted by my belief system that I can, I also know I could will things into being so. Like I can will the universe to work, collude with me, right? Conspire with me, which also goes back to like your rules. Like I also believe the universe has rules. And it's like, hey, man, you thought of something? Yeah, every second that passes, says the universe to me in my mind, every second that passes, I'm gonna make it less achievable. So you thought of something? You just learned a new skill?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Do it, motherfucker. Do it. Yeah, but it's not gonna be right, Mr. Universe. I know it's not, but you could either wait to get it down correctly, but you're gonna be so in the deficit because all the number of minutes and hours and months that go by, that I've, you know, all these strikes against you. Or if you do it now, take imperfect action, you just learned it, deploy it, you can course correct. Like the universe is testing you, like, do I wanna keep rewarding this guy for this idea? I'm like, oh, my God, I did it. It's scary. Is it gonna work? It's like, oh, it kinda worked. Okay, well, great. But can you fix it? Yes, I can. I'm gonna keep fixing it. It's this cool thing where whether, call it the rules, call it the universe, I really believe that the self-work and the rules and taking that orb that's glowing and trying

• 47:22Speaker 01

  to raise its radiance, the more we do, we do develop these skillsets. Like these skillsets exist, but we uncover them, unearth them, and then we could use it to make money, have meaning, leave an impact, have significance, create a legacy. I suppose we could also use it for evil, but that goes back to character, core values and all that other shit, right?

• 47:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation, cuz I think most people that, from the outside we go, that person's evil, they never think they're evil.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 47:55Tom Bilyeu?

  But there's something you said that I wanna go deeper on. So I am reading this book called The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley. And he talks about, cuz you were saying like you need to take imperfect action, the universe conspires with you if you're the first person, that it's gonna get harder the longer you wait. And in the book, he's talking about the, a potential explanation for why that really is. And his theory is that because everything evolves, literally everything, that electricity gets invented and the light bulb is going to be invented necessarily after electricity. But that, it will be a certain period of time after electricity that you get the light bulb,

• 48:39Tom Bilyeu?

  based on what kind of filaments are there, can you blow glass? Like, there's all these things that have to come together, right? So, and he points out that like, we think of these moments of, that inventions are these moments of genius, and that it's this one person that sort of propelled us forward in this great leap. And he said he doesn't think that the world actually works that way. That what's happening is things are evolving and things will happen at a given point based on that evolution. And that there are, there are like eight different people that have been credited with the invention of the light bulb, and it's only because we're in the West that we think of Thomas Edison. But in reality, in different countries, almost at exactly the same time, other people came up with a light bulb.

• 49:22Tom Bilyeu?

  And that there was the same thing, I forget, another really famous invention, I'm forgetting, it was the telephone or the phonograph, whatever. But it was like, they, the, the patent was filed in the patent office on the same day.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:36Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's a really interesting idea, and Michael Jackson said the same thing. He called, I think it was Quincy Jones, in the middle of the night, and he's like, Quincy, I just had an idea for a song and we have to record it. And he's like, why do we have to record it right now? Mike, it's like three in the morning. He said, because if we don't record it right now, Prince is going to. And he was like, but it's just a random fucking idea that you've had. What are you talking about? How would Prince know? He's like, no, like, once it's out there, it's out there.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  The ethers of the universe.

• 50:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, and I think what he was really getting at, it gives me the chills, what he's getting at is there's all this shit going on in the world, and it all comes together, and it, we're all the product of our time. This really freaks me out, is somebody trying to have a second, like, arc in his entrepreneurial career. It's like, I got it so right with Quest, and now I'm trying to do something totally different in a totally different field. And I'm like, ooh, there's really something to, am I, am I of the moment? Because a kid growing up now, they're just of the moment. They're not thinking, like, I didn't think about Quest. Quest was me, and look, it was me and my partners, don't get me wrong. It was this conference with three people. But just to keep it about the part of me that was me. I was reacting against being an entrepreneur, chasing money.

• 50:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Ah, I was like, this is so gross. I just want to be myself. This idea, wanting authenticity, wanting to build community, all of this. But I had it as a, as a, I was moving away from all the bullshit that I saw that I didn't like about building businesses. And it happened to coincide right with social media. Now, I was on the bleeding edge of social media, not because I was clever, because I was having a big emotional reaction and I decided to pursue it. And so I was of that moment. And so, all of those things that happened to coincide right as social media was coming, boom, Quest hockey sticks, it goes crazy. And like, if you think about what you built, if that had been in 2019, it would be a very different story, right?

• 51:32Tom Bilyeu?

  And so, all this idea of like, it's out there sort of in the ether, and are we able to have the balls to move when it strikes us? Because it's out there for everybody.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Well said. You know what, there is something to, you know, being in that moment, right? And so, are you saying then, that you feel like in the second arc, you feel differently than you did the first time around? Like, you know too much, are you too smart?

• 52:05Tom Bilyeu?

  It's not that I know too much, it's that I really had to, so I spent about a million dollars launching a comic book. And it was a financial waste. Because I was making comics for when I was reading comics. And I was reading comics in the late 80s, early 90s. And so, then, my instinct was to make films, like the films that I had when I was a kid. But that's done, man, it's dead and gone. Like, kids don't even think about that. And so, I, in my 40s, had to go on this journey of like, okay, wait. Comic books are still getting turned into movies. So who's doing it right? That leads you to Japan, which then ultimately leads you to ask the question,

• 52:49Tom Bilyeu?

  why does a single title, a single title bedroofs in Japan outsells the entire Western comic market? Okay, outsells Wonder Woman, Batman, Spider-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men. All of it combined is outsold by Demon Slayer. And so I was like, how the fuck is that possible? And looking at it then leads me to this idea that they call shonen, which translates as the few years. So they had narrowed in on this idea, which is now I know known as the age of imprinting, 11 to 15, where the brain's in a really weird state,

• 53:29Tom Bilyeu?

  which is why power of myth, taking kids on these journeys that you guys are now doing, which is incredible, where you have to have this rite of passage. But the reason that a rite of passage happens at that fucking age is because your brain is in this hyper malleable state, where it's no longer drinking from the parents, it's drinking from culture. And so now in my 40s, I had to discover manga and anime and like really be in it. And so it's now very calculated. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to figure out like what this moment is. Now, maybe I've learned so much, that's perfect. And maybe I'm now at, because I feel like I'm at the cutting edge of something. I feel again the way I felt at Quest, where I see something other people don't see. But I had to brute force it.

• 54:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Whereas at Quest, I was of the moment. So I'm like, I don't know. Like my whole life, I get to answer this question. It's fucking fascinating to me. I'm totally unafraid of failure. Like that just is not a concern for me.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Are you as into anime as you were in the comic books of our era?

• 54:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, this scares me. I've saying this to my mom this weekend. I don't know if everyone is as malleable as I am and they just don't do the thing. I have a process. I can walk people through it. This is what you have to do if you want to fall in love with something new. Or is it not a process? And it is a process, but that it won't work for most people. And it works for me because by nature, I just happen to be hyper malleable. I don't know the answer. So I act as if anybody can do it, but I don't know if that's true. And I'm terrified by the 50% of us that's hardwired, because some people don't meet. Minimum requirements.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Bro, can I tell you something about yourself that I've figured out about you?

• 55:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Please.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  You, my opinion, I'm just gonna share my opinion.

• 55:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Please.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  That I think you give too much credit to the hardwiring and not enough credit to the fucking savage that you are.

• 55:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting. I only think about the savage. And the only reason I acknowledge the hardwiring is I've, I'm watching culture walk a stupid line. Where they're acting like there is no hardwiring and that's gonna end in fucking disaster.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Because you can no longer predict the outcome of your actions. So, speaking of which, Bajoros, let's talk about this new movement in your life. I know you're sunsetting the Empire Podcast.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Starting something new.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Why?

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  So, you know, the Empire Podcast, well, part of it is phases of life, right? Like, we all go through seasons of life. And so, when I was broke and, you know,

• 56:06Speaker 01

  living in Section Eight housing when we first came to the United States, it, all I wanted was money. Because I remember the conversation in our house, and when you're the, when you're the small one in the house. I was six years old when we came to America. So, my older brother was nineteen, my sister was twenty-one. My mom and dad and my older brother and sister were always talking about how we're running out of money before we run out of month. Like, every end of the month, it was always having to make a choice between do we leave the water on or the electricity on? And it was always water because you could live in the dark, you can't live without water. In the Section Eight housing apartments that we lived in, in Santa Ana. And, um, so I kinda grew up thinking like, money's gonna solve a lot of problems. And so, I want money, I want money.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  And so, as you, as you become an entrepreneur, you have money and then soon you cover your costs and, and, and have a good life and give your family experiences and you start realizing, alright, there's more to life than money. And so, seasons, phases of life, and so, but, and it turns out I was good at making money. You do anything long enough, maybe part of it is that fifty percent hardwiring. The other part might have been just me being so desperate for it. I just looked at any mentor I could find from old school copywriters like Gary Halbert all the way to, you know, people that really focused on how the mind operates from like the Tony Robbinses and beyond. And so...

• 57:26Speaker 01

  The Empire Podcast was really about me sharing my gift of being an entrepreneur and how to turn any idea into a business and that business into an empire. And then if you want to sell it, sell it. If you want to scale it, scale it and go on.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  But I realized, especially right around 2019, 2020, with the pandemic and all, that, holy hell, man, like, we are in a place where society is not doing well now. We see how depression and anxiety has gone through the roof. We see the prescription drugs for mood-altering prescription drugs that are up by 400%, especially during the core of the pandemic.

• 58:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Suicide.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  Suicide rates, all those things, right? And so, I was like, man, I'm in a place where I'm able to mentor my kids. And they're staying at home, thankfully. They're in a good headspace. We're working out with them. We're going on hikes. We're talking to them about what's happening in the world.

• 58:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you homeschool your kids?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  No, we don't homeschool them, but they go to private school. And, you know, the way I explain to them is, hey, guys, this is your Great Depression. This is your Great Depression. This is your version of my 9/11, you know, that we experienced where there's uncertainty and chaos and economic crash, et cetera. And so, rather than having them be afraid of it, like, you guys are of age, you know, they were, so, 12 and 14 at the time of the pandemic. And so, talking to them, walking them through it. Because I just figured, my dad never did that with me. Like, I love my dad. He brought us here. He risked his life to bring us to the United States, but everything else was on a need-to-know basis, and I didn't need to know. And so, the Empire Podcast was all about that, making money, building empires.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  The Bedros Koulian Show that's launching here is me talking about culture, me talking about community, me talking about how we're...

• 59:18Speaker 01

  It just seems like it's a perfect scientific, artistic design to... They're trying to separate us by...

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Left and right, by black and white, by mask and no mask, vax and no vax, by, if they can, if they can separate us by shoe sizes, bro, I feel like they would. And I feel this-

• 59:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Who's they?

• 59:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, do you believe in a grand conspiracy, the new world order, that kind of stuff?

• 59:43Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's a new world order, but I do believe that the they is a very smart group of powerful people that run the world. And there is a smart group of powerful people. They're called the heads of state and the people that voted them into, or not voted them, that financially enabled them to get into there, have control. A great example of that, and I always use it as a microeconomy, like a microscale. I'm the president, no longer the CEO, but I'm the president of Fit Body Boot Camp, a franchise, right? You could look at as every franchise location, we've got hundreds of franchise locations, as a state. The clients in there as the citizens of that state.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Now, I could say that we're gonna start using Tom Bilyeu's water. And I can mandate all franchisees to start using it. And Tom Bilyeu's gonna give me, HQ, the president, a kickback from using that water instead of the other water. And I can force my franchisees to use that. Now, my franchisees have to then force their clients, their citizens, to use that. I could raise the prices, I could raise the franchise royalty fees, and I could justify it by saying whatever I want, and if you don't comply, you've, well, you've signed a franchise agreement, and that franchise agreement says that I can pull your franchise and make you de-brand, and if you de-brand, you lose your money. I could stop sending your, your money, right? And so, it's, I'm, I'm my own little country.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  When you look at a franchise, it's a little country with a leader and states and citizens. And so, when I just look at it that way, well, it just makes sense that the they exist. The franchisors, and so, when you look at all different fran- like, what if, I'm not saying this, this doesn't happen, but if me and the other franchisors across many industries, hell, let's just say fitness industry. Come together and we're like, hey, from now on, we're all gonna raise the franchise buying fee to eighty grand and not lower. Mine's forty-nine-six right now, right? Eighty grand, so we conspire on that. And the franchise royalty fees are not gonna be seven percent anymore, it's gonna be ten percent across the board, right? If we all conspire to do that, now whatever franchise brand you wanna open up, it seems like six in one, half dozen in the other.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Really what we did is we conspired together, just like the universe might conspire, or people conspire, to do things. And again, you know, everyone's got best of intentions, but they say the path to hell was paved with good intentions. And so, do I believe in the they? I do believe that there's a they. At some point, maybe they did go into power to... There's power. Absolute power is absolutely corrupt, bro. We're not supposed to be this powerful. We're not... I plan on giving away as much of my money as I can, so that I save my son and daughter from corruption. Money is corrupt. Money is corrupt when you don't make it yourself. I believe that. It's a personal belief that I have.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  I earned mine, I built mine from the ground up with my wife, certainly stood on the shoulders of giants and watched what they did and modeled that and paid for coaching and got the results from it. But if I just hand them all the assets, and I hand them all the passive streams of income, I do believe that they will shit on their lives. That is probably the biggest, thickest blanket I could put on their radiance.

• 1:03:01Tom Bilyeu?

  That's interesting.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  In my opinion. And so, anyhow, I do believe that there is some level of conspiring happening at the top. And so, when you look at it that way...

• 1:03:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Why divide us? What's the... What do you think is the purpose?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  The internet did something, especially as we're entering web 3.0.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Bro, it created freedom in a way that we hadn't seen, like you remember pre-internet. I remember pre-internet. Vividly. Right? And like, I would have to get on a bus and go to Service Merchandise or wherever to buy something, or Gemco, or Zodiacs, or whatever the department store was. Now I could Amazon Prime it and it's here the next day, it's exactly what I wanted. And now anyone can create a channel, a YouTube, a network, a platform. The internet has given us so much freedom. And that freedom, and humans are, we take an inch, we'll take a mile. That's just how we are. We have gotten too free, and I'm pretty sure it gotten too scary. Going back to the franchise model, if my franchisees started to add a juice bar, and I said nothing about it, and now they're adding squat racks, because FitBody Bootcamps don't have squat racks.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Now it looks like a CrossFit. Now they're adding childcare, right? Like, hey, now they're gonna monetize more with childcare. Well, wait a minute, childcare is not part of the FitBody model. It's a whole different liability insurance. Plus, you have to have certified people, like watching those kids. Like, you can't just do that. Now you guys have too much freedom. I've gotta bring the compliance officer of FitBody Bootcamp down on your ass. Isn't it the same thing? The web, the economy has been good for so long, so long. And

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  this web has given people so much freedom that I believe that they needed to create something to create this division and control and compliance of humanity. And so, it's tightened the noose down again because it's compliance. It's the compliance officer coming down on us, is how I see it. On regular, I hate to say it this way, on the civilians, on regular people, wage earners. Because first, they were gonna tax you and us, we're gonna tax the rich. They're gonna tax you and us. And I'm like, no, don't do that, because me and Tom know how to pass that cost along to you. I will raise my prices. I will find a way to still make my product profitable.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  You, the customer, and the employees will end up paying for it, because I'm too clever. And then, to tax you, they will create inflation. And they did. Right? And so, anyway, that's, I don't know if we're getting political, but that's how I do believe that control and compliance is being exercised right now by them.

• 1:05:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I sometimes worry that I'm too naive, so I don't have a sense of the "they." I am willing to accept that that probably is naivete, because I hear your example, and that makes a lot of sense to me, and somebody has to be getting, funding people to run campaigns and all that. At the end of the day, we elect, but here in the West, anyway. But, going back to this idea of the evolution of everything, that, you know, cycles happen, and you've got Ray Dalio mapping out these cycles, and empires rise and they fall, and the reason he says that that cycle just repeats endlessly is because there are only so many human personality types.

• 1:06:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Again, why I think about the 50% that's hardwired, even though in my own life I'm only thinking about the malleable part, is that if there's only so many personality types, then of course things are gonna repeat, because you just find people bumping into each other, and there is a finite number of ways that those personality types will interact, and they get in these sort of cause and effect loops, and they just are what they are. And it doesn't repeat exactly, but it rhymes, and it rhymes because enough changes, and we're, we, there's, just like the Earth isn't just rotating around the Sun, we're also actually flying through space, right? So there's directionality to everything, so there's directionality to culture, but there's also this sort of loop, right? Even though we're going that way, and things do change,

• 1:07:05Tom Bilyeu?

  but there's a lot of rhyming that goes on. So, I don't think a lot about the "they," but I'm willing to just say, "Okay, naivete." But what I do think a lot about is, as social media has come along, it's an evolutionary moment, right? So we couldn't have predicted how social media was gonna impact us, and the bad news is, it's not all bad. In fact, I would say it's primarily good, but it's created this weird moment where, because humans are so influenceable, that, I mean, that's why they're called influencers, that you end up getting this...

• 1:07:41Tom Bilyeu?

  When you marry it to an algorithm with our desire to connect with another human and to be swayed by their influence if they have some sort of magnetism or whatever, and then the algorithm just fucking really goes, "Oh, this is what you respond to," and so it takes you down these like hyper niche holes. And if you don't have a rule in your life that says you must seek disconfirming evidence, you end up really seeing the world that way, and it just seems true. So whatever the algorithm is showing you, it just feels that's the true narrative. It doesn't feel like a narrative. It's just that is true. So to your point about, okay, we have division. So I ask myself, okay, if I'm having a biological experience,

• 1:08:24Tom Bilyeu?

  and when I say there are rules to this game, I mean that the world works a certain way based on the way that the human animal is, based on gravity and physics and all of that stuff. There just is a way that things work. Why are we able to split into camps of two? Why could they divide us by our shoe size? And hopefully people know about that study where you can give people a red shirt or a blue shirt, and people will click up and automatically start treating people in the red shirt differently. Like, what the fuck? You know it's make believe. But we were just tribal like that. So it's evolution. So what is it that allows us to be so evenly parsed into these groups? Well, left and right is the basic thing that a tribe needs,

• 1:09:09Tom Bilyeu?

  is you need some people that are all about compassion, so that we don't leave people behind, that we have cohesion, we're looking out for each other, there's reciprocity. But then you have, if you look at that on a large enough sample, what you find is then you get the freeloader problem. So if we were all compassionate, you get freeloaders who go, "Oh, word, I'm in a, there's an evolutionary niche for just taking advantage of people." It's like the cuckoo bird, which is where you get the idea of a cuckold from, right? Cuckoo bird's like, "Oh, word, I can drop off my egg in your nest, and you'll raise it and feed it and all that stuff? Amazing."

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  I did not know that's where the idea of a cuckold came from.

• 1:09:47Tom Bilyeu?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  No kidding.

• 1:09:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep. So you always run into the freeloader problem. So the other side of the equation has to be people that go, no, personal responsibility's everything. Now, what you get is a group that works. Because you get people who are like, yo, you cannot just leave people behind. You can't be tyrannical and not think about people. You've got to love them and like, you know, worry about them and lift them up. And you've got other people that are like, hey, you can't fucking take advantage. You've got to pick yourself up and you've got to like really, a group only becomes strong as the weakest link. And so we've all got to rise up. Now, when you bring them together, they're high functioning. Because it's in the friction between the two. Where it's like, this half knows, okay, I need to like find concessions where it's going to work. And then this half is like, okay, we've got to find, we really should look out for people.

• 1:10:29Tom Bilyeu?

  And when they are working well, then we thrive. But now, the algorithm is pulling us down into these, what's called peak shift. And I'm, I'm thinking of this stuff out loud. So everyone's going to have to bear with me if, a week from now, I think very differently. But this feels right to me. So there's this idea of peak shift. Where if you take, there's this bird, that the mother has a big fucking red nose, beak. And when the bird sees that big red beak, it goes crazy. And there was a research scientist that was like, is it responding to the size of the beak, to the fact that it's red? Like, what actually makes it go, mom, like I'm gonna go into my feeding frenzy?

• 1:11:11Tom Bilyeu?

  What they found was, the brighter, you could make an artificial one. And the brighter you made the red, the bigger you made the beak, the crazier the chicks went. And they just like went berserk. They called that peak shift. So, the algorithm's all about peak shift. Oh, you like that, then you really like this. You like that, then you really like this. And you begin to dopamine habituate. And so it just like, ah, it goes crazy. People are in there scrolling all day. You get one narrative, it takes you down this one path. You're not seeking disconfirming evidence. You get tied into these influencers. And, if I can really put something that's hit me recently. If you're feeling overwhelmed, I guarantee there's a study on this even though I don't know it. But I have felt this, so I know it must be true.

• 1:11:55Tom Bilyeu?

  If you're feeling overwhelmed and someone tells you hate that person, it feels awesome because it's certainty. Well, I know exactly what to do. Hate that motherfucker. They're wrong. I'm right. That feels awesome.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:12:08Tom Bilyeu?

  People are intoxicated by certainty. So you just gave me certainty combined with all those other things. And so now it's like, even if there isn't a they, and this is just spontaneously evolved, we're living in this fucking moment. And so this is happening. This is real. And shit is getting weird. And for the first time in my life, I'm paranoid. I'm like, not literally paranoid, but I'm like, oh, like I'm worried. I'm worried that things go to bloodshed. That's my actual concern.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  How does a paranoid Tom Bilyeu prepare? Because I think I'm a bit extremist, so I can't trust myself. And I

• 1:12:51Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm selling

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  This is good for your audience and for me.

• 1:12:53Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm selling everything. I don't want to be tied to anything. Massive mobility. Read Raed Aliyah. He, he wrote a book called Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. And he said, you need to be mobile. You need to be able to go basically wherever stability is. Um, I've heard you talk about this, so I know you know the concept. Get off the X.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't know where the X is going to be, but I know that I own a lot of real estate and I probably shouldn't. So that's move number one. Now, I don't think I'm the guy people should listen to. I'm fucking fumbling my way through this. I just want to make moves.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  I was just curious what your move was.

• 1:13:28Tom Bilyeu?

  But that, that's where

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think mobility is key. Like my, my personal feeling and opinion is that liquidity and mobility is key.

• 1:13:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Today more than ever. Like I, but all, everyone who's stockpiling like guns and weapons and like making that underground bunker, like

• 1:13:46Tom Bilyeu?

  I haven't gone that far.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  I think it's quite the opposite. Like, like that's all great.

• 1:13:51Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you mean it's the opposite?

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  I think the vision that most people have is when they come to take my property or to take my shit to rape and pillage, like I will, me and my wife will defend, you know, our canned food and our gold and our, with our guns and ammo.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  Eh, not really. First of all, I think statistically, less than like 99% of people have any training with their weapons, number one. Number two, most people are ill-prepared if that were the apocalypse shit hit the fan thing was gonna happen. And because I actually studied with these guys like John Lovell, Warrior Poet Society, and others like them who have been actual true warriors, like they don't think about hunkering down. They're all about liquidity and mobility, like very intelligent warriors who understand that I've gotta be liquid and mobile because I don't know where the X is gonna be, but I know I won't be on it. And the resource that helps is obviously money.

• 1:14:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, and I hope, man, I hope I'm just being paranoid and that, eh, it's all good.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Nothing wrong with healthy paranoia. I mean, it's when it keeps you up at night. It's when you begin, I believe there's a tipping point to anything. Like, my dad was taking, whatever, like two baby aspirin a day, his heart's doing just fine. I bet if he took a handful a day, it'd probably burn a hole in his stomach. It's when we hit the tipping point, which goes back to your social media example, that the algorithm sucks us down this hole, this rabbit hole so accurately and gets us to believe that this is truly the reality. And if we are not looking for the contrary, actively looking for it, we will begin to believe that this is a shit hits the fan moment and I must, I must prepare. And what preparation looks like for one guy may be very different than the other.

• 1:15:41Tom Bilyeu?

  No doubt. You were born in Soviet-controlled Armenia.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:15:48Tom Bilyeu?

  How has that informed the, what you're telling your kids about this moment? Might be the most interesting way to ask that.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  As you were talking about, see, this is why I like hanging out with you. This is the most selfish thing I do. Like, whether it's food with you or just this, it's like, I do realize that when you've grown up under communist control, and then when your dad was a member of the communist party, and so he kind of tells you, you grew up hearing the stories. So seeing it and then hearing the stories. It does influence you and the way you think like, well shoot, that government did that. Like, they literally went to oppress the citizens. Like, there was just different classes. My dad was part of the eighteen percent of the society in the Soviet Union, who had a, uh, this different colored, dark red passport. And I remember he'd be able to get bread and cheese from any store that he wanted.

• 1:16:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Wow.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Uh, when they were out and there were lines. Me and my mom would have to wait in lines until my dad became a member of the Communist Party. And we never once waited in the line again. In fact, I grew up eating caviar. We talked about this in your, in your previous, uh, show, the last time you interviewed me. I was eating caviar in Armenia for breakfast. And then come here and I'm eating like out of dumpsters and section eight housing. So talk about it. But that government did oppress its people. And so I do realize that I look through life through those lens at times. And so hearing you talk about like, hey, what if this is just like, it's really good algorithm doing what it's supposed to do. Oh shit, what if? Alright, so okay, a little less paranoia, cool, more preparation, yeah. And then just live your life, and just live your life.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Um, but it just breaks my heart when I see, dude, when I see people this far apart. Like, our, our country, humanity has never been this far apart. And, and maybe we need it, we need to go so far apart where we feel the pain and then get back together again. Um, and maybe it's that I'm forty-eight years old and I've got more gray than I've ever had. And, and I'm realizing that I've had, I've had a really good life experience. And worried from what my kids are gonna have as a life experience. Like, what's gonna happen for them and their kids? Like, I wanna, I can't wait to hold Andrew and Chloe's babies. But I also know I'm gonna be like, fuck, what's life gonna look for, like for them?

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  So I'm, so hell bent on trying to influence society, humanity, in what I feel is a better way. And I know it's, you know, hindsight's always twenty twenty and things always are more glamorous when you look back. But how simple was it for us, dude, growing up in the eighties and nineties? You know, like, alright, so you got your Walkman, you got your CD player, you're, like, there, there was no fentanyl to, to overdose on, there was, I just feel like-

• 1:18:35Tom Bilyeu?

  I will say though, I was legitimately afraid of nuclear war.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  I do recall. I took.

• 1:18:41Tom Bilyeu?

  I was.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Really, I mean, that was like a thing and I was right at that age where my amygdala was just eighty percent of my brain.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  During the Cold War?

• 1:18:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. And it was like, hey, this mutually assured destruction. I remember having to explain that to my neighbors. I don't know, the reason they won't launch nuclear missiles is because of mutually assured destruction. That's, that's rough.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:03Tom Bilyeu?

  So I do remind myself of that, like, okay, have we been this divided before? Probably, I mean, we're at civil war, like literal guns being fired, civil war, people being killed. So it's like, we have gone through things like this and people rebound and we're super resilient. But I don't think it happens by accident. And so it's like, how do we, you know, nudge each other back in a loving direction is how I think about it.

• 1:19:33Tom Bilyeu?

  But how do we?

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  I think it comes with the individual and I think that's where it comes when we try and change a whole party's ideology and belief system, it's not going to work. It's going to be the individual, like the individual watching this, listening to this right now and going, shoot. We had two different ideas on, on maybe the rules of life and how things work, but then they kind of agreed that there is this radiance within us. Whether it's we're born with it or we have to turn it on and then stoke that fire. Um, yeah, I could, I could buy into the idea of that there's something within us that needs to thrive.

• 1:20:03Tom Bilyeu?

  So to your point, the right place to start is with yourself, right? So trying to figure out, okay, what do I have wrong? How do I be the open mind that comes to the table to try to, you know, find a path forward? But I just don't feel like I have wisdom in this, like Ray Dalio talks a lot about things that have happened in history, but that have not happened in your life. And the things that are going on right now have happened in history, but they haven't happened in my life. And because I'm so experiential, like for whatever reason, I've always had to learn things the hard way. And so, yeah, I don't know that I have any wisdom to impart here, but in my, I find it very fascinating and I really want to understand what's happening.

• 1:20:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, what is this revealing about human nature? I don't think we can ever count on the algorithm to do anything other than maximize what humans respond to, and unfortunately, we respond to certainty extraordinarily strongly, which is the opposite of an open mind. We respond to fear a lot more than the flip side. It's gonna be a lot harder to have a good news show than it is to have a bad news show, right, if it bleeds, it leads. And so, all of these things are real. So, it's like, okay, I know all of these things are real. What can I do? Like, do you have advi... I know you do, I know the punchline to this, but like, what's your advice to people on social media? Like, how do you deal with it? How, do you make it a part of your life? Do you not make it a part of your life?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  I do. It's a very big part of my life. But I divide social media people into two camps, consumers and creators. And I believe that you're better off being a 90% creator, 10% consumer. And that's what I am. And I create content that the 1.0 version of me would want, because I've been able to take myself from 1.0 to 2.0. And if 10.0 is my goal, then when I get to 3.0, I'll create content for the 1.0 and 2.0 version of myself. And if, I feel like, that's what you've done. I've seen your evolution over the last four or five years. I feel like you are coaching the younger Tom, Toms, who are like Tom 1.0 out there in society.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  It's...

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  It ain't rocket science that social media is a business and it is there to stoke fear.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Create a level of certainty and also it stokes uncertainty. So that we can be attracted to those that that speak in certainty. That's what's beautiful about social media. When you just look back at at the hell that social media is. It creates uncertainty and it's like, well, people, what do you mean? Well, let's face it, social media has probably caused a lot of kids to kill themselves. Like, some kids have, like, been bullied, been been felt like they don't belong, fear of missing out. Right, it's created this uncertainty within them. And they felt that that certainly the solution to this is death. And so we do have to see how powerful this thing is. Like, anyone would be stupid to not look at Hitler or Bin Laden and and not realize there's something to take away from there.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  That the those those evil powers did have a great way of communicating. That perhaps if we can learn that, put it to good use, that maybe we can do, create good outcomes with it. Uh, so my belief system on social media is to be a creator of content that the older version of you would benefit from and would help those people level up to the higher version of you. And if we all did more of that and consumed less of it, that we'd be less influenced by it. But I also realize, like, there's literally like variable response, the whole idea of this, like, it's a casino thing, right? Like, you pull the slot machine, do I'm I gonna get the three cherries if I do?

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  I'm a winner, shit, I only got two cherries, that was close. Let me try again with another twenty dollar bill, variable response. So variable response works on pumping out dopamine like no one's business, bro. They figured out how to get this thing, our brain, to pump out the right addictive chemicals so well that you do, goes back to routine, goes back to morning ritual. Rules and rituals, I believe, will save someone from going down the social media depression, anxiety, time suck vacuum that it really is. Uh, because I've got rules and rituals about it, like, I won't like more than three things, right? So, like, you and Lisa and my friend Craig pop up and my friend, I'll I'll like you three, that's it.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  If I just keep going, I've now starting to suck through the variable response funnel and now I'm gonna keep liking and liking. I will literally just go through all my friend's shit and they'll show me stuff from yours like six weeks ago. Like, there's no end to it. So I've, I create rules and rituals. And when I have rules and rituals, and also I know I'm a, I'm an addictive person. Um, and I think most of us are, man. Um, that's why we're so easily to get addicted to social media. I'm an addictive person, and so I know that I'm more susceptible to, to getting addicted to that pattern. And that pattern could, and then I'm also OCD, so everything I do is obsessive. That's a bad combination, right?

• 1:25:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Apparently not for entrepreneurial success.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Not for entrepreneurial success, touche. But in that path, oh my god, man, to get addicted to it and then to go OCD on it? Forget about it. Like, this is why, man, I, I could eat a bag of bagels. My wife would like, that's like a, a baker's dozen, thirteen bagels, and two things of Philly Delfi cream cheese. Like, where did it go? Like, I must finish it all, Tom. I can't leave anything half-finished, even bagels.

• 1:25:38Tom Bilyeu?

  How long would it take you to eat thirteen bagels?

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Bro, I would stand at the kitchen buffet, um,

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  forty-five minutes.

• 1:25:46Tom Bilyeu?

  No way. I thought you were gonna say four days.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  No, dude.

• 1:25:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Tom Bilyeu?

  That's interesting. I have an obsessive mind, but not a, I don't have an addictive personality. So I don't find myself doing that. I, if I, I don't like eat one chip and then I'm fine, but I'm like, food used to be more of a problem for me. Food is not a problem, but I thrive on rules. To your point, what are some rules and rituals that you have in place? So we know the social media one.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's a social media one, uh, uh, you know, going back full circle to a morning routine. Uh, the best morning routines, I believe, start in the evening. So, some of the rules that I have.

• 1:26:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Read.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  Right? Right? Um, no iPhone, no, no, no, no.

• 1:26:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Starting at what time?

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Uh, for me, at nine PM, because I go to bed at ten.

• 1:26:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  No iPhone, no iPad, no laptop.

• 1:26:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Hour before bed.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Hour before bed.

• 1:26:36Tom Bilyeu?

  What are you doing? Talking to Diana?

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  We're either watching, uh, we'll typically watch, right now we're watching, um,

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  The Bluths. Oh my god, where they built, it's a comedy show.

• 1:26:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, god.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Arrested Development.

• 1:26:50Tom Bilyeu?

  There we go.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  We're watching that with the kids. So we'll watch one episode of The Bluths, or Arrested Development, then we'll go in the hot tub. Kids will fuck around in the pool while we go in the-

• 1:26:57Tom Bilyeu?

  And the hot tub is just relaxation, talking.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a rule too, to relax, talk 20 minutes, 30 minutes while the kids goof off, and then they go in the hot tub with us, and we all get out, they go to bed, we go to bed, 10 o'clock, lights out. That's just how it worked out. But screens off by 9 o'clock, in terms of computer, laptop, and iPad. We do watch a show and then go into the hot tub. Number one. Number two, bring the 30 ounces of water upstairs with me. Because if I'm gonna drink 30 ounces of water in the morning, it needs to be on my nightstand. Otherwise, it might take me 20 minutes to get there if I'm showering and doing all this shit. Create my GSD list the night before. I believe taking that stuff out of my brain and putting it on a notepad just allows me to do a brain dump. And I always put the hardest, scariest thing that I'm gonna do tomorrow morning, the thing I wanna avoid, at the top of my GSD list.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Right? It's common sense. And it's not swirling around in my head, and my subconscious mind is keeping me awake thinking about it. It's on a list of three to four things to do, the worst one at the top of that list. And so, again, that's another one of my evening rituals. And I'll set my alarm, and lights out, off I go. But some other rules are that if there's people who always, and to date, I've got 119 people blocked on my phone, some friends, some clients, former clients, I guess I should say, some just people who were friends. But it's the people that go, "Hey, Tom, did you see this article about your brand, your company, your thing?" And it's always negative, the ones that always say, "Do you, like, motherfucker, did you hear that I was on the Ink magazine?

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Did you hear that I was in Entrepreneur magazine's top 500 fast-growing franchises? I didn't see you text me the link to that."

• 1:28:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  "But you hear that somebody died at a FitBody bootcamp?" It's a gym. People do die at a FitBody bootcamp. You know, all of a sudden, you're saying to me, "Did you hear that somewhere in Tallahassee, Florida, somebody died at a FitBody bootcamp?" Thank you, I'm aware of that. Right? And so people who are just so quick to show up with negative news, especially via text, I just block them. Like I'll see a pattern, I don't tell them or whatever, like I'm gonna block you, you gotta not do that. But if I see someone's got that pattern in my life, they are addicted to causing drama. I don't need that. So that's one of my main rules as well of blocking them on my phone. Uh, at which point they could just call the house line and talk to Marlon, my house manager. And not me, uh, which point she'll leave a little notepad note and that's that. Those are my big major rules and then, but mostly on social media, create 90%, consume 10%.

• 1:29:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, rules, man. I think that this is one of the most underutilized things for people that wanna be successful. You really, you have to one, identify what are the things that I struggle with? What are rules that I can put in place? For me, the biggest one, and I know we've talked about this before, is I have to be out of bed in 10 minutes or less. Because otherwise I will lose hours, man. It's crazy. Like I am still shocked. I, when it comes to laying in bed, I'm like an alcoholic. It's like, no matter how many years go by that I don't do it, I still every day want to do it. It's super weird. And I just find myself wanting to, to lay in bed. How do you like, and maybe you feel like you've always had this, but how do you teach other people to be a savage?

• 1:30:02Tom Bilyeu?

  You talked about being a servant savage and the need to be capable of that savagery.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:09Tom Bilyeu?

  One, do you mean savage literally? Or do you just mean being tough? Like, how do you think about that?

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  Both, both. I'm sure you would jump to my throat and like attempt to kill me and probably kill me if I even made any attempt to attack Lisa. Like you need to be a savage, right? But you're also a savage in creating your, your, your businesses. And, and, and, and the Impact Theory show, um, a savage and like, doesn't matter how you feel. You're up doing your show, you're up doing your ritual, you're up stacking your wins. It might be walking like molasses during days that you're not, maybe you didn't sleep well or having an off day, but you're still savagely going through your day. So savage in both ways. I do believe that, that those who are skilled in the art of violence are least likely to become violent. And I've known this-

• 1:30:57Tom Bilyeu?

  That's really interesting. Why do you say that?

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Because of my experience as a kid. See, growing up in Section 8 housing-

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  So in Russia, judo and sambo are some martial arts that were really big in the Soviet Union. So my dad taught me that very quickly, judo, sambo. And then soon as I became 11 years old, he put me into tempo karate, kicking and punching. This is pre-jiu-jitsu era. And growing up in section eight housing, so I'm the foreigner. Imagine me, the foreigner kid with the funny bowl haircut and the clothes that my mom made in the section eight housing. And in Santa Ana, there was a gang called F Troop. They're still out there causing violence. But my dad had bought me a little bike, like from a garage sale, for like eight bucks or something. It was like rusty, but it worked, right? And then these gang bangers stole it. And they lived in the same complex, in the neighboring complex.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  They stole it. I went home, kind of crying, like, hey, this is what happened. My dad gave me a beating, because that's what a communist dad does. And when I told that to Kevin, by the way, my therapist, he's like, hey, anything ever happened to you as a kid, like, do you want to talk about? Because he helped me with my stress and anxiety and all that stuff, right? That was the reason I went to a therapist. I was like, no, man, like, no, there's nothing as a kid that I want to talk about. Like, okay, my, he goes, well, what about your parents? He goes, well, what about your parents? I go, well, my parents, you know, my mom spanked me, my dad gave me a beating, but I would have rather had those beatings and spankings than, like, all my other friends who were put on restriction for two weeks, they can come out and play with their G.I. Joes with me. Like, they really had to, like, pay the price. I just got a good beating and I can go out and play again, Kevin. And he's laughing. He goes, that didn't leave a scar on you? I'm like, nah.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  I go, plus, what happened to me as a kid, even before that, was even worse. But that's where I had enough, I had apparently built enough rapport and trust with him where I hinted to what had happened to me, hence being molested. Right. And that's how we, what was supposed to be one month of therapy, ended up being 15, 16 months, because then we started working on what happened to me as a kid. But anyway, going back to the savage and the servant. What I found was that when my dad was, he beat me and he goes, if you don't come back with your bike, the beatings will continue.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Because that was a lot of money he spent. Eight bucks for having three, four jobs, living in section eight housing, that eight bucks can go towards food and water and all this other stuff that he put towards a bike. Give me a flathead screwdriver. And as I go get the bike, I didn't have to ask him what I do with the flathead screwdriver. And so it was simple enough that the more violence I could cause, the more compliant they became.

• 1:33:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Were you a big kid?

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  I, I was a bigger kid, yeah. I was a, I was a stocky kid. And my two friends in America were, my first friends in America were, were black, section eight housing. It's either Mexicans, black kids, or foreigners. Dwayne and Torrance. Torrance I found, uh, when we stay in touch, Torrance Jackson in Anaheim. Uh, Dwayne, I have no idea, but he lived in apartment number twenty-two at the Shade Tree Apartments. God, I still remember that. We played snake in the grass together and all this. So them two had my back. And we went and got my bike. And it didn't even have to take any use of the flathead screwdriver to get my bike back.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Because they understood why we were there and, and, and so, but I realized in that moment that like, all right, sometimes violence is, is the way. But I also understood that violence could work against me when a whole bunch of them showed up and whooped my ass. Uh, many years later, put me in the hospital. Um, all this to, to, to tell you that you begin to, and, and now, man, doesn't matter how big someone is, how wiry someone is, how muscular someone is. Some of those jujitsu, or they've taken the, you know, a few months of, of Muay Thai, kickboxing, like, they will just like meatloaf your face right in, or just take, take the air out of your brain. And you're, you're, you're passed out. And so today, people are more dangerous than ever. And when you realize that, I don't know, what do they say in Texas? Like an armed society is a polite society?

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  Well, technically, most people these days, with the knowledge of violence that they have, um, I just want to treat everyone as though you know jujitsu, you know kickboxing, you might have a flathead screwdriver in your back pocket. And therefore, I'm going to be cool to you. So I'm going to be a servant. But I love knowing that I could show up as a savage, knowing that. I don't really pull that card out unless I have to. And the savage is also the guy or gal who's willing to, they see a car accident, everyone else is rubbernecking, and, you know, taking video. Like, that savage is someone who's running to that car, breaking the glass window, and pulling out the people out of it, right? They're willing to stand in the gap between good and evil.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  I don't know if I shared this with you on your show last time I was here. My family and I, we do our annual trip to Maui, right around Christmas. It's just something that we enjoyed Hawaii when we got married for our honeymoon, so we decided to do an annual trip with the kids. Several years back, Andrew was probably six, Chloe was four. We're flying back, it's one of the, from Maui, we took an 11:00 PM flight back from Maui to LAX, and it's those big jumbo jets where there's like, the lay-down seats up front, like in the middle and on the sides. So we're in the very back of first class, we all have our fun seats. And then, but way up front in first class, there's a dude going off, like smashing the seat. I didn't tell you this story? No.

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Okay, so he's smashing, dude, we're up at like 35,000 feet up in the air, we're over the Pacific Ocean, bro. Like, he should have done this on the tarmac, where they could have removed him. He's smashing the seat back in front of him. And now the dude's like, dude, bro, relax, what's going on? And he's just like foaming at the mouth, going bananas. People have gotten up and kind of gotten into that galley where they make your coffee and all that stuff. And I look at my wife, next to her is Chloe, across the aisle. My wife and Chloe, and next to me is Andrew. Andrew looks at me, I'm like, buddy, everything's gonna be okay. I look at my wife, she looks at me, I just like, hey, we're gonna be fine. Chloe's knocked out, sleeping. I look at the guy behind my wife, he's now sitting his thing up, right?

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  And we made this eye contact, like, no words were spoken. No words were spoken, Tom. But I just knew he had my back, and I know he knew that I had his back. Now I'm thinking, this is post 9/11. Something happens, like, we're all gonna dogpile on this bad guy, right? Because Noah's gonna die, because you're not landing this thing in the water. So you gotta make sure this guy just goes down. So anyway, long story short, we see the flight attendants go all the way to the back. They're coming down our end of the aisle. Their plan is to cut through the galley to create a wall between angry ballistic mad guy making the gun gesture and hitting everyone's seat. They're trying to make a human wall between him and the cockpit. Got it. So as they're coming down, I see two interlaced black handcuffs, those zip ties. And I like stopped the flight attendant, like ma'am, is everything okay?

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  How can we help? Like she goes, he's a flight risk. We need to ask him to put these on. And I, I'm like, well, can we help? And she goes, we have to ask him to put these on. I guess the law is they have to ask you, Tom. So the next time, if you decide to lose your shit on the plane.

• 1:38:02Tom Bilyeu?

  He has to agree?

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  He has to agree.

• 1:38:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  They cut in front of him, three flight attendants, and you could see this older lady, flight attendant, gesturing like, you gotta put this on. He stands up, he's like, I'm not putting those fucking things on. She looks up towards me and like, help! I look at this guy, just through the corner of my eye, and I see him standing up and we both, I had just finished, remember I told you I did the six-week marathon challenge? I just, since then, I've been doing like about two challenges a year. I just finished an MMA challenge.

• 1:38:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Nice.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  So I was like, alright, man, I want to learn to really fight, right?

• 1:38:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's see how this works.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, with, at the time, King of the Cage welterweight champion, Aaron Weatherspoon. Awesome, tiny little guy, tatted up, peaceful until he brought me on the mats and he would just have his weight with me. But in six weeks, he, he taught me some really cool stuff. And then he went in the ring and beat the shit out of me. Cause every six-week challenge has to end with either a marathon or whatever, right? So anyway, that's a different story. So I, we go, and that's just me and this guy, and I, I look at this guy, he's like, what are you gonna do about it? And I was like, bro, just put those things on, like just, like be cool, right? I'm wearing flip flops and I got my Hilo Hattie shirt on, it's like fucking, we're coming from Maui, dude. Sweating profusely because I'm nervous. He goes to shove me, and I did exactly what Aaron Weatherspoon taught. I parried out of the way, got behind him and got him in a rear naked chokehold.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Tom, I'm not gonna lie to you, bro, I hope Aaron Weatherspoon never sees this video. In the back of your mind, you're like, okay, I'm paying this guy to coach me. So like, the times that I got him in an arm bar, or rear naked chokehold, or guillotine. Maybe he was just like, kinda going with it, you know? He really wasn't choking, he just tapped because I'm paying him, right? Dude, it worked, so I'm choking this guy out. I'm choking this guy out, I'm on his back. I'm talking in his ear like, dude, just calm down. Now he's bucking like a bronco. I'm sliding out of my flip flops because I'm sweating and I'm wearing flip flops and he's taller than me. So I'm like, my toes, right? I'm like, that's right, Aaron said, like, when that happens, take a deep breath. It'll tighten up more. And then he started to like, crumple over. Tom, it's working. He's on his knees, I'm on his back. Now I'm like, shit.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  Now the one dude who's here to help me, he's trying to wedge. He's trying to wedge the zip ties between my gut and his back and bring his arms back and it's not working. I'm like, okay, what would Aaron do? I quickly got him in a guillotine chokehold. You know, the old elementary school, get a kid in a chokehold and walk him around the campus thing? That would happen to me all the time, because I'd get bullied, right? So, dude, I flipped around and got him in a guillotine.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  And it worked. And this guy zip ties him. He zip tied really too tight, and so the zip tie cut into him, so we had to re zip tie him. That's a different story. Anyway, flight attendants made us sit in the back with him. We take turns.

• 1:40:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Jesus.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got all the hummus and wine you could drink and eat on the flight. And then we landed in LAX, LAPD took him away. And that was that. But all this to say that, thank God that my dad had instilled this savage mindset in me. Like, you have to be the one to do something, son. You can't just be the one goes, hey, someone should do something about that. And so that's always been my mindset, is if I have to cross my arms and go, someone should do something about that. Maybe I should be the one. Maybe I should be the one funding that movement. Maybe I should be the one saving that person out of the fire. Or saving that flight, whatever the thing is. And so I've always, but I also want to show up as a servant and love you up. And how much value can I add to your life? And what can I do to connect? Because I also realize I'm a big commanding guy, and so I could come off as a threat.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  So, look, I see a ping pong table. Everybody, let's play ping pong, you know? Plus, I enjoy it. So anyway, that's. I believe the more savage servants we can build, the more confident, capable protectors and providers we will have, men will finally feel that they have this role in their life. Every guy feels like they want to have conflict. Like, we have this thing called The Project. It's a 75-hour men's personal development program. But it's 75 hours straight. So, my lead instructor for it, Ray, is a former Navy SEAL. Then we have the psycho sociopathic Marine. I've learned not to say "former Marine." Once a Marine, always a Marine, apparently. Then there's me, teaching life productivity, time management, building businesses, because they're all entrepreneurs that come to this thing.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  MMA fighter, former SWAT operator. Teaches pistols and rifle stuff. And so, we really teach... 90% of these guys, when the Marine asks, "How many of you motherfuckers have never hit another man before?" 90% of the hands go up. "How many of you have ever choked out another man?" 90%, have never choked out a... Hands go up. And so, realize, yet, they still have a desire. You're a man. You have this desire to be aggressive, to have some level of conflict, to be able to like, "Ah!" But you can't, because society has neutered us so much. And so, there, we teach these guys to be violent, but to also learn how to control their violence, so that they're not...

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  Because otherwise, when you never show your violence and your savage within, you become a passive-aggressive man. And that is where toxic masculinity begins. The passive-aggressive man, the nice-guy syndrome. There's a great book out there called "No More Mr. Nice Guy." That's the passive-aggressive man that's, you know, toxic masculinity is the passive-aggressive man, who will yell at his wife and put his fist through a wall at home, where it's safe, but where, when he's supposed to stand in the gap or raise his voice in a situation where the opportunity of right and wrong are presented, or jump out of a seat and choke a motherfucker out, he won't do that. He won't do that. "Because he's not really sure if I can. I know I could probably yell at my wife and my kids and scare them.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  Well, here's your chance to fight with a pugil stick. Here's your chance to wrestle a guy. Here's your chance..." And when they do, they realize, "Oh, you know what? First of all, I could take a punch. Secondly, I know what it feels like to get choked out and choke another man out. You know, I think I am going to go learn this thing on my own, jiu-jitsu or Muay Thai." And every single one of them report back that they're more peaceful, that they have less stress, because you're on the mat two to three times a week or in the ring... Getting after it, I literally have zero stress, bro. Like because of it, in terms of like where I want to like rage out and kill someone because I'm like, somebody else might try and kill me. Like I'm just gonna be cool.

• 1:44:16Tom Bilyeu?

  This is very interesting to me because it's the very thing that I know I have not focused on in my life and ought to. But the first time that somebody put it on my radar was Frost Sahabi, who was the, I don't know if he was the all-around MMA coach of George St. Pierre, but certainly the jujitsu coach for George St. Pierre. And I had him on the show in the early, early days. And he said, "Tom, I want to choose kindness. I don't want kindness to be my only option." I was like, "Damn, very good point." And then Jordan Peterson has started talking about this recently where he looked at the phrase from the Bible, "The meek shall inherit the earth." I have to admit, this always bothered me because I always interpreted meek as weak.

• 1:45:01Tom Bilyeu?

  So it's like, why would the weak inherit the earth? It doesn't make sense. Like, I know that it isn't true. And so how does that like, the Bible, believe it as a literal thing or not, it's got wisdom that's obviously lasted for a reason. So I was like, "Ah, why does that resonate?" So Jordan Peterson, whether he's right or not is another question, but this feels right. Looks up, I think, the ancient Greek translation of meek, and it means to, basically, to be good with a sword but keep it sheathed. And so there's a reason they didn't say the weak shall inherit the earth. But when you are a competent fighter, then you can choose combat or you can choose not to.

• 1:45:43Tom Bilyeu?

  But there's no internal conflict, there's no nervous aggressive like a chihuahua that's like barking and freaking out because it feels like it has to act big and tough. Because if it can't get you to back down and it actually goes to blows, now it's gonna be in trouble because it doesn't actually know how to fight. There you go. Or just paralyzed, like you said, and they're, they just stay because they're, you know, afraid that they won't be able to do anything. And I do feel that that is one that as guys, you do have that impulse that you get in an elevator and you think, could I take this guy? Like even in business, like it still does run across your mind. And so to not address it, I think does it to, to not have that tool in your arsenal

• 1:46:28Tom Bilyeu?

  just robs you of one more thing, but also it sets up what you're talking about where you've got people who are like, guys are going to try to get laid, full stop, period, end of story, it just is what it is. And so if you don't have that confidence, you don't feel like you can be manly and sort of win over a woman's heart by being the sort of prototypical tough guy, not even tough guy, but like to have that. Yeah, a dangerous man, but, but meek in the, that you're weaponized, but you keep your weapon hidden, then you go for the nice guy tactic. Oh, the, the subtlety, the more feminine way of being sly where it's reputational. Oh, he's not the right guy for you anyway.

• 1:47:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Like they, you know, they slide in that way. There's a whole strategy that in the animal kingdom, there are actually like frogs that do this. I think there are other ones as well, where there is a legitimate male strategy where they try to look like a female. And so they, they can bypass the dominant male and they can mate. It's crazy. So it's a, it is a, I fear a strategy that, that guys are tempted to deploy, but it isn't a confident, grounded expansive strategy. It's a, a sort of shifty, like secretive, like.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  It's a desperate attempt.

• 1:47:55Tom Bilyeu?

  It's not a good energy.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  When that's your only tool, you have to make that tool as useful as possible. And so, and a lot of dudes end up. In the nice guy friend category, it's like, hey, how'd you become a friend? You're trying to get laid and now you're a friend. There was a comedian, I forget the comedian, he goes, all those people you just described, those guys, they're the dick in the jar now, because then when that girl gets a boyfriend, as in, soon as there's a conflict with the boyfriend and she goes, I hate him, I'm thinking of breaking up, that's the guy who goes, it's like in case of emergency, break glass.

• 1:48:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  You know what? Yeah, he is a bad guy. He is a dick. Maybe, maybe you should, hoping that if he just also pisses on the boyfriend that he can get laid for the night. Like, that's not a cool way to do it, but if that guy also had the tools of confidence and he was capable and he knows how to protect, but he also knows how to stay cool like Fonzie, because there's no good, even in the best fight where you win, you still get hit. I've been stabbed.

• 1:48:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa!

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  I've got a giant scar on my calf, like, the guy went down, I hit him.

• 1:48:58Tom Bilyeu?

  How do you get stabbed in your calf?

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  Because when you hit him and you're like, I'm done, and then he pulls out a knife and just slices your calf. That's how you get stabbed in your calf. So even in your best fights, you still get hit in the process of trying to win. And so, but see again, if someone's been on the mats before, they've been in the ring before, they've been in a fight before, you realize like, okay, it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt me even when I win. Can I now try and talk my way out of this? Can I be cool? If I have to, I can always resort to that, but can I be cool? But if, but if that shifty desperate, I'm the, I'm the beta, you're the alpha thing is the only tool I got, I don't, I don't want that, dude. I don't want that desperate thing, because what if I'm with my family and you decide not to have mercy on me and I can't plead my way out of this?

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  I want to be able to like, get both thumbs in your eye holes as quickly as possible, right? That's just a reality. We all, like you said, man, we go in the elevator, we'd start like, sizing people up, that's just how it is.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  I don't know about you, but I've got such a predator's mind that I'll be in a grocery store and I'll see like a woman with a purse. And she like looking at something, I'm like, I could steal that purse right now. I see a guy who's like in his car and he's got his door open, but he's got his head in, his ass is sticking out. I'm like, that five series BMW could be mine right now. Like, I know exactly what I would do to like, pull him out of his car and take that car so quick. Like, I do believe that every man has a predator's mind. It's in our, it's just the way we're wired. But I also have experienced a lot of violence where I've had my ass whooped. Where I'm like, that dude could also have a concealed carry permit as I'm pulling him, whack. That also, that dude could also grab a knife and slice, because I've been sliced before, right?

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  And so, and I would never do that these days, right? Like the old me, I've carjacked and home invasion robberies. But the, the new me like realizes that there's people, the great might equalizer is the gun, the knife, or multiple people. And if you get past all those, then there's a universal karmic justice that always has to take place to balance out. You know, you being an asshole means your kid gets cancer.

• 1:51:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  I believe in that too. That my sins will be paid for by my kids. And so I have to add so much value, bro, to make up for all of those fucking years of being an asshole.

• 1:51:19Tom Bilyeu?

  It's a useful way to look at it, even if it's not literally true. Where can people follow you?

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  Best place to follow me is on Instagram, at Bedros Kulin.

• 1:51:28Tom Bilyeu?

  I love it. Guys, follow him. He's absolutely incredible. He's right about an incredible amount of things. And speaking of incredible things, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done.

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