Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 23 Tom + Lisa Bilyeu

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

This week, in episode 23 of couple things with Shawn and Andrew, we sit down with Tom and Lisa Bilyeu. These two are founders of Quest Nutrition, Impact Theory, and Women of Impact. It was an absolute pleasure to chat with them about their businesses and experience as entrepreneurs. Tom and Lisa also give us some great advice on how they maintain a healthy relationship with each other, and it's some of the best advice we've ever heard. It was so nice to learn a little bit more about their dynamic as partners and we're so excited to share this conversation with you guys. Without further ado, Tom and Lisa Bilyeu.  If you haven't yet, please rate and subscribe to the show to hear more! And if you have suggestions/recommendations for the show, send us your ideas in a video format - we might just choose yours! Email us at [e-mail].    We are supported by the following AMAZING companies! Make sure to check them out using our special code & link below!     Zovio! Go to https://www.Ashford.edu/couplethings and sign up today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So I just remind myself, okay, he loves me. So it brings my emotions now so I can think clearly about what we're actually arguing about instead of taking it so personally against me. Even though I now have all this money, it has affected how I feel about myself exactly zero. But what I had to do to change myself in order to become capable of generating the well, that made me feel. good about myself. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Couple Things. With Sean and Andrew.

A podcast all about couples and the things they go through. Today, we are interviewing Tom and Lisa Bill You, one of our favorite couples. I am in love with the wife. Andrew's in love with the husband. I mean, we're in love with them literally as a couple. If you guys are dating, single, looking for a significant other. If you're married, newlywed, engaged, or married 74 years, and truly looking for a mentor, these are your people. Tom and Lisa are impressive and admirable on so many different accounts in their career.

They've been amazingly successful, but also in their marriage. And so Tom and Lisa actually are co-founders of Quest Nutrition, which you can find on shelves pretty much at any store you go to. sold for over a billion dollars yes uh but through the whole process of getting to the point of selling their company they've been through so much and they actually started as film students um and they talk about the career changes they've been through technology companies lisa actually spent eight years being a traditional housewife just supporting tom and his career realized that she hated it and so she talks about what it was like to move away from that role transitioning to become almost a CEO yes I mean they are both incredibly successful, have gone through almost everything you could imagine within a

relationship, have great perspective, have fought their way through all of the crap and come out on top. They're awesome. If you guys want to find out more about Tom and Lisa, we'll include their information in the show notes down below, but also check them out on pretty much any platform at Impact Theory and Women of Impact. They put out some awesome content. It's really encouraging and really well thought out. What I love about Tom and Lisa is they speak from experience. And they give some fantastic advice because they've really been through it all and have some fantastic, not only stories to share, but also advice that they've learned through all that. I will say, I feel like we covered every single topic from singles to dating to trying to

court your significant other to overcoming obstacles and arguments, literally everything. So it's a great episode. Yes. So before I jump into it, if you haven't subscribed or rated the show, please do so on whatever platform you're listening to. So let's go ahead and jump into this one with Tom and Lisa. Hey, I kind of want to just jump into it because I feel like we could talk for hours. Yes.

But I was looking at some of the lessons you've learned over 17 years of marriage. And the first thing on the list was have sex often. Can we talk about why that made number one? Yeah, I'm going to start. Yeah, please. The one thing that went on our very, very first date, you know, my history was, you know, guys are always trying to posture, say the things that you want to hear. be very sweet and romantic and not saying really much truth and when I first met him because we both thought it was going to be a fling he was so honest and on that first date he's just like

yeah I don't understand people that are in sexless marriages that's never going to be me I refuse to ever have that sex was always going to be discussed we're always going to and this was our first date and it was kind of he absolutely set the ground rules and then at least just me I had friends whose parents were living in different rooms. You know, bed, death in relationships is real. So we had just always discussed, like, that's not going to be asked, which means that you have to talk about it a lot, right? Because each couple, there might be someone that, I mean,

he wants more sex than I do. So we have to talk about that. And I'll say, not just talk about it, you actually have to do it. Right. Yes. Yeah, so my perspective, the reason that I think it is important is just what I call the physics of the human animal. So we have a certain neurochemical state that's brought about through physically connecting on a

sexual level. And that's part of how you maintain the level of bond that you do is by, not to make this all scientific, but by modulating that neurochemistry. So oxytocin is like the bonding hormone, but it also has to do with trust. So when you're intimate in that way and you feel connected and the level of trust increases, excuse me, you can see how that would be really powerful for the relationship as I choked to death over here. That is really managing your neurochemistry is something that I'm always trying to get people to focus on more. It is really critical and I don't think enough people take the time to figure out what the brain is actually doing. I don't think that love will just magically take care of a relationship. So I

I think people have to be super conscious about making choices that benefit the long-term pair bonding. Okay. I feel like we cover so many topics because you guys are just so wise when it comes to relationships. Okay, I want to go back to Lisa. First date, you talk about people posturing. I remember talking to Andrew on after our first date, I wrote him off as like, this could

never work because I was so used to being and going on dates where people did posture so much and he didn't that I was like there's there's no way like who is this guy what is this about I've never seen this angle I don't know how to even read this situation how like what advice would you give people going on first dates what's important what's not important what to look for I mean, what's funny, I think you just, like in your experience as well, it's like you go into a relationship or you go into a day thinking something's important. And I think actually it was the fact that everything I thought that was important, he was the opposite, made me realize those things weren't important in the first place. So I was so used to guys posturing. I was used to guys

being from England and just the community I was brought up in. Having a nice car meant something. having a sound system in your car meant something and wearing china clothes meant something and so I was used to dating those types of guys and so here I was I thought he was like that because he had like this nice watch on and he had like this funky pants on and so I thought he's my type of guy

and that first day where he picks me up and he walks me to his car and he had this really old beaten up puick and it was like those massive old men's cars and I was like what and it totally threw me off and then his back seat had piles of just junk in there and I'm a neat freak so going into it what would I have said was important someone that's neat someone that you know cares for their car and he was the complete opposite but as we're walking to the car he opened the door for me and I was like I've never never dated anyone who's ever held the door open for me my culture being

week. My dad doesn't hold the door open for me. They're walking in front. My brother never held the door. So I was like, he's opened the door for me, which I would never have thought meant anything to me. And then, you know, get out the car. He opens the door to the restaurant. And I'm like, wow, this is something that it made me uncomfortable because I was like, I don't, I'm an independent woman, but I don't like it. So that's the kind of the way of saying, all the things that I thought were freaking important one and now in hindsight, what was the most important thing is that I saw the truth. Now, of course, he was still showing, you know, doing nice things specifically because it was our first day, but he never lied. We had very open

conversations, conversations that normally make people uncomfortable. He was just very open and free to talk about. And that was so refreshing to me. So, yeah, I would, I actually had thrown out all the things I thought were important. Tom, it's my understanding that you had, I think gotten advice from maybe a mentor or friend who said in order to win a girl over, just don't be an a-hole. Can you talk about that? It was the exact opposite. So it was like the classic advice.

So I did not have game. I was very bad with women, basically my entire life. And I was finally getting to the point I was really frustrated by that reality. But I was willing to accept that it was something I was doing wrong. So I worked with this guy who was just getting laid left. right and center and so I said like dude other than he he was an attractive dude but I was like what's the trick and he said oh man you have to be an asshole and I was like that that can't really be the advice like you hear that so often it's such a freakish cliche and I was like I refuse to

believe that but I was like there is a reason much like wives tale stick around for a reason there is a reason that people tell you that and so I tried to sort of back into what was it about this guy that I could see that even I thought was interesting and it was he was so confident and so I was like okay how do I begin to display that kind of confidence in my own life with women even if I don't necessarily have it and I'll stop shy of saying that it's fake until you make it but beginning to realize and this is true of everything in life there are ways to embody something so enthusiasm is the one that I come to the most often trying to get people to understand how you develop a passion you don't find a passion, you develop it.

And part of that is actually embodying whatever excitement you want to feel. And as your brain has a mechanism where however you respond, your brain goes, whoa, it must have been worth that response. So if you respond huge, your brain goes, this must really be a big deal. If you respond small, your brain goes, well, I guess this isn't that problematic. So I wanted to find a way to actually start to embody that, to show the confidence. And it didn't hurt that I met her doing the thing at the time that was probably most, most confident in, which was teaching.

So I was in my element, I was getting to display my verbal ability, which has always been the thing that I've got disproportionate rewards from. So that finally realizing I needed to at least test this confidence thing, and I'm not joking, within 30 days of stepping into that and saying, I'm going to embody confidence, I started to get laid. So I was like, whoa, it actually worked. I was like, this is real. And the truth is that was exactly what I was talking.

want to. He was so confident, but he wasn't rude. He wasn't cocky. He wasn't an asshole. But he was just confident. And so it definitely worked on me. I was his second try. Wow. I was going to say, Tom, so you walk into this date trying to just, you know, make some moves and then you've stumbled into a marriage. So what I want people to understand is I didn't like flip over and I've always been far more interested in getting to know somebody. I need to connect with somebody if the sex is going to be enjoyable. So coming into it, I was just like, look, she's legally obligated to leave the country. This is perfect.

I want to really connect with her. I want to have a good time, but I don't want to be in a relationship. So it's not like I had no experience when I met her. I just wasn't consistently good at sort of connecting with people and taking it to that next level. I was very prone to getting put into the friend zone. So now with this, I thought, okay, well, this is perfect. I want to get to know her, but I know she's going to leave.

I have zero interest in pretending to be somebody that I'm not. So I want to really talk to her like on a real level. And so when she talks about me like, oh, you know, I was just throwing all this stuff out there and talking in a way that other people don't talk, I was just trying to have a conversation that I actually cared about. So like the not posturing was just like, hey, this is interesting to me. I don't care if you agree or not. I'm trying to filter.

And I know that if I try to tell you. what I think you want to hear, which I have tried with women in the past. It actually doesn't work. So now just owning what I actually think, saying what I actually think, and knowing that that will turn off a certain number of people, but it will attract the right kind of person because now I'm not going to have to pretend later down the road. So it was like it was strategic, but it's the smartest lifelong strategy you can play, which is I don't have to remember which lie I told or who I was pretending to be with this person. Like, yep, I do. get it. Some of who I am is actually really going to be a turnoff to some people, but it's really

going to be a turn on to the right person. So I feel like this answer could be different in regards to dating, engagement, and marriage. So it might have different answers for every category and phase. But talking about posturing, talking about trying to like fake it until you make it, to gain confidence and impress a potential spouse or anyone, what I don't even know. know how to phrase this what is like a the biggest mistake people make when they're trying to find a significant other or trying to go on dates or trying to impress someone and how can you cut through all of the BS immediately but still make that first impression does that make sense because you're you're trying to impress people you're trying to posture to some extent you're trying to be someone

else, because you feel like that person wants to see someone, how can you create something impressive for someone and not change who you are later on down the road? Does that make sense? Yeah. I know exactly with yourself. I think it's looking at yourself. So first of all, I'm not going to conform to the person I'm about to go on a date with, right? Because you find yourself, like if someone likes something, he's like, oh, I don't really like it, but yeah, sure. that's great it's like I'm telling yourself I'm not going to conform to that person I'm going to show up and be who I really am but show up and be the best of who you really are right so it's you know I'm not going to show him all my bad moods on the first date that's just a bad

strategy I'm not going to show him if I'm you know irritable it's just a bad strategy now down the line obviously I'm human so he knows eventually you know most people have bad moods and have irritability but I don't necessarily need to show that on the first date so what I would do is show up as my best self, but not as a false self, if that makes sense. That would be at least on my first day. And then down the line with me and him on engagement and marriage, we really did sit down and discuss what type of wife do you want me to be and what type of wife do I want to be. That was way late. I'm going to be honest. That was not like in the first of course of reach. Yeah, that was not. No, so that was when we got engaged and when we got

married and that changed over time i mean i was a stay-at-home wife eight years before you know we became business partners so things are always going to change i think if you're trying to grow and but it's always about communicating and understanding and thinking about what you want as well as what i want i'll take a slightly different approach um so the way that i think about it is you if you really want to get somewhere in a relationship if you want to be both who you really are and be attracted to somebody, then you've got to be a person worthy of attraction. And I feel like people try to play a game or they try to optimize or posture. When in reality, try to, and now I'm speaking to the 50% of your audience as male,

try to be a badass, like actually do something worthy of somebody standing up and taking notice. But for your own sake, like you're doing it to solidify who you are, to strive to be better, to push yourself, not to impress somebody, but because like that's the human condition. If you want to feel good about yourself, this is what I tell everybody, the punchline of life, boys and girls, is it isn't success, it isn't money, it isn't fame. I promise you it is exactly one thing, and that is how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself? And if you're looking for external validation, if you're looking for the person in your life to echo back something that makes you feel good about yourself, you will forever be in a fragile situation because the second that they stop giving you that, like you are now more or less. Like, you're just, you're adrift. And my thing was, I met her in a period where I realized I'm doing something wrong

if I'm not getting the result that I want in life. And it happened to coincide with me beginning to read about the brain and understanding this virtual reality that I was living through this spongy tissue between my years. And so I was just like, I want to get better, man. I feel so trapped. I feel frustrated. I feel lost. I feel hopeless.

This was a pretty dark period in my life. And clawing my way out of that was. was about self-improvement. So unlike somebody who grows up a gymnast, nobody told me to toughen up. Nobody told me that if you worked hard, you could get what you wanted. And so my life up until that point

had been to try to, like I thought I was born with a certain set of skills. I didn't realize that I could improve them until I started reading about the brain. And so I was just trying to put myself in this little situation where it was like, these are the skills I have.

Let me try to like make the most of them. When I flipped a switch and was like, yo, I can improve, I can get better, I'm going to work my ass off. Then it was like I started to become attractive because I didn't need validation. I wasn't seeking it anymore. I knew who I wanted to be, even if I was still a little unsure who I was. And then that put me on a process to be interesting to some of my reasons.

Tom, do you limit that message to just males? Because you're married to a badass, it seems. It is purely the language. So the way that I speak as evidenced by the audience that I have built skews a little more masculine. But no, the message I think ultimately is the same. But I really do believe that there are inherent differences in the female brain and the male brain. So I think it's inevitable that we express ourselves differently, which I love. So you think about what makes a rainforest so resilient. It's the variety, right? So I wouldn't want men and women to be exactly the same,

especially not in a business context. I heard a really rad quote one time, which is if you have a business partner and you both think alike, one of you is unnecessary. I was like, whoa, like you actually want diversity of viewpoint. You want diversity of opinion. And then you want those to come together and sort of battle it out for what's actually most effective to move before. But the core of what you said, though, is absolutely true for women as well. Like I have absolutely had to learn and work on my own, work on my own confidence, my own self-esteem and not seek it in him. Because the second you're looking for it in your partner, while it feels good in that moment, I think it becomes fragile, right?

Because if he's in a bad mood or if he's distracted or something's going on with him and I'm feeling insecure and I'm looking to him to bring the security to me and he's not, then that leads me in a very fragile position. So, yeah, I agree. It's absolutely both sexes as well. Speaking about how you express yourselves, you guys talk a lot about defining terms. and Sean and I have been having this discussion

actually a lot the past two weeks because she says hey Andrew you never say you're sorry in my mind I say I'm sorry every other sentence but it's not how she defines it can you talk about how you guys have gone about that it's so funny because we literally

this week on that we've got a post that we're putting out on what terms we're defining and it we are you guys okay what are you drinking over there I don't have COVID. So really, it is. Like, you've been brought up in one way and one word being something to you.

You've been brought up in a different way. I'll pick up. Basically, you learned early on that if you think you're saying the same thing, but you're not, then you're going to have a total communication breakdown. And so taking a time, to actually say, hey, you're using the word important. I'm using the word important, but there's a

huge gap between what that means. So important is one of the earliest words that we define. And for us, what we circled around and came to was that the word important means, yo, whatever you are doing, stop immediately, listen to what I'm saying. I will never use this word. I won't use it very often. But if I say this is important to me, I mean, I'm talking like highest value, like all attention on this thing. And so that became really clarifying. But we defined even more about like if I said important, he's in a meeting with the president. It means he has to leave. Like that's how high.

And we've actually said that he's like, yep, if my wife says it is important and I'm with whoever. And literally in our marriage only once have we both said, this is important to me in this direction. and she said this important to me in that direction. We were like, whoa, like now what a, that's actually a really interesting moment, but it's a, it's an edge case, so I'll stay to the core thing. Just knowing what it means to the other person, that it immediately elevates, you know, this thing to like all hands, pay attention, has been really, really helpful. And then so we have a step below that, which is meaningful.

So if I say, this is important, yo, unless you have an equally important reason why we wouldn't, we are doing this thing. But if I say it's meaningful, it's like, maybe you don't feel the same. I want you to know that it's of elevated significance, but I completely understand if you're going to refuse to do this or you don't see it the same or whatever. And then there's a handful of other words. Yeah.

But going back to like what you were saying, Sean, is like with the word sorry, right? Because you feel like you say, well, okay, what are the word? How are you actually feeling that? Are you saying it because you, oh, like, do you actually say the word, sorry, but you say, oh my God, yes, I'm sorry, but, right? I don't know. But, like, what is the things that makes you feel like you're saying sorry but makes you feel like you're not hearing sorry?

And then defining that. And so what we do is I say, okay, these are the words you said and this was my interpretation of that. And then he could go, oh, my God, no, that wasn't what I wanted you to interpret. This is the words that I said, and this is what I was meaning behind it. So kind of really breaking those down layers and like, okay, now the... you've assessed all of that. How do we move forward? Okay, if you want me to actually hear you say sorry, I need you to say X, Y, and Z, whether you agree with it or not, this is how I interpret

it. And perhaps do X, Y, and Z, because there might be a due component of this, which may be where you guys are disconnecting. I could certainly see that, with that particular word, I could see that one going beyond sort of the lexicon definition and into like the actions that follow. and that'll be part of the discussion. Because I will say to him, I need physical contact. Like if you're across the room and you're like, okay, yeah, I'm sorry. And you walk off, that's not the same to me as if you come to me and go, baby, I'm so sorry and give me a hug, right?

And so for him, who doesn't necessarily need the hug or doesn't need to necessarily say the word baby, he's like, but I've done what you look. Like I've said, sorry. But I haven't felt it. So really going over, this is actually what I need to hear what you're trying to say. and then acting in accordance and reminding yourself in that moment. It's amazing how much self-discipline it takes

to actually enact that to only say, hey, this is important to me when it's the leave the president type of situation. And I'm sitting over here listening to you, Lisa, and understanding that, oh my gosh, I need to do these things to make sure that Sean feels that I'm sorry. By the way, this hit therapy mode real quick. but people say that marriage is a lot of hard work and it's it's like really it is but it's a lot of

small hard work things you know what I'm saying like oh I only I can only say important if it's this situation or for me to have Sean understand that I'm sorry I need to go across the room and give her a hug it's like it's hard work in the sense that that's humbling and there's a lot of pride that has to get pushed the side there um but those are really wise words okay i have two topics i want to talk about this is kind of a trend we've been seeing in a lot of like the couple conversations and interviews that we've done and i feel like everybody seems to be really split 50 50 on their opinions so one is baggage we have friends who have very um passionate views on baggage and I define baggage as we have we've seen people who go into relationships and they're like

whatever you've done in the past whoever you've been with whatever like whoever you were is not who you are now so I don't need to know and let's just start here and move forward whereas I feel like the other half is like let's talk about it how are you brought up how did you deal with these situations because however you dealt with them then is how it's going to affect us now I'm curious ear guys' stance on that and kind of where you lie with it, I guess. Reading, playing, learning.

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and ask your family eye care professional for Esselor Stelis Lenses at your child's next visit. I feel like you got a very strong opinion here for you. So again, just the physics of being human, right? So if you want to have a meaningful relationship with somebody, you want to open up and explore. But going back to what you were saying a minute ago, it's the real work with saying something is important,

is not abusing the work, right? So it's so tempting to know I can get what I want by. saying this is important. And resisting that urge is critical. So if you guys are going to have a relationship where you're completely opening up to each other and you ever are doing that to like dig into somebody, to get to something, to shame them, to make them feel bad, it's like that person will shut down and then instantly, oh, I can't be honest with this person because I know where it's going. And I will say in the beginning of our relationship, there was so much insecurity and realizing that insecurity is like if you have a strong emotional reaction to something

I can pretty much guarantee somebody has put a finger on something that you're insecure about and things that she would tell me in the beginning of our relationship I can't recapture why that would have ever bothered me but it did when we first got together and so things now that just seem utterly stupid um that I would never have even a moment sort of hiccup over back then we're really problematic and we really had to talk and process through. Now, I'm glad that we did it and we had that value system, which we didn't have the exact words for back then, but I can give people the words for now. Don't ever weaponize something against your partner. Don't weaponize their past. Don't weaponize their failures and really, really, really don't weaponize their

insecurities. Like when you're in a relationship and you fucking open yourself up and you tell something that you've never told anybody and you don't know how they're going to react, it's like there will come a point in the future, I promise you with that deep insecurity that they gave you, you're in an argument and you think they're wrong and you could shut them down. You have that thing. They gave you that weapon that you could literally make them stop talking, right in that moment. You could make them weep and apologize to you and you could win. And in that moment, if you do it, you will break the trust forever and you will never be able to recover because they will know if I give them this thing, which I need to give them to feel like me and

to relax and to have that the cathartic moment of telling somebody something that you think you'll be rejected for and being supported in that moment for the reasons you said, which is that's who you were. It's not who you are. But man, there's something cathartic about being a human, if you can express that to that person and tell them, suddenly it loses its power because you don't have to hide it. That's so beautiful. Like relationships are compromised, but they are worth the compromise when you're able to really

let go of all that stuff and be supported. It doesn't mean that they're going to think everything you've ever done is brilliant. It just means that they recognize that who you were then does not have to define who you are today. And then also understand why you may react to something. Because let's say I'm super sensitive about something, but he has no clue. And it comes from a part, in fact, my ex-boyfriend wasn't very nice to me. And he was emotionally abusive and would say, no one's ever going to love you, like I love you, but made me feel like crap. And so there were certain things that he would do that I needed to tell him so that he understands. Because if he didn't know where my scars were and he starts pressing on them and all of a sudden

I'm like upset, annoyed, irritable, he's like, what the hell's wrong with her? But if I can communicate, hey, this is what happened in the past. I'm still sensitive about it. It doesn't mean that that's who I am, but I'm still sensitive about X, Y, and Z. He can now be show grace to me when something happens. he's like okay i know she's sensitive about that so i'm not going to touch on that so i think in sharing it is enabling you to come together stronger and understand each other instead of judging each other it's so powerful on the on the one hand how sharing that baggage can be the most

healing thing that you do but on the other it's it's now open to be weaponized do you slash couple things. Side note, not all programs are available in all the states. But if you go online, you can see which programs are available for you. That's right. Also check the link in the description down below. Let's get back to it. How have you guys prevented when you're in those heated moments, which I'm sure being business partners, being married for 17 years, there's plenty of moments like that. Is there something that keeps you in check when you're feeling those emotions rise that prevents you from weaponizing those insecurities? Cool. For me, it's more just internal dialogue. So I tell myself, you can never take this back.

Like, I just repeat that to myself. So if I even feel the inkling, it's like, you can never take this back. You can say, sorry, but you can never take back something that you've seen your partner suffer with. And if you've used it to weaponize, you just can't take that back. And so for me, I just remind myself, I'm in this for the long game. Like, till the day I die. And so in order for us to succeed, I have to. to remind myself in those moments. So that's one thing I personally do in my own head. And then the thing is, I just always say, like, I just want him to win, right? As a human being, I want him to win. Not in the argument, I of course want to win in the argument, but removing yourself from that.

Like, as a human, I just want him to win. And so for me right now, to say something that's going to not allow him to win doesn't feel right of who I am as a human. You may have a better strategy. Well, I'll say yes, and. So on top of that, I'll say that people need to understand why they're in a relationship, what they get from that relationship, what is worth the sacrifices and compromises that are required to be in that relationship.

And once you know that, then it's like, okay, well, if that's the reason I'm doing this and I reap tremendous rewards from that, then I'm going to do whatever I need to do to protect that. and for me that sense of being lifted up by somebody who knows who you are and they're not with you because they don't understand who you are they know fully who you are and they're still with you and there's so much comfort and value in that and the bond that human seek emotionally is so powerful and you get such a neurochemical reward from that so I'm like well I know what breaks that thing down, which is if you lose trust, you lose everything. And knowing that if I do that even one time, it has this a break effect that can never fully be recovered from. So it just like

the logic of what do I want to get? What would break that thing that I want to get? Oh, saying this, weaponizing this, then therefore it just makes sense I can't do that. Or it wouldn't serve my own selfish desires. So if we've read this correctly, you guys have a magic question within your relationship that you ask during arguments or during kind of vulnerable times. And it's the, I think it's the do, does he love me or do they love me? Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, I, I'm just very emotional in the sense of like I would get frustrated or if we'd

get into an argument, you know, end up, I don't know about it from, but like, you take it personally. And so it's like, I can't believe he did that to me, like, oh my God. And your emotions, then, I believe, really do, like, they trick you. So I know, okay, in those moments where I'm emotionally sober is what I call it. I look back and I'm like, man, like you absolutely let your emotions take you in a direction that you really know isn't true. But in that moment, it feels so vindicated because your emotions are telling you.

So because I can't help in that moment, chat. change my emotion like that, I just have a mantra that I repeat to myself to, in essence, distract me from what my emotions are trying to trick him on. So I just say, does he love you? Like, it's so simple. Yes. I mean, you know, we've been together for 19 years. Every single day, you do these little things like he makes me coffee or whatever. Like, he shows me in every single way that he loves me. So why in this one moment of a massive argument do I think that everything he's done in the whole 19 years has negated that? So I just remind me so, okay, he loves me.

So it brings my emotions down so I can think clearly about what we're actually arguing about instead of taking it so personally against me. So Tom, you spoke in a couple times about the neuroscience behind relationships. And you guys are both really big on mindset. At least I think you said that Tom came up with that word. and you're so thoughtful in that way. Some might say that that kills the romance, the fact that you're so strategic and aware of that.

Is that the case or no? Definitely not. I don't think being blind to the mechanisms of anything is ever a good idea. So if you guys think about, take art, for instance, the greatest artists of all time, take a Leonardo da Vinci, right? I don't think anybody argues that if he's not the, greatest artist that ever lived, that he's certainly one of the greats. And what he would do was he would go out into nature and try to figure out the way that things work. So he was looking at

the way that light reflected. He was looking at the way that things tend to get more blue with distance. He was getting cadavers and dissecting them so we could understand the musculature so that he knew just from a physics standpoint how a muscle could move or bend so that he knew how to pose a body. and that kind of stuff made his art that much more powerful. And so if your art is living a good life, if your art is being connected with somebody and making love last over a lifetime, then understanding the way the brain works

because, look, we all live life through the brain. And once you realize that the brain truly, I don't think we live in a simulation, but I think that the brain comes so close to being a simulation of what is real, that you might as well think of yourself as living in a simulation. There's an area of the brain called the deep limbic system. Its job is not to tell you what's happening.

Its job is to tell you how to feel about what's happening. Now, once you realize, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. It is not trying to give me objective reality. It's trying to tell me emotionally how I should interpret this reality. And then you realize that it can get inflamed. And when it's inflamed, it tends to perceive things negatively. So if you say to somebody, oh, my God, you look so good today. and they get really pissed and really hurt.

You're like, how is that bad? I don't understand what just happened. Because when the deep limbic system is inflamed, what they hear is you didn't look good yesterday. And that is to understand the physics of being a human. And it's like, okay, cool, I get what's going on here. I can adjust my behavior. Like for me understanding, oh, wow,

like this is really upsetting me, whatever she's doing, to know that that means that she's triggered an insecurity allows me to then not get into this death. spiral of what we call arguing about the T, but you get into what's really going on so you can diffuse the situation so you can stay, you know, in this positive, optimistic, loving environment, which is, it's just a more fun place to be. And so without those mechanisms, which I understand how sterile and boring and later sounds, but it's like you want to talk about something that that changed my life. It was ceasing to be a slave to my emotions and finally understanding

what triggers them and how most importantly to change them and that that has been massive in our life and then talking about openly what you each need is going to be so important because you know just seeing how couples i just heard it too you know too much growing up where i was like yeah i don't know you know i blinked and now i don't know who he is it's because you're not connecting okay well why aren't you connected you have to actually look at the realities of why you're not connecting Is it because you're on emotional, different paths right now? Well, you have to discuss that. Otherwise, what's going to happen?

In one, two, three years, you're going to wake up and be like, I have no connection with you. So it's so important that we go to what is our goal to be together for the rest of our lives. Great. How do we get there? Now, that doesn't mean that you have to suck up all of the emotion and connection that comes naturally, right? So it's like on date night.

It's not like we're talking about logistics on the day about like. the things that we're going to talk about, you have to let that just take its course and be like natural and organic. But like you were saying, the mechanisms behind what are the things that trap most couples or couples that end up not staying together? And we really look at it because we don't want to get there. So you ignore it, I think is doing yourself as a couple of disservice. And I'll add one thing to that. I think words matter. I don't have an interest in being together forever. I have an interest in being together forever joyfully. So if it isn't fun, there's no way. I would not continue. So if something happened and we just could not reconcile

and could not get back to a joyful place, I literally since the time I was 14, I had a recurring nightmare about being a loveless marriage that did not stop until I met Lisa. So there was this, this I had witnessed so many people stay together for the sake of kids or whatever that as a 14 year old I was like in this weird loop of like what that would feel like and I have literally zero interest but I know that it won't happen by accident and I know that it is avoidable if you have a real foundation and so going back to what she said about does he or she love me you keep coming back to that as your anger and it's like from there you can build once the answer to that question is no you have other problems i hope you guys have longer than an hour

yeah do you have the rest of the day um okay jumping topics again lisa i think this is really important because one of my biggest pet pee is with relationships and just society is i feel like everybody tries to put relationships into a box they say you have to do this and that and if you do it you'll be happy and things are right I read somewhere that you said the worst piece of advice you were ever given was that if you didn't have kids, you wouldn't be fulfilled within your relationship. I think this hits home with a lot of people. We have a lot of friends who are like, kids just aren't for us.

Can you walk us through your worst advice and how that resonated and then how you move past it? Yeah. Growing up as Greek Orthodox, it was just assumed. Like no one asked me, no. I didn't even ask myself and that was the problem. I just grew up being told, you're going to have kids, you're going to get married. When I went to study filmmaking, I was arguing with my dad because he didn't want me to study film.

And then eventually he's like, well, it doesn't matter in a way you're going to, you know, get married and have kids. And he didn't mean it to be mean. It's just that's his perspective of the world. So growing up, I didn't question it. I meet him. I'm like, yeah, I want to get married. I want to have kids. This is like the life that I want.

He was on board with having kids. But he was like, I want to go out and really experience. So to cut a long story short, he then went chasing money at the time because we thought money was going to make you happy, how long we were. But like, so he went out chasing money. So I was like, I'll stay home. I'll support you. And I did that. And I didn't expect to do it for eight years. We had a master plan, but that took longer than expected. And so I realized for those eight years, I was alone a lot. And so being, I was like, I just want to have kids because I thought it was going to feel something in me that I wasn't. feeling in that time. So I was just like, I want to have kids. When are we going to have kids? And he was just like, I just want to get to a point financially. I want to be able to support you. And then we started Quest. And at the time, he turned around to me and he was like, okay, if we start this company, we're going to lose it and it doesn't succeed. We're going to lose our

house. And so he's like, do you mind just helping out a bit here and there, shipping some protein bars from my living room floor, like rolling pins and knives? And so I was like, of course. I had seen myself as a stay-at-home wife. Now, what I didn't analyze was, was I happy? I would just got into that, like, that loop of this is what I'm supposed to do. And so I didn't actually ask myself, am I satisfied? Am I fulfilled? Am I happy? So when he asked me, hey, do you mind just help him? I was like, of course, I'm a good wife. I want to support my husband. And I don't want to lose my house. So I just went into it, shipping bars from my living room floor. Now, what we didn't expect was our company to grow at 57,000%. So when it became, hey, you're shipping a

couple of bars a week from your living room floor to now you're shipping $80 million of inventory and you need 10,000 square foot of just fulfillment space, not production space, fulfillment space. For me, I was like, just support your husband. Oh my God, don't lose your house. Now, in that process, I realize I'm actually enjoying this. And that's when I started to go, what do I, what does Lisa want? And that was the first time I actually asked myself the question. And so I was asking myself the question, but you really love this. And as time went on, I mean, I had 40 employees.

I'd never been a boss before. You know, I had my two dogs. And in two years, I went to, you know, 40 employees and $80 million in inventory. And I was loving it. I was loving learning. I was loving messing up and figuring it out. And that's when I started to ask myself, what does my life look? like like as a whole not just thinking about you know you hear a lot of people saying like

oh my death bed I want to make sure that I've got family around me at Christmas time I was like I need to go what does my Wednesday look like if we have children right and we sat down and we asked each other the question like don't think about me don't think about your wife what do you want your average Wednesday to look like and he was like you fell in love with an ambitious man. So please don't ever ask me to now not be ambitious. And so I had to respect that, of course. So he's like, I'm not going to be coming home. I'm at six o'clock in the evening. Like that's not who I'm going to be. Now, I want to be an amazing father. So on the weekend, I'll take him to soccer practice. And so then we're like, okay, if that's what our

weeks look like, where do I fit in? And so we just had a very honest conversation of if he wants to be an amazing father and he's not going to come home early. So, okay, when all week, I'm going to be at home with the kids. On the weekend, he's going to take the kids and want to spend time with them. What about our relationship? And so we literally were just so honest, no guard up. Don't think about how I'm going to feel if you're like, yeah, I don't want kids. Like, don't worry about how I'm going to respond to it. You have to be honest. And in that same token, I then was honest with him. And I was like, look, I know you married a woman who said she wanted kids. I wanted four children.

So I was like, I recognize you married someone that's what you thought. But I'm changing. And so in me changing, I am feeling so good about myself, running this business and helping you build a quest. And his response was, look, I love the fact that you're putting my clothes out for me, that you're making me dinner every night, that, you know, you were basically there at my, you know, Beck and calling essence of what he needs. And he's like, of course I love that.

I'd be stupid to, like, or I'd be lying to you if I said, I didn't love that. But what I would love even more is to see you happy. So what kind of husband would I be to ask you to be someone that you're no longer? And so we broke that down and we said, okay, so how do we make this transition? Is it okay that I don't want children now? Like, am I going to be judged? And I was judged for it. And people called me selfish.

And I just had to remove the emotion and go, okay, someone's calling you selfish now, now why do you think that they're doing that and then being true to myself as well as well is that a good enough reason to have kids when you really you know for somebody else so we kind of break things down I know that was a very long way would answer but that was really exactly how we processed it and we came to the conclusion of yeah I like working in business I don't want to give up my career and he you know said the same and we put each other first and so we just kind of broke things down to come to that conclusion and then I had to to be okay with the judgment that may come to it because I'm not going to live my life

for somebody else. I was I was going to ask you Tom about your nightmare of a joyless love life because you mentioned if you were if you ever found yourself in that situation like you just couldn't bear it and I was going to ask is there a certain time period of joylessness that you would put up with before like I don't think you were you weren't talking about being being in a marriage and then being joyless and divorcing. But it seems like you've prevented that by just, it's not so much about falling into that situation as it is about living this life whose main principle is like honesty and transparency.

And you brought that into your marriage. And I think that's fantastic. I come from more of a traditional background. Sounds like you do as well, Lisa. And the stereotypes of like, oh, this is. is what my marriage is going to look like. I don't think we've put much thought into like overcoming those as much as just like you two have done this, this partnership is about me making her happy, me helping her realize

her dreams and vice versa. And so it's not like, oh, well, you need to do the laundry because that's purely selfish on me. It's no, you're busy doing something else so I can do the laundry. Well, I think, like you were saying, I think a lot of people handcuffed themselves in relationships and their relationships fall stagnant because they follow the guidelines of what they think they should do

instead of doing what's best for their relationship. I know we have a lot of friends who are like, oh, well, if we did this or we moved to this city or we didn't have children, my parents would never forgive us. Well, then you're living your parents' relationship and not your own. And I feel like no relationship can succeed if you aren't transparent and honest and live the life that you guys want and that you guys dream and not someone else's so i i think that's you said it beautifully i mean we we have a lot of those conversations

just because our parents were raised so different and we've even said i almost feel like we would be doing them a disservice if we don't like evolve our relationship to become something different than theirs otherwise we're not growing and we're not becoming something new yeah but Yeah, we get that a lot. And the parents, especially for me being Greek Orthodox, I had to keep telling my mum, because she was just asking me every time I would call her. And then I was like, oh, when you're trying,

when you're trying. And I started to realize it was actually making me not want to call her. And so I had to be honest, I said, Mom, I love you so much. And I understand that you're looking for me to feel something by having a child. But in the fact that you keep asking me, it's making me not want to call you.

going to be dangerous because I love you and you're my mom. And so if you need to mourn, and I actually said this time, if you need to mourn the idea that you're going to be a grandmother through me by all means, let me know how I can support you through that process. But at some point, you need to get to the other side and you need to accept that this is the lifestyle when you have chosen. There is no reflection on how much I love you and how much I want you to be happy. But I have to do what is right for me for my happiness in the long run. And like kind of having those discussions and giving someone the space to feel badly or feel sorry for themselves because they had an idea in their head about being the grandmother or, you know.

And so it's like, look, I want to respect however you're going to perceive this. But we have to talk about it and get to the other end. Otherwise, it's going to be a freaking nightmare. And every, for years and years and years, that's all she's going to keep saying. And I felt like I was breaking her heart every time I would say. So she would say, oh, you guys try and I was like, no. mom decided to not have kids. Every time I would say it, it hurt me as well. So yeah, I totally understand the judgment or the wanting to do things for other people, but I think that in the long run

it just becomes such a thing this game. I don't. I really don't get it. The only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself and you by yourself, man. Can't live somebody. That is one gift I will say that I cultivated that shit real. So know what you want. I think a lot of people lack clarity on what they want for themselves. But, yeah, I think somebody else's life makes zero sense. You went from a first date in a beat-up Buick to however many years later, 20 or so, maybe just over selling a billion-dollar company together. How has money, how has material things change your guys' relationship?

You want an answer? Zero, literally zero. So the cool thing is we did it together. I won't lie. That's been absolutely amazing. And let's see how many people in your audience I can really piss off right now. But here is something I find absolutely. Women are very good at working through other people.

So when I think about who I would be without my wife, I am not. I have the chills right now. I would not be the person I am. When we got together, one of the first things I said to her, which she mentioned earlier was, you can ask anything of me, literally, let me know. How can I make you happy? Don't ever ask me to not be ambitious. It is the one thing that is at the core of who I am and my pursuit of greatness and getting

better and all of that. So, but in that, like this woman pushed me to be great. In moments of weakness, she would big me up. She would make me feel better. She would lift me up and encourage me to, like, go back out. Like, come on, you can do it. In moments of some of the hardest negotiations in my life, this woman was in my ear like, yo, let me tell you, do this, ask for this, push here.

I'm telling you, which week is there? And I was like, yo, I used to joke and say, you're like Lady McVette. She's behind this, like making sure that I'm rising up and then I'm doing, becoming everything that I can't be holding me to a standard. And that was so intoxicating for me because she always made me feel love. And it was like, if you fall, I'm going to be there. I'm going to support you. I'm going to lift your back up.

It was like this beautiful thing. But she was always like, hey, you can be better, you can be more. And that was so what I needed. It was so rad. And I loved it so much. And I remember one time, I'm not a crier. But this was probably a few years ago. And I, like, we were in, like, some deep discussion.

And I started to cry because I was like, you're never going to get the credit for who I've become that you deserve. Like, you've been so patient in the backgrounds to help me grow and to give me the space and to be encouraging and to never make me feel bad when I fell. But I was like, oh, my God, the person I would be so much less with. you. And I was like, that is such like this female thing of like that there was an ability for her to find joy and who I was becoming by pushing me and by having a role and watching me a sin. She spent eight years as a housewife. But that is so misleading to what was actually happening. It's just so hard to encapsulate the, the messy truth of the reality. But the reality is behind the scene. She wanted to know, like, what's the dream? Where are we going? How can I

help, like always facilitating and pushing me forward. It was rad, man. And so I was just like always awestruck with how there seemed to be very little difference for her, whether it was my success or her direct success. Like she was just so able to move between. And look, as she began to realize, actually, no, I want to be in the fight myself. I want to be an entrepreneur. Like, we made that transition. That, that you literally do a whole thing just on that. But like, she was able to move and become the person that she wanted to become, but that really powerful ability to help me become who I wanted to become was something I will value and cherish until the end of time is so powerful. I've completely lost track to what you asked. But like that, what was the

argument? It was about money. Oh, yeah. So I would put a, this is great for you. No, we totally lost But so through all of that, because it was a journey that we took together, and I always felt like she added equal value, it was like, we've always said, look, money could come, could go. I'm hyper aware that nothing is guaranteed. So just because you've had success doesn't mean that it'll stay forever. And our thing is the being together is the one thing that is as close to bulletproof as you're going to get. Like that's always the thing I can retreat to and feel good about. So we've always said one phrase, We go together. So as long as we have each other, we'll be fine. I only fear two things. Brain damage, because I can't rebuild after that, and I can't have the emotional life that I want to have, and losing her because a shared life is the greatest joy,

and it's the only thing there's no shortcut to. So if something happened to her, I could start over. I could find somebody else, and I believe that, I would find love again for sure. But we've been together for 20 years, and it's like there's, to get that back, I would have to live 20 years in real time with somebody else. And I just want to add to that.

Like he said, money can come and go. There's never a guarantee. And so for us, it's finding the joy in the small things. And I deliberately actively tell myself that constantly. And I can't remember who said it. Oh, God, I wish I could. But they said, oh, Larry Hamilton's wife, Gabby.

Gabby, Reese. Thank you. to Gabby Reese turned around and I love this and it hit me so hard and stuck with me since she's like every day I walk down the stairs and when I see lead I give him a kiss because there's no guarantee he's always going to be sitting there and I was like oh my god like that hit me so much and I remind myself that every time now and when I see him I just go up to him and I kiss him and I hug him and I'm just like I just want to hug you because you're here but we don't do that with the bank statement and like

I say that knowing that it's going to get people to laugh, but like really think about that. So it's like, man, we are wired, getting back to the brain, we are wired to have this outsized response to somebody looking at you with love and knowing that they're going to be there. They're just, money's powerful. Money's rad. It's better than people think. It just isn't what people think. Like most people have a different view of what money can do. Money can't touch how you feel about yourself.

It can't. and I'm very grateful for the way in which we got wealthy, which was we built a ton of value in something. And even though on paper we were worth hundreds of millions of dollars, we were living a normal middle class life. And so there was this like weird discrepancy of, yes, I guess we're like super rich, but it actually doesn't feel like that because I don't have a lot of money in the bank account. I have a lot of value in a company. And then we took an investment and sold a piece of that company. So literally, we're sitting there with our banking app hitting refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, because we knew the money was going to hit the account. And you go,

from a normal bank account to like crazy commas and zeros, literally like that. And in that moment, I realized, oh my God, every insecurity I've ever had in my life, I still have. And so even though I now have all this money, it has affected how I feel about myself exactly zero. But what I had to do to change myself in order to become capable of generating the wealth, that made me feel good about myself. So it's like, look, you may never get wealth. But But the struggle is a guarantee. So put all of your investment into the struggle being something that fills you up.

If you do that, you're both. And that's what we did with our relationship. It's when the times were really tough and I was collecting coupons and literally counting every penny, I found joy. I turned it into a game. We would do carpet picnics

because we couldn't afford to go out for dinner. You know, and so we turned it into a game. And so even now, it's like, we still do those small little things that are just super fun and have nothing to do with money. And it's just us connecting. And we actively, going back to what you were saying earlier, Andrew, about it being work.

It is work. And so even with this, it has been very deliberate that I do not put money or value money over my relationship with my husband. And I make sure that we do that. So it's his birthday. We couldn't go out, right? Because of the quarantine, it was like last month. And so it's like, okay, normally we would do a big trip, right, which is a lot of money. And so I was just like, this is amazing.

Now I can think about showing him ways that I love him without money. And so how do I do that? And it becomes like this thing, but we connect. And yeah, it's just so. Listen, we usually, our closing question is usually what do you love most about your significant other? But I feel like this whole past hour has been you guys talking about in a really deep way, probably the deepest that we've heard, how much you appreciate and how much you depend on.

and how much you love your spouse and I am so impressed with you too you can speak on so many different things entrepreneurship you could speak on health you could speak on uh film you can speak on tech there's so many things that you guys are experts on but it seems like you make your biggest priority kind of the marriage and I love that and it it shows through and it's it's it's amazing It's inspiring and I am thankful for that. So appreciate you guys taking the time. And thanks for giving me a new perspective on my wife. You guys are amazing.

I could literally talk to you guys for a week straight. So we're moving in with you guys, okay? I feel aware. And I love seeing your guys' content and how you guys are together. It's so awesome. So I love that you're doing this show. And thanks so much for having us on. Yeah.

Thank you guys. Thank you.